The Test Plate

The night before the test, Carla stayed late in the shop. Mr. Petrakis had given her a key in October, which he did not do for everyone, and which she had not told anyone about because she didn't want to be the one he'd given a key to. She wanted to be the one who passed. The shop was cold. She got the machine warmed up, clamped a practice plate in the fixture, and pulled her hood down. Eight months ago she'd been answering phones at Dr. Lindqvist's office in Parma. Eleven years. Good benefits. A chair that fit her exactly. And then one Tuesday she'd been driving home past the county vocational center and seen a banner that said "Welding Program, Evening Section, Enrolling Now," and she'd pulled into the parking lot and sat there for twenty minutes with the engine running, the way you do outside a place that might change your life. She hadn't gone in that day. She'd gone in the next. Her mother had said, "Welding? Carla. Your hands." Her hands were fine. Her hands, it turned out, were the best part. Petrakis had said so in the third week, in the unsentimental way he said everything. "You've got steady hands and you don't rush. That's most of it. The rest is a thousand hours." She hadn't done a thousand hours. She'd done maybe four hundred. It would have to be enough. The test was 3G, vertical up, on three-eighths plate. She'd been doing it every night for two weeks. She could do it clean maybe seven times out of ten, and the three bad ones were always the same problem, a cold lap at the restart where she lost the puddle. Petrakis had watched her do it twice and said, "You're breathing out when you strike. Breathe in. Hold it. Then go." She struck an arc. Breathed in. Went. The bead crawled up the plate in a series of tight, even crescents. She could see the puddle, see the edges wetting in, and she moved with it, not too fast, letting it fill. At the halfway mark she stopped, chipped the slag, checked. It looked right. It looked like the pictures in the book. She restarted, breathed in, held it, and the second half came out the same as the first.

She flipped her hood up and looked at it under the light. It wasn't perfect. There was a slight ripple at the top where she'd tensed. But it was sound. It would bend. She did it four more times. Then she cleaned up, turned off the machine, locked the shop, and drove home past the dental office, which was dark, and did not slow down. The test was at eight. There were six of them taking it. Devon, who was twenty-two and had been welding since he was fifteen with his uncle. Two guys from the auto plant. A kid who'd been laid off from something. And Ray, who was sixty-one and had said, the first week, that he was doing this so he could build a trailer, and who had turned out to be the most careful welder in the room. The inspector was a woman, which Carla had not expected. She checked their plates were stamped, told them they had ninety minutes, and sat down with a coffee. Carla clamped her plate. Struck an arc. Breathed in. Four days later she got the letter. She opened it in the car, in the parking lot of the vocational center, engine running. Then she sat there for a while. Then she went inside and found Petrakis in the shop and held it up, and he looked at it, and nodded once, and said, "Good. Ray passed too. Devon didn't. Restart problem." He went back to the machine he was working on. "There's a fab shop in Brook Park looking for second shift. I told them about you." "You told them?" "I told them you don't rush." She stood there holding the letter. Outside, through the roll-up door, it had started to snow. "Go on," Petrakis said. "And give me back the key. I need it for the next one."