My Boss Fired Me Beside The Survey He Could Not Sell

Preston fired me at 8:12, with a rock sample still in my hand.

“Leave that here,” he said. “Company property.”

“The rock or the tag?”

“Please don't make this provincial.”

He used words like that when he wanted a room to stop asking questions.

I set the sample on its tray. The tag had three brown rings drawn around a black dot. I drew contour lines on every label. The shape matched the place where we had taken the sample, so a lost number did not mean a lost location.

The rock came from a road cut. We checked surface rock along with well temperatures. Nothing in that tray could promise what a deep drill would find.

I was twenty-six, a Black man with close-cut hair, broad shoulders, and a pale scar across my left thumb.

As Cinder Bench Geothermal's field coordinator, I spent more time cleaning mud from probe cables than sitting in that office. Preston had asked me to wear a clean shirt for the sale. Now he stared at its pocket as if my pencil had brought dirt inside.

Preston Vale was a white man of forty-four, with silver hair at his temples, a narrow face, and shoes that never seemed to bend.

He slid a thin envelope across the sample bench.

“Your role has been consolidated.”

“Into whose?”

“The buyer has its own people.”

Outside our Montrose office, a truck rattled over the railroad crossing. Beyond the buildings, the Uncompahgre Plateau sat under a hard blue sky. I had a probe taking its final reading in a ranch well west of town and another crew waiting for my call.

“Who is collecting the crew?” I asked.

“That's no longer your concern.”

The envelope held a termination letter and an offer of $3,200. To get the money, I had to sign six pages that said I owned nothing tied to the company.

I left those pages flat on the bench.

“I need to read them.”

“It's standard language.”

“Then it should survive being read.”

His mouth went thin.

At two that afternoon, High Basin Thermal planned to buy Cinder Bench's assets for $18.4 million. Preston had practiced saying the amount all week. He liked to pause before “million.”

The main reason for that price was a set of shallow temperature surveys across eleven ranches. The surveys showed where warm rock might be worth a deeper test. They did not prove a power plant would work. I had corrected that claim in three slide decks.

Preston kept putting it back.

“You should be proud,” he said. “A community college kid helped build something serious.”

“I am proud of the surveys.”

“You took readings, Malik. Let's keep the scale appropriate.”

I looked at the framed map behind him. My contour lines filled its glass. The small credit at the bottom had been cut off when he ordered the frame.

“Does High Basin have Schedule C?” I asked.

“Legal has everything.”

“The signed version?”

“Don't worry about documents above your pay grade.”

I put my pencil in my pocket.

Before Cinder Bench existed, the Arroyo Gate Ranch Cooperative had paid me $8,600 to take those readings. I had rented a probe, borrowed a truck, and slept on my aunt's couch between routes.

The cooperative had kept ownership of its data. Our agreement gave me the exclusive right to license that survey package for commercial use. The ranchers could still use it for their own farm work.

When I joined Cinder Bench, that agreement went into my hiring papers as Schedule C. Preston had signed beside it. So had I.

There was also a blue folder at my apartment, between my truck title and my mother's recipe cards.

I did not mention the folder.

“Can I call Inez about the crew?” I asked.

“On your own time.”

He held out his hand for my door card.

I gave it to him, collected my coat, and left the sample trays where they belonged. I took no company files. My personal field notebook was already home. We used company forms for company work.

From my truck, I called Inez Castañeda.

At fifty-nine, she chaired the cooperative and ran cattle with a patience she rarely spared for people. She was Mexican American, with a long gray braid and a laugh like a gate latch catching.

“I got fired,” I said.

“Before lunch? Cheap man.”

I told her about the crew. She said her nephew would collect them and bring the probe inside.

Then I told her about the six pages.

“You signed nothing?”

“Nothing.”

“Good. Bring your blue folder. Mine is green. We can have a little parade.”

I almost laughed.

At 9:03, my phone rang again. This time the caller introduced herself as Ruth Bell, counsel for High Basin.

“Mr. Sorrell, our rights review has a gap,” she said. “The company gave us an evaluation license. Do you have the original agreement that explains who can approve its transfer?”