Curtis Raised His Voice While The Board Read The Rules

The Wednesday meeting took place in the warehouse packing room. Someone had moved the apple crates against a wall and set out twenty folding chairs.

Every chair was filled.

I sat beside Faye with a short wick braid in my lap. I had left my candles at my niece's house. I did not want to spend the meeting watching a door.

Curtis arrived with a thick folder. He wore his market badge on a cord outside his vest.

"Before we begin," he said, "I want everyone to understand the danger I prevented."

Mara asked him to sit.

"You'll have time to respond."

"I've given this market eleven years."

"And tonight we need records."

He dropped into the chair hard enough to make it scrape.

Mara started with my complaint. She read the dates and dollar amounts. She did not call it a disagreement. She called it the removal of a vendor's property without a rule allowing that action.

Then she asked me to speak.

My voice caught on the first word.

I looked down at my hands. Three strands went over, under, over. The red keeper thread rested against my thumb.

"I paid for a stall," I said. "I brought my own power. My goods were taken. Here is what I can show."

I kept it to six minutes.

Faye played the full stretch from my arrival through the seizure. Rowan's signed report went around the table with the battery file attached. Owen described carrying the cartons and setting them on the storeroom floor at Curtis's direction.

"She never gave me trouble," Owen said. "She asked me to keep the boxes dry."

Curtis lifted both hands.

"That's what a person says after getting caught."

Mara looked at him.

"Caught doing what?"

"Taking power."

"What evidence did you have?"

"Her lights were on."

The room went quiet in a new way. People had stopped waiting for more.

Faye leaned forward.

"So were mine. I paid for a connection. Did you check which cord went where?"

Curtis's chair scraped again.

"You people have no idea what managing this place takes."

He had used his voice like a door slammed in someone's face. This time no one stood up to leave.

Alma put four receipt copies on the table.

"These payments need to be traced," she said. "We have no approved fee schedule matching them."

Curtis opened his folder and pulled out a typed list.

"There. Safety fees."

Mara read the page, then turned it over.

"Where is the approval date?"

"We discussed it."

"Which meeting?"

"I don't remember every meeting."

Alma had brought the minutes for four years. No vote on that list appeared in them. Curtis said people had trusted him to handle small matters.

"A three-hundred-dollar demand isn't small to me," I said.

He looked at my lap.

"Could you stop playing with string while we're discussing your business?"

I finished the crossing I had started.

"This is part of my business. I'm listening."

Someone behind me let out a slow breath.

The board voted to withdraw the electricity accusation and cancel the $300 demand. My stall rights were restored through the dates I had already booked. Mara would send a written correction to every vendor who had received Curtis's account.

Then the board suspended him from all market duties while an outside audit checked the receipts and payments. A separate vote would decide his job after he had a chance to answer the findings.

He pulled off his badge.

"Find somebody else to freeze out there."

Mara held out a small envelope.

"Keys, please."

He dropped them on the table. Two board members counted them against the key list before he left. The office passwords were changed that night.

I had pictured feeling glad. Mostly I felt tired.

When the chairs folded shut, Ellis came over.

"I should have said something when he took your boxes."

"You said something now."

"It doesn't fix Friday."

"No. But it helps with next Friday."

Mara gave me a copy of the votes before I went home. I folded it around my unfinished braid so it would not come loose in my bag.

Two days later, I returned to the market. My table stood in its old place beside Faye's bowls. A new sign at the office listed the power rules and the number for complaints.

I had just set out my first candle when Alma called.

"The auditor found market payments to Curtis for storage," she said. "Some have the same dates as the fees he charged you vendors."