The World Made Straight by Ron Rash Page B

month’s salary you’ll end up teaching at some college, she’d told him that afternoon. A bet he should have taken, Leonard now thought as Mrs. Ponder ran her index finger over a row of books.
    She lifted a thick paperback titled
Essentials of Mathematics
from the shelf. “If he can work through all the problems in these first ten chapters, he’ll do fine on the math part.”
    Mrs. Ponder handed the book to Leonard.
    â€œCourtesy of the state of North Carolina,” she said.
    â€œHow often is the GED given?”
    â€œFirst Thursday and first Saturday of the month at Asheville-Buncombe Tech. Let me know at least two weeks in advance and I’ll reserve him a place.”
    â€œI’m thinking April. Math’s not my strong suit so I may be learning right along with him.”
    â€œI remember,” Mrs. Ponder said, meeting Leonard’s eyes. “If your math scores had been higher you’d have receivedscholarships to out-of-state schools as well. Maybe you would have gotten far enough away not to find your way back here. That’s what I hoped for you.”
    Mrs. Ponder looked out her window at the mountains as if to emphasize they were still in Madison County and not some bucolic New England college town.
    â€œI’m glad I’m not at the high school anymore,” she said. “There are fewer disappointments here. Be able to read a safety manual. Balance a checkbook. Get a job as a secretary or foreman at a mill. That’s all I have to hope for now, Leonard.”
    He wore what he always wore these days—ragged jeans and a tee-shirt, work boots. His hair long, his beard unkempt. Leonard knew what Mrs. Ponder saw before her, heard it in the bitterness of her voice. Whatever she knew or didn’t know of his life since high school, his appearance evidently verified enough.
    â€œIs this for your son?” she asked, and he knew this was a judgment of him as well.
    Mrs. Ponder had grown up in Madison County herself, come back after graduating from UNC-Greensboro and married her high school sweetheart, a dairy farmer who’d barely graduated high school. Mrs. Ponder’s left hand rested on the desk, and Leonard saw she no longer wore a wedding ring. He thought about telling her it appeared he wasn’t the only one whose life hadn’t turned out as expected.
    â€œThank you for your help,” he said.
    Leonard walked back down the hall, studentless now. He passed classrooms, some doors open, some shut. Chalk tappeda blackboard, a projector whirred, typewriters clattered, then a room where a man near Leonard’s age spoke of the past.
    Why can’t you just let them take a different test on the material? one of the parents had said that afternoon in Illinois. Six people had been in the conference room: the principal, Leonard’s department head, himself, and three parents. He’d looked out the window before he spoke at what passed for landscape in southern Illinois—a few scraggly cottonwood and bald cypress poked into an endless unscrolling west toward Missouri and Kansas. At that moment Leonard had realized how truly oppressive the openness was, its wide possibilities he no longer believed in. By then he was no longer living with Kera and Emily. He and Kera passed each other in the school’s hallways with little acknowledgment, negotiated evening and weekend exchanges of their daughter with the cold formality of pawnbrokers.
    School policy stated cheating was an automatic zero, and Leonard had reminded the parents and principal of that policy, then gotten up and left the room. But school policy had been only part of why he refused. Stacks of unmarked tests and essays cluttered his desk. Lesson plans unwritten. Finding the energy and focus to make a new test had seemed impossible.
    On the way back to the trailer, Leonard stopped at the Winn-Dixie and bought two cases of beer to bootleg. He paid with the twenty dollars in