by Homer Hickam
The truck slowly pulled out, its chains clanking. It was heading not for Welch but Coalwood Main. Dad stood with Mom and watched. Jake came out on the porch followed by Tag, who closed Cuke’s door. They walked together down the path, separating at the bottom of it. Somebody asked Tag what he was going to do. “Going home, get some breakfast,” he said.
“Ain’t you gonna go hunt Cuke?” came a demand. It was from Pooky Suggs, standing in a knot of men carrying paper bags. There were bottles in those bags, of that I was certain.
Tag looked up at the snow-covered mountain behind Cuke’s house and then at the mountain on the other side of the road and the creek. “You want to go up there, be my guest, Pooky,” he said. “He’s hiding up there, I’m sure of it. He’s probably watching us now. But he’ll either come down, give himself up, or he’ll freeze, one or the other. That’s the only choice he has. Give up”—he raised his voice—“or we’ll find your body in the spring! Hear that, Cuke?”
No answer came back from the mountains, just the silence of the snow. Tag shook his head and started walking home. I saw Jake standing with the engineers. I went over to him. “He was the only powder man I trusted for this job,” Jake was saying as I walked up. “Guess we’ll stop. All we can do.”
“I know a good powder man,” I said.
Jake looked at me. “Who? Quentin? I don’t think so, Sonny, but thanks, anyway.”
“You know who, Jake. Remember when he helped us with our black powder?”
Jake frowned at me, but then I could almost see the light go on in his brain. He looked up at the knot of union men, now dispersing. “Hold on!” he called out. “Hold on!”
29
LIFE IS WHAT YOU MAKE IT
MR. DUBONNET’S BOOTS were aimed toward his house, but he turned his head at Jake’s cry: “Hold on, John!”
Mr. Dubonnet leaned in toward him as Jake put his arm over his shoulder. Then he straightened and shook Jake’s arm off. Mr. Mallett and the other union men came slogging back through the snow to see what was happening.
Reverend Richard came over and greeted me. “Hey, Sonny boy,” he said.
“Hello, Reverend. Isn’t it awful?”
Little contemplated Cuke’s house. Mom and Dad were standing in front of it, talking things over with the school teachers and their husbands. I noticed Little was wearing a handmuff and envied him for it. It looked warm, and my hands were cold in my threadbare gloves. “I did not know the woman, although I had tipped my hat to her in the Big Store.”
“All she wanted to be was a Coalwood girl. That’s strange, isn’t it?”
“She will get her wish,” Little said.
“What do you mean?”
“She is in God’s arms,” he said, “but her body will repose in the cemetery on Mudhole Mountain. Dr. Hale asked if I was willing to let this girl be placed there. He said she had no family, said this was where she wanted to be. I agreed and it will be done.”
Over the years, I had heard the story that such a cemetery existed. When Coalwood had been founded, so the story went, Mr. Carter had agreed to let colored people bury their dead on Mudhole Mountain because there was no cemetery for them closer than a hundred miles away. But, since then, colored cemeteries had opened in Welch, Kimball, and Bluefield. To my knowledge, no one, black or white, had been buried in Coalwood for years. “Do you think she knows, Reverend?” I asked. Then I raised the stakes. “Or do we know anything after we’re dead? Tell me the truth.”
Little looked me over. “Do you want a sermon?”
I squared my shoulders. I was a Rocket Boy. A rocket wasn’t worth flying if you didn’t know how it worked. Living was the same way and dying was just part of life, I figured. “I just want the truth,” I said staunchly.
“The straight dope?”
“Straight as an arrow.”
“You sure?”
“I’m sure.”
“All right. Here it is. Yes, she knows because you know. Do you understand?”
I was honest with him. “No, sir.”
“We’re all one, Sonny. It don’t matter if you’re colored or white, American or Russian. God decided in his wisdom to put us in vessels that die, but He also gave us a spirit that can’t die. That spirit keeps us connected. Our bodies may turn to dust, but as long as one of us is still alive, all our spirits go on.”
