Chapter 1

In the summer of 1980, after the college entrance exam, my friend Lucas Grant came out to my house and clapped me on the shoulder.

"Evan Cole, you missed the cutoff by twenty points. College was never in the cards for you. Let it go."

I believed him.

The next day I went south for work.

Over the next four years I learned a trade, repairing imported precision machinery, the kind nobody else would touch.

Then Meridian Chemical Works, twenty minutes from the house I grew up in, hired me on as a specialist machinist.

On my first morning I stopped in front of the honor board outside the administration building.

Under "Outstanding Production Workers," I saw my own name.

Evan Cole.

But the face in the photograph was Lucas.

I asked my way through the building until I found his office, walked him back out to the board, and waited.

His eyes went everywhere but mine.

"Evan. I did you wrong.

"I'll give you fifty dollars to make it right. We pretend it never happened. All right?"

I didn't say anything. I just looked at him.

Four years of my life, taken. And to him it came to fifty dollars.

Chapter 1

"Evan, I know what I did was rotten."

Lucas talked fast, the words running over each other, half of it pleading.

"But you know how it was at my house. My folks were sick. I'm the only son they've got. I needed something steady or the whole family goes under.

"You're different. You're smart, you pick things up fast. You did all right down south, didn't you?"

He held out five ten-dollar bills.

"Take the fifty for now. If it's not enough I'll bring you more after next month's check. I'll make it right with you. Okay?"

I looked at the money in his hand. Then I looked at his face, and I'd never seen anything so practiced.

Make it right?

Pretend it never happened?

The university place they took from me. The four years of my life. The road I should have been walking this whole time.

Fifty dollars.

I didn't take it. I flicked my wrist, and the bills slid out from under my hand and went down into the gray coal dust on the pavement.

Whatever was left of the pleading went out of Lucas's face. What came up behind it was offense, as though I were the one who'd insulted him.

"Don't push your luck, Evan." He kept his voice low and cold. "I lowered myself. I apologized. What else do you want out of me?

"It was a name. One name. Are you going to hang onto that forever?

"Four years. Four years, and you come back here to settle old scores? What's the point?"

The first shift was coming through the yard, and more of them were stopping. The whispering got louder.

Lucas heard it. His face changed again, tired now, and hurt, as though he'd been putting up with me for years. He spread his hands to the men around us.

"I know it eats at him," he said. "He didn't get into school back then. Now he comes back and sees how I've done here, and of course it bothers him."

One sentence, and I was the jealous one. The sore loser. The man making a scene.

I watched him do it. I watched the contempt settle on the faces around us, and the curiosity behind it, people waiting to see how bad it would get.

And my head cleared for the first time since I'd walked through that gate.

He'd fooled me once. He'd fooled me for four years. He wasn't going to fool me for the rest of my life.

I didn't argue. I didn't raise my voice. I didn't give them a scene.

I'd earned this job with my hands, and I wasn't going to lose another piece of my life to him.

I turned and walked toward Workshop Two.

We had time, Lucas. Plenty of it.

Every last thing you buried under a lie, I'd dig up. Every last thing you took, I'd take back myself.

At noon the cafeteria was packed, a few hundred men shoulder to shoulder. I carried a tray of creamed cabbage and egg noodles to a table in the corner.

I'd gotten two bites down when somebody sat across from me.

Nathan Brooks. We'd grown up two farms apart. Four years had filled out his face and his belt, and the plant had clearly been good to him.

"Evan?" He leaned in, staring. "It's really you. Somebody in the shop said Workshop Two brought in a machinist back from down south. I figured it was just the same name."

I got a smile out of somewhere. "Nathan."

He took another mouthful and frowned.

"Weren't your grades about the best in the county? How'd you end up going south to work?"

He shrugged.

"Still, getting hired on as a specialist isn't bad. Technical job. Pay's decent."

Chapter 2

Then he hesitated, and gave me a careful look.

"So. Did you and Mr. Cole really have it out?"

My fork stopped.

"Mr. Cole?"

"Lucas." Nathan said it like it was the most obvious thing in the world. "That's what everybody calls him now. He took the name when he went off to school. University man, engineering degree, walked in here straight onto the management track. They think the world of him."

He sighed and lowered his voice.

"Don't go picking a fight with him. He's the golden boy around here. And his father's Henry Grant, the assistant plant manager. That's not a fight anybody wins."

Assistant plant manager.

Something went through me, sharp and cold.

I set the fork down. "Nathan, I want a straight answer."

"Go ahead."

"Lucas's family was hard up, weren't they? His folks sick, younger brothers and sisters to feed?"

Nathan stared at me. Then he nearly choked.

"Evan, did four years down south knock something loose?"

He tapped his fork against the tray and dropped his voice.

"Hard up? Henry Grant's been at this plant twenty years. Started as a machinist, made master, worked himself all the way up to assistant manager. That man signs things.

"They put in the first color console television on their road two years ago. Half the county came by to look at it.

"And Lucas is an only child. There's no brothers and sisters. There never were."

Something snapped in my head.

Lies. Every bit of it.

Four years ago he told me I'd missed the cutoff. A lie. Four years later he told me his family had left him no choice. Another one.

They'd had the money, the name, and every man in the building who owed them something, and they'd used all of it to take my life, and never lost a night's sleep over it.

