Rocket Boys

by Homer Hickam

  I fought down my embarrassment and sat on a rough chair and pulled my galoshes off and then my pants. “There, that wasn’t so bad, was it?” she chuckled, taking them. “I didn’t bite you once! You can keep your underdrawers. Gawdalmighty, them pants is wet, ain’t they? You ain’t frostbit, are you?”

  “My toes hurt,” I confessed.

  “Well, get them socks off too!” She added them to the line and then came back and made me sit on the couch while she knelt in front of me and inspected my feet. “Naw, you ain’t frostbit,” she said. “Near though.” She rummaged in a trunk and brought out a long flannel shirt. It was a man’s shirt, much too large for her. I wondered how it was she had it. “Put this on and then sit there. Here’s more tea. It’ll help warm you from the inside out ’n that’s the best way. Whose boy are you, anyway?”

  I gratefully sat before the glowing stove, soaking up the delicious warmth. I wiggled my toes. They still hurt, but it was the pain of getting back to normal. “I’m Sonny Hickam. Homer and Elsie Hickam’s second son.”

  “You’re Homer Hickam’s son?”

  She said it in such a disbelieving tone of voice that I got worried. Dad had more than a few enemies. Was this woman one of them, or maybe her husband, or a brother? “Yes, ma’am,” I said, and added carefully, “And Elsie Hickam’s.”

  She drew up a chair and straddled it. “I know your daddy.” She studied me. “I don’t see it.”

  I was still in my underwear, and the way she was looking at me made me uncomfortable. I hunched over, trying to stretch the shirt over my lap. “Ma’am?”

  “I don’t see him in you. What’s he doin’ these days? How is he?”

  That was the first time anyone had ever asked me to tell them about my father. I thought everyone just knew. “He’s … okay. He works a lot. Mom got him an electric razor for Christmas.”

  “Did she, by God!”

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  “Is he happy?”

  Was my dad happy? Happy or sad were states I never thought applied to him. “I guess so.”

  My answer, vague as it was, seemed to satisfy her. “That’s good. That’s real good. My name’s Geneva Eggers.” She held out her hand and I shook it. It felt bony but warm. “Pleased to meetcha. I’ve known your daddy more’n a while. Say, you want some toast?”

  Before I could answer, she got out a big black frying pan and poured some bacon grease in it out of a coffee can that was sitting on top the stove. She set the pan on the stove, over to the side, and then opened a bread box on a small table. She went back behind another sheet curtain and came out with two eggs. She cracked the eggs in a pot, whipped them with a fork, dipped in four slices of white bread, and laid them out in the frying pan on the stove. Just like that, the room was filled with the wonderful smell of hot bacon grease and eggs.

  “Your daddy and me come from the same part of Gary Holler,” she said as she cooked. “I followed your daddy around when I was in diapers. He took care of everybody up and down that old holler, always worryin’ if the old people had enough coal for the stove or had food in from the store. He weren’t no richer than nobody else, but your daddy was always wantin’ to help.” She looked at me. “You didn’t know he knew me, did you?”

  “No, ma’am.” It was true. I had never heard of her.

  “You know his daddy got his legs cut off in the mines, don’tcha?”

  “Yes, ma’am. That’s my Poppy.”

  “Well, that ain’t all that happened to your Poppy. He got hit in the head in the Gary mine. He did! Big piece of slate caught him, knocked him silly. It was pret’ near a year Mister Hickam didn’t work. Your daddy just took over supportin’ his family,” she said. “Nobody never liked for nothin’ when your daddy was around, I can tell you that!”

  Geneva found a plate and stacked the French toast on it and set it on the table. She set out a pot of honey too. “Come on or it’ll get cold.”

  The meal was delicious, somehow better for being cooked on the old stove. After I was finished I asked to use the bathroom. She gave me the lantern. “Put on your galoshes. Path is out the back door.”

