IGMS Issue 49 (13 page)

Two days later, a review of company invoices gave Graham all the evidence he needed. Once the disbelief wore off, he printed the transaction record and climbed the ladder to the warehouse roof, where he found Ed polishing one of the solar panels with a rag. The row of tilted glass faces reminded Graham of Easter Island. He gazed in wonder at the plantings spilling out around the perimeter and underfoot. A fuzzy odor from some nearby herb made his nose itch.

"I've been meaning to show you the vegetable garden," Ed called out cheerily when he spotted him.

The new brownness of Ed's upper body startled Graham. His torn shorts barely clung to his hips. Fairly certain Ed was going commando underneath, Graham avoided looking too closely at the holes.

"The sod's going to regulate the building temperature all year," Ed said, giving a pea vine an affectionate pat.

"You sold the shipping truck," Graham said. He brandished his print-out and waited.

Ed grinned. "I'm rebalancing," he said. "I don't think that junker could clear even the loosest emissions test."

"I warned you about going over my head like this. I'm the boss here." Graham swallowed a groan at how pathetic the words sounded.

"I didn't ask because I knew you'd agree with me," Ed said. "How can we help our clients develop responsibility if we're stuck in the old patterns?"

"How do we distribute without a truck?"

"You said you were serious about going green, Graham. I can't think that you're a hypocrite."

"No. I'm just the sap holding the paperwork when we file for bankruptcy."

Ed laughed. "You see, that's just another cultural construct."

Graham smacked his palm against his forehead. "We're a
business
."

"And it's businesses that cover this planet in asphalt, waste, and poison."

Graham fumed. Nature's Mill didn't practice blind profit-making. He was as responsible as his budget allowed. And sometimes that meant compromises. Bosses understood this.

"You're fired, Ed," he said. "It's been interesting. Good, even. But - "

"You want me to leave?" Ed faltered against one of the panels. Graham felt a twinge, remembering the office-sport afternoons. He kept his eyes on the jagged tree line across the gorge. "Let's not end it ugly. You don't have a lot of stuff. You can be out by the afternoon."

"Or else what?"

"Come on."

Ed's lips thinned. "Or else you'll 'make me'?"

Graham exhaled forcefully. Right. Like this was going to end in blows. Ridiculous. He headed for the exit ladder.

"I'm out of here. Get your things and get out."

He scolded himself for taking one last look, knowing the image of Ed's hollow-cheeked dismay would sear itself on his memory.

A dark building greeted Graham the next morning. A good sign, he thought. He unlocked the door and took the elevator upstairs. To his relief, he found Ed's desk bare of everything except his computer. Graham felt his heart lighten. No messy interactions after all. He took his place at his desk. Time to rewrite the job ad and start again.

His computer beeped with an instant message.

Dammit. Graham bolted out of his chair and paced, his knuckles against his lips. He kicked the wall, then slid back to his keyboard. He pounded out:

He finished with a whack of his middle finger on the 'return' key.

Graham craned his neck to look down the length of the office toward the packing tables. Vacant. Ed was either loitering downstairs or in the warehouse.

He stalked to the elevator. The button felt strangely dead under his finger.

He tried again. No response.

"What the hell."

The stairwell door, then.

No exit. Locked.

He returned to his computer.

He stilled his breath for a minute, inclining one ear, straining to hear anything over the rush of the river.

Beep
!

Graham sat with his back against the packing floor wall, slowly massaging his beard. In the two days that had passed, he had eaten all but a remaining pack of peanuts in his desk, developed a closer familiarity than he wanted with the Tempur-Pedic properties of the office floor, and put an Aeron-shaped dent in the elevator's doors.

His cell phone lay in front of him, still cued up to 9-1-1. He'd dialed every hour for the last forty-eight hours, until he forced himself to stop wearing down the battery.
No service. No service. Bullcrap.
He'd set his stomach to boiling again if he thought too much about it. Ed must have mail-ordered a black market signal blocker. As an extra measure, he'd also taken all the office cell chargers. Though not the water cooler, Graham noticed.

