by Homer Hickam
What Mr. Short had said was true to my way of thinking, but it didn’t make me feel any better about it.
After civics, we moved to physics class. Miss Riley asked everybody to gather around her desk. Although her supply of chemicals and hardware was running on empty, her supply of creativity was always filled to the brim. She invited us to look at a razor blade floating on the surface of the water in a shallow pan. “What holds the blade up?” she asked. We all knew the answer and competed with each other to say it first: surface tension, the elastic property of the surface of liquids. Then she squirted some liquid detergent in the water and the razor blade sank. “How come?” she asked.
Roy Lee said, “Because it makes the razor blade so slippery it cuts through?” We just laughed at him, but we didn’t know the answer any better than he.
Quentin piped up and said, “Is it not clear to you all that the detergent simply reduces the surface tension of the water such that it cannot hold the blade?”
Everybody went silent. Quentin, we were certain, had nailed it. “You’ve described what happened, Quentin,” Miss Riley said gently. “But why did it happen? That’s the more important question.”
Quentin’s eyes registered puzzlement. He licked his lips. She had him stumped. I had an idea. “Could it be,” I said, “that the detergent molecules are so small they get in between the water molecules and that’s what keeps them from clustering? If they did, the tension would be gone. It would be like knocking the legs out from under a table.”
Quentin looked at me. “A rigorous thought, Sonny,” he said.
I preened, just a little. Miss Riley smiled. Her experiments, no matter how simple, were to provoke our minds.
Miss Riley waved me up to her after class. She rested her cheek on her hand. “Can you tell Jake something for me?” I nodded, and she said, “Tell him I have received his message and will oblige.”
I was happy to hear that she and Jake were communicating. She perused her grade book. “If you get an A on your exam,” she said, “looks like you’ll get an A in this class. I’d put that down as prodigious, as Quentin would say.”
“I have a good chance of getting A’s in all my classes,” I reported, careful not to sound too proud.
“Why the turnaround?”
“My rockets,” I said instantly. “Every class seems to have an application. Even speech class. I’ve been giving every one of my speeches on the space race.”
Miss Riley worked her lips as if trying to keep them straight, but a crooked smile broke through. “I know. Miss Bryson said she’d like to see a little variety in your act.”
“Well, I’m kind of interested in the Loch Ness monster,” I confessed.
“You might want to use it as the subject for your final speech,” she suggested.
Quentin was waiting for me outside the classroom. “I applaud you for your rigorous thought process on surface tension, Sonny,” he prattled. “Roy Lee’s idea of the razor blade becoming slippery was, of course, ludicrous, but you might be interested to know that I have been considering the entire concept of slipperiness lately, a subject profoundly ignored by most scientists. In fact, I believe that if I put my mind to it, I might be able to create the perfect slippery surface. The applications of that would be enormous! Frying pans, for instance. Would that not be prodigious, Sonny, my boy? Your mother with a frying pan whereby her eggs did not stick? A complex polymer will probably be the solution. I have been considering the chemistry of the banana to start . . .”
“Quentin, not now,” I said. “I’ve got other things on my mind.”
“Such as?”
“I have a list. It was your suggestion. You want to hear everything on it?”
“Not really,” he confessed.
“Then how about your ceramic-lined nozzle? You want to hear about that? Mr. Caton finally figured out how to layer in the putty. And I got to tell you, it’s prodigious!”
Quentin opened his mouth. I could tell he was about to say “Prodigious!” but since I’d already said it, I nearly had him at a loss for words. Finally, he said, “Stupendous!”
“Quentin?” I stopped him in his tracks. He raised his eyebrows. “Please don’t start saying ‘stupendous.’ I don’t think I could stand it.”
He nodded, implying that he understood, although I knew he didn’t.
WE walked down the hall past the principal’s office. I was surprised when I glanced through the glass in his closed door and saw some familiar faces. I was most astonished to see my mother as well as Mr. and Mrs. Likens, the Coalwood school principal and his wife. In the corner of Mr. Turner’s office was a man in a navy uniform. I didn’t see Billy. “What do you make of it, Sonny?” Quentin asked.