I grappled with Little’s explanation. It must be, I decided, like the equations for complex variables I had studied in my calculus book. I couldn’t understand how they worked but I believed, with all my heart, they were true. Some things you just have to accept. “What about Cuke, Reverend?” I wondered. “What happens to people like him when they die?”
He didn’t hesitate. “Cuke Snoddy will burn in hell, of that I am certain.” He mused on his answer a bit and then added, “Or maybe the Lord will be merciful. It isn’t for me to say.”
Even a Rocket Boy could only absorb so much truth. I’d need to ponder all Little had said, but I doubted if I’d ever really understand it. I’d read where Wernher von Braun had been asked about religion and he’d said, in effect, that sometimes you just had to stop worrying about it and just believe. Maybe God had created complex variables, or even death itself, to convince us of that, I thought.
Little changed the subject. “I heard you and Mr. Homer had it out last night.”
There was no use asking him how he knew. “Yes, sir, it’s so. And now I know what the thing is that’s really been bothering me all these weeks.”
“That your daddy thinks no better of you now than when you started shooting off your rockets?”
“Yes, sir,” I said bitterly. “He thinks I’m not smart enough to ever go down to Cape Canaveral.”
“That’s what I thought it was from the get-go.”
“Then why didn’t you tell me?” I demanded.
He ignored my tone. “So what are you going to do about it?”
“I’ve quit,” I answered. “Just given up. My rockets and everything else I can think of.”
Little said, “You can’t quit building your rockets, Sonny Hickam. You could no more quit than the sun can quit coming up in the morning or the moon at night. Besides, what would the people of Coalwood be without their Rocket Boys? You are part of who we are.”
When I didn’t answer, he went on. “But on this matter of your daddy, you need to see him as he really is.” He pointed his muff at Dad, who was talking to Jake. Mr. Dubonnet was standing some paces off, his hands jammed in his pockets, his head down, kicking at the snow. “Your daddy is Coalwood. Without him, Coalwood would die.”
“I had hoped—” I began.
“You should have prayed,” Little interrupted.
“Yes, sir. But I just wanted Dad to—”
“Wanting a man to do something is just wishful thinking,” Little snapped. “No one can change a man’s heart, save himself or God. But I want you to think on all the things your daddy gives you, Sonny. Think about where you live, the warmth of your house, your room to study, all the books you have to read. All those things come from your daddy. That’s the way he shows you his love.”
“I want him to think I’m smart.”
“There’s still plenty of time for you to prove it.”
“And I want him to care, Reverend. Not just give me a roof over my head but really care about me.”
“Then keep going and he may. Stop and he never will.”
He had me beaten down. “Why is life so hard, Reverend?” I asked.
Little frowned at me. “Why, life is what you make it, Sonny boy. It don’t matter who you are. Sure, God molds you a little on his wheel but, in the end, it’s all up to you. You got to take what you got and do the best you can with it.”
“Yes, sir,” I said, grappling with the enormity of it all.
“Now I want you to look over there,” Little said, nodding toward my parents, Jake, and Mr. Dubonnet.
Obediently, I looked. Mom had taken a step toward Mr. Dubonnet, and th
e union boss had taken off his hat. He looked at her with a crooked smile.
“Is there a sadder memory than a lost love?” Little asked, holding his handmuff up to his heart.
The wind blew down the hollow behind Cuke’s house, and Mom’s voice wafted over to us, crystal clear. “John, I want all this fighting between you and Homer to stop,” she said.
Dad pushed past Jake and tugged on Mom’s arm. “Elsie, what are you doing?” he demanded.
“I’m tired of it, Homer,” Mom said, pulling her arm away. “I swan, since the day I met you and John at Gary High School, you’ve been fighting over one thing if not another. Won’t you stop for just one day?”
“You’re a good woman, Elsie,” Mr. Dubonnet said. “Too good for the likes of him.” He nodded toward Dad.
Mom shook her finger at Mr. Dubonnet. “John, if all you’re going to do is talk stupid, you can just shut up.”
“Go home, Dubonnet,” Dad growled. “You’re not needed.”
