Rocket Boys

by Homer Hickam

  An orchid corsage in hand, I picked up Melba June and together we strolled into the Big Creek High School gymnasium, a proud couple. We danced nearly every dance. To my disappointment, Dorothy didn’t show. When I took Melba June home, we fogged up the windows good in the Mercury before she gave me a final, adoring kiss and skipped up to her porch, where her parents patiently and secretly waited for her to finish smooching the great rocket scientist and science-fair winner. They opened the front door the moment her dainty little foot touched the first step.

  Mom and Dad got back late on Monday after I’d gone to bed. When I came in from school on Tuesday, I found Mom humming around with a contented little smile on her face and Dad in the basement poking into the dark corners of the junk down there, whistling. I had never heard him whistle before, didn’t even know that he knew how. “Your dad’s quitting,” Mom told me when I questioned his behavior. “He’s going into real estate at Myrtle Beach. We’re moving as soon as you go to college this fall. We’re figuring out what we’ll take and what we’ll leave behind.”

  Mom must have seen the doubt cross my face, because she rushed to assure me. “He really means it, Sonny. He’s had enough. Mr. Butler said he could go in business with him.”

  That part sounded right. Mr. Butler had been an engineer with the company and then quit to open up a realty business in Myrtle Beach. Dad came bounding up the stairs two at a time, as excited as any time I had ever seen him, with the possible exception of when the West Virginia coaches came to see Jim. “I don’t think we need a thing down there,” he said of the basement. “We can even leave the washer. Sonny’s almost worn out the top of it anyway. We’ll buy everything new at the beach.” To my astonishment, he hugged her.

  I went down to my lab to mix up some more propellant. Daisy Mae made an appearance and climbed up on the counter to watch me work. She started rubbing my arm. I patted her absently, but I was too busy to really pay her any mind. After a while, she gave up, got down, and demanded to be let out. Glad to be rid of the distraction, I opened the door for her.

  Later, I went up to my room to do my homework. I was feeling a little sick to my stomach and my head ached too. There was so much to do to get ready for the area fair in Bluefield. I thought about stretching out on the bed, but I remembered Daisy Mae was outside and part of the relaxation was having her curl up beside me. I buckled down to a solid-geometry problem, until I heard a screech of tires that seemed to begin opposite the service station all the way past our house. Whoever it was was in a big hurry. I dug in to the problem again. I heard the storm door slam shut and words between Mom and Dad. “I have to tell Sonny,” I heard Mom say, and I knew exactly what had happened.

  I came, without being called. Mom waited for me in the foyer, holding my little cat in her arms. Daisy Mae’s body was turned awkwardly, her fluffy little feet limp. Her head was lying on Mom’s chest and her eyes were half open. There was a trickle of blood leaking from her mouth. I could get no closer. A storm of emotion came out of nowhere and engulfed me. My eyes wouldn’t focus, and my mind felt as if it were being sucked down into a whirlpool of red and white swirling blotches. I sat down on the stairs hard and stared ahead. I let her out was the first rational thought I had. I let her out. I killed her.

  Mrs. Sharitz appeared from next door, somehow aware of what had happened. “He’s okay, Elsie,” she kept saying. “He’s okay.”

  I blinked back to reality, suddenly aware of everything. I got up and ran upstairs and into the bathroom and started to puke. I thought I would never stop.

  When at last I felt like I could move again, I came unsteadily down the stairs. The house was deathly quiet. I found Mom alone on the back porch, sitting in a chair. She had Daisy Mae in a shoe box on her lap. How many cats had we buried over the years in shoe-box coffins? Always before, Jim and I had carried them into the mountains to bury them and to give them their last rites, a prayer over a rough wooden cross of birch twigs and twine. For the first time, I missed Jim, missed his strength, his ability to focus on nothing but the task at hand. I went down into the basement and got a shovel and came back to the porch. Mom let me take the box, saying nothing. I set it gently under the apple tree in the backyard and began to dig. Dad came out of the house and stood and watched me and then he left in the Buick, destination unknown. Dandy and Poteet sat nearby, shivering and quiet except for an intermittent whimper. Mom came outside and watched me silently. When I finished burying Daisy Mae, I looked up and all the boys except Quentin were there, called by the invisible network that still seemed to connect everybody in Coalwood.

