My Best Customer Asked Me To Certify What I Could Not See

Orson Keene waited until I had clay on both hands before he laid the forms beside my wheel.

"Clean fingers leave a better signature," he said.

He set a fresh towel over my knee, like a father helping a child.

The papers covered twenty-four urns. He had already paid $7,680 for them, the largest sale my shop had made. Now he wanted me to swear each vessel had stayed empty from pickup through delivery.

"I wasn't at the deliveries," I said.

"Nobody expects you to ride along."

"Then how could I know?"

His smile held still.

I was twenty-five, a lean Italian American man with olive skin, dark curls, and one eyebrow split by an old playground scar.

My name was Luca Vitale. I made ceramic urns in a narrow shop on the east side of Indianapolis. My floor held two wheels, a secondhand electric kiln, and enough unpaid bills to cover both.

I owed $11,900 on the kiln and $2,100 in rent. Keene knew. Six weeks earlier, I had told him while thanking him for a rush order.

Orson Keene was a broad white American man of fifty-five, with pale eyes, smooth silver hair, and a soft brown coat buttoned over his thick middle.

His company, Lantern Road Transfer, carried the dead between homes, hospitals, and funeral businesses. He lowered his voice whenever he said the word families. Even alone with me, he did it.

"Your rent is caught up now?" he asked.

"Yes."

"Good. A young craftsman needs someone who believes in him."

He called himself my wholesale partner. He owned no part of the shop, but he liked words that made a purchase feel like a favor.

He rested a finger on the signature line.

Outside, his driver opened a carton on the van's step. Perry Dace had collected every order. He always brought little cards with route numbers.

"You need another picture?" Perry called.

"Already took it," I said.

"With our card inside?"

"Yes."

Keene nodded toward the drawer under my packing bench.

"You take more pictures than a proud mother."

"Broken lids taught me."

A freight claim had once cost me $480. Since then, I photographed each foot, mouth, lid, and packed carton. I kept the original files with my invoices.

I also kept glaze-test tiles. Before a batch went into the kiln, I dipped a flat scrap in the same glaze and scratched its code into the back. The tile's color told me whether I had fired too hot or cooled too fast.

Six tiles covered Keene's orders: K61 through K66. Four urns in each firing.

Above them stood six tiny clay animals.

My mother had made scrap animals while her bread rose. After she died, I began saving one from every kiln batch. Each animal carried the batch code beneath its belly and a small dent from my thumb.

The newest was a mouse with one crooked foot.

Keene picked it up.

"Little things make you happy," he said.

"Sometimes."

He set it down facing the wall.

He had bought the urns. He had not bought the records behind them. My order terms said that plainly. A night class had taught me to keep that line in every wholesale sale.

I had never expected to need it against someone who brought me coffee.

"I'd like my lawyer to read this," I said.

I did not have a lawyer yet.

Keene folded the towel with great care.

"Certainly. Though if these shipments weren't complete, my office may need the payment returned. That would be difficult for you."

There it was. No raised voice. Just my debt placed neatly beside his kindness.

"I'll answer tomorrow," I said.

He left the forms. Perry shut the van doors.

After they drove away, I turned the mouse around.

The shop was warm, but my hands had gone cold. I checked the bank account. After rent, an $800 kiln payment, and supplies, I had $2,946.18 left. I could not return $7,680.

I read every form again.

The pickups were real. The delivery dates were later. The words said I had inspected the urns at both ends of a trip I had never taken.

I opened my oldest packing photos.

In one, Perry had slipped a cream envelope into an urn before asking me to photograph his route card. I had assumed it held delivery papers.

Now I enlarged the flap.

Someone had written $2,300 beside the number LR-17.

I could not see through paper. I knew that. Still, I saved a separate note about what the picture showed.

At closing time, a woman knocked beneath my window sign.

She held her badge where I could read it through the glass.

"Dahlia Shah," she said when I opened the door. "Financial investigator with the prosecutor's office. May I ask about an urn?"

She showed me a photograph of a green vessel sitting beside a stack of bills.

I knew its pale thumb-shaped mark near the lid.

Then she turned to a second photograph.

On its foot, clear as my own handwriting, was K62.