A surge of hope passed through me. “Did I ever tell you the navy occupied Coalwood one time, Q?”
Quentin scratched his head. “No. Why did they do that?”
“Because they wanted something we had.” I looked into the office again. Mrs. Turner spotted me and closed the door to the outer office but not before I saw Mrs. Likens shaking her finger at the navy man. I laughed. “I think the tables just got turned.”
That evening, Billy wasn’t on the school bus back to Coalwood. The next morning, he wasn’t at the Six bus stop, either, but he did turn up in our first class. Mom had already given me the good news the night before. Mr. Turner was going to keep Billy at his house through exam week and even the Christmas holidays. He could stay there the rest of the school year if he needed to. The navy had been sent packing. “You and Mr. and Mrs. Likens did a good thing, Mom,” I said.
Mom was sitting on the top of her ladder, concentrating on the wispy clouds in the sky of her painting. “It saves him for now,” she said. “We’ll keep our fingers crossed that he can get through the rest of the year.”
I didn’t try to compliment her anymore. Sometimes just doing something is praise enough.
EVERY time I went past the union hall, I saw more activity. Hand-lettered signs were stacked out front. One of them said HICKMAN IS A RAT. Another one said HICKHAM AGAINST THE WORKING MAN. The signs didn’t bother me. Every time there was a strike, I’d seen them like that, or worse. What I wondered was how many years we’d have to live in Coalwood before people figured out how to spell our simple name.
Roy Lee, who kept his finger on the union pulse through his brother, said Mr. Dubonnet and Mr. Mallett were primed to take their men out on strike during Christmas week. All they needed was the approval of UMWA headquarters in Charleston. “Your dad can kiss 11 East good-bye if they do,” Roy Lee said. “It’s going to be one of their main gripes. They’re going to shut that section down for good. You ever find out what he’s doing in there?”
“No.”
Roy Lee was driving me down to the machine shop to get Mr. Caton to take another turn on the nozzle he’d built. I had found it to be just a shade too large for the rocket casement it was supposed to fit within. It was probably because of me trying to design with a fat lead pencil and a large-scale ruler.
As we drove past the Club House we saw Mrs. Mallett and some of the other women in her new club. They were supervising their husbands, who were putting up plywood camels, sheep, and other Christmas cutouts on the Club House lawn. One of the Wise Men held a sign that said THIS DISPLAY ERECTED BY THE C.O.W. LADIES.
I tried not to care but I did. Coalwood was just going to have this blighted little display this year and, in a way, it was my fault. If I’d jumped in and written the pageant script for Mom way back when she’d first asked me, it might have given her the momentum she needed to make it happen, despite the company’s abandonment of it along with everything else. I shook my head, sighing. “Shut up,” Roy Lee said before I could open my mouth. “It’s not your fault.”
“You’re a good guy, Roy Lee,” I said.
He hunched his shoulders. “Well, keep it to yourself. I have a bad reputation to defend.”
MY brain was crammed full. I had to let it get out on paper before
it fell out of my ears. Exam day had struck at Big Creek High School, and I had studied all I could study. I gave my speech on the Loch Ness monster and got a thumbs-up from Miss Bryson. I was on a roll. Civics, English literature, typing, physics, and trigonometry all went by, one exam after the other. When I finished, I knew I’d done well. I could just feel it. I was going to get all A’s. I allowed myself a small grin, then wiped it off lest someone see me being proud.
22
BACK TO THE DRAWING BOARD
“WHAT DO YOU think?” Quentin asked nervously. It was the third time within the last minute he’d asked the same question. We were standing at the launchpad. Auk XXIII-A, with Mr. Caton’s proud putty-lined De Laval nozzle, was ready to go. Dean Crabtree, an auxiliary Rocket Boy, had come over from Caretta to help Roy Lee get the pad ready. But after I had pressed the cork holding the Nichrome hot wire into the nozzle, I saw Billy emerging from the fog, loping across the slack. He came straight to me. “I’m back,” he said.
I felt like hugging him. Instead, I balled up my fist and hit him on the shoulder, though not too hard. “What happened? I thought you were staying with Mr. Turner clear on the other side of the county.”
