Chapter 95: Ledger and Scale

At dusk, the short-haul bus from the county seat back to town was thick with the smell of diesel and damp human bodies. Lin Chen sat by the window in the last row, his right foot planted firmly on the floor, his left foot hanging off the ground, the sole of his shoe braced against the iron bar of the seat ahead. The bus jolted and bounced, and each jolt sent another wave of numbness through the wound. He kept his eyes closed. There was no scenery in his mind, only a timetable. County seat to town: forty minutes by bus. Fare: eight jiao. Teacher Wang had asked him to bring back the review outline on the way, and the eight jiao she pressed into his hand as errand money just offset the fare. He took out his ledger, crossed out “trip to county seat,” and wrote: ticket 0.8, errand offset 0.8, actual expense 0. Balance: 3.2. Shortfall: photos and photocopies. He calculated his stride. From the town transit stop to Qingshi Village was twelve li. With his foot in its current condition, he could manage three and a half li an hour. He would need three and a half hours. He could still make it before dark. Whatever could be saved still had to be saved.

Outside the window, the scenery receded from factory buildings on the edge of the county seat to rolling hills, then receded again into the familiar yellow loess slopes. He opened his eyes. The edge of the dressing on his left foot had already dried stiff, and the seeped tissue fluid had glued the gauze to his skin. Every bump tugged at his Achilles tendon. He did not move. He only shifted his weight half an inch to the right. Someone in the bus was cracking sunflower seeds, the shells dropping into the aisle. A middle-aged man in the front row was snoring, half of a crumpled copy of Reference News clenched in his hand. Lin Chen pulled the provincial evening paper from his inner pocket. The ink had already smudged onto his fingers. He read the line about the “pilot assessment for basic computer applications” one more time. An added test for science-track students. Not a rumor, but an official notice with red letterhead. That meant the dimensions by which the gaokao selected people were physically shifting. Knowing how to code was no longer just an extra advantage for competition students; it might become a threshold for ordinary exam takers. He folded the newspaper into quarters and tucked it into the innermost layer of his notebook of wrong-answer corrections. The paper was coarse, its edges already starting to fray.

By the time the bus arrived, the sky had already gone gray. The three-wheeled drivers at the entrance to town were calling for passengers. He shook his head and turned onto the road back to the village. The wind was harsher than it had been during the day, carrying the raw smell of earth. The twelve li took him four hours. By the time he reached the village entrance, the moon had already climbed into the branches of the old locust tree. The courtyard gate was ajar. He pushed it open and went in. The light in the main room was still on. Wang Guiying was reheating food by the stove. Hearing footsteps, she turned around. Her eyes passed over his mud-stained trouser legs and the slight limp in his left foot. She said nothing. She only turned back to lift the pot. Lin Jianguo sat on the threshold smoking a dry tobacco pipe. The ember in the bowl brightened and dimmed. Xiaoman had fallen asleep on the table, still clutching that worn-down pencil in one hand. Beside him sat a bowl of corn mush gone cold. Lin Chen set his bag on the long bench. From his pocket he took out the coins and crumpled small notes he had left. Three yuan and two jiao in all. He placed them on the table. “Mom, this is what was left from today’s trip to the county seat.” Wang Guiying glanced at it. She did not count it. She only said, “Go wash your feet. The water’s ready.”

The water by the well was icy. He took off his rubber shoes and socks. His left ankle was swollen tight and shiny. When he peeled back the dressing, the gauze had stuck to the flesh, and pulling it away tore off a layer of dried blood. He bit down on a towel and softened it little by little with warm water. After cleaning it, he changed the dressing and applied the herbal paste his mother had already boiled for him. The coolness pressed down the burning pain. He sat back down in the main room and spread open the ledger. He crossed out “pre-interview preparation” and wrote: Countdown: 6 days. Goal: advance on two fronts in parallel. He pulled out two sheets of white paper. On the left he wrote “Provincial Tech Interview,” on the right “Senior-Year Review.” The timeline ran from six in the morning to eleven at night. Every hour was cut into blocks. Interview requirements: personal statement, experiment review, on-the-spot questioning. Review requirements: finish the first round of math, physics, and chemistry review; English vocabulary; Chinese composition. Point of conflict: next Wednesday morning he had to go to school for materials verification, and the first mock exam was also on the same day. He had to shift comprehensive science practice to the weekend and late at night, and compress interview materials into the early morning and after dinner. He picked up his pen and drew lines on the paper. Connected them. Marked priorities. He did not write “do my best.” He wrote only “complete.”

