Rocket Girl

by George D. Morgan

  Elaine patted her sister gently on the shoulder for attention.

  “What if mother finds out about the photograph?”

  “Are you going to tell her?'

  “No.”

  “Then how would she find out?”

  “Mother always finds out about everything.”

  “No she doesn't.”

  “Why do you say that?”

  A puddle of water stretched across the road. The mud around it looked deep and viscous—an easy trap for Star to get a hoof stuck in. Mary steered her horse around it.

  “If mom found out about everything, the boys would get into a lot more trouble.”

  Elaine sat quietly in the saddle for a few moments, pondering her sister's words.

  “Mom and Dad don't care about what the boys do. They're all on the same side.”

  All was serene for a while—the cool breeze being the only sound. Mary tried to remember the last time Clarence, Vernon, or Michael had been punished for anything. She could not remember a single incidence. On the other hand, it seemed that she and Elaine were punished daily for the smallest infraction. It had been this way for so long she could not remember any other way of life.

  “Why is that?” Mary asked.

  “They need the boys. They don't need us.”

  “Why?”

  “The boys do all the work.”

  “We do work.”

  “We do the work the boys don't like to do.”

  At that moment the Sherman farmhouse came into view a quarter mile away. A few moments of peace, then the rattling noise of a Chrysler in-line six, combined with the prattle of its flatbed's wooden stakes, rose to attention. The Sherman truck was in the area and approaching. While Mary scanned ahead, Elaine looked behind them.

  “It's coming,” said Elaine. “Behind us.”

  Mary turned to look, but her poor vision betrayed her. She needed glasses desperately, but her parents had refused to spend the money. Neither Michael nor Dorothy Sherman had ever needed eyewear, why should their children? Mary's teacher had sent them several missives expressing the problem their daughter had with her eyesight, but they would not be moved. As long as Mary could see well enough to milk a cow or clean a creamer, that was good enough.

  “Who's driving?”

  “Too far to tell.”

  “Hyah!” Mary gave Star several stiff kicks, and the horse picked up the pace, albeit more trot than gallop.

  “It's the boys.”

  “Hyah!”

  Star got the message, and a second later his legs stretched into a gallop.

  “Mary!” Elaine held on tight. “Mary! We're going too fast!”

  Mary took a quick glance behind them. The truck was about two hundred feet away, and closing the gap.

  “Mary—I don't want to fall!”

  “Just hold on!”

  They could hear the boys now, taunting, whooping, and hollering. Scaring the girls was their favorite game, and the game was on. The truck's horn began blaring with an insistent repetition.

  “Clarence is driving!”

  Mary looked for an escape, but there was none. At this section of the road, steep irrigation ditches lined both sides—the only way out was forward.

  “What are they going to do!?”

  Then the truck was immediately upon them, threatening to ram Mary's horse. At the wheel, Clarence continued to sound the truck's horn, and the whooping and hollering got louder. Elaine turned her head and could see Michael sitting next to Clarence, with Vernon standing in the back, his hands gripping the stakes.

  “They've been drinking,” she said, holding her mouth next to Mary's ear.

  The truck accelerated and pulled beside them.

  “Ya wanna race!?” shouted Clarence. “Come on! Let's race to the house!”

  Mary kept her gaze straight ahead—the property-line gate was not far ahead.

  “Push ’em! Push ’em over!” Vernon began banging on the roof of the truck. “Push ’em into the ditch!”

  Clarence turned the steering wheel slightly, bringing the truck within inches of the stirrups. Despite the danger, all three of her brothers were laughing. Mary and Elaine were terrified.

  “Do it! Push ’em in!”

  “Race us or you're goin' in,” said Michael.

  The truck nudged the stirrups, and Elaine screamed. Mary could tell Clarence was serious. Bluffing was not something he was prone to. The gate was less than a hundred feet away, but Mary could tell there would not be enough room for both horse and truck to pass through together. Someone had to yield. Clarence looked ahead, realized what was about to happen, then shouted at Mary.

  “Where do you go every night!?”

  But Mary kept the reigns loose.

