by Homer Hickam
Jim eyed me and shook his head. “Yes, I pulled you out. What were you doing in the creek anyway, you moron? I went over to the mine to call Tag and then the church to let Mom and Dad know I’d had a wreck and when I came back, you’d gone swimming.”
“How—How—How—” I pointed at the car, so he’d get my meaning.
“The car didn’t fall in until we got out,” Jim said. “It was balanced on the wall. We were lucky.”
“Ya’ll sure were,” Hug said. “Whose car is that?”
“It’s my daddy’s,” Patsy said.
Jim put a protective arm around her. “I borrowed it. Dumb thing to do, I guess.”
Patsy cuddled against him. “You saved my life,” she cooed. “You were so brave! Then you saved Sonny’s life, too. You were even braver.”
“You drove all the way across Coalwood Mountain in this snow?” Hug marveled. “You must be some good driver.”
“Hell, ol’ Jim’s good at just about anything he does,” Tug said. “You ever seen him play football?”
I just stood there, equal parts freezing and mortified, listening to Jim receive praise even though he’d just wrecked his girlfriend’s father’s car. Oh, sure, he’d dragged me out of the creek, but I would have gotten out on my own, I was certain of it. My next thought was what the fence line would make of all this. I instinctively knew. It would be glossed over that Jim had wrecked the car, but what would be remembered, and discussed forever, was that I had fallen in the creek! Why hadn’t Patsy told me Jim was okay, had gone to call Tag? I gave her a dirty look, but she was enjoying the attention of Jim, not to mention Tug and Hug. I considered flinging myself back into the creek, but I wasn’t sure anybody would notice or care.
The Buick eased to a stop beside us. Dad was first out. “You okay, son?” he asked Jim.
“Yes, sir,” he said. “I guess I messed up.”
“It’s not your fault. This curve is banked all wrong. It can get you even when it’s not slick.”
Mom hugged Jim. “Oh, thank the good Lord you’re all right.”
“Hi, Mom,” I said.
She shot a frown in my direction. “What happened to you ?”
“I fell in.” There was no use reporting that I had tried to be a hero when no heroics were required.
She took inventory. “Where’s your loafers?” I tried to shrug, but my coat was too heavy to get my shoulders up. “Go home, get dry, put something else on, and get to the church,” she said. “Hurry up. They’re holding the wedding until we get back.”
I stood for a moment longer, perhaps thinking maybe she or Dad would offer me a ride in the Buick, but when no such offer came, I shuffled back home in my frozen socks. The Buick passed me just as I reached the front gate, Jim and Patsy snuggled in the backseat.
In my room, I stood on the furnace register until some blood got moving in my feet again. Roy Lee tooted the horn outside and, when I didn’t appear, he came inside and up the stairs. “Why aren’t you ready?” he demanded. I gave him a condensed version of my little adventure. He laughed out loud. “You’re just not hero material, Sonny.”
“I guess you’re right, Roy Lee,” I said grumpily. I pulled on a pair of jeans and a flannel shirt and a pair of tennis shoes. It was all I had left to wear.
“Is this the way you’re going to dress at Cape Canaveral?” Roy Lee asked. “Maybe I was wrong about those rocket women being after you.”
“Shut up, Roy Lee,” I grumbled. Then I thought of something I needed to know. “Roy Lee, would you tell me the truth about something, honest, flat-out, no holds barred if I ask you a question?”
“Sure, if you’ll get moving.”
I went down the stairs with him and out into the backyard. Poteet zipped by and then leapt high in the air, catching a snowflake on her laughing tongue. Dandy trundled after her and then flung himself down in the snow, rolling over. At least the dogs were having fun.
We settled into Roy Lee’s car and slowly drove down Main Street. The road was covered with snow and ice. So were the houses. Christmas greens and colorful lights on every window lit our way. “Do you remember that poem about snow we used to say in grade school?” Roy Lee asked.
Roy Lee always knew how to cheer me up. We recited it together:
O the snow, the beautiful snow
Filling the sky and the earth below.
Over the house-tops, over the street,
Over the heads of the people you meet,
Dancing, flirting, skimming along,
Beautiful snow, it can do nothing wrong.