The other boys came running. Billy gave them all a small, embarrassed grin. “Tell you what,” he said. “I’ve said my share of bad things about Mr. Turner but never again. You know why he’s so hard on us? It’s because he cares.”
“Yeah, yeah,” O’Dell said impatiently. “But why are you here?”
Billy shrugged, his smile lost. “I decided to just come on home and stick it out. I need to watch after my brothers and sisters, anyway. And just knowing that I have a place to go when things get too rough helps out a lot.”
“Anytime you like, you come stay with me,” Sherman said. Except for Quentin, we all echoed the sentiment for our own homes.
Billy drew me aside. “Tell your mom thanks for me. I don’t know how, but I’m going to pay her back.”
“She doesn’t expect anything, Billy.”
“I’ll figure it out,” he said, going over to the pad to help Roy Lee and Dean.
The sun was taking its time burning off the mists swirling around Rocket Mountain. If we launched through the fog, we had a good chance of losing the rocket. If we lost it, then we couldn’t inspect the nozzle, the real purpose of the launch. We just had to wait, as hard as that was. Quentin came over, and we went over our checklist again. “I think it’s going to be a great rocket,” I said. I had designed this one to reach an altitude of precisely two miles. Included in my calculations was a half-pound payload of smoke-producing, high-sulfur, low-grade zincoshine. This was to help us track the rocket better. When the fog lifted, I hoped for either a high solid cloud layer or blue sky. Both were good for tracking because we could see the casements silhouetted against a solid background, clear or cloudy.
“I should have checked your calculations,” Quentin said, still worrying. “Lord knows you have your problems with logarithms.”
“Did I tell you I got all A’s this semester?” I asked serenely. I was watching Billy show Dean how to set up the launch rod. Nothing was going to dent my good mood.
“About a thousand times,” he said. “It is a depressing statistic, is it not? Once out of how many semesters? Five in high school so far! That means you have failed to reach your potential during eighty percent of your academic career.”
“You’re a pal, Quentin,” I said. “By the way, what kind of grades did you get?”
He frowned. “If Coach Mams had an ounce of fairness in his bones, I would’ve had all A’s, too. Once more, I’ve been unfairly graded a B in phys ed.”
“You know, Q, you might want to actually come to his class once in a while,” I suggested. “I’m not sure, but doing something physical in physical education is probably a good idea if you want an A.”
“Can I help it if I often experience a headache at that precise time of day? Do you think it’s easy to tote around all these brains?” He tapped his noggin.
“Are you ever going to set up the theodolite stations?” I wondered. It was the square on my checklist still unchecked.
“When my assistants arrive,” he said haughtily.
“Your what?”
“My assistants. Ah, there they are. Over here, my good men!”
I looked and spied Tug and Hug Yates strolling across the slack. I knew them well. Tug and Hug were twins who worked on the hoot-owl shift. When my class reached the fifth grade, we’d found Tug and Hug patiently waiting for us to catch up with them. As a matter of fact, they had been patiently waiting in Mrs. Mary Alice Cox’s class for nearly four years. It was their final stand at the Coalwood school. Mr. Likens, the Coalwood school principal, figured if Mrs. Cox couldn’t educate them, nobody could. Mrs. Cox had given it her best, but it had turned out to be hopeless. The thing about Tug and Hug was that they were not the least bit disruptive in class, just uninterested. They sat in the back and read when they were asked to read, or wrote when they were asked to write, and took tests when they were given them to take, none of which they ever passed or even came close. They were marking time until Mr. Likens let them loose to go to work in the mine.