He flipped open his notebook of wrong answers. Tucked inside was a note that Teacher Wang from County No. 1 High School had sent through someone the week before. The handwriting was messy: “First mock exam set for next Wednesday. Anyone absent will be counted as zero. Review outline already distributed. Be sure to bring it back.” Next Wednesday. The very day Provincial Tech required him to appear on campus for materials verification. The verification site was the admissions office on the first floor of the main building. Miss your turn and it would be void. He stared at the note for a long time. A zero. That meant losing the countywide ranking as a reference. It meant losing the baseline he would need for filling out gaokao applications. He could not skip the exam. But he also could not simply throw away his interview qualification. He needed a third path. He opened the county library borrowing catalog and found Fundamentals of Electronic Information Experiments and Gaokao Comprehensive Science Mock Papers. The catalog showed that both books were in the library. But the borrowing rules said: priority for twelfth-year students, and a homeroom teacher’s signature required. His current status was “competition student.” He knew his homeroom teacher’s attitude well. Not opposed, but not supportive either. If he asked for a signature, he would most likely be told to “focus on the gaokao.”

Lin Chen closed the notebook and stood up. He went into the inner room. His father was already asleep, breathing heavily. Quietly, he pulled open the drawer. Inside was the cigarette pack his father normally used to jot down household accounts. He took out a piece of the cigarette-pack paper and cut it in half. Then he began writing letters. One was addressed to Provincial Tech’s admissions office, asking them to compress the materials verification into the morning as much as possible so that he could hurry back to the county seat for the first mock exam. The other was addressed to the academic affairs office of County No. 1 High School, asking that if the road delayed him, he be allowed to make up the comprehensive science paper that same afternoon. He did not ask for special treatment. He only stated the facts and his proposed plan. His handwriting was neat. There was not a single extra word. When he finished, he put the letters into envelopes, stuck on eight-fen stamps, and placed them on the table. Tomorrow morning, at first light, he would go to the town post office and mail them.

He blew out the oil lamp and lay down. The wooden bed gave a faint creak. In the darkness, his left foot throbbed dully. But in his mind the chart was already full. Six days. Enough for him to twist the two lines into a single rope. The wind picked up outside, making the window paper rattle. He closed his eyes. His breathing gradually steadied.

Early the next morning, before the sky was light, he got up. He slipped the envelopes into his inner pocket and pushed open the door. On the yellow dirt road outside the courtyard stood a familiar black bicycle. In its front basket was a kraft-paper envelope, weighted down with a stone. His name was written on it. Old Zhao, the county postman, had left it there. He walked over, picked up the envelope, and opened it. It was not a reply to the letters he had sent. It was a supplementary notice that Provincial Tech had just issued. Red letterhead. Urgent. The title read: “Instructions on the Materials Required for the Final Interview of the Electronic Information Experimental Class.” The attached list named three items: photocopies of award certificates, the final draft of the personal statement, and three recent one-inch photographs. Note: those whose photographs or materials are incomplete will not be assigned an interview slot.

Lin Chen’s fingers stopped on the page. Photos, photocopies, travel money—even a reference book he could use to steady himself for the interview—every one of them required cash on hand. The usable balance left in his ledger was only 3.2 yuan. Five days remained before reporting in. The wind swept dust up from the ground. He raised his head and looked toward the village entrance. The road ahead was still long. But the accounts had to be balanced.