Rocket Boys

by Homer Hickam

  A few days later, when I was next called to Mr. Turner’s office, he had his hands folded on his desk and was looking grim. “I told you only six students would be allowed in the class,” he said. “But seven signed up.”

  Mr. Turner tapped the stack of folders. “I’m afraid your grades were the lowest of the seven.” He studied me. “Mr. Hickam, you have just learned a great lesson of life and this is it: Life is quite often ironic. You worked to get this class and now you will not be able to take it.”

  I stood there, my mind spinning, my stomach sinking. “Can you tell me who got the class instead of me?” I finally managed.

  “Dorothy Plunk.”

  I wandered from Mr. Turner’s office and into the hall, feeling weak, frustrated, and pitiful. I was tempted to run to Miss Riley and beg for her help in overcoming this terrible injustice. Why not seven students instead of six? But I didn’t. Mr. Turner had kept his promise. Dorothy had the better grades and deserved the class. I remembered when I had shown her my rocket book and she had said how much she, too, wanted to learn calculus. She deserved her chance as much as I did.

  “I’LL teach you calculus,” Quentin said.

  We were going out onto the frozen football field behind Miss Riley and the tenth-grade biology class. Mr. Mams had asked her to perform a chemical experiment that had to do with the decomposition of organic materials. Quentin said it involved some chemicals he wanted to see. “I don’t know, Q,” I answered. “Why don’t you learn it and work the equations? You don’t need me.”

  “Nonsense,” he spat out.

  Miss Riley sprinkled a little hill of gray powder in the grass. “This is zinc dust,” she said. She poured sulfur on the powder and mixed it up with a stick. “You’ve smelled rotten eggs? That’s sulfur dioxide, released from the chemical reaction of rotting organic material. This is going to stink just like that.” She touched a long match to the pile, and it erupted into a huge boil of hot light and smoke.

  “Yewww,” the other kids groaned, holding their noses. They had had enough. They stamped around and shivered until Miss Riley led them back across the field.

  Quentin and I remained behind. “Sonny,” he said. “I think we’ve got our next rocket propellant.”

  I had been impressed by the massive amount of smoke and gas the combination had produced, but I was confused. “Q, why do we need a new propellant? What’s wrong with rocket candy?”

  “You are fortunate to have me as your scientist, old boy, or else I think you’d still be blowing up little aluminum tubes.” Quentin could still be obnoxious when he wanted to be. “Haven’t you been paying any attention at all? We’ve got the maximum results we’re going to get from rocket candy. No matter what we do, we’re not going to gain any more altitude. We need a new propellant.”

  I kicked at the debris. “What did you say this stuff was?”

  “Zinc dust and sulfur.”

  “Hot stuff,” I said.

  Quentin cocked his head and nodded, as if he were a teacher who had finally gotten the correct response from the class dunce. “Indeed,” he said.

  As the winter of 1959 waned and the snow and ice melted, many miners who had been cut off the year before were called back to the mine. The Ohio steel mill had received a big order and needed coal, lots of it. For the first time in years, the company went to a three-shift, seven-day-a-week production schedule. New cars, heavy with fins and chrome, were parked in front of miners’ houses from New Camp to Frog Level, and new swing sets, brightly painted, were erected in the backyards. Women and children wore new clothes. Living rooms glowed with new television sets, and home telephones—from the phone company, not the mine—appeared on little tables. Dad was in a frenzy every time I saw him, hopping up and down to yell into the black phone, running up to the mine in the middle of the night. Mom kept working on her painting in the kitchen. She was putting in a house on the beach.

  About the same time, a strange traffic began at home: college football coaches, come to entice Jim to their schools. Despite his fears, the year’s suspension had not dimmed his reputation. I was banished from the living room when they came, but listened all the same, sitting on the steps in the darkened foyer. “For heaven’s sake, Homer, remain calm,” I heard Mom tell Dad in the kitchen when the coaches from West Virginia University were there. “You’re going to have a heart attack.”

  “Do you realize who’s in our house, woman?” he demanded. He loaded up a tray with glasses of iced tea and rushed back to the living room, glancing my way as he passed. He had a huge grin on his face, but it disappeared at the sight of me. I must have looked particularly unhappy. “And what’s with you?” he asked warily.

  “My grades weren’t good enough to get into calculus class.” I shrugged. I told him the story quickly because I could see how eager he was to get back to the coaches.

  He studied me. “Let me get this straight. You fought for a class, got it, and now you can’t take it?”

  “Too true,” I replied.

  “You want me to talk to Mr. Turner?”

  I shook my head. “No, sir. He did the fair thing.”

  Dad nodded. “Yes, he did. I’m happy that you recognize that.” He went into the living room with the tray, and soon I heard his laughter.

  I trudged up the stairs. At the top of the steps in the hall there was a huge bookcase, six shelves tall. I turned on the hall light and found myself looking at the books, an idle activity. Then my eyes lit on one. It was titled Advanced Mathematics, a Guide for Self-Study. It was well-thumbed, some of the pages dog-eared. Its index included several chapters on differential equations and calculus. I found a piece of yellowed notebook paper within, calculations on it in Dad’s handwriting. I realized I was holding the book he had used to teach himself the mathematics he needed for his job. Then I wondered why he hadn’t mentioned it to me. Maybe, I fumed, he didn’t think I could learn what was in it.

  Reverend Lanier once preached that when a door is shut in our faces, we shouldn’t worry, because someday, if we’re properly patient, God just might open another. My mother, never the patient sort, had a different idea. If a door closes, she amended to me after his sermon, find yourself a window and climb through it. I took Dad’s book—it was mine now—into my room.

  16

  A NATURAL ARROGANCE

  Auk XX

  DURING THE LAST week of March 1959, Dad went off to Cleveland, Ohio, for a mining-engineering conference. He was to give a presentation on ventilation, a great honor for a man without an engineering degree. It was a strange sensation knowing that he was not in Coalwood, not even in the same state. I felt