The food in front of me went rotten in my mouth.

Then somebody yelled across the whole cafeteria.

"What the hell are you spreading around in here?"

A young quality inspector with a brush cut came at us fast and slammed his enamel bowl down on the table. Soup went across the front of my shirt.

Tyler Grant. A cousin's boy on the Grant side, and he'd gotten his job the same way everybody in that family got theirs.

Tyler put a finger in my face.

"You're some nobody who couldn't make it down south and came crawling back here for work. And now you're running your mouth about my uncle?"

Then he turned and pitched his voice to the whole room.

"Everybody listen up. This man's name is Evan Cole. Same name as Mr. Cole up in the office.

"He didn't get into college back then and he's never gotten over it. Now he sees Mr. Cole with a degree and a career and it's eating him alive, so he's going around telling people Mr. Cole stole his name.

"You ever hear anything so ridiculous?"

A few hundred faces turned toward me.

Nathan went white and slid quietly down the bench, away from me.

Tyler saw he had the room, and it made him bold. He leaned down close, where only I could hear him.

"What are you, exactly? What makes you think you're fit to stand next to my uncle?

"I'll tell you how it works here. This plant belongs to the Grants. You keep talking and you'll be packing your things tomorrow morning."

I picked up a rag off the table and wiped the soup off my shirt, slowly, until it was gone. Only then did I look up at him.

"Tell Lucas something for me. The truth doesn't stay buried."

Tyler's face twitched. "What are you talking about?"

I didn't look at him again. I picked up my tray and walked out.

Behind me the talk rose like a tide.

"Jealous, that's all it is."

"Specialist or not, there's something wrong with him."

"Looks honest enough. Rotten all the way through."

Back in Workshop Two, the German grinder that had shut down half the plant since morning sat quiet in the middle of the floor.

The old hands stood in a ring around it, and every one of them was shaking his head.

Chapter 3

"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."

Chapter 4

Mr. Adams wiped his face with the back of his hand.

"How could I, Evan? Henry Grant came to me.

"You have to understand what that man was in this town back then. He walked into my school and told me that if a word of it ever left my mouth he'd have my certificate pulled and see to it my family couldn't stay here.

"And he told me that if I ever tried to reach you, he'd send men south to find you."

He stopped, and then made himself go on.

"It wasn't only me. Walter Davis carried that letter. He was the rural carrier on your road for thirty years. Henry got to him too. He made it plain that anybody who talked would never work again."

He took hold of my hand.

"But you came back. You came back and you got into that plant with nothing but your own two hands, and I'm proud of you, son.

"Take the score report. If you want me to testify, I'll testify. I've lived with this for four years and I'd rather not live with it any longer."

"Thank you, Mr. Adams."

I walked back toward the plant with that yellowed paper inside my coat, and there was only one thing in my head.

Find Walter Davis. Get the postal record. Without it, nothing I said could be pinned on them.

The next morning I'd barely gotten onto the floor when the PA crackled overhead.

"Workshop Two maintenance. Evan Cole, report to the plant manager's office."

Victor Hayes sat behind a heavy desk in a dark suit with a cup of coffee in his hand, and he took his time looking me over when I came in.

"Cole. I heard about the cafeteria. And I've heard what you've been stirring up on the floor."

His voice came down a notch.

"Lucas Cole is one of the men we're grooming to run this place. You've been going around making accusations about him, and it's doing real damage."

"I haven't made an accusation that isn't true."

His hand came down on the desk.

"You're still going to stand there and tell me that?

"You were brought in here as a specialist hire. This plant gave you an opportunity. I'd expect a man to know what that's worth."

He took a blank sheet out of the drawer and pushed it across to me.

"Write it out. A full written apology. You say that jealousy got the better of you and that you spread something you knew to be false.

"Tomorrow morning you read it over the PA, with the whole plant listening.

"You do that, and this is finished."

I looked at the paper a while. Then I felt the corner of my mouth pull.

"Mr. Hayes, I'm not going to write it.

"Because I didn't lie. Every word I've said in this building is true."

His face went flat.

"Do you know where the last man who talked to me that way is working today?"

"No."

"He's sitting in the shack at the front gate." There wasn't any warmth left in his voice at all. "Keep this up and you'll do worse than that."

I didn't look away from him.

Four years ago they'd already taken one life from me. Now I had the truth in my coat pocket, and I wasn't backing down for anybody again.

"Mr. Hayes. Let me ask you something."

Before I ever took the job I'd heard the man was fair. I decided to bet on it, and I wanted him to see what the Grants really were.

"Suppose somebody took your son's scholarship letter out of the mail. Suppose it cost him the whole thing, and he spent the next four years down south breaking his back on a line because another man's boy wanted his place.

"Would you sit your son down and tell him to write an apology for making trouble?"

Victor Hayes's cup stopped halfway to his mouth.

He looked at me, and something moved behind his eyes that I don't think he wanted me to see.

The office stayed quiet.

I didn't wait on him. I pulled the door open and walked out.

Outside the administration building I went to the pay phone by the gate and dialed Lucas's office.

"Yeah?"

He sounded bored.

"It's me. Evan.

"Tonight. Nine o'clock. The old warehouse behind the plant. We need to talk."