  “Where do you go, Mary!? We're tired of searching the farm for you.”

  “Tell us, or you're going into the ditch!” added Michael.

  Side-by-side, the flatbed truck and the horse arrived at the gate. Mary prayed, Elaine screamed, and the boys laughed. Then Star—the over-the-hill feedbag that no one thought was of much value—did something he had never done before: he leaped into the air and sailed clean over the gate.

  Mary pulled up on the reigns and brought her horse to a stop directly in front of the house. There was going to be trouble. She had bested her older brothers—more than bested, and that wasn't going to sit well. By refusing to yield, she had denied them their puerile victory and bruised their pride. Not just one of them, but all three of them. Simultaneously. Elaine was safe, but Mary was sure she was going to get the switch.

  Mary jumped to the ground, then pulled Elaine off the saddle. She carried her younger sister up the steps and into the house, praying that one of her parents was home. She also prayed for a miracle—that today would be different. That her mother and father would break from tradition and not automatically side with the boys.

  Mary set Elaine down and latched the door.

  “Mom?”

  No answer.

  “Dad?”

  Still no answer.

  Through a window Mary could see Clarence was already looking for a switch, and one of the boys was pounding on the door.

  By the time the girls realized their parents were not home, Clarence had entered through the kitchen door, a long maple tree branch in his right hand. Mary unlatched the front door and the girls ran outside—where Michael and Vernon grabbed them.

  “You deserve this,” said Clarence, and began swatting Mary's bare legs over and over. As Mary screamed and twisted, the photograph fell from her dress pocket. Clarence picked it up.

  “What the hell is this?”

  Mary was crying, so Elaine answered. “Mrs. Gudmund gave it to us.”

  Clarence roughly held it against Mary's face.

  “You know how mother feels about pictures.” Clarence took a closer look at the photo. “Ya know somethin'—you look ugly.”

  Michael leaned over to see. “Real ugly. Hey Vernon, wanna seem some real ugly girls?”

  “Give it back, Clarence!” Mary reached for it, but Clarence held it just out of her grasp, laughing. Vernon stepped over to look.

  “Oh yeah, they'z ugly.”

  “Give it back!”

  Both girls were crying now.

  “Please give it back.”

  “Oh boy—they're so ugly.”

  “Give it back!”

  The more they pleaded, the more the boys laughed and played keep-away with the photo. Amy came around the corner of the barn to see what the noise was about. Mary turned to her older sister, tears now covering her cheeks.

  “Amy! Help us! Mrs. Gudmund took a photograph of me and Elaine, and they won't give it back.”

  Amy shook her head. “You know Momma doesn't abide photography.” Then she disappeared into the house.

  “Ya want your stupid photograph back? Here!” Clarence stooped down and stuck the photo into a large wet clog of horse dung. The three boys walked away, still laughing.

  “Bye,
ugly girls!” shouted Vernon as they rounded the edge of the barn.

  Mary picked the photo out of the gooey manure. With one hand she wiped the tears from her cheeks, then used that now-moist hand to clean the oily green slime from the photograph.

  “We are ugly,” Mary whispered.

  Still crying, Elaine shook her head. “No we're not. We're not ugly.”

  “We're ugly.”

  “No we're not!”

  Mary held the left side of the photo tight, then pulled forward with her right, ripping the photo in two.

  “Mary! What are you doing!?”

  “We're ugly!” she shouted.

  Mary continued to rip and tear the photograph in ever smaller segments, until they could not be torn any further. Then she opened her hands and allowed the shreds to fall toward the ground. At that very instant, a cold Canadian wind rushed through the farm, lifting the photo remnants toward a gray, god-centered sky. Refusing to yield to gravity, they fluttered and flurried and scattered ever higher.

  Elaine threw her arms around her sister, the Canadian wind blowing their hair over their faces.

  “We're not ugly.”

  Their cheeks touched, and for a few seconds the chemicals of their tears mixed and slurried into a powerful new compound. Their embrace tightened, neither wanting to let go of the other. Time passed, and they eventually released. Mary turned and walked away. Elaine watched her go, watched as Mary entered the dry, brown field of last season's wheat and vanished into its crowded boscage. Though Elaine could no longer see her sister, she could hear Mary's sobbing.

