Walter Brooks began loading luggage for Skyline when the company still operated out of a much smaller terminal, and the gates were filled with handwritten tags and rolling carts that broke down in winter. He took overtime whenever he could, but he was never careless with the money. On payday he divided his envelope into rent, groceries, savings, church, and a small entry in a notebook labeled shares. Nobody understood the last category except Walter, and he had no intention of stopping because they laughed.
When Imani was twelve, he took her to the airport on a day when he had secured standby travel for the two of them. They were going to visit a sick aunt, a woman Imani knew only from birthday cards and telephone calls, and Walter had promised his daughter her first trip above the clouds. At the boarding counter, an agent looked at Walter's work jacket and told them that standby passengers boarded last. He said it without apology and pointed them toward a row of seats where Imani could see other families already walking down the jet bridge.
Walter thanked the agent and took his daughter to the waiting area. She watched as a late-arriving businessman was ushered aboard, then another passenger with a briefcase, then two people whose names seemed to open doors as soon as the agent heard them. At last, when nearly everyone else was gone, the agent called Walter forward and told him there might be one seat left. He thanked her again, stepped aside, and let a frightened elderly woman go ahead of him when he realized she needed to reach a hospital that afternoon.
They missed the flight. Imani cried quietly against the shoulder of his work jacket because she had dreamed about that airplane for weeks, and because she thought the gate agent had looked straight through her father as though he were part of the terminal furniture. Outside, in the employee parking lot, she finally asked the question that had been boiling inside her. "Daddy, she made you wait like you didn't belong. Why don't you ever get mad?"
Walter buckled her into their old sedan before he answered. "I get mad," he said. "You don't always see it, but I do. Being calm isn't the same as agreeing with someone."
He settled into the driver's seat, held the steering wheel for a moment, and looked out at the airplanes climbing into the pale afternoon sky. "The seat doesn't make the person, baby. And you can't change a company by shouting at it from the parking lot."
"Then how do you change it?" Imani demanded. Walter smiled at her in the rearview mirror. "Own a piece of it. Then show up."
She had wrinkled her nose and asked the question he was waiting for. "Own a piece of an airplane company? With what?" Walter reached into his work bag and took out the small notebook where he recorded his savings. "One share at a time, every payday. People laugh at small things until the small things add up."
The shares did not turn Walter into a wealthy man overnight, and he never pretended they did. He worked the baggage line through winter storms, mechanical delays, and summers when the air on the ramp shimmered above the pavement. He studied the company's annual reports even when they were written as if ordinary employees were not supposed to understand them, and he attended shareholder meetings when his schedule allowed. His daughter learned to read the numbers beside him, the way other children learned to read baseball scores with their fathers.