The Woman Who Only Did the Books

“What is this?”

“It’s ten to eight,” I said. “We’ve had thirteen customers.”

His eyes went to the apron. He flinched, like a man touching a fence he forgot was hot.

“Take that off,” he said.

“No.”

“That’s not yours to wear.”

“I think it’s exactly mine to wear.”

“Jan, I told you last night…”

“You told me there was no place for me here. I heard you.” I kept my voice down. “And I thanked you, because you said it to my face, and I would rather know. But I own half this counter, Gary. I’m going to stand behind it.”

“You don’t know the first thing about the counter.”

“That’s so,” I said. “I’ll have to learn the second thing and work back.”

Ozzie made a sound into his coffee.

Gary looked at him, and at me, and at the apron once more. Then he turned and walked to the back room. A minute later the glass cutter started up, and that was the last word he said to me for nine days.

I will not pretend those weeks were a triumph. Mostly they were my feet.

I had spent two decades in a chair. A hardware store floor is old maple, and by noon the first day I could feel every board of it. I went home at night and fell asleep with my feet in a dishpan of hot water.

I made mistakes, too, and I will tell you the worst one so you do not think I am bragging. It was pipe, and I made it in front of Gary.

A man came in wanting a piece of three-quarter black pipe, thirty-one inches, threaded both ends, for the gas line to his grain dryer. Ozzie was at lunch. I had watched that pipe machine run a thousand times through the office door. I thought I could do it.

I cut it fine. I forgot to ream it, and I forgot the oil.

A die cutting dry steel makes a noise you do not forget. It screamed, and it smoked, and Gary came out of the back room at a run and hit the switch.

He did not shout. I will say that for him. He looked at the pipe with its torn, blued threads, and he looked at the dies.

“That’s forty dollars of dies,” he said. “If they’re chipped.”

“Then take forty dollars out of my half.”

He turned and looked at me then, for the first time since the morning with the apron. I thought he was going to say it again, that there was no place.

Gary pulled a fresh length off the rack himself. He cut it, reamed it, flooded it with oil, and threaded both ends in about two minutes. He handed it to the man and went back to his room.

That afternoon Ozzie stood me at the machine with a pile of scrap.

“Cut. Ream it. Bring your die head down. Now oil, and more than that, you can’t hurt it with oil.” The dies bit, and the thread came curling off bright as tinsel. “Run her till the end of the pipe comes even with the face of the dies. Now throw your lever.”

I threaded scrap until closing. By the end my forearms were black to the elbow, and I could do it with Ozzie looking out the window.

He taught me keys the next day.