  Elaine called out.

  “We're not ugly!”

  “Those who dream by day are cognizant of many things that escape those who dream only at night.”

  —EDGAR ALLAN POE, “ELEONORA”

  Walter Dornberger was a mechanical engineer and captain in the German army during the 1930s. And he was one of the first of von Braun's countrymen to recognize the young man's genius and potential.1 The moment the two men first met at a small solid rocket test conducted in 1932 near Berlin, Dornberger had decided to take von Braun under his wing. Without the captain's early help and mentorship, it is very possible history would have been written quite differently. By 1937 the two men were working together at Peenemünde, Dornberger in charge of the business end of rocket affairs, and von Braun heading up the engineering end.2 The two men would take a little-noticed backwater technology program and build it into the pride of Germany and the technological envy of the world.

  On the morning of March 23, 1939, just one day shy of von Braun's twenty-seventh birthday, Dornberger, von Braun, and a staff of over two hundred were waiting outside the offices at the Kummersdorf, a top secret facility twenty-five kilometers south of Berlin where all of the army's rocket engines were tested.3 Kummersdorf was about to receive a visit from a very important person. Dornberger had arranged for a VIP informational tour of the facility, and von Braun had prepared a live test of two liquid rocket motors—an A-2, and its much more powerful cousin, the A-5.4 The engineers and technicians responsible for the tests had gone over every detail beforehand to make sure there were no glitches, delays, or (god help them) explosions.

  No expense had been spared for this special visit. Extra staff had been added, and the finest cooks and servers that could be found were gathered and put through a rigorous rehearsal. Dornberger had personally supervised the lunch menu and approved every item. The culinary demands of their visitor were humble—steamed vegetables and mineral water—but the same could not be said of his gluttonous entourage. After the tour of the facilities and the demonstration test-firings, their guests would dine on tafelspitz, schweinebraten, schwarzwaelder kirschtorte, and homemade apple strudel with ice cream. No detail was too small, and Dornberger personally fretted over every one.

  “Remember: Say nothing about spaceflight,” Dornberger instructed von Braun. “Absolutely nothing. I know how you get—all crazy and overly enthusiastic. He'll want none of it.”5

  Wernher nodded. This was only the tenth time Dornberger had given him the same tired speech. Did the captain really think he was not getting the message? Then, as Wernher's eyes meandered over to one of the new secretarial hires, he felt a nudge in his side. Dornberger made a motion with his head off to the left, and Wernher followed his gaze. He focused his eyes and saw a small fleet of vehicles heading swiftly toward them.

  The Führer had arrived.

  Like millions before him, the man had been given no trial. Some prior prisoner somewhere had been relentlessly tortured until, in hope of saving his own life, he pointed the finger of suspicion at some other innocent Soviet citizen. That citizen did the same, and so forth, until one day a bony, tormented finger pointed in the direction of Sergei Korolev.6 He was arrested in front of his family and taken to a secret location where he was questioned, tortured, and convicted—all in less than thirty minutes. He was then sentenced to ten years hard labor in the Siberian gulags.7 That one of the country's most valuable and dedicated rocket designers could be so reprehensibly treated was testament to the demented and frenetic nature of Joseph Stalin's communist government.

  Korolev was sent to the worst of the worst: Kolyma,8 where it is said winter lasts twelve months and the rest of the year is summer.9 At Kolyma he experienced a hellish world of forced labor, crowded housing, inadequate nutrition, violent confrontations, and brutal discipline. Each year, up to 10 percent of the prisoners died of malnutrition, starvation, disease, untreated health problems, murder, and execution.10

  All of this served the purpose of supplying a steady flow of gold ore for the growing industrial might of the Soviet Union. On the day Wernher von Braun was enjoying his dessert of apple strudel and ice cream, Sergei Korolev was seated on an icy cold wooden floor in Siberia trying to keep a hundred other prisoners from stealing his only meal of the day: a small bowl of watery soup.