  I knew all about outhouses. Mom’s parents had retired to a farm in Abb’s Valley, Virginia, and they had a privy. I followed Geneva’s own footprints down the snowy path and found the outhouse at the end of it. It was a simple one-holer, complemented by the inevitable Sears, Roebuck catalog. It was too cold to dawdle. I did my business quickly and hurried back to the warmth of the shack. I found my clothes laid out on her narrow bed. “Pret’ near dry,” Geneva said, smoothing my pants. She went over to the stove and turned her back. “You can dress. Go on, now. You don’t need to get behind the curtain. I ain’t gonna look!”

  I put the lantern down on the floor and then put on my layers of shirts and my pants, now warm and almost completely dry. I got my rocket book and tucked it under my belt. I looked up and saw that Geneva had been watching me. I wasn’t sure for how long. “I—I really appreciate this, Mrs. Eggers,” I stammered. Except for my mother, I’d never had a woman watch me get dressed before, and even that had been a while.

  “It’s Geneva, honey. Will you tell your daddy you saw me? Will you tell him I made you get yourself dry and fed you some toast?”

  It seemed to me a most plaintive request. “Yes, ma’am. I will.”

  She helped me with my coat. “Tell him when your mom ain’t listenin’. I wouldn’t want her to get the wrong idea.”

  I didn’t know what she meant by that, but I didn’t question her. It wouldn’t be polite. She led me up to the road, her lantern held high. Far below I could hear a truck trying to climb the mountain, its chains slapping the snow. If it made it, I knew I could sled down the packed snow left by its path.

  “Tell your daddy, now. Will you promise?”

  I nodded. “Yes, ma’am. I promise. Thank you for saving me.”

  “Hell, child, don’t go on about that.”

  A big dump truck soon appeared, loaded with coal. I waved at Geneva and then fell on my sled in the tire tracks and slid quickly down the mountain, coasting all the way to the mine. When I got off the sled, I could see my house. There was a light in every window. As soon as I put a foot on the back porch, the door opened. I could see the worry in Mom’s face, but she wasn’t about to let me know it. “Don’t track snow in the house,” she warned. She looked me over. “You don’t look any worse for wear.”

  Dad appeared, the evening paper in his hand. “I was about to get in the truck and go looking for you, young man.”

  I was filled with glory. “I went all the way to Big Creek and back on my sled!” I reached inside my coat and pulled out my book. “And look what Miss Riley gave me.” I handed it to Dad.

  He read the title and tentatively turned some pages. “It seems to be thorough,” he said. The black telephone rang, and he answered it after handing the book back to me. “Get Number Two going if Number Three goes down!” he shouted, and I knew he was worrying about the ventilation fans losing power during the snowfall.

  I went upstairs. Jim was in his room. I opened his door. He was lying on his bed, reading a magazine. “We sledded all the way to Big Creek,” I told him. “Nobody’s ever done that before.”

  “You morons went to school?” he growled. “We were supposed to stay home. Next time they’ll make us all walk over there.”

  I went to my room. I snapped on the lamp on my desk and began to eagerly read my book, relishing the titles on each of the chapters, until I remembered Geneva Eggers. I went downstairs and found Dad slumped in his easy chair, back to his paper. Mom was in the kitchen. “Dad, a Mrs. Eggers up on Coalwood Mountain invited me inside her house and got me warmed up. She wanted me to tell you that.”

  Dad peered at me over the paper. “A Mrs. who?”

  “Eggers. Geneva Eggers.”

  He studied me and then carefully laid the paper down on the footstool. “You were in Geneva Eggers’s house?”

  “Up on Coalwood Mountai
n. That shack off the road, about a third of the way down. She fixed me French toast. She wanted me to be sure to tell you about it.”

  The black telephone rang, but he didn’t jump up to answer it. It was the first time I had ever known that to happen. He fixed his eyes on me. “What else did she do?”

  “Nothing. Just got my pants dry.”

  “You took your pants off?” His voice was strained.

  “She gave me a long shirt to wear.”

  He frowned. “And nothing else happened? You’re sure?”

  “Yes, sir. I’m sure.”

  Mom finally came in from the kitchen to answer the phone. When she answered it, there was a pause, and then she said, “I don’t know, Clyde. He must have died or you’d be talking to him instead of me.”

