Backlands by Michael McGarrity

Author:Michael McGarrity
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Penguin Group US
Published: 2014-05-05T16:00:00+00:00

19

When Matt was five, CJ had given him a cheap alarm clock to play with. He took it apart, put it back together, and got it ticking, but much to his frustration he never got it to keep the right time no matter how hard he tried. In spite of his failure, it didn’t dampen his enthusiasm for taking things apart, to the point of getting into big trouble with Ma for attempting to disassemble her trundle sewing machine. To keep him away from such mischief, she presented him with a brand new Erector set, which came in a red wooden box complete with a variety of different steel parts and nuts and bolts he could build stuff with. The set was a source of constant enjoyment, and he spent many contented hours on the living room floor constructing drawbridges, cranes, water towers, windmills, airplanes, and the like.

His more recent experiences helping Boone fiddle around with his old jalopy had reminded Matt how much he enjoyed working with his hands, so in his first semester of college he’d taken a mechanical arts course that consisted of learning how to disassemble and repair a variety of gasoline-powered motors, including an unusual twenty-four-horsepower horizontal automobile engine. The classwork also consisted of making detailed diagrams of engine components, which rekindled Matt’s interest in drawing. It became his favorite course in his first semester.

Pleased with what he’d learned, in his second semester he shifted to an emphasis on applied science, with classes in drafting and basic welding and a calculus course to improve his math skills. He also signed up for an elective course in military science, taught by a veteran of the Great War. Matt enjoyed it so much, it got him to thinking he might consider the army as a career if he could serve as an officer in the Corps of Engineers.

But not yet ready to settle on a path his life should take, he figured to explore different courses in his sophomore year, including botany, a class in modern writers, and a land-surveying class, which would be useful in both agriculture and science. Classes started in six weeks and he was eager to begin.

When he wasn’t at his part-time job clerking in Miller’s store, he rode Patches several miles to the college outside of town, situated on the upper shelf of a wide tableland that extended beyond the Rio Grande far into the desert. With the permission of his mechanical arts professor, Augustus Merton, he’d parked a 1925 Studebaker Standard Six Roadster with a blown engine he’d bought at a salvage yard in an empty shed on campus. He hoped to have the roadster rebuilt and running before classes resumed so he could motor to and from college.

Three days of unusually cool and rainy weather had turned the gravel road to the college muddy and the surrounding land a brilliant green. He stopped at the campus gate and cleaned Patches’ hooves before continuing on the horseshoe drive past ornate buildings

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