Pride by William Wharton

directly from milking and tie his school clothes on his back with his lunch.
    At school, after he’d locked his bicycle, he’d go into the boys’ room and change. He kept his farm clothes cached in a cubbyhole out of sight over the toilet. The high school was large, with inside toilets.
    Sture quickly settled into his studies. At first, most of the other pupils thought he was only a child visiting. Sture was not particularly small but he was thirteen years old, two years younger than any of the other students. Within a few weeks, however, the other students knew about him. His class participation, questions, his first test and examination results set him apart. The teachers, originally apprehensive about so young a student, soon began to delight in his learning ability. His algebra teacher couldn’t believe Sture’s competence; it was unnatural the ease with which he handled the more complicated algebra usually reserved for the most advanced students. His Latin teacher insisted he must have studied Latin before; no one could absorb and use so much of a new language without previous experience. Sture didn’t know it, but by Christmas there had been several teachers’ meetings devoted almost exclusively to him.
    Sture enjoyed his school work, but because he had to leave immediately after the last bell, there was no time for socializing. He used the short lunch period to nibble on a piece of home-baked black bread and hard Cheddar. The school library was a place of wonder to him, and it was there he went for lunch. He quickly learned one was not allowed to eat in the library, so he started cutting his bread and cheese into bite-size pieces and stashing them in his pockets to be eaten surreptitiously.
    Sture’s mind was still mostly captivated by his bicycle. He’d bought a lock and chain so he could secure it to a post near the school gate. He was working on a way to pedal up the hill to school faster and more easily and at the same time not use all his energy going home by holding back on the pedals. After much experimentation he developed two different shanks to attach the pedals to the sprocket. One set was very short, only about four inches, and the other long, long as he could make them without his pedals touching the ground. When he went to school he used the long shank and could pump up the hills much more easily. He’d carry the short shanks with his school clothes, books, and lunch. Then, on the way home, he’d substitute the short shanks on the pedals and could pedal at great speed, getting home easily in time to milk the cows. In fact, on that bicycle, coming down that hill from school, he was probably the fastest-traveling human being within a hundred miles of Oshkosh. He started getting home too early for milking and began staying on an extra half hour to work in the library, where it was quiet and there was good, steady electric light.
    Sture went through his high-school years, pedaling from home to school every day. Winters he tied rope around the wheels of his bicycle so he could get a grip in ice and snow. Even on days when snowdrifts were up to the second story of his house he snowshoed to school. Twice he was the only pupil to show up in his classes.
    At the farm, they’d increased the herd by ten cows and that meant more milking, so Sture’s time at school was soon limited to class time. He read almost every book in the school library. It was as if he ate books. In the evenings, he read everything he could, on the pretext he was doing homework for school. He actually could do all his required assignments during lunchtime at the library.
    The world interested Sture. He began to want to travel and see some of it. He worked ever harder at the farm but he knew it was not where he wanted to be all his life.
    He graduated from high school at sixteen with every prize and honor, but there was no way for him to go on to a college or university.
    He helped his father