  Dad kept looking at me as if trying to figure out if I was fooling with him in some way. Then he went to the phone and started shouting orders again.

  It was still too icy for the bus to run the next day, but we rocket boys didn’t try to cross the mountains again. We’d done it once and that was enough. We were sure to go down in the record book of teenage Coalwood heroes by the stunt. That night, Dad came into my room and closed the door behind him. “Let me tell you a story,” he said, and I stopped reading my rocket book. He sat down on my bed. Whatever it was he was going to say, he didn’t look happy about it.

  “When I was a little younger than you,” he said, “a house on our row in Gary caught fire. Those old Gary houses were just clapboard and tar paper. One spark and they burned up like straw. I was out in our backyard for something and saw the fire. There didn’t seem to be anybody else around, so I went inside, thinking maybe there was somebody trapped in there. I tried to see, but it was too smoky. Then I heard this baby crying. I didn’t know where I was, couldn’t see anything. I just went by sound. I found this baby crying in all that smoke, like there wasn’t anything in the world that was going to kill her! I picked her up and jumped out the window before the fire got us both. It turned out the whole family was in that house and I didn’t see any of them, just the baby. Eight brothers, the mother and father, all burned to death.”

  Dad shifted on the bed, both his hands pushing down on the mattress. “I was kind of unhappy with myself for a long time after that. How was it I didn’t see all those people in that little house?”

  I just stared at Dad. I couldn’t imagine why in the world he was telling me this awful thing, but whatever the reason was, I wanted him to stop. For a reason I couldn’t define, I had a fear of knowing too much about him.

  Dad looked me in the eye. “Anyway, that baby was Geneva Eggers.”

  “Oh” was all I could say. I thought of Geneva as a helpless baby, my dad carrying her to safety, and tears welled up in my eyes. I forced them back.

  Dad flicked imaginary lint off my bed and looked up at the ceiling. He cleared his throat. “Sonny,” he said finally, “what do you know of life?”

  I didn’t know what he meant. “Not much, I guess.”

  “I’m talking about … girls.”

  “Oh.”

  “You haven’t ever …”

  I flushed. “Oh, no, sir.”

  Dad focused on one of my model airplanes on my dresser. “I wouldn’t tell anybody else about being in Geneva Eggers’s house. She has sort of a business going there. Some of the bachelor miners—she’s sort of their girlfriend.”

  I didn’t understand. “Which one?”

  Dad winced. “More than one … a lot of them. The occasional married man too.”

  My eyes widened, and I’m sure my mouth dropped open. I understood now. “She runs moonshine too,” Dad said, his eyes still locked on the airplane. “Her husband got killed in the Gary mine five years ago. The police over there chased her this way. I gave her that old shack and I told Tag to leave her alone. Let her do what she wants.” He got up and went to the door. “So now you know. Don’t go see her again, and never, never tell your mother what I just told you.”

  Dad closed the door quietly behind him and I sat alone in my room, thinking about what he had said. I thought about the young woman in the shack, how she’d treated me so nice, and then I imagined what it must have been like for Dad to go into a burning house. I doubted I would have had his courage. I felt suddenly proud of him, more than for just his long-ago act of heroism, but because of what he had once been back in Gary and all that he had become because of his hard work.

  The next day the school bus ran. I looked for Geneva Eggers often after that as we went by, going and coming. Sometimes she would be there, standing alone alongside the road. She studied the windows as the bus passed, smiling if she saw me. She didn’t wave, nor did I. She was Dad’s secret and I was hers.

  14

  THE PILLAR EXPLOSION

  Auks XVI-XIX

  NOW THAT I had received a letter from the great man himself, I felt almost as if I were already on Dr. von Braun’s team. On February 1, I heard on the radio that the Russians had launched Luna I, the first man-made object ever to break away from Earth’s gravity. The velocity required for that was 25,500 miles per hour, or approximately seven miles per second, a distance I could visualize easily because seven miles was the distance between Coalwood and Welch. As the Russian spacecraft streaked toward the moon, I went up on the Club House roof to use Jake’s telescope just to see what I could see. Jake didn’t join me, because he was going out on a date with Mr. Van Dyke’s latest secretary, a redhead from Ohio. Although Mrs. Van Dyke had threatened to hire an ugly secretary for her Mister, somehow another lovely from up north had appeared. Jake called up to me. “See any Russians on the moon, Sonny?”

