Trevor Announced My Retirement While My Presses Stood Behind Him

Trevor put white wine in paper cups and told twelve people I was done working.

“Lionel deserves some rest,” he said. “Starting next month, this place becomes Stonewake Studio. Fresh ideas. New tools.”

I stood beside the oldest tool in the room.

I was a tall, lean Black man of sixty-five, with close gray hair, ink-dark fingers, and a perfectly knotted burgundy bow tie.

I had been a letterpress printer for forty-three years. With my eyes shut, I could tell my broad slab serif from my narrow roman by brushing a thumb across the raised letters. I still looked before I set them. Touch told me where to look.

Trevor Maddox was a white man of thirty-one, with pale eyes, swept-back blond hair, and white sneakers he kept clear of the shop floor.

He had dressed that morning like a man who expected photographs.

“Retiring?” I said.

His smile held.

“We talked about slowing down.”

“I said my knee hurt on the stairs.”

Somebody lowered a cup.

Outside our Tacoma storefront, rain shone on the sidewalk. A truck climbed toward Hilltop. Inside, my youngest apprentice stopped sorting spacing material.

Esme Laurent looked from Trevor to me.

At twenty-six, she had a neat ledger, a sharp pencil, and enough patience to check a count twice. Her Haitian American family had taught her three languages. The language she used best at work was a long silence before a hard question.

“Did you get him a card?” she asked Trevor. “Usually the person retiring gets to know first.”

“Let's keep this warm,” he said.

I laid my brass composing rule on the stone table. I tapped it three times against the edge.

That was an old habit. Before I locked type into a chase, I checked the work in three directions. Straight across. Straight down. Then the whole thing together.

Trevor called those taps my little ceremony.

“Whose retirement are you announcing?” I asked.

“Lionel. Please.”

A woman near the door closed her notebook.

“Mara Chen,” she said. “North Quay Design Cooperative. Perhaps we should speak another day.”

“No need,” Trevor said. “The transition is agreed.”

I looked at her notebook. Our three restored presses appeared in a small photograph pasted inside the cover.

“What transition?”

Trevor set down his cup.

“A proposed purchase. Eighty-four thousand dollars. North Quay takes selected studio assets, the name package, and certain accounts. You get your share when everything closes.”

“Are the presses selected assets?”

“They're shop equipment.”

He said it as if that settled title to several tons of iron.

Behind him stood the proof press I had bought from a shuttered church print room. Beside it sat two platen presses, each rebuilt by my hands. One had come from an estate sale in Puyallup. The other had spent nine years under a blue tarp near South Tacoma Way.

I had brought those machines into Harborline Letter & Type when Trevor and I formed our company four years earlier. I brought customers and skill. He brought design work, online orders, and $18,000.

I owned sixty percent of the company. He owned forty.

We had put other things in writing, too.

“You should send me the asset list,” I told Mara.

“Of course.”

Trevor gave a short laugh.

“He's attached. Every bolt has a story.”

“Some have numbers,” I said.

Esme turned away. Her shoulders moved once.

After the guests left, Trevor peeled the paper banner off the window. It said A NEW IMPRESSION.

“You embarrassed me,” he said.

“You announced a decision I hadn't made.”

“You can't run this place forever.”

“I planned to run it Thursday.”

He rubbed his forehead.

“Buyers want a clean change. They don't want a founder hanging around telling them how every job used to be done.”

“Then you should sell something you own.”

He glanced toward the presses.

“Don't make this ugly over old iron.”

There was no point raising my voice. The presses were louder than both of us, and they had never won an argument by talking.

I went to the flat file under the cutting table.

In its bottom drawer lay a brown envelope marked EQUIPMENT—ORIGINALS AT HOME. Inside were copies of estate-sale receipts, pencil rubbings of serial plates, and the schedule we had signed with our partnership agreement.

Trevor had watched me make the rubbings years earlier.

“Building a museum?” he had asked.

“Keeping track.”

Now I put the envelope into my coat.

Esme waited by the door with Jun, our other apprentice.

“Are we losing our jobs?” Jun asked.

“I don't know yet,” I said. “I won't pretend I do.”

My phone chimed.

Mara had sent the purchase packet. The city walking-map commission appeared under transferable accounts. The city had already paid us $9,600.

Below it was an equipment schedule with three photographs and three serial numbers.

Across the top, Trevor had typed: ASSETS OWNED FREE AND CLEAR BY SELLER.