Moss Light Signals

The whole thing started over a hatpin holder, which is not a sentence I ever expected to say out loud, and yet here I am, thirty-four years old and writing a complaint email about a piece of cut glass the size of a teacup. I came to Kandi two years ago for the textile mill, and in two years I had never once had a public argument with anybody, and then the Moss Fair happened.

For those who don't know the fair, it runs three days every year under canvas awnings, vendors selling dyed cloth and carved gourds and fermented baobab drinks that taste better than they smell, and the whole back edge of the fairgrounds sits against a hillside where an old smuggling tunnel comes out, which the families here use now for lantern signals instead of, I assume, smuggling. It's the kind of place where everybody knows everybody, and I am the woman from the mill, which apparently makes me an interloper no matter how long I've been paying rent here.

I had a tent at the fair this year because the cooperative had sent me to show our new moss-dyed fabric line, and I'm a sales rep and I do push sometimes, that's the job. But I was not prepared for Dalton.

He's the sawmill operator at the lumber cooperative, thirty-seven, big hands, quiet voice until he isn't. I'd seen him around maybe four times in two years and we had exchanged maybe six words total, and then on the fair's first afternoon he walked past my display table, stopped, picked up one of my moss-dyed sample swatches, and said, loud enough for half the row to hear, that it was cheap work, machine-dyed, nothing like the real thing, and that city people shouldn't come to a fair like this to sell imitations to tourists.

I was standing right there. I had been standing right there holding the swatch in my own hand, and he looked at me while he said it.

So I said some things back. I don't remember exactly what, which is probably for the best, but I know I used the word decorative, and I know I gestured at the vienna hatpin holder he had set up on the next table, a cut-glass thing catching the light, and I said something about him selling trinkets while I sold fabric. It went back and forth for a good ten minutes. A crowd gathered. Somebody's grandmother started laughing. And that's when Elder Sowanto, who is about eighty and walks with a carved stick she mostly uses to poke people, suggested we settle it the old way, each of us sending coded lantern signals through the tunnel over the three fair nights, and whoever's messages read better to the families listening at the far end would win the hatpin holder and the bragging rights.

I said yes before I thought about it. Pride and a crowd watching is the whole story of how I got into this.

The first thing I did that night, back at my rented room with a beer, was write an email to Fabienne, who organizes the fair. I typed it out carefully, because I was still angry enough to want it to sting a little.

Fabienne, I wrote, I want to report an incident at today's fair. One of your vendors, Dalton of the lumber cooperative, publicly called my fabric cheap and called me a city interloper in front of a crowd. I've been here two years. I pay my stall fees. I would like this noted, and I would like to know whether the fair has any policy about vendors insulting each other's goods. Also, and I say this with respect, the lantern challenge he and I have accepted is the strangest thing I've ever agreed to, and I blame the fair's culture of settling things this way. Please advise. Marla.

She never answered, which told me everything about how much the fair cares about vendor complaints.

Meanwhile, apparently, Dalton was doing his own version of complaining, because the next morning Clarisse, who is a friend of his sister and also sells gourds two rows down from me, told me he'd sent her a text so grumpy she read it out loud to three people. I only know what she told me, that it was terse even for him, something like: the hatpin holder dispute is ridiculous, that saleswoman is pushy beyond reason, and now I'm stuck sending lantern signals for three nights because of her. Clarisse said the last line was, tell my sister nothing, and I laughed harder at that than I probably should have.

I'll admit I laughed about the whole thing on the phone with my boss too. I left him a voicemail at nine that night, sitting on the floor of my room with my shoes off, and I could hear myself giggling halfway through, which is not professional but there it was.

Jose, I said, you will not believe what happened at the fair today. Some sawmill guy tore into my samples in front of a crowd, called them cheap, and an eighty-year-old elder made us settle it with coded lantern signals through the old smuggling tunnel, three nights, winner takes a hatpin holder. I accepted. I accepted a lantern duel, Jose, to prove a point about fabric. I don't even know the code. I'm going to have to learn an entire signaling alphabet by tonight, because I was insulted in public and my pride is worth more than my dignity. Call me back. Or don't. I'm going to be fine. Probably.

He called back and just laughed for a while and then asked if the fabric was actually good, which it is, machine-assisted but good, and I told him so.

The second night was when it got interesting. I had spent the afternoon with a fair volunteer named Odile, a patient woman in her fifties, learning enough of the lantern code to send a sentence, which mostly meant learning how many flashes meant which letters and how long to hold the shutter slide open. My hands cramped. My first message was supposed to be dignified and instead came out lopsided, because my shutter timing was terrible, but I sent it anyway: MY FABRIC IS NOT CHEAP AND NEITHER AM I.

And then, before I sent it, I found something tucked under my tent flap. A folded piece of paper, handwritten, in blocky letters that had to be Dalton's