Mr. Dubonnet had flushed crimson at Mom’s words. He put his hat back on and tilted his chin. “What do you say to that, Jake?”
After a quick glance at Dad, Jake said, “John, I need you to blow that header.”
Dad said, “He hasn’t done any powder work in ten years. He’ll have the whole section down on our heads.”
“He either does it or it doesn’t get done,” Jake replied.
Mom said something to Dad, so softly I couldn’t hear. His face clouded, then he lowered his eyes while she went past him, walking up Main Street toward the house.
Jake said, “See you at the mine, John.”
Dad’s and Mr. Dubonnet’s eyes locked for a moment and then, after they had burned holes in each other, broke contact and they stomped away in opposite directions. Jake stepped up to me. “Thanks,” he said. “Looks like we got us a powder man.”
The snow kept coming down as everybody walked away from Cuke’s house. “Hey, Sonny,” Quentin called. “Look what Mr. Caton gave us for Christmas.”
Quentin was bareheaded and bare-handed and only had a thin coat. He was wearing his usual leather brogans, one of them untied. He had to keep stamping his feet to keep warm, but somehow he was glowing as if he were under a warm, tropical sun. I looked at the thing in his raw, chapped hand. It was a glorious, gleaming, perfectly machined, curvethroated, ceramic-lined De Laval Coalwood machine-shop-crafted rocket nozzle.
Quentin’s hand became blurred, then he disappeared entirely in a swirl of snowflakes. I looked around at shadowy forms slowly disappearing into the blizzard until finally I was alone within a brilliant white concavity. I could feel its pressure, as if there were giant hands on me. From somewhere behind the translucent veil, I heard a slow laugh. Heh-heh-heh. It sounded a lot like the Reverend Little Richard.
I found Mom in her kitchen. She had a paint roller in her hand and was staring at her beach mural. “What are you going to do, Mom?” I asked her.
“Rid the world of this monstrosity,” she said, and dipped the roller in a tray of white paint.
“Why?”
“Because some dreams don’t deserve to come true,” she answered. “It’s time I accepted that.”
“Quentin’s here,” I told her.
Mom turned to see Quentin, and her eyes brightened. How she loved that boy.
“I believe I can assist you in the proper form of the gulls’ wings in your painting, Mrs. Hickam,” Quentin said. He gave me a sour glance. “Sonny, as usual, failed to give me the context of his question concerning the gull’s wing. That’s why I gave him a short answer and for that, on his behalf, I apologize. The shape of a bird’s wing is, of course, dependent upon the requirements of speed and maneuverability for which the gull, that is to say the birds of the genus Larus in this case, have developed a unique airfoil. Of course, to gain a proper appreciation of the wing, it will be necessary for us to discuss the extinct Archaeopteryx, which, while probably flightless, nonetheless demonstrated the physical characteristics necessary for the evolution of the modern birds as we know them today.”
Mom stared at Quentin, then pushed a chair out from the kitchen table with her foot. “Well, sit right down, Quentin. God knows it looks like a good day to discuss the Archaeopteryx.” She put the paint roller down. “Would you like some breakfast? Some eggs and bacon? How about some waffles with hot maple syrup?”
“Why, yes, ma’am, that would suit me just fine,” Quentin said, taking the chair. Mom went to her kitchen cabinets and started rattling pots and pans. “Well, Mrs. Hickam, you see,” Quentin went on, “this creature was as much reptile as it was bird. As a matter of fact, it had teeth, although it also had feathers and a head of low mass . . .”
“Do tell,” Mom said, cracking eggs as fast as she could go.
“I’m going down in the basement,” I said, relieved that just the sight of Quentin had revived Mom’s spirits. I was not at all certain, however, that I could withstand a lecture on birds and reptiles from him. Mr. Caton’s nozzle was safely in my coat pocket. “I’m going to whip up a batch of zincoshine. I’ve got a casement nearly loaded.”
“Don’t use up all the ’shine,” Mom said. “I may have need of it yet.”
“Yes, ma’am.”
“But, wait, why are you loading a rocket?” she asked. “I thought you’d quit building those things.”