  The boys followed me up to my room and watched me as I sat on the edge of my bed, staring unseeing at the far wall. Roy Lee said, “I’ll find out who did this, Sonny, and he’ll pay for it, I promise you.”

  Roy Lee was talking about who had hit Daisy Mae. Until that moment, I thought it had been an accident, but then I realized I had heard those tires squealing once before. Whoever had shot at Dad had murdered Daisy Mae.

  I nodded, unable to do more. What did it matter now, anyway? Daisy Mae was gone. I had years yet to live and I missed her already.

  I got through my classes during the next week in a haze. Roy Lee drove us to Bluefield for the fair, and together we set up the panels and the displays. Once more, I submitted myself to the judges while the other boys hovered nearby. I gave a little speech and then my answers to their questions, hardly caring whether I won or not. We returned after lunch for the presentations. The third prize and then the second prize were announced. I felt my stomach twinge. Oh, God, please, no, I thought. We weren’t going to win anything. What an embarrassment to go back to Big Creek with nothing. As soon as we’d gotten outside our little county, we’d been a complete and utter failure. The head judge stood up and leaned on the podium. “First prize goes to—and this is a first for this high school, ladies and gentlemen—Big Creek High School, represented by Homer Hadley Hickam, Jr., for A Study of Amateur Rocketry Techniques!”

  Quentin couldn’t contain himself. He jumped up and yelled, “Whoo-whoo!” before subsiding in embarrassment. O’Dell danced around with both his hands in the air like a victorious boxer. Roy Lee cackled and then slugged me hard on my arm. Sherman laughed and clapped his hands. Billy sat back in his chair, wiping his forehead in relief. The auditorium burst into applause. I just sat there with a big silly grin on my face. I couldn’t believe it. We’d won! We were going to the National Science Fair!

  “I told you, I told you, I told you,” Quentin kept saying to me over and over.

  When things settled down, we got yet another award. An Air Force major stood and announced that we had earned a first-prize certificate for being “Outstanding in the Field of Propulsion.” He talked about our exhibit, saying it contained the most sophisticated rockets he’d seen this side of Cape Canaveral. “You got that right, Major!” O’Dell brayed.

  After the presentations were over, the major came by to shake my hand. He said he hoped I’d consider the Air Force as a career. I had the other boys come over, and when I introduced them, he beamed and said, “The United States Air Force would love to have each and every one of you.” He had apparently not noticed Sherman’s shriveled leg or Quentin’s doubtful slouch.

  It was raining as we drove home through the twisting valleys and the coal-smeared towns of Mercer and McDowell counties, the mines alongside the road so quiet and empty they looked as if they’d been abandoned for a thousand years. A bus passed us. HUBERT HUMPHREY FOR PRESIDENT was emblazoned on its side. It sent back a dirty spray that splashed across the windshield. Roy Lee eased up on the accelerator a bit. A few miles farther down the road, the bus that had passed us with such alarm had stopped. Somebody was out of it, waving his hat at a tiny gathering. I was feeling sick to my stomach again and my head felt like it was splitting. Roy Lee stopped to let me go throw up, and when I came back from the ditch, the other boys had climbed up on a stone wall. Hubert Humphrey was a rotund little man, whose jaw and arms seem
ed to be connected by a string. The more he waved his arms, the faster his mouth seemed to move. He was on a tear, promising the crowd if he got to be president, the government was going to come in and set everything right, even run things if it had to. No one would ever go hungry if he was president, no sirree, and nobody would lack for a job either.

  “Let’s ask him a question about space,” Sherman suggested, and he waved his hand at him, but Humphrey never looked his way. He was still talking when Roy Lee guided his car past the bus and then sped up, slowing only to make his way through the little town of Keystone, the streets empty except for a mangy dog picking around the front of an abandoned store.