  By the time May 1940 arrived, the death rate at Kolyma Prison had doubled, Wernher von Braun's rocket budget had tripled, and Mary Sherman Morgan was preparing to graduate from high school.11

  On May 31, Mary gave a speech before the faculty and graduating student body of Ray High School. She earned that privilege by being the 1940 class valedictorian.12 At nineteen years of age she was also the oldest graduate, an echo of her parents having enrolled her three years late. After the graduation ceremony, Mary and the Sherman family returned to the farm for a celebratory meal. As she sat at the table in her usual place between Elaine and Amy, Mary's mind was focused on a plan she had been formulating for months, a plan to run away from home in the middle of the night and go to college. She had told no one of her intentions, not even her one confidant, Elaine. Mary had learned long ago the advantages of secrecy, and this was one secret she had kept well. The risks of even the slightest whisper getting out were too great. She had been using the address of the local Catholic parish for all correspondence between herself and her chosen college. It was during confession one Saturday morning that she had asked the priest for permission to use the rectory as a mail drop. Since the request was spoken during confession, she knew the priest had an oath to keep the mail deliveries secret from her family.

  Mary helped herself to a second portion of ham.

  “My, my,” said her mother. “You sure have an appetite this evening.”

  The year Mary graduated from high school, the farm town of Ray, North Dakota, was so small it barely warranted a stop on the one and only bus route that serviced lonesome Highway 2. Every Monday and Thursday at 3:05 a.m. American Flyer #273 pulled up to a roadside eatery known as Rachel's Diner In a typical evening, the bus would pick up no one, drop no one off, then proceed east on one of the loneliest roads in America. After Ray, it would make stops at Kenmare, Minot, Rugby, and the Sioux Indian reservation at Devils Lake. If Mary failed to catch the Monday-morning pickup, she would have to return home and spend three more days on the farm. But if everything went according to plan, she would be sleeping in a bed at Aunt
Ida LaJoie's home in a couple of days. She had never met Aunt Ida, having corresponded with her only by mail. But from what other family members had told her, there was not a great deal of affection between the sisters, Ida and Mary's mother. Ida had readily agreed to keep the arrangement a secret.

  The Sherman family did not own a suitcase, owing to the fact none of them ever traveled farther than fifty miles from home. For Mary, this certainly simplified obedience to the college dorm's requirement. Since her parents never saw the need to buy her anything, her clothes and personal items were few. Still, she needed something in which to carry her paltry pantry of stuff. Mary looked around for anything that could hold something.

  There was nothing.

  Mary slipped on her shoes, quietly tip-toed out of the closet-size room she shared with Elaine and Amy, walked through the kitchen, and stepped out the front door—holding her breath as the door's hinges squeaked just enough to be dangerous.

  Mary stopped and turned around. The sound of her father's snoring was clear and steady, signaling safety. She propped the front door open and stepped onto the porch.

  In the half-moon light, Mary could see Star standing quietly at his usual place, tied up at the property gate. Her father had never taken the time or expense to build a proper pen, so Mary had to have him tied up most of the time. By the time Mary had received the horse from the social worker, Star was already thirteen years old. He did not have many more good years left.

  Mary emptied the last of the feedbag into Star's trough. She was about to dispose of the bag when it occurred to her that the large, durable, burlap sack would make a passable, if not elegant, carryall for her trip. She took it into her room and began stuffing it with her clothes and a few belongings. It was the early morning of June 1, 1940, and Mary was running away from home to go to college.

  Rachel's Diner began life as a large trailer that had been shipped into town twenty years previous by Buddy Farnsworth. He had leased from the county a small plot of land beside Highway 2, then planted the trailer atop it. He added a wood skirt around the wheels, installed a set of glass double doors on one side and a couple of white awnings above the windows for style. He then boasted his new restaurant's original humble identity as a trailer was well hidden, a declaration no one took seriously. Buddy knew that every town—even little ones like Ray—needed places for people to gather, share gossip, and experience a good slice of apple pie. With nothing else to do in Ray, Buddy calculated his new restaurant would be a success—and he was right. He named the restaurant after his wife, who died of consumption less than a year later.