The Paper Vernon Forgot He Signed

The letter

I did not send an angry email. I want you to know that. I did not storm anywhere.

I opened my laptop and I typed one short letter, and I kept it plain.

I wrote that, effective immediately, I was resigning my employment at Kessler Implement, and that I was exercising my rights under Section Seven of the Continuity Agreement dated 2013, electing full and immediate release from all restrictive covenants and the return of my deferred compensation and my capital contribution with interest as the agreement provides.

Then I printed it. I printed several copies.

I called Harlan Voss first, because a man should call his lawyer before he lights the match, and Harlan picked up on the second ring. I told him what Vernon had done, and I heard him go quiet on the other end, and then I heard him chuckle, low, the way an old man chuckles when the world confirms something he already knew.

“Wade,” he said, “I’ve had my copy of that agreement in a drawer for thirteen years wondering if it would ever mean anything. You come by this afternoon. Bring your letter. I’ll have mine notarized right alongside it.”

I told him I would.

Then I did the part that mattered more than the letter. I made three phone calls of my own before Vernon knew a thing.

I called the Vogel brothers, because they were the biggest account we had, nine thousand acres and a shed full of green machines that needed a man who would answer at five in the morning. I did not badmouth Vernon. I just told Carl Vogel that I was moving on from Kessler’s, and that wherever I landed I hoped I could keep taking care of his equipment the way I always had. Carl was quiet a second, then he said, “Wade, I don’t deal with a building. I deal with you. You tell me where to send the machines.”

I called Marvin Kubik, who was still babying that 1994 combine. Same thing. “Well hell, Wade,” Marvin said. “If you’re gone, what’s left over there? The blazer boy?”

I called the Reinhardt outfit, the ones who had been half a step out the door for years, the ones I had personally talked back from the Danby County dealer in a bad stretch. I told them I was leaving. There was a pause, and then old man Reinhardt said the thing I did not expect, which was, “About time you worked for yourself, Wade. You’ve been working for yourself in that building for twenty years anyway. Vernon just had his name on it.”