Rocket Boys

by Homer Hickam

  I sensed an opportunity. “Dad, I’m sorry about what happened that day you took me in the mine.”

  “Mining’s in your blood, little man,” he shrugged. “I guess you’ll figure that out, sooner or later.”

  “I still want to work for Dr. von Braun.”

  He nodded. “We’ll see.”

  “The gravel?”

  He sighed. “We’ll see.”

  “And sir? …”

  “What?”

  “Mrs. Bykovski needs a new commode.”

  “Get out!”

  Mr. Duncan installed Mrs. Bykovski’s new fixture the next day about the same time the first of three two-and-a-half-ton truck-loads of gravel showed up in Mr. Ferro’s backyard. I knew better than to thank Dad for any of it. Some dogs you’re better off to just let lie in the sun. When I went to the machine shop, I expected to see the machinists hard at work on my rockets, but I was disappointed. Mr. Ferro explained he’d come up short on the steel tubing. “The tipple shop will have it,” he advised without apology.

  “But you promised you’d get it!” I complained.

  “I sure could use some lumber for my front porch,” he said, nonplused. “Got some rot out there.”

  Willy Brightwell was the name of the man who had taken Mr. Bykovski’s spot in the tipple machine shop. I knew him fairly well. His son Willy, Jr., often played touch football with us, coming down with the other boys from Mudhole to scrimmage with us on the broad concrete between the church and the Club House. Mr. Brightwell shook his head at my request for steel tubing. “Naw, Sonny, I can’t do that. Your dad, well … you know your dad.”

  I caught Dad at home with my latest request as he sat down and tried to give the paper a quick read. “No way,” he said, rattling the paper and then jumping up at the black phone’s insistent ring, “and that’s final.”

  The tubing showed up on the back porch two days later, leaning against a far corner, along with some bar stock as well. I took it, no questions asked, still letting that old dog soak up the sun. If Dad wanted to pretend he wasn’t really helping me, who was I to argue with him?

  At the machine shop, Mr. Ferro presented us the finished product of our newest design, Auk XIV. Quentin hefted it while the machinists who built it circled around. “I fear the ratio of the mass of propellant added compared to the mass of the empty rocket will be too small,” he said. “I have deduced that there is a relationship between these two masses that must be within certain parameters.”

  “He says it’s too heavy,” I told the machinists. I took the rocket from Quentin. It was heavy, and there wasn’t much room for the propellant after the nozzle and top plug were bolted in place. The fins and nose cone would add more to the weight. I doubted even rocket candy could get this dense little rocket off the ground.

  “What needs to be done is to increase the volume of the cylinder with only a small amount of additional mass,” Quentin stated.

  “It needs to be longer,” I translated again.

  A machinist—Clinton Caton was his name—raised his hand. “I’ll do it, boss,” he said.

  Mr. Ferro nodded agreement. “It’s all yours, Clinton.”

  Mr. Caton, as it turned out, was a man of vision. Without any advice from me, he lengthened the rocket to two and a half feet, a monster. To fill it took a pot and a half of rocket candy. While the candy was still soft, I pushed a glass rod into it—borrowed from Miss Riley’s lab supplies—forming a spindle hole.

  The following weekend, our rocket rocked in the stiff, frigid wind that swept over Cape Coalwood, enough so I was afraid it might be blown over. Sherman and Billy dragged out a six-foot steel rod O’Dell had found discarded behind the machine shop and jammed it into the slack beside the pad. We used a wrap of wire to make a loop at the top and bottom of the rocket and then slid it down the rod. Mr. Ferro’s machinists crowded around, braving the bitter wind. Jake and Mr. Dubonnet were there too. “Might work,” Jake said of the guide rod. “The rockets on my wing in Korea were on a short track that got them off straight.”

  “I heard you went to see Ike Bykovski,” Mr. Dubonnet said, “and then Leon Ferro and then your dad for supplies. You’re making the rounds, aren’t you?”

  I just shrugged. He already knew everything, anyway.

  “Some of the boys in the union hall were wondering what John L. Lewis would think about UMWA members building rockets.”

  I didn’t like the sound of that. Mr. Dubonnet could stop the machinists from working for me if he wanted to. I never knew what undercurrents between union and management might be coursing through Coalwood. “What do you think he’d say, sir?” I asked nervously.