When we approached Cuke’s dreary house, I told Roy Lee, just in case he hadn’t heard, that Dreama had left Cuke.
He knew all about it but had an update. “I heard she went back with him,” he said. “Mom said she saw her going into Cuke’s house yesterday.”
There was only one light showing through the dirt-caked windows as we passed Cuke’s place. He was a notorious miser, never burning more than one light in his house at a time. I wondered if Dreama was in there, sitting near that one light, and what she was doing, and what she was thinking. I could not, for the life of me, imagine what thoughts might be running through her head.
“So what honest, flat-out, no-holds-barred thing did you want to know?” Roy Lee asked.
I laid it on him. “Did you ever notice that Mom and Dad like Jim better than me?”
Roy Lee kept his eyes on the road, carefully steering. “Yes, I have, now that you mention it,” he said. “I always thought my folks liked my older brother more than me, too, and you know what? I think they really did. It used to bother me until I finally looked at it this way. When a couple of young folks have their first baby . . . I mean—think about it—a boy and a girl who’re just doing it in bed every night and having a good time all of a sudden find out that they’re a man and a woman with a baby. It’s bound to make them different and that baby’s got to mean everything to them. It’s them—man, woman, and baby—against the whole damn world! Then the second kid comes along but it’s not the same. It just can’t be. You know what I think, Sonny? I think you can’t beat history. You’re the second son. That means you’re number two and that’s all there is to it. Your mom and dad love you just fine, probably more than you deserve, but just not the same or as much as Jim. Does that answer your question?”
27
A COALWOOD WEDDING
I THOUGHT ABOUT what Roy Lee said all the way to the Coalwood Community Church, my heart in the icy cold vise of truth where hearts tend to suffer. I concluded Roy Lee was right. It was just history, that’s all it was. I had wondered for a long time why my mother and dad seemed to dote on Jim more than me, but, deep down in my heart, I’d never believed it was really true. But now I completely understood the entire matter. Mom and Dad loved me—more than enough—but just not the same as Jim. It was history, see? Second son and second forever in everything for all time no matter what. I realized I could go out and ride one of my rockets right up to the moon—the moon!—and I’d still just be the second son in their eyes. I knew now that Little Richard hadn’t got it entirely right. It was History, not God, at the controls of the great Potter’s Wheel and it ground without cease, thought, or remorse.
Then I thought: Wait a minute! Could this be the thing that came out of nowhere every once in a while and made me sad? Had my list, if I’d put it all together, added up to that? Was it because, deep down in my heart, I knew that no matter what I did in my life, Jim was always going to be the favorite son? I applied Quentin’s logic test to it. It seemed to fit, and I felt a sense of grim satisfaction, as if I’d finally found the piece that went in a particularly aggravating place in a jigsaw puzzle. But if that was so, why then did I do what I did next? Without a thought, I looked up and prayed: Dear God, what is it that’s really bothering me?
Instantly, I knew what I’d done. A groan escaped my lips. Roy Lee looked over at me. “What?” he asked.
I couldn’t tell him. I didn’t even know how t
o tell myself. I just crossed my fingers. Just kidding, God, I prayed. But I knew I was in trouble. I had asked God to give me something I really didn’t want. The truth was I’d been hiding from the answer to what was bothering me all along because I suspected it was worse than anything I could imagine. Now, I’d opened myself up to it. It was coming. I could feel it. And there was no place to hide.
IT turned out to be a beautiful wedding, although I struggled to stay focused on it. I spotted Miss Riley with Jake in one of the pews up front. That pleased me. Now I knew what her message had meant. I wondered how she was going to get home in all the snow, though. It occurred to me that getting home—if home was somewhere else other than Coalwood—might be a problem for a lot of people at the wedding. But there were worse things than to find yourself stuck in Coalwood, I reflected. Mrs. Davenport could always find extra rooms at the Club House, if need be, and just about anybody in Coalwood would open up their homes to someone who needed a place to sleep. As long as the stay was a short one, Coalwood would open its arms to anybody. That made me think of Dreama. Our town was changing but it still had its rules on who was welcome and who wasn’t.