“Quit?” Quentin’s eyebrows went up.
“Just a passing fancy,” I said.
I was called up for breakfast shortly afterward, and then, with Mom at her mural and Quentin supervising the shape of the wings of the gulls, I walked through the snow down to Coalwood Main while the fresh zincoshine cured in the casement. There was somebody I needed to see down there. Along the way, I met a line of men going toward the mine. They had their heads down against the snow. Tug and Hug were among them. “Extra crews for 11 East,” Tug told me at my question as to where they were going.
“We got a lot of rock to move,” Hug added.
I found Mr. Cox at his desk in the engineer’s office beside the Big Store. He was one of my favorite adults in Coalwood, and I had told him to shut up while yelling at my dad. A star athlete as a youth and still one of the best tennis players in West Virginia, Mr. Cox had always been warm and friendly to me. I had no right to smart-mouth him and it bothered me. “I’m sorry I yelled at you,” I said. “I had no right to do that.”
Mr. Cox reared back in his chair and crossed his arms across his khaki work shirt. “Heck, Sonny, I wouldn’t have blamed you if you’d kicked me in the shins.” A big grin spread across his face. “You had something to say and, by golly, you said it!”
I couldn’t let him make it easy for me. “I’m still sorry and I apologize,” I said. “I acted like a moron.”
Mr. Cox nodded. “You did, you did. Apology accepted!” He drummed his fingers on his chair’s armrest. “Say, you want me to teach you how to play tennis this spring?”
I knew he was trying to make me feel better, so I told him I’d like that just fine and then walked to the Dantzler house. Mrs. Dantzler, dressed like she was about to attend a party in New York or something, answered the door. Ginger, hearing my voice, came up behind her and gave me a wan smile. She was wearing a fuzzy pink robe and fuzzy pink house shoes. My boots were too snowy for me to come in, so I talked to them from the porch. In case they didn’t know, I told them about Dreama, and about 11 East. Of course, they had heard all about everything. Mrs. Dantzler’s eyes flashed. “It is a terrible thing that happened to that girl, but it convinces me all the more that we must have our pageant. If Coalwood ever needed to pull together, it’s right now, seems to me. The pageant would do that.”
I looked around. The snow was still falling. It was hard just to walk through it. I thought Mrs. Dantzler was right, but I didn’t see how it was possible and said so. “So you figure if you say it’s impossible, then it’s all right not to try?” she demanded. “I want you to go home and think about that, Sonny Hickam. I’ve already seen you quit
one thing on me, young man. I don’t care to see another.”
Despite Mrs. Dantzler’s challenge, I still couldn’t see what I could do. The snow showed no sign of slowing down, and anyway, until the situation on 11 East got resolved one way or another, how could there be a Christmas Pageant? Besides the Dantzlers, who else would help to put it on? The Rocket Boys? The Coalwood teachers? I thought they were like most of the people in Coalwood, huddled around their Warm Morning stoves and waiting word on 11 East.
I trudged home in the continuing blizzard. Drifting snow had nearly covered the fences. I used a narrow path beaten down in the center of the road, moving to one side to allow miners heading home to pass by. They were coated in brown and white rock dust. “Dubonnet blew the header,” Mr. Kirk told me. “But all we got was more rock. We loaded it until another crew came down. All three shifts are taking turns until we get it done, one way or another.”
“What’s going to happen now?”
He shrugged. “They’re arguing about it. Dubonnet says the coal’s not back there, just more rock. Your dad wants to give it another go. Jake’s not sure what to do.”
I went home and kept loading the casement. Mom was on the Captain’s porch, keeping an eye on the mine while pretending not to. Quentin had fallen asleep on the couch. Jim came down into the basement. “Let’s put up the Christmas tree,” he said.
I told him Mom had said she didn’t want it. “Let’s do it anyway,” he said.
Who was I to argue with my big brother? Anyway, it seemed like as good a thing to do as any. We poked around the basement until we found the big steel base Mr. Bolt had built for us a couple of years ago to hold Mom’s usual big trees, and then took it upstairs and put it in place in its traditional living-room spot.