The Morning My Own Key Stopped Working At The Workshop

My key went halfway into the new lock and stopped.

I tried once more. Behind the workshop door, the steam box hissed. Someone was bending cedar without me.

It was the first Monday in March. Dirty snow sat along the gravel drive in Sandpoint, and low clouds hid the far side of Lake Pend Oreille. I had brought coffee, clean gloves, and a smooth gray river stone.

The stone fit in my palm. I used it when I checked a finished canoe, placing it on the center mark while the hull rested in two loose slings. A hull that leaned needed another look. The stone never argued with anyone.

I was thirty-eight, a white man with a lean face, pale brown hair, gray eyes, and cedar dust caught in the cracks of my hands.

My name was Nolan Beck. I built cedar canoes. Until that morning, I had believed I also had a partner.

Everett Sloane opened the door just far enough to stand in it.

Everett was forty-five, a white man with swept-back blond hair, blue eyes, and a smile that made every room seem to belong to him.

"We need a cleaner structure," he said.

I looked past him. My spokeshave lay on a bench beside a curl of ruined cedar.

"Where's the old lock?"

"I paid the rent. Eighteen fifty. Somebody had to carry this place."

"The company paid last month's rent. We both approved this month."

"And I covered it when the account came up short. That tells you something."

He spoke as if a receipt for rent was a deed.

A customer stood behind him with a paper cup. I knew her. She had ordered a fishing canoe for her husband's birthday.

"Nolan," she said. "I thought you left."

Everett turned his smile toward her.

"Nolan helped with sanding. Good hands. But the designs, the client work, the whole operation, that's been mine."

Her eyes dropped to my gloves.

I could have named every rib inside her unfinished boat. Instead, I asked Everett to step outside.

"No scene," he said.

"Then don't make one."

He closed the door behind him.

"You can pick up your lunch tin Friday."

"And my equipment?"

He laughed softly.

"The forms stay. We have an expedition order. You know what that means for this town."

Six sixteen-foot canoes. Twelve thousand dollars each. Tessa Quill's outfitting company had booked them for a monthlong river survey. Experienced crews would put those hulls through hard days. Photos from that trip would mean more than any ad Everett had ever bought.

Only three outfitters had been invited to bid for the survey. Tessa had won the field contract, and her crews would carry visiting river researchers.

"Those forms aren't company property," I said.

"Everything inside belongs to Stave and Shore. That's what a partnership means."

We had formed Stave & Shore Canoes LLC three years earlier. Everett had brought sales contacts and $8,000. I had brought $8,000 and a separate equipment lease.

He had signed both agreements.

"Did you read the letter I sent in January?" I asked.

"Your little offer? Yes."

"You didn't answer."

"Because it was silly."

He held the door handle. He had always been good at making a meeting seem finished.

"Tell the customers whatever you need," he said. "Just don't slow down the work."

I stood there until the door shut.

Through the window, I saw him point at one of my cedar forms. The customer nodded. He was already explaining my work to someone else.

I went back to my truck.

My first thought was of the men I could call. Two friends had helped me carry those forms into the shop. We could carry them out.

Then I pictured a canoe shell cracking as someone tried to drag it off a form. I pictured a deputy asking who had broken the door.

I took my gloves off.

Under the truck seat sat a flat document case. I kept copies there because water pipes froze, roofs leaked, and Everett misplaced things he didn't like.

The oldest receipt had my name at the top. Nolan Beck. Not the company.

There were eleven more like it: cedar strongbacks, station forms, rib molds, steam-bending jigs. I had bought them over nine years, before and during the business. Together, the purchases totaled $47,850.

Behind them sat the equipment lease, signed in blue ink.

Behind that sat my January 8 buyout proposal and the postal receipt showing delivery on January 10.

I had offered Everett $10,000 for his half, subject to a full review of the books. Our operating agreement gave him thirty days to answer a written separation proposal before either of us could demand outside review and a sale process.

Thirty days had passed.

I laid the river stone on the papers so the heater wouldn't lift them.

My phone rang. Tessa's name filled the screen.

"Nolan," she said, "why did your partner just ask me to pay our deposit again?"