The Librarian of Boone's Hollow - Kim Vogel Sawyer Page 0,16

late tomorrow. We will attend church service Sunday morning, and yawning during a sermon is most certainly a sin.”

Emmett

WAS HE REALLY graduating? The week of final examinations had gone so fast that Emmett still couldn’t believe it was over. He’d prepared well and performed his best on every exam. Spence had poked fun at his undivided focus, but he’d been given money by the college to take these classes. He owed the scholarship committee members his best efforts. Between examinations, he visited each of the businesses in town that had posted job openings and talked to the hiring agents. Some were blunt, some acted sheepish, and others seemed flat-out bored, but every one of them sent him away with a “No thanks.” The reason? His degree.

“Sorry, young man,” the agent at the chicken-processing plant, the kindest of the men, had told him, “but there ain’t even a ghost of a chance we’ll hire you. Somebody with your education ain’t gonna be happy yankin’ feathers from a chicken carcass. No, you need to hire on at a bank or big department store or even with one o’ the minin’ outfits—they got office jobs, too, y’know. But we can’t use ya here. Nope, not here.”

The man’s dismal statements rolled in the back of Emmett’s mind when he should have been listening to the guest speaker at the graduation ceremony. Maybe he shouldn’t have come for the ceremony. But he’d worked so hard for his diploma. It seemed as if he’d earned the right to cross the stage and shake the college president’s hand like the others. So he lined up with everyone else and waited his turn. Since they went in alphabetical order, he waited a pretty long time while the sun scorched through his robe and the wind tried to yank the cardboard hat from his head.

“Emmett Emil Tharp.”

Emmett watched the toes of his shoes poking out from the hem of his gown—how did ladies make walking in gowns look so graceful?—and climbed the three wobbly steps to the stage set up in the middle of the football field. There wasn’t anybody in the audience celebrating his accomplishments. Nobody who clapped extra hard or let out whoops of joy for him, as happened for many of his fellow graduates. The half-hearted applause given to be polite tried to dull some of the shine of receiving his rolled-up sheepskin from President McVey, but he told himself to be proud, the way Maw would be proud. He could imagine what she’d say to him right then: “Son, you’re the first college graduate to hail from Boone’s Holler, Kentucky. Just ’cause nobody else knows you done somethin’ extra special don’t mean it ain’t special.”

Planting Maw’s voice in his head helped, and he left the stage with a smile and a firm grip on his diploma.

When the last student received his diploma, the dean of the College of Law stepped up to the podium and delivered a lengthy prayer of blessing over the graduating class of 1936. At his somber “amen,” as they’d planned before marching in procession onto the field, the male graduates snatched off their caps and threw them in the air with shouts of glee. Emmett threw his cap, but he didn’t holler. A lump seemed stuck in his throat, and a shout couldn’t escape.

Students milled in a mob, some of the girls hugging one another and most of the boys slapping one another on the back. Emmett worked his way to the edge of the group, holding his diploma against his chest. He wanted to keep it nice until he got home and showed it to Maw and Mr. Halcomb. After they’d taken their fill of gawking at it, he’d put it away in his trunk, and it could get smashed flat in there.

Spence trotted up to him, grinning big. He’d already gotten rid of his gown somewhere and rolled up the sleeves of his shirt. He looked a lot more comfortable than Emmett felt. Spence gave Emmett’s shoulder a whack. “Well, ol’ bloke, I reckon this is it, time to say goodbye.”

Emmett couldn’t honestly say he and Spence had been good friends. Not like he’d been with his longtime buddy from back home, Shay Leeson. But after four years of rooming together, he’d gotten used to the freckle-faced man. He might even miss seeing him every day.

He bounced his fist on Spence’s shoulder. “Reckon we’ll see each other in our room later on. Still have to pack up.