The Boss Offered Cash While My Paper Crane Waited

Rafe Bannon laid four thousand dollars beside my paper crane and asked me to make a loaded barge weigh nothing.

"Just mark her empty, Kavita. Same as the others."

Outside my scale house, the Mississippi pushed brown water past the pilings. Up on the bluff, Natchez, Mississippi, was getting ready for lunch. Down at our terminal, a towboat leaned against its lines, making the window hum.

I was fifty, an Indian American woman with brown skin, a thick gray braid, and square glasses that slid down my nose.

My badge said Kavita Desai, Scale Technician. For twenty-three years, I had worked at the river terminal. I weighed trucks and ran our barge draft station. That station read how deep a hull sat in the water. With the right hull table, you could turn those readings into weight.

While the readings settled, I folded paper cranes.

One fold. Wait. Another fold. Wait again.

Rafe was a broad white man with silver hair, pink cheeks, and spotless tan boots that never seemed to touch river mud.

At fifty-eight, he owned the tug company, the sand yard, and enough favors to make people say he owned the riverfront. He called every woman sweetheart until she cost him something.

"She's the Heron Six," he said. "Light boat. Easy money."

"Her light weight is three hundred twelve point six tons. She's sitting at four hundred ninety-five."

"Rain."

"That would be a lot of rain."

He laughed, pleased with me for a moment.

The laugh stopped when I moved the cash away from my keyboard.

"I need to check the hull marks," I said.

"You already took your pictures."

"I need the pictures to agree with the ticket."

His smile stayed. Something behind it went cold.

"You earn twenty-nine dollars an hour. Don't make this into a calling."

He left the money on my desk and walked out.

I did not touch it. I called our office clerk to witness the envelope, counted it in front of her, and sealed it in the office safe with a note: Returned Payment Awaiting Collection.

"You could've just said no," she whispered.

"I did. This is the receipt."

Through the glass, the Heron Six looked almost empty. The front of the open hold was bare. A tall steel wall divided off the back section, which lay under a gray cover.

It had been that way eleven days earlier, too.

That was the morning Eli Mercer failed to come home.

His missing-person flyer was taped by our time clock. Twenty-six years old. Narrow face. One crooked front tooth. His sister had written CALL ANY HOUR beneath the number.

The last time I saw him, he had been standing at the back rail of a sand barge, pulling at the strap of his work bag.

"Keep your pictures, Miss Desai," he had called.

I had thought he meant the river looked nice.

Now I opened my daily log.

Our system printed two kinds of strips. The working strip went upstairs with the bill. The reference strip showed the raw draft readings and the morning check against our fixed water staff. I put that strip in a numbered sleeve with the hull photographs and sealed the edge.

The photographs mattered. Paint could change. A hull's welded number and old dents were harder to change.

Years earlier, after a flood had ruined the office files, I had agreed to serve as the terminal's named records custodian. The board paid me thirty-five dollars a month to keep a second archive in a dry locker at my house.

My signed agreement was still in the first box. Each month, I sent the board an inventory with the strip and seal numbers.

Rafe knew about the working copies. He had never asked what the little red seals meant.

At three, he called.

"Dinner at my house tonight," he said. "Catfish. We can smooth this over."

"Send me the order to mark her empty. In writing."

For a few seconds, I heard only his breathing.

"Your trouble is you think a desk makes you important."

"No. I think a signature does."

He hung up.

I finished the crane. Its left wing was shorter than its right. I set it beside the phone and wrote down the time of the call.

Before closing, I checked the old voyage folder.

The barge Eli had stood on was listed as the Heron Nine. Its departure weight had been high. Its return sheet said empty.

But in my photograph, under fresh paint, I could see a crescent-shaped repair by the back rail.

The same repair was outside my window on the Heron Six.

I had just put both sealed sleeves in my bag when someone knocked.

A tall Black man stood on the step, holding a state identification card and a photograph of that bent rail.

"Lionel Price," he said. "Environmental investigations. May I ask you about a barge that seems to have two names?"