A pile of spent objects sat in front of him - scissors, boxcutters, the heavy, unscrewed blade from the paper cutter, all nicked and bent from his failed efforts to loosen the stairwell door lock. The elevator doors wouldn't budge, and the windows? Also no use. Even if he could bust out the safety glass and squeeze through the bars, he'd earn only a 60-foot drop to the rapids. The knuckles of his right hand still throbbed from his slamming them into the wall in a moment of rage.

He read his blog post from his first night of imprisonment again. It was all he could do, since every URL he tried redirected him back to the company webpage.

Other posts had come through, from time to time:

Graham hated the pleading tone of his responses. "Ed. I apologize. I got hotheaded. You can have your job back, if that's what you want. Let's have a beer and talk." As the sun came up on the second day, he stopped censoring. "This is not a joke, you effing lunatic. Taking your ass to court at the soonest opportunity." At one point his heart leapt at the sight of responses spilling onto the screen, before he recognized them as a backlog of automated replies:

%%%

POST DENIED BY WEBMASTER

POST DENIED BY WEBMASTER

POST DENIED BY WEBMASTER

%%%%%%

Nothing he'd posted had gotten out. Not his call for help. Not his emails to every friend he could think of. Nothing.

His empty stomach snarled.

As if in response, over the tumbling of the river, a set of truck brakes released.

Graham scrambled to his feet and pressed up to the glass. A shipping truck quivered to a stop in front of the building. Graham gasped at the sight of Ed trotting down the steps in a polo shirt and jeans. He jogged out to meet the man climbing down from the driver's seat.

"Hey!" Graham hollered. The man's baseball cap brim shielded his face. Graham beat the heel of his hand on the glass, then rammed it with the butt of the paper cutter handle. The security glass cracked but held, supported by its embedded wire grid. The man looked off into the trees a moment, then turned back to Ed, who was writing in one of the office checkbooks.

Graham kept hammering at the glass. As the man made notations on a form, Ed looked up in Graham's direction, his facial features narrowing.

"I'm up here!" Graham shouted. He cursed. Even if the guy looked up, the mill was backlit this time of day, and the river's white noise masked all other sound.

He watched them unload a half-dozen crates, using the lift at the back of the truck. "Humboldt Machinery"... "Steelcraft"... he read on their sides.
What the hell is he buying now?
, Graham thought. He groaned as Ed tore off a check, handing over another chunk of the mill's assets. Ed accepted the man's help loading the crates into the building with a hand truck, and when the two of them emerged, he clapped the guy on the shoulder. The man nodded and headed for the truck cab.

Graham yelled, smacking the glass, until the roar of his voice became lost in the pounding of the deluge below. When he came to his senses, his throat ached, the rear lights of the truck were gone, and dust had re-settled on the road.

The freight elevator squealed as it climbed. "What do you want from me?" Graham shouted as it came even with his floor. To his surprise, it stopped with a
k-chunk
, and opened a crack. Graham leapt to the door.

"Ed. Open up. Let's talk about it."

"You behaved poorly just now," Ed said through the slit. "I'm not going to let that slide."

Graham jammed his fingers into the gap and pulled. The doors gave, just an inch. Inside, Ed's wiry form paced, a yellow blur swinging at his side. Graham caught a flash of wide, red-rimmed eyes before the object smashed against the doors. He yelped and fell back.

He looked down in wonder at his crushed and darkening middle fingertip. The Wiffle bat. The psycho had injected it with concrete.

The door slid back shut.

"What was that you always said, Graham?" came the muffled voice. "Stewardship is about earning your place on the planet. Even more true for you, the amount of carbon debt you're carrying."

"Ed," Graham croaked, cradling his bashed finger. "I'll write the damn post. I'll tell the world you won. It's what you want, isn't it?"

But the elevator had already closed and lifted past him, like a judgment.

The sound of drilling and banging on the ground level dominated as night fell. Graham had opened his last pack of peanuts when his computer screen flickered to life. He scrambled to the desk and read, squinting in the screen's light. The email had been sent to their entire list of customers and suppliers.

Graham's signature followed.

An air-shattering crack sounded from the front corner of the roof. Graham ducked as a spray of sparks fell past the windows. His screen flicked off, and with a
whump
like the building giving a massive shrug, the power shut down.