Tommy Todd, Carol’s first cousin, sang “If I Could Tell You,” “Always,” and “The Lord’s Prayer” to Jeannette Odle’s organ accompaniment. Jeannette was one of Mrs. Dantzler’s prized students. Jane Todd Yost, Tommy’s sister, was the matron of honor. All the bridesmaids, 1956 Big Creek classmates of the bride, wore green velveteen gowns and yellow chrysanthemum corsages. Carol wore a magnificent white taffeta highlighted by sequins. I’d never seen such a dress and couldn’t help but gawk at it. Freddie Allison, a Coalwood boy who’d gone off to study engineering at West Virginia Tech, was the best man, and he, like the groom, wore a navy-blue suit. It was all pretty much glorious. As the wedding progressed, I sensed there was something in the air, something that seemed to transcend all of Coalwood’s troubles. It was as if all those troubles had been suspended, just for the moment. By the time Carol came down the aisle on the arm of her father to the triumphant strains of the “Wedding March,” nearly every woman in the church was crying. The men sat stiffly upright without looking left or right, as if fearful that the emotional tide that had swept over the women would engulf them, too. But, truth be told, there was no stopping it. Red bandannas came out of hip pockets by the score. When Carol and Slug said their vows, there was outright bawling in the pews, more than a little of it from tough, grizzled miners. Then there was a long sigh from the tearful assembly when the freshly married couple swept up the aisle. If angels had appeared out of thin air at that moment and started flying around the church, I don’t think the congregation would have been the least bit surprised, or been capable of choking out much more emotion.
Afterward, at the reception in the church basement, Ginger found me. She was decked out in a powder-blue suit and matching heels. Her blouse had little pearls as buttons and she wore a pearl necklace. I could not imagine how any girl could look prettier. “How was the Welch Formal?” I asked her.
She took my arm. “I didn’t have that much fun,” she confessed. “Stuart’s an okay boy but he doesn’t seem to have much spunk. He’s going to get a degree in accounting and then come home and run his father’s car dealership. He’s not like you, with big dreams.”
“At least he has a dream of some kind,” I said.
She shrugged. “What did you do formal night?”
I felt good for the first time since I’d fallen in the creek. Ginger had that effect on me. She was a first-class pal. “I went!” I said enthusiastically. “Roy Lee made me go. And I had a good time, too. As a matter of fact, after the dance, I—”
“Sonny,” she interrupted, “I’ve been thinking about . . . well, thinking about us. You know what? We really would be a cute couple. My mother says so, too.”
Uh oh, I thought. “I guess we would be, Ginger, but—”
“I know I’m just a sophomore,” she said. “But if you wanted to take me to the junior-senior prom, I’d be pleased to go.”
I gulped. “I can’t,” I confessed, feeling miserable. “I’m going to take Melba June Monroe. We got together at the formal.”
“Oh.” Ginger released my arm. Her eyes were a little misty.
“I’m sorry,” I said, and I was.
“We’re never going to get together, are we? No matter how much we like each other, either you’re going to be with somebody else, or I am.”
I thought she was going a little overboard there, but I couldn’t deny it had so far worked out that way. “I would have been proud to take you to the junior-senior prom,” I said.
“And I would have been proud to go as your date,” she answered. The way she said it sounded formal. I could sense the distance she was putting between us. To make it official, I suppose, she turned and walked away without another word.
While I was standing there, trying to figure out what had just happened, Emily Sue Buckberry came up to me. “Do they make girls any nicer than Ginger Dantzler?” she asked.
“Emily Sue,” I said, “you know a lot more about these things than I do. Is it written down somewhere that every girl I care anything about either hurts me or I hurt them?”
“It’s in the book of love,” Emily Sue said, patting my cheek. “You know, ‘I wonder, wonder, who, do-do-do, who wrote the book of love?’”
I didn’t make any crack about moo cows. This was serious. “I’d sure like to find out who wrote that blamed thing,” I said, “and see if I could get a few revisions.”
“So would most of the human race, Sonny,” Emily Sue replied, and then she gave me a quick hug. “You’ll find the right girl. Might take you a couple of tries, though. You know what they say about love. ‘ ’Tis better to have loved and lost...’”
