The Auctioneer Raised His Hand Beside My Old Sewing Machine

The first price tag hung from the machine my father had helped me carry upstairs.

It said LOT 14. Someone had tied it around the handwheel with red ribbon.

I had come to our loft with biscuit crumbs on my shirt and a roll of white thread under my arm. Down on the street, Mobile smelled of warm rain and river mud. Upstairs, our cutting floor held folding chairs.

People sat where I spread mainsails.

"Here's our hired stitcher now," Merrick said.

A woman holding an auction card looked at my hands. I still had the thread under one arm, like proof he was right.

I was a short, broad Hmong American man of forty-nine, with brown skin, gray at my temples, and a white scar across my left thumb.

My name was Fue Her. I repaired sailcloth. Before I let any repaired sail leave, I pushed my thumbnail along each new seam. A loose stitch could hide from an eye. It could not hide from a nail.

"What's going on?" I asked.

"A fresh start. Don't look so grave."

Merrick Sloan was a tall white man of fifty-two, with pink cheeks, silver hair swept back, and boat shoes that never held a scrap of thread.

He wore his good blue shirt. He used that shirt for customers with large boats and problems they wanted someone else to own.

"You booked an auction?"

"An asset sale," he said. "Words matter."

I looked at the chairs, the cloth racks, the hot knife, the six industrial sewing machines. Even my square of beeswax had a sticker.

"Then use the right ones. I'm your partner."

His smile stayed up for the crowd.

"Fue does beautiful work. Business matters make him nervous."

A few people laughed softly. I knew that laugh. It meant they were glad the joke had landed on another chair.

Beside the window stood a young auction clerk with a tablet. His name badge said Cal.

"Have you sold anything yet?" I asked him.

"Viewing first. Bidding starts at ten."

The wall clock showed nine forty-eight.

Merrick took my elbow.

"Come downstairs. I'll explain your last wages."

I pulled my arm free.

"You didn't pay me wages. We split draws."

For six years, we had run Bay Thread Sail Loft together. I repaired and cut. He booked jobs, paid bills, and made people feel better before we had done a thing for them.

We each held half the company.

The machines had come from my earlier shop. When our company could not buy them outright, I had agreed to installments. Merrick had called my thick agreement a worry book.

I kept it downstairs in a steel cabinet above the old flood mark.

"Those machines aren't yours to sell," I said.

Now his smile dropped.

"I've made payments for years."

"The company made payments."

"Same difference. We paid more than fifty thousand dollars. What else do you want?"

"The last four payments."

He glanced at Cal.

"They cleared."

I had checked my account that morning. I had checked it every Friday for four months. Each time, Merrick had blamed a bank delay, a mailed check, a number entered wrong.

That morning, nothing had cleared.

I set down the thread and went to the cabinet.

Inside the file, my blue sailmaker's pencil held my place. I used that pencil to mark a seam after my thumbnail passed over it. One small blue tick meant I had tested what I could touch.

I had used it on the machine list, too.

When I came back, Merrick had picked up the auctioneer's microphone.

"A minor staff concern," he told the room.

"A creditor concern," I said.

Cal lowered his tablet.

I laid the signed agreement across his registration table. Then I turned the heavy machine at lot fourteen just enough to show its plate.

"Read the last four digits."

"Six one eight two," Cal said.

I put my finger on the same number in the attached schedule.

"Now look at the unpaid balance."

He read quietly. His eyes moved toward Merrick.

"Forty-eight hundred dollars?"

"Four installments of twelve hundred. The agreement reserves title until the final payment. There's also a filed security interest. Here's the filing receipt."

"He downloaded something," Merrick said.

"You signed it."

I showed Cal the page that required both members to approve a sale of company assets over five thousand dollars. My signature was missing from his auction papers.

Cal took the microphone away from Merrick.

"We're pausing. Nobody removes a lot."

The room went quiet enough for me to hear the loose belt ticking on the ceiling fan.

Then feet struck the stairs.

A woman appeared carrying an empty sail bag. Behind her came a man with a yellow deposit receipt.

"Where's my mainsail?" she asked.

Merrick backed into the cutting table.

Three more people came through the door.