The Gap Year

1 The acceptance letter from the state university had hung on the Bergstroms' refrigerator since March, pinned beneath a magnet shaped like a walleye, and by June its corners had begun to curl in a way that Wyatt found increasingly difficult to ignore. He had rehearsed his argument for a week, so when his father settled at the kitchen table with his Saturday coffee, Wyatt slid a printed page toward him and explained the proposal before his nerve could fail. The engineering program would reserve his place for one year if he paid the deposit and described his plans, and a trail crew in the national forest would pay him fourteen dollars an hour, with housing included, to construct the kind of footbridges he had only ever sketched.

2 Neil Bergstrom read the page twice, because twenty-two years of repairing furnaces across three counties had taught him to read everything twice, contracts most of all. He conceded that Wyatt would return with savings, then asked what else the year would provide, and Wyatt, after a pause, admitted the uncomfortable truth he had been circling for months. "Everyone tells me engineering suits me because I'm good at mathematics, but that isn't a reason; it's a forecast."

3 His father almost smiled, then reconsidered. At eighteen, he explained, he had also taken a single year away, working at the plant to save for tuition, until the plant offered overtime, and he purchased a truck, and the truck required payments. "One year is a remarkably persuasive number," he said, "but nobody plans for the second and third." Wyatt had heard fragments of this story before, always delivered as a joke about the truck, yet he had never heard it told like this, quietly, as though his father were reading it from a bill he still owed.

4 "So that's what this is really about," Wyatt said. "You think I'll turn into you." The accusation landed harder than he had intended, and for a long moment the only sound in the kitchen was the refrigerator's hum while Neil studied the van parked outside, BERGSTROM HEATING painted across its side.

5 "I think you're right that you need a reason," his father said eventually, "and I think I'm right that a plan with no end date is merely a hope wearing work boots." He returned the page and instructed Wyatt to write the letter, but to include a date in it: the day he would be back in this kitchen, packing for school, whether or not the trail crew begged him to stay. When Wyatt asked what would happen if he concluded that engineering was not for him after all, Neil lifted his coffee again. "Then you'll decide with your eyes open, instead of letting a truck decide for you. I'm not trying to keep you from the year; I'm trying to keep the year from keeping you."

6 That night Wyatt composed the letter, and when the form requested his expected date of return, he typed one, considered it for a long time, and left it there. In the morning he shifted the walleye an inch to the left, so that it held the curling letter flat against the door, where it could wait for him.