CHAPTER TEN M: THE CONTRACTOR’S APPRENTICE
Celia Marsh called Imani on Tuesday with a question about a handwritten marking found on the recovered timber.
The marking referred to a workshop that had closed twelve years earlier.
Celia had traced the workshop’s former owner to a retirement residence outside the city.
The man remembered making scenery supports but could not recall the theater commission.
He did remember an apprentice who had delivered finished pieces to the harbor.
That apprentice was now a carpenter named Jonah Pell.
Imani asked whether Celia wanted the committee to contact him.
Celia said that her investigation would remain independent,
but she welcomed information that could be checked.
Nora accompanied Imani to Jonah’s workshop because the carpenter had agreed to speak after business hours.
The workshop occupied a narrow storefront between a bicycle repair shop and a closed bakery.
Jonah greeted them while sweeping curls of pine from the floor.
He had a scar beside one eyebrow and the patient manner of someone accustomed to correcting mistakes without making a speech.
Imani showed him a photograph of the bracket without suggesting what it meant.
Jonah studied the shape and asked whether it had come from the old harbor theater.
He remembered delivering a scenery frame there when he was seventeen.
His employer had insisted that the frame be assembled in the shop before transportation.
Jonah said that the theater’s crew had later asked them to remove one of the supports.
Imani asked who had made the request.
Jonah said that a man in a dark waistcoat had spoken on behalf of the production office.
He could not remember the man’s name.
Nora asked whether the request had seemed unusual at the time.
Jonah said that he had objected because the removed piece helped distribute the frame’s weight.
His employer had told him that theater workers understood their own equipment.
Jonah shook his head as he recalled the conversation.
He said that he had spent years wishing he had argued harder.
Imani told him that an apprentice should not have been expected to overrule the adults who commissioned the work.
Jonah answered that the distinction had not made the memory easier.
He opened a drawer and retrieved an old carpenter’s square with his initials scratched into the handle.
He said that he had carried the square on every delivery during that apprenticeship.
He remembered placing it on the theater stage while the workers debated the support.
One of the workers had pointed toward a painted doorway and said that the frame needed to pass through it.
The support had made the frame too wide.
Jonah believed the crew had wanted a narrower assembly rather than a safer route.
Imani asked whether he would explain this to Celia.
He agreed, provided that she understood how little he could remember with certainty.
Nora appreciated the condition.
Too many people had tried to turn incomplete recollections into weapons.
Before they left, Jonah asked whether the theater would be demolished.
Imani said that the decision remained open.
Jonah looked around his workshop and said that he hoped the building survived only if people stopped treating the past as an excuse to ignore the present.
Nora carried that sentence into the street.
