My Partner Took The Truck Before I Could Finish A Date

Wesley drove away while I was cutting an eight in Lee Sloan's death date.

The air hose pulled tight. Then it slid through the grass after the truck, knocking my spacing guide off a board.

I raised both hands.

"Wes! The compressor is still hooked up!"

He stopped near the cemetery gate. I thought he had heard me.

Instead, he lowered his window.

"You're done, Omar. Leave the keys with Bernadette."

"Those are my keys."

He held up his phone as if that settled it. Then he drove out onto the Tulsa street with my truck, my compressor, and the stone tools I had spent six years buying.

I was thirty-six, a Puerto Rican man with brown skin, close black curls, and a pale scar that split my left eyebrow.

As a mobile stone engraver, I added names, dates, and short lines to markers too heavy to move. Most days, I worked on my knees. That morning, my knees were wet from the grass at Redbud Rest Cemetery.

Mrs. Sloan stood beside her husband's marker.

"Did I do something?" she asked.

"No, ma'am."

She held a folded check for $185. We had agreed I would add Lee's death date beneath his name. Now a rubber stencil covered half the stone, and my air supply was leaving without me.

Bernadette Okafor came down the walk before I could explain.

She was fifty-five, Nigerian American, and the cemetery superintendent. Her silver braids were tucked under a broad hat. When she stopped, even people who did not know her tended to stop too.

"Mrs. Sloan," she said, "come sit in my office. Your husband's name will still be here after we have some water."

She gave grief room. She never hurried it just because someone else had caused a scene.

My phone buzzed.

Wesley had sent a message to our cemetery contact list. I knew because I was still on it.

Omar Feliciano was a subcontractor whose services were terminated after damage to cemetery property. Direct all open orders to me.

Mrs. Sloan read it over my hand.

"Damage?"

"I didn't damage Lee's stone."

"There is that crack at the bottom."

"It was there when we measured. I have the photo."

I found the picture on my own phone. Her shoe showed beside the old crack. The date was three weeks earlier.

Bernadette studied it.

"Send that to me," she said. "Then take the stencil off before the sun bakes it on."

I did. Mrs. Sloan went inside with her check still folded.

At noon, Wesley returned in his own car. He wanted the small key ring I kept in my pocket.

Wesley was a broad white American man with sandy hair brushed flat, blue eyes, and a neat beard that made his smile look planned.

At thirty-eight, he had become good at waiting until witnesses were tired before telling his version again.

"Don't make this ugly," he said.

"Bring back the truck."

"Our business bought that truck."

"Read our agreement."

"On what? The tablet? It's been reset. Customer privacy."

He smiled when he said it.

That was when I understood. He thought the equipment invoices had lived only on our shared tablet. He thought wiping it had wiped out the years before he joined me.

I had let him handle calls because he was quick with people. He had mistaken that patience for permission to handle everything.

"You can get your junk," he said. "The rusty box is in the shed. I didn't want it scratching the truck bed."

He tossed the shed key onto the grass.

My father had given me that toolbox. Its red paint had worn down to brown edges. Wesley had called it a tetanus case.

I picked up the key.

"When did you leave it there?"

"Last night. You're welcome."

He drove off before I asked anything else.

Bernadette offered me a ride. At the shed behind my rented work bay, she waited while I opened the toolbox.

On top lay three smooth river rocks. A landscaping crew off Riverside Drive let me pick river rocks from its discard pile to practice new lettering. One held a tall, narrow R. Another held the same R with more space inside its loop.

Below the rocks was a locked steel tray.

"You keep money in there?" Bernadette asked.

"Things that cost me money."

I opened it. A plastic sleeve held the truck title in my name. Another held the $24,900 purchase receipt. Under those were installment receipts for $18,600 in engraving equipment, ending with a stamped balance of zero.

The serial numbers matched my compressor and blasting cabinet.

Our signed partnership agreement lay beneath them. Its equipment schedule called every one of those items my separate property, loaned to the work.

Bernadette touched the corner of the title.

"He signed that schedule?"

I turned to the last page.

Before she could answer, my phone lit up with a photograph from an unknown number.

It showed a receipt for a $3,200 memorial deposit, my name at the bottom, and a stone I had never ordered.