  MR. Turner called me to his office the following Monday to shake my hand. “You’ve surpassed all my expectations, my boy,” he said. “I’m going to call an assembly. We’re going to give you a proper send-off to Indianapolis.”

  During the assembly, all the members of the BCMA got to stand up and take a bow. Mr. Turner called me up front. “I’ll do my best to represent Big Creek,” I said, frowning into the stage lights and trying to ignore my splitting head. I was still having bouts of nausea and now headaches.

  Miss Riley stood and said, “This just goes to show that Big Creek students can do just about anything they want to do. I know Sonny is going to make us even more proud in Indianapolis.”

  Seeing Miss Riley so positive and hopeful made me ashamed and disgusted with my symptoms. I was just being a weak sister.

  That night I was drawn to my backyard by some undefinable need. All was quiet there in the dark, save the rustling of the leaves in the apple tree, barely stirred by a gentle wind. I walked deep into the yard beyond the light from the kitchen window and stood very still, scarcely breathing, wondering why I was there, hoping something inside me would give me the answer. The night air was so clear that when I looked up, the stars seemed to form a glowing blue-white bridge that arched from mountain to mountain. I stood enthralled, letting my mind wander happily down the starry trail until my attention was drawn to the fence where I was surprised to see someone standing there looking my way. As dark as it was, I recognized him just by the way he tilted his head. “Roy Lee?” I called. “What are you doing there?”

  “I was looking out my window and saw you come out into the yard,” he said. “I’ve been meaning to talk to you, but I wanted it to be kind of private-like, you know? Guess this old backyard is as private as it gets in Coalwood.”

  I waited while Roy Lee leaned on the fence and had a bout of general fidgeting, clearing his throat, squinting, running his hand through his hair, and so forth. Whatever he had to say, he didn’t much want to say it. “Roy Lee, what?” I finally demanded.

  “I found out what happened to her.” He nodded toward the apple tree and I realized he was talking about Daisy Mae. “I found out who killed her like I promised you I would.”

  I came over to the fence. “Who was it?” I hissed, ready to commit murder. “Pooky, right?”

  “No. But it was one of those blamed idiots who follows him around. Pooky most likely put him up to it.”

  As mad as I was at Pooky, I surprised myself by thinking first of Calvin. Calvin had been mean to me his whole life but I had come to see him in a different light since he had helped me by finding my rocket stuff. Still, if Pooky had sentenced Daisy Mae to die, I couldn’t forgive him, even for Calvin’s sake. “I have to do something, Roy Lee,” I said. “I can’t let him get away with this.”

  “You don’t have to do anything, Sonny,” Roy Lee said. “Pooky’s left town. The way I heard it, Calvin tried to keep Pooky from beating up his ma and got smacked pretty hard. The neighbors called Tag and Tag came right up, kicked in the door, and threw Pooky in the creek. Tag told him if he ever saw Pooky’s face in Coalwood again, next time he’d throw him down the mine shaft. Pooky couldn’t get away fast enough, Tag was that mad.”

  “What about Calvin and his mother?”

  “The widow Clowers up in Six took them in until Calvin graduates and goes into the Army.”

  “And what about the man who ran over Daisy Mae?” I asked.

  Roy Lee twitched some more, turning finally to look up at the dark mountains. The lights from the gas station burnished his sleek black hairdo. “I’d tell you his name, Sonny, if you made me, but the way I heard it, he’s real sorry now he did it. You want to know?”

  I considered it and then shook my head. What good would it do for me to go around sharing the same town with someone I hated? I just didn’t see the sense of it. Anyway, I figured the man who killed Daisy Mae would eventually get his due without any help from me. Justice, after all, had finally come to Pooky—Coalwood justice. It seemed as if the town had a way of eventually settling everything if only one was patient enough to let things sort themselves out.