When my class moved on to the sixth grade, we left Tug and Hug holding down their two desks in Mrs. Cox’s class. That’s when Mr. Likens finally gave up. He came into their classroom and said, “Boys, we’ve done all we can do for you. You are free to go.” With a whoop, they had bounded from their desks and run down to the bridge that crossed from the school over the railroad tracks. Tug was so excited, he vaulted off the bridge into a full coal car passing below. Hug did the same, not noticing that Tug had caught the last coal car. The next one was the caboose. Hug bounced off the top of it, breaking both his legs. That mishap had delayed the two boys getting their job at the mine but not by much. They had become two perpetually cheerful employees of Olga Coal Company, assigned more or less permanently to the hoot-owl shift by my father, who liked the two boys and used their intellectual limitations to the company’s best advantage as well as their own. Tug and Hug were their own best friends. I often heard their distinctive braying laughter at night from my room as they walked in the long line of hoot-owl-shift miners going to work. Everybody in town thought the world of Tug and Hug. “Ready to go to work, Cap’n,” they saluted Quentin.
“What’s the deal, Q?” I demanded.
“The deal is this telephone wire is heavy and I need help. These two fine gentlemen have volunteered to assist me. In return, I have made them honorary members of the BCMA.”
Tug and Hug grinned. “We like being Rocket Boys,” they said. They proceeded to shoulder the telephone wire and Quentin’s theodolite and head downrange.
I grabbed Quentin before he could follow them. “They can’t be part of the BCMA!”
Quentin pulled away. “Why not? They seem like good old boys to me.”
“You want a club full of good old boys or Rocket Boys? Seems to me it has to be one way or the other.”
Quentin looked down his long nose at me, his crisp blue eyes crinkling along the edges. “It never occurred to me until this moment that you are quite the prig, Sonny Hickam. Without a doubt, the result of your privileged life as a mine superintendent’s son.”
I sputtered, searching for a comeback, but couldn’t find one. “Quentin, just tell me you aren’t going to recruit any more fifth-grade dropouts into the BCMA.”
Quentin shrugged and stalked off, shaking his head. “Quite the prig,” he said over his shoulder.
I looked downrange. Tug and Hug already had the telephone wire and theodolite station set up. It would have taken Quentin another hour at the rate he usually went. Maybe the boy was on to something, I didn’t know. But— me, a prig? I struck the accusation from my mind as unworthy and went to the blockhouse. “All ready, Sherman?”
Sherman patted the firing box. “Roger that. How’s the audience?”
I went back outside to see. There were about a hundred spectat
ors, I estimated. I saw Basil Oglethorpe pull up in his purple Studebaker. He got out, his notepad at the ready. He was wearing a fur coat that went all the way down to his ankles, and on his head was a straw boater with a red ribbon around the crown. A few of the miners who had never seen him before gave him second and then third looks. “Hey, Basil,” I called.
A big grin split his narrow face. “Ah, Sonny. A delightful day to continue the adventures of the Rocket Boys, eh? I shall be pleased to continue to make you famous. Someone told me you were thinking about entering a science fair. Is that so?”
“I guess it is,” I said. “If we can solve our nozzle-erosion problem. We’re trying out an ablative ceramic coating today.”
Basil kept his pencil poised. “I’d prefer that quote to be a little snappier,” he said.
“We’re going for it,” I said.
“Ah.” Basil scribbled it down. “Going . . . for . . . it! Excellentay!”
I excused myself from Basil when I saw Ginger drive up in her parents’ Buick. She was alone. “Have you seen those awful plywood things the COW ladies put up on the Club House lawn?” she demanded as soon as I got within range. “Are those not the tackiest things you’ve ever seen?” She put her hands on her hips. “So what are we going to do about it?”
“I can’t do anything about it,” I said. “I’m in charge of the BCMA, not Christmas. Anyway, remember you said I shouldn’t try to save the world.”
“No, I didn’t. I just noticed that that’s what you do.”
Sherman came up. “Hi, Ginger.”
Ginger apprised Sherman of the “awful plywood things.”
“I know,” he said. “I hate them, too.”
Billy and Roy Lee and Dean, seeing that Sherman and I had stopped working to talk to Ginger, strolled over. “There’s not going to be a Christmas Pageant this year?” Billy asked. When told it had been canceled, he didn’t try to hide his disappointment. “You know, I really loved going to those things.”
“Well, I say there’s got to be a Christmas Pageant for Billy’s sake, if for no other reason,” Sherman said. “Anyway, it’s our last Christmas here. That’s a reason right there.”