“Tennyson,” I said morosely, recalling Miss Bryson’s English lit class.
“The very one,” she agreed, and went off into the excited swirl of Coalwood society.
I got some cake and punch and wandered around until I saw Dad talking to Mr. Guy Cox and a few of the other company engineers, including junior engineers Rollie and Frank. Rollie, for some reason, looked a little dejected. Frank was his usual boisterous self. They were all having an animated conversation, so I edged in closer, curious cat that I was. “We’re ready to blow the header,” I heard Dad say.
“What if there’s another header behind it?” Frank worried.
“Then we’ve got a big problem,” Dad said.
“What’s this about Sonny falling in the creek?” Mr. Cox asked. I guess he was tired of talking about 11 East and didn’t see me standing there.
Dad laughed. I guess he didn’t see me, either. “That boy. He was soaked. Lost his shoes right off his feet, too. Lucky for him that Jim’s so strong. A normal man would’ve had trouble pulling Sonny out, he was so heavy with water and ice.” He shook his head, chuckling. “That boy.”
Everybody joined Dad to laugh heartily. There was no mention of Jim wrecking the car. Frank asked, “You gonna let Sonny go off to Cape Canaveral, Mr. Hickam?”
Dad pondered the question. Then he said, “He’s going to have to make better grades if he hopes to go down there.”
It felt like my brain had been hit by a nuclear missile. The blood flushed into my face, coursed into a torrent up into my skull, and then swept away every semblance of rational thought. I had put my report card with all A’s beside Dad’s mail on the dining-room table where he couldn’t miss it. It was still there. He hadn’t even bothered to open it and take a look. My mouth, pretty much disconnected from my brain, started working and I made no attempt to stop it. “I will so go to Cape Canaveral,” I said, stepping up to Dad. “You haven’t even looked at my report card, have you?” When he didn’t reply, just stared at me with a frozen expression, I became angrier. “I got all A’s! What do you think of that? I’m not a quitter,” I spewed, “like your precious Jimmie! Did you know Jimmie’s quitting college? Well, he is!”
Dad seemed paral
yzed. “Don’t you ever make fun of me again,” I snarled into his face. “Don’t you ever say anything about me again!”
“Sonny, I’m sure your dad didn’t mean—” Mr. Cox began.
I cut him off. “Shut up. Just shut up!” Tears welled up, a single one trickling down my cheek. To my shame, I couldn’t stop it. I don’t remember leaving, but I must have because I found myself outside the church, wading into the darkness. It was snowing so hard I couldn’t see more than a foot in front of me, but I didn’t care and just plowed into it. I hadn’t gotten my coat, and I didn’t care about that, either. I was halfway home before I stopped and looked around and realized where I was. I stamped the snow, wrapped my arms around myself, and shivered. My heart, which had been pounding in my ears, subsided, and everything came into focus around me, reality returning.
I knew now what had really been bothering me all those months. I had built my rockets, learned calculus and differential equations, made good grades, gained the respect, even admiration, of my fellow students, my teachers, and even people from all over McDowell County. But my father, my wonderful, glorious father, still thought I was stupid! He believed I wasn’t smart enough to make my dreams come true and had said so in front of God and everybody! Nothing I had done all these months as a Rocket Boy mattered a hill of beans. I’d known that all along, and it had made me sad even when I didn’t know why. That was it, the whole thing! “Why didn’t you just tell me that?” I demanded of heaven, looking skyward. Heaven didn’t answer, just dumped more snow in my face. I remembered I hadn’t asked, not until tonight.
“I give up,” I said. “I just give up.” After I stumbled a bit farther up the road, I found another way of saying it. I yelled it out, my voice muffled by the building snow. “I quit!”
It felt good, right, and even holy to say it. In another two days, it would be Christmas, the most joyous day of the year. I felt like laughing into the face of the Christmas Spirit, as if such a thing existed. No wonder I hadn’t wanted anything to do with the Christmas Pageant from the start. The truth was I hated Christmas because I hated the place I had always known at Christmas—ugly, blighted, mean, and dirty Coalwood, the whole place and everybody in it.