Faye Turned Her Pottery Camera Toward The Missing Extension Cord

I read the yellow receipt twice, then took a picture of it beside my watch.

"Forty-eight hours from when?" I asked.

Curtis tapped his pen against the split paper.

"You were standing here."

"Then please write the date and time."

He added them with a sigh loud enough for the row to hear.

I did not pay him. I did not sign the space marked Vendor Accepts Violation.

Instead, I wrote on my own copy: Goods taken over objection. I asked the setup worker his name. It was Owen Reed. He let me write it down.

"I'm just moving boxes," he said.

"That's what I'll say you did."

Faye stood at my empty table after Curtis left.

"Would you like to borrow some bowls?" she asked. "You could sell the bowls and I'll stand around looking useful."

I laughed once. It surprised us both.

"I'd like to see your camera."

Her smile settled into something sharper.

Earlier, she had told me about the small camera clipped above her shelves. She used it to watch her booth while she carried stock from her truck. A sign said the booth was recorded. When the market ended, she usually cleared the card.

"I haven't erased anything," she said.

We went into her truck, where the wind could not hit the screen.

Her camera had started at 2:58. At 3:06, I came through the side gate with my loaded cart. We watched me lift the battery onto its crate and connect my lamps to the output sockets.

The charging socket faced the camera. Its black cap stayed closed.

"Look there," Faye said.

At 3:43, Curtis crossed behind my booth with an orange extension cord. He bent at the post that fed our row, then carried the other end toward his wooden kiosk by the gate.

His kiosk window shone yellow. Through it, a small heater glowed near his boots.

At 3:47, the string lights over the aisle went dark. My lamps stayed on.

We watched him leave the kiosk and head straight for my stall.

"That doesn't show the heater plug," I said.

"No," Faye agreed. "But it shows where he took the cord."

I liked her more for that answer.

She copied the whole recording onto a spare card. She kept the original, including the dull parts where nothing happened. On a sheet from my folder, we wrote the camera's time and compared it with our phones. It ran two minutes slow.

We noted the difference instead of changing the recording.

Then I opened my battery's saved history.

After lunch, at my niece's garage in Grawn, I had finished charging it before driving north. Input stopped at 1:12. From then through the seizure, the record showed no incoming power. Output began at 3:09 and stayed between twenty-six and twenty-nine watts.

Enough for my lamps. Nothing close to a heater.

"Can you save that?" Faye asked.

"I already do. Every selling day."

The battery had cost $680. I could not afford to guess when it needed service. Each month I saved the power report with my sales records. That habit had once felt fussy. Now I saved the full day's file, took pictures of the screen, and left the history alone.

Curtis had seen an old van and a woman making wicks. He had assumed he could choose the only record that mattered. But I held a record his pen could not change.

At 4:32, I emailed the market office. I attached my paid permit, the receipt, and my stock sheet. I asked for my candles back and for a review before the sale threat took effect.

I described the two records without sending all of Faye's footage to an inbox Curtis might control.

The permit listed the association's board chair, Mara Bell, beneath the office address. I sent her the same message.

Then I packed my empty shelves.

The gates opened while I was tying the last strap. Families came through with knit hats and paper cups. Someone stopped at my table.

"No candles tonight?"

"They've been taken to the office. I'm working on getting them back."

Curtis heard me from his warm kiosk.

"Careful what you tell customers," he called.

I pulled the strap snug.

"That was what happened."

At my niece's house that evening, I laid the braid across my folder. The red keeper thread looked small against all that paper.

At 8:14, my phone rang.

"Ms. Akana? This is Mara Bell," a woman said. "Can you bring that battery to the market at nine tomorrow morning?"