  “Thank you for telling me, Roy Lee,” I said, and all of a sudden I realized how much he meant to me. I found myself wanting to say that I hoped Roy Lee would always be my friend, and that I could be his, no matter what happened to us or where we went or how far apart we were. I settled for hitting him on the shoulder and then letting him hit me back, a good balled fist to the shoulder that hurt. That said everything I wanted to say without letting the words get in the way of it, anyway,

  I said good night to Roy Lee and moved away from the fence and walked to the apple tree, wanting to be near Daisy Mae. I knelt and patted her grave, taking a handful of soil from it. I would put it in a fruit jar and take it to Indianapolis with me. Standing, I took a deep breath of mountain air, and then I knew something else. Mr. Dubonnet had been right that day years ago by the old railroad track when he said I had been born in the mountains and that’s where I belonged, no matter what I did or where I went. I didn’t understand him then, but now I did. Coalwood, its people, and the mountains were a part of me and I was a part of them and always would be. I also remembered that night when Dad had come back from Cleveland and we had argued in my room. I had gone to my window after he’d left and looked out, envying the men I saw going to and from the mine, because they knew exactly who they were and what they were doing. Standing under the apple tree where Daisy Mae was buried, I realized I didn’t have to envy them anymore: I also knew now who I was and what I was going to do. That was when, almost as if someone had pulled a string, my stomach and head stopped hurting.

  24

  A SUIT FOR INDIANAPOLIS

  “I’LL TAKE CARE of him, Mrs. Hickam,” Emily Sue promised my mother from the Buick’s passenger seat.

  I was behind the wheel of the car, my head down, and I was fuming. Emily Sue and I were going to Welch to buy me a suit for Indianapolis. I didn’t see why I needed one. What was wrong with the clothes I planned on wearing, my cotton pants and plaid shirts and penny-loafer shoes? I was supposed to be a young scientist, not some fancy-pants like Peter Gunn on television or somebody. Besides, my displays and charts for Indianapolis needed work. I didn’t have time to traipse over to Welch for clothes.

  Emily Sue was already, in her opinion, an adult, unlike certain other members of her class, such as me. It was up to her, therefore, to make certain I would not embarrass Big Creek High School or, for that matter, the entire state of West Virginia in Indianapolis. My clothes, never fancy, were her primary concern. Emily Sue’s mother had driven her across the mountain to make her pitch about proper dress at the National Science Fair to Mom, who called me up from the basement, where I was screwing on the hinges of my new display boards. “Take her to Welch,” she said, nodding toward Emily Sue, who sat on the couch with a big, pleased smile on her face. “Let her help you pick out a suit.”

  “What do I need a suit for?” I grumped.

  “Because we can’t have you at the National Science Fair looking like a hillbilly,” Emily Sue said.

  Mom lifted her chin. “No, Emily Sue,” she said. “There’s a better reason.”

  “What’s that?” I demanded.

  She laid her eyes on me. “Because I said so.”

&nb
sp; The Buick swerved back and forth as I steered it through one curve after another. In the seven miles to Welch, there were thirty-seven switchbacks. I hardly noticed them. It was the straightaways that seemed unusual. On about the twelfth turn, I said “Thanks a lot” to Emily Sue as sarcastically as I could.

  “Happy to do it,” she replied.

  At least I had the opportunity to ask Emily Sue about Dorothy. Emily Sue was still very much Dorothy’s friend. “Um, so how’s everybody in the Honor Society?” It was my way of asking without asking.

  Emily Sue was way too quick for me. “Dorothy? She’s fine. She misses you and she’s sorry you’re mad at her, but I don’t think she stays awake at night worrying about it. Are you still carrying a torch for her?”

  “For Dorothy? Don’t make me laugh?

  Emily Sue looked across the bench seat at me. “Did you know you raise your eyebrows when you lie?”

  I didn’t say anything else to her the whole way to Welch.

  It was a Saturday, and Welch was filled with throngs of shoppers. We parked behind the Carter Hotel, paid a quarter to the attendant, and walked down the hill toward Main Street. Emily Sue led me to Philips and Cloony, a men’s shop. I hesitated at the front door. “Now what’s your problem?” Emily Sue asked.

  “I don’t want you to go in with me.”