Part 3The Friend I Sent to Prison

"That machine's too fine for us."

"The Germans built it. Let the Germans come fix it."

"Line's down. We're losing money every minute it sits there."

"Nobody in this building can read that thing."

Curtis Boyd, the Workshop Two supervisor, saw me come in, and I watched his face decide what it thought of me. The cafeteria story had already made it around the floor.

"Cole." He waved a hand at the machine without much interest. "You're the specialist from down south. Go ahead and try it."

Then his voice cooled off.

"Don't just talk. You've got skill; let's see it."

A couple of men laughed under their breath. They were all waiting for me to fail.

I set my tray down, picked up the tool case, and walked straight to the machine.

I pulled the housing and looked at what was underneath: the lines and the valves and the gear train and the control assembly, all of it crowded in together.

The room went quiet behind me.

Tyler had followed me over from the cafeteria. He stood off to the side with his arms crossed.

"Don't break anything in there. We could sell everything you own and not cover one of those parts."

I didn't bother with him.

I'd rebuilt this exact model better than ten times down south. I could have found its faults with my eyes shut.

I took a length of steel wire, ground the end of it down to a point, and worked it into a hydraulic passage narrower than a sixteenth of an inch until I brought out the chip of iron that had been choking it. Then I pulled the burned contactor and set a new one, trued the drive shaft, and closed the housing back up.

I straightened and peeled off my gloves.

"Power it."

The electrician looked at Boyd. Then he threw the switch.

The machine came up smooth and even, no rattle and no grind in it, running as if it had never stopped.

Workshop Two went dead silent.

Then one of the oldest men there started clapping, and the rest of them came around and joined him, and the sound filled the whole floor.

Tyler hadn't moved. His face had gone dark.

I picked up the tool case and walked out without looking at any of them.

By the time the shift bell rang it was nearly dark.

I didn't go back to the boarding house. I went straight across town to the high school.

If I was going to bring down Lucas and his father, knowing my way around a machine wasn't going to do it. I needed proof of what had happened four years ago. And the only man alive who could tell me what my exam results really were had been my teacher for three years.

The janitor at the door pointed me toward the faculty apartments behind the gym and gave me a number.

Raymond Adams had just finished his supper when he opened up. He looked at me and stood there so long the plate nearly went out of his hand.

"Evan? What in the world are you doing back here?"

I came in and said it straight out.

"Mr. Adams, I need to ask you about the exams four years ago. Did I really miss the cutoff by twenty points?"

His face fell apart.

He turned away from me, and I heard him breathe, and when he turned back, there were tears on his face.

"Evan. I failed you. Four years I've carried this, and it's been eating me alive.

"You didn't miss anything. You came in thirty points over the cutoff. You were the best student in that building, and you had a full engineering scholarship to Ashford State waiting on you."

Everything in me went rigid. My hands closed.

"Then where's my letter? Why did Lucas tell me I'd missed it?"

"Henry Grant took it."

He brought his palm down flat on the table.

"He came in here with papers saying your father had been hurt bad on a job site and you'd already left the state for work. He talked the school office into signing off on it. Then he walked into the post office and put his name on your letter, and by fall his boy was down at Ashford using your name."

He got down on one knee at the bed and pulled out a bundle wrapped in old flannel, and opened it like it might come apart in his hands. Inside was a yellowed sheet of paper.

My score report. The school's own copy.

My name. My scores. And across the bottom, in red, the line that said I was qualified and recommended for admission. The words sat there and burned.

I held onto it hard enough to crease it, and when I spoke, my voice wasn't steady.

"Then why didn't you tell me? You could have gotten word to me. A letter. A phone call. Anything."