  I poked my head over the edge of the roof and waved. “Not yet, Jake. See any down there?”

  He threw back his head and howled at the moon just as the redhead appeared on the Club House porch, her spike heels clicking. Jake took her in his arms, twirled her around while cupping one of her breasts in his hand, giving me the grinning eye while he did it, and then guided her into his ’Vette. He and the redhead sped, with tires screeching, toward an unspecified destination. I envied him and wished with all my heart that someday I would learn how to have Jake’s confidence and devilish enjoyment of life. Deep down in my heart, and with considerable sadness, I suspected I never would. Born and bred West Virginians, it seemed to me, had a suspicion of anything that was too much fun, as if it were maybe a sin.

  I went back to the telescope and put my eye to the eyepiece. There was some speculation that the Russians’ payload was a bucket of red paint. I spent the night on the roof alone wrapped in my heavy wool coat, alternately dozing against a chimney, and waking to look through the telescope. To my relief, no revolutionary red star appeared on the moon’s yellow surface. The next day, the Welch Daily News said Luna I had missed the moon, but by a mere 3,728 miles. The next time they tried, the politicians and editorial writers worried, the Russians might hit it and then what kind of world would we live in? I worried with them. Would we never catch up to the Russians in space? Every time the United States launched a satellite, the Russians launched one bigger and better. I trusted that Wernher von Braun, at least, was doing something about it. In my own small way, I figured I was too.

  I hurried every day after school to my desk to pore over my rocket book. On the weekend, Quentin hitched a ride across the mountain to study the book for himself. All morning he sat on the side porch and carefully, reverently, turned each page, his face a frown of concentration. I tried to sit with him, but there was so much I wanted explained that I knew I would be too much of a distraction. Chipper sat on Quentin’s shoulder, his little black eyes following every turn of the page. His interest worried me more than a little. Chipper had, after all, eaten the family Bible the winter before, chewed right through it from Genesis to Revelation, shredding generations of inscribed Hickams in the process. Mom thought it was the cutest thing. All I knew was if I found tooth marks on one page of my rocket book, I was going to declare hunting season on a
certain bushy-tailed rodent.

  Mom fixed up some fried baloney sandwiches for lunch and called Quentin and me into the kitchen. Quentin continued to leaf through the book at the kitchen table. Finally, he said, “There’s a lot of theory in here that presumes the reader already knows subjects we haven’t had, chief among them, I suspect, thermodynamics and calculus. Did you note the discussion of isentropic and adiabatic flows?”

  I slid my chair beside him. I had skipped over the chapter he was on, titled “Elementary Gas Dynamics.” “I don’t think anything in there will help us build a better rocket,” I said. Actually, its pages of equations had discouraged me.

  “Perhaps not,” he replied coldly, looking down his nose at me as if surprised at my shallowness of purpose. “But isn’t it something you want to understand? All of these equations lead to a discussion of what happens to a gas when it enters a flow passage.” He looked at me again. “Sonny, a flow passage and a rocket nozzle are one and the same!”

  I looked perhaps blankly, because Quentin sighed and turned the page and pointed at an illustration: two trapezoids on their sides, the small ends facing one another. The figure was marked “Characteristics of Flow Passage for Subsonic and Supersonic Flow Expansion and Compression.” “There it is,” he said triumphantly. “The answer to everything. Don’t you see?”

  I peered at the illustration. “See what?”

  “Look! This is how a rocket nozzle works, why it’s designed as it is. Did you even bother to read about De Laval nozzles?”

  I had at least done that. A Swedish engineer, Carl Gustav De Laval, had shown that by adding a divergent passage to a converging nozzle (one that necked down to a narrow throat) the expansion of the fluid (or gas) coming out of the throat would be transformed into jet kinetic energy. In other words, the gas came out of the passage faster than it went in. I told Quentin my comprehension of it and he nodded. “Yes, yes. You understand. Good.”