Chapter 4 - Four Hundred Rejections
I began counting Leo’s job applications.
Not because it was healthy.
Because I needed to understand.
Four hundred and seventeen.
That was the final number.
Some were stretches.
Most weren’t.
Entry-level analyst.
Assistant manager.
Junior marketing coordinator.
Operations trainee.
Customer-service representative.
Warehouse supervisor.
He had even applied at my plant.
I stopped when I found that one.
Mercer Manufacturing.
Maintenance Management Trainee.
Application status:
Rejected.
I called HR.
“Why?”
The recruiter searched the archive.
“Insufficient experience.”
“It was a trainee position.”
“I know.”
“How much experience did it require?”
“Three years preferred.”
I laughed.
It sounded ugly.
“How does a trainee get three years of experience?”
She didn’t answer.
I wasn’t angry at her.
She hadn’t designed the entire world.
But for the first time, I understood Leo’s sentence.
The mountain still existed.
The path had changed.
That didn’t mean every young person was doomed.
It didn’t mean my generation had lived on easy street.
My father had worked brutally hard.
So had I.
But Leo hadn’t been asking me to erase my struggle.
He had been asking me to recognize his.
There was room for both truths.
I just hadn’t known it.
The Ladder Project grew.
Carl convinced the plant to offer five apprenticeship positions.
Then a local electrical contractor called.
Then an auto shop.
Then a medical supply warehouse.
We held our first community meeting in the basement of St. Andrew’s Church.
I expected fifteen people.
Eighty-three came.
Young adults stood against the walls.
Parents sat in folding chairs.
Some looked embarrassed to be there.
I recognized that embarrassment.
I opened with Leo’s photograph behind me.
“My son was twenty-three.”
My voice nearly failed.
“He believed he was failing.”
The room became silent.
“I believed it too.”
I told them about the applications.
The delivery work.
The misunderstanding.
I did not turn Leo’s death into entertainment.
I told them what mattered.
“I spent years telling my son how hard my life had been. I never asked how hard his was.”
A mother in the second row began crying.
Afterward, she approached me with her son.
His name was Noah.
Twenty-one.
He barely looked at me.
His mother whispered, “He hasn’t left the house except for work in months.”
I remembered Leo’s eyes.
I didn’t lecture Noah.
I asked, “What are you interested in?”
He shrugged.
“Computers.”
“Fixing them?”
“Networks.”
“I don’t know anything about networks.”
That made him smile slightly.
“But I know someone who does.”
We connected Noah with a local IT company.
It wasn’t magic.
He didn’t suddenly become confident.
He missed his first interview.
We rescheduled it.
He almost missed the second.
His mother drove him.
Three months later, he was working part-time.
That was when I learned the most important lesson of the Ladder Project.
Success wasn’t always a house.
Sometimes success was getting out of bed.
Sometimes it was answering an email.
Sometimes it was asking for help.
Sometimes it was surviving Tuesday.
The project became known around town.
Then one morning, a reporter called.
She wanted to interview me.
I refused.
“I’m not turning my son into a headline.”
She said something that changed my mind.
“Mr. Mercer, what if another father hears your story before he makes the same mistake?”
I agreed.
The article ran Sunday.
By Monday morning, my inbox had hundreds of messages.
Some praised me.
Some attacked me.
One comment read:
Stop blaming parents. Kids today are soft.
Six months earlier, I might have clicked “like.”
Instead, I closed the laptop.
Another message came from a father named Dennis.
My son is 26 and living at home. I’ve been riding him constantly. Last night I knocked on his door and asked if he was okay instead.
He cried for forty minutes.
Thank you.
I printed that message.
It went beside Leo’s photograph.
But the message underneath it frightened me.
It was from Maya.
Leo’s college friend.
Mr. Mercer, there’s something Leo never told you.
I called immediately.
Maya answered after three rings.
“What didn’t he tell me?”
Silence.
Then:
“Leo wasn’t only building the Ladder Project for himself.”
“What do you mean?”
“He was helping people already.”
“How many?”
“I don’t know.”
“Maya.”
Her voice cracked.
“A lot.”
Then she sent me access to an online folder.
Inside were dozens of names.
Dozens of stories.
And at the top was a document Leo had written only five days before he died.
Its title was:
May you like
IF I EVER GET THIS WORKING, DAD NEEDS TO SEE THIS.
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