  He laughed his rich laugh. “I can just see those big, thick eyebrows dancing. He’d love it! Maybe I’ll tell him. He might be interested in forming the United Mine and Rocket Workers of America!”

  After we got Jake, Mr. Dubonnet, and the machinists safe in the blockhouse or hiding behind their cars, Auk XIV erupted from the pad, spinning once around the rod before hurtling into the sky. Quentin threw himself out of the blockhouse with his theodolite and started tracking. Sherman limped outside, scribbling notes on the flight. It angled slightly over in the direction of what we called Rocket Mountain and kept climbing. It was our best rocket yet. When it was just a dot against the blue sky, it stopped and came hurtling down, disappearing behind the highest ridge on Rocket Mountain. We took off, scrambling up through the woods. Billy was in the lead. He was not only a good runner, but had a great nose for burnt rocket candy. A whole hour later, tired, our knees bloody from battering them against the rocks we had to climb, we found Auk XIV. It had landed nose-first full bore against the only rock outcropping within a hundred yards. Its casement was bent and its nose cone turned to sawdust. At least the nozzle was intact. There was erosion and pitting within, but it had held up. Quentin finally gasped up beside us; even Sherman could move faster through the woods than he could. He paused, his hands on his knees, trying to get his breath. Then he thumbed through Jake’s trigonometry book. “Three thousand feet,” he concluded.

  Three thousand feet!

  “I think we’d better give those boys a call down at Cape Canaveral,” Roy Lee said. “We could teach them a thing or two.”

  The machinists waved me into their shop a week later to show off a rocket that they had built on their own. It followed the last design, except it was six inches longer—a three-footer. They had also put in the top plug and the nozzle with machine screws rather than welding them. Eyebolts were attached on the top and bottom for the guide rod. I accepted it gratefully, and the boys and I dragged out the hot plate and filled it up. The following weekend, Auk XV drilled into the sky to the applause of the watching machinists. I could tell it wasn’t going to go as high as the smaller Auk XIV. In fact, it managed only half the altitude. Although the machinists were still thrilled by it, Quentin and I worried over its performance all week, trying to figure out what had cut into its altitude.

  “We may have reached the maximum performance with rocket candy,” Quentin said. “Perhaps there’s a break-even point for all propellants.”

  “We need more tests,” I said, “to be certain.”

  Quentin’s face lit up. At last I had agreed with him. “My boy, although I have had my doubts, there are moments, such as this one, when I believe you are quite capable of learning. How about the science fair this year?”

  “We’re not ready,” I said. “We still need a book so we’ll know what we’re talking about.”

  Quentin shrugged. “If we keep going the way we are, we can write our own book.”

  THE girls in the Big Creek band outnumbered the boys four to one. Although before the suspension the football boys might have had the hearts of the girls, we boys in the band had more ready access to them. There were no football games in the fall of 1958, but the band still took trips around the district on holidays to march through the various towns that invited us. It took two buses to carry the eighty band members and
our equipment. Band buses tended to be real cozy, especially after we had performed and were coming back to school at night. Tired but happy, we sat in the dark bus, some of the more lucky boys paired off with the girls of their choice, smooching in the back. Dorothy was one of the saxophone players, and she always chose to sit beside me and even occasionally rest her head on my shoulder while I sat stock-still, fearful of moving a muscle that might disturb her angelic rest.

  The band members liked to sing quietly on those dark nights, the bus warm with radiating bodies. A favorite song was “Tell Me Why.”

  “Tell me why the stars do shine.

  Tell me why the ivy climbs.

  Tell me why the ocean’s blue.

  And I will tell you just why I love you.”

  I remember Dorothy’s head shifting on my shoulder; she was mumbling something.

  “Because God made the stars to shine.

  Because God made the ivy climb.

  Because God made the ocean blue.

  Because God made you, that’s why I love you.”

  What was it she said? Something to me she could say only in her sleep? I hoped so, was willing to pretend so. “I love you too,” I said so low even I couldn’t hear it, but my heart still thumped wildly at the audacity of it. The bus rolled on, filled with dreams.

  DURING one of our study sessions in late November, I worked up the courage to ask Dorothy to the Christmas formal. “I wish I could,” she said, shaking her head sadly. “That boy I went out with last summer asked me and I told him yes.”

  That boy, I knew, was a college student from Welch. Dorothy had told me all about him. “But you said he was mean to you!” I protested. “How could you agree to go out with him again?”

  “Well, he asked me before I realized what kind of boy he was,” she explained.

  “And you’re still going to the formal with him?”

  “I told him I would, and I can’t go back on my promise,” she sighed. “But I’ll be thinking of you, Sonny. I will.”

  The way she looked at me so pitifully, I couldn’t help but feel sorry for her. The night of the big dance, I suffered at home, barely paying attention to the book—Steinbeck’s Sweet Thursday—I had borrowed from Dad’s bookcase in the upstairs hall. I stayed awake until two o’clock in the morning, relaxing only when I was certain Dorothy must be home and safe. I saw Roy Lee the next day. He’d been to the formal, and I couldn’t resist asking him if he’d seen Dorothy. “I saw her,” he said noncommittally.

  “Was she … did she seem to be having a good time?”

  He looked past me, off into the distance. “What do you want me to say?”

  “Well, the truth.”

  Roy Lee put his hand on my shoulder. “She was all over that guy.”

  CHRISTMAS 1958 wasn’t a white one, but it was bitterly cold, no problem in a town sitting on a billion tons of the finest bituminous coal in the world. As always, Mom bought the biggest tree in town, and Jim and I “wrestled it indoors for her. Unwilling to remove an inch off it, Mom made us wedge it against the ceiling at an angle. When Dad came home, he silently got his stepladder out and cut two feet off the top. Mom hated his handiwork, saying he’d made it look more like a bush than a tree. After we decorated, Daisy Mae and Lucifer immediately began to pull down every bulb and bauble within paw’s reach, and Chipper took up residence deep within, squawking at anyone who walked past.

  On Christmas morning, Mom came into my room and sat on my bed, handing over a large manila envelope. Not having any idea what it might contain, I opened it and, to my amazement, found an autographed photograph of Dr. Wernher von Braun with a personal note in his own handwriting. I couldn’t believe what I was reading. He was congratulating me on the success with my rockets, suggesting that I continue my education and perhaps I might one day find a job in the space business! The note ended by saying: If you work hard enough, you will do anything you want.

  I stared at the photo and then the note, going from one to the other. I couldn’t believe I was touching these things that the great man had also touched. “Mom? How …”

  She grinned, a little proud of herself, I think. “I wrote him about you, Sonny. I thought he’d like to know who was getting ready to come help him build his rockets.”

  I grabbed her around her neck and gave her a big hug, surprising her as much as me. I had never had such a wonderful present! For the remainder of the Christmas break, I read and reread von Braun’s note. I even offered it to Jim to read, but he claimed he didn’t know who von Braun was. I tried to get Dad to read it too, and he said he would, but he never got to it.

  I carried the von Braun photo and letter to school the first day back after Christmas. At lunch in the auditorium, Quentin fingered them like they were holy artifacts. “Prodigious,” he whispered in reverence and awe.

  13

  THE ROCKET BOOK

  ONE NIGHT IN January, it started to snow, a little at first, and then steadily. Before I crawled into bed, I heard the muffled footsteps of the hoot-owl miners trudging through the deepening snow. I looked outside and could barely see them through the heavy snowfall. Daisy Mae huddled in beside me, purring. I reached down and petted her and then fell asleep.

  I woke to the sound of tire chains on packed snow. I saw through my bedroom window that everything was white—the yard, the road, the filling station, and the mountains. Only the tipple and man-hoist kept their black visage, steam rising from the deep shafts beneath them. I pulled on my jeans, shirt, and sweater and hurried downstairs to the kitchen, where Mom already had the radio tuned to WELC. Johnny Villani, the announcer, was cheerily commenting on the snow, advising everyone to be careful, and, no, there was no announcement of any school closing. Jim rose from the table as I got there, grunted that it would be nice to take a day off to go sledding, and disappeared upstairs into the bathroom. I gulped down hot chocolate and toast, ran back upstairs to throw my homework inside my notebook, then back down to balance books and notebook on the banister post, and then to the television to hear a few minutes of the Today Show with Dave Garroway. There was little news on the space race, so when I heard Jim finish in the bathroom, I took the steps two at a time upstairs, brushed my teeth, and then rushed back down to grab a heavy coat from the closet in the foyer. Jim was gone already, was in fact already climbing on the bus when I went out the front door. Mom chased after me, her housecoat pulled tight against the cold, and caught me just in time to hand me my brown-bag lunch. “Late again, younger Hickam!” Jack announced, giving me the eye. Then he saw my mother. “Mornin,’ Elsie, how do?”

  “I’d do better if I could get Sonny moving in the morning, Jack.” She smiled up at him.

  “Aw, the boy’ll get some sense someday,” Jack said, swinging the door shut. Mom waved and carefully scooted her house slippers up the walk.

  I made my way up the aisle, wedging myself three to a seat beside Jane Todd and Guylinda Cox, already dozing. Carol Todd, Jane’s cousin, and Claudia Allison wedged me in on the other side. As we trundled through town, I saw a few women out in their front yards shoveling coal into shuttles to carry inside to their Warm Morning heaters. Most of the women were bare-legged, and peeking beneath the bottom of their old woolen coats were pastel-colored nighties, standard Christmas gifts from miners to their wives during good times. Mom liked to tell about the time when she and Dad lived in one of those houses—just after they were married—and she ran out into the snow to the coal box with nothing on but her Christmas-night nightie and encountered a line of miners on their way to work. Naturally, they all stopped to comment.

  “Now, Elsie, Homer will be buyin’ you a coat soon, darlin’,” Mr. O’Leary said sympathetically.

  “He bain well better,” Mr. Larsen added, outraged but eyes popping.

  “Ah, that Homer,” Mr. Salvadore said, putting his fingers to his lips, “he’sa lucky, lucky boy.”

  Mom grabbed her shuttle and ran for the porch, only to slip, both feet flying over her head, her pin
k ruffled matching house slippers sent sailing. At least the snow cushioned her landing, which was solidly on her backside. The miners started to climb over the fence to help her, but she told them to stop, dared them to take a step farther. She said she was fine, but she didn’t make a move because if she got up, they’d see a lot more of her than she wanted any man to see, even my dad. So there she sat, melting the ice beneath her until the miners left—only after asking her many more times than she felt was necessary if she was sure she was all right—and then she made another run for the door. She was so embarrassed she didn’t venture outside for the rest of the day, and when Dad got home after work, he found the Warm Morning cold.

  “Why didn’t you keep this fire burning?” he demanded, raising up the heater door and peering at the cold ashes on the grate. “I work hard all day, and I expect to come home and see something burning in here.”

  “You want to see something burning?”

  “I sure do.”

  “Okay.” Mom went upstairs and came down with the Christmas nightie and the matching slippers and stuffed them all into the Warm Morning and set them ablaze. “Better?” she asked. When Dad was within listening range of the story, he added to it by saying the house stunk for days afterward. Mom said a furnace was installed in our house the next year—the first for a house on our row.

  A dozen more kids got on board at New Camp and then at Substation, Roy Lee among them. He had a speech assignment and began practicing to a thoroughly bored Linda Bukovich. Carlotta Smith got on at Number Six and all us boys perked up, watching her move sideways up the aisle in a short open jacket and tight sweater. It wasn’t that she was exactly a beauty: She had a puffy, childish face marred by acne and her hair was stringy, but just the sight and scent of her could set a boy’s heart a-pounding. Roy Lee leaned over and wiggled his eyebrows and whispered in my ear, “Old Glory,” and, against my will, I laughed. It was shorthand for the cruel phrase for ugly girls with great bods: “Put a flag over her face and you know what for Old Glory.” Not that we had a chance in the universe of doing any such thing. Carlotta could find no place to sit, so she stood beside me, her rounded bottom within inches of my face. Either guilt or embarrassment forced me to my feet, and she mumbled her thanks and pushed in beside Jane and Guy Linda, who woke just long enough to marginally scoot over for her. “Woo-woo.” Roy Lee grinned. He stood up long enough to whisper again. “You think being polite will get you some of that? What would your darling Dorothy think if she knew what you were thinking?” He sat down, sniggering. I tried to grab him, and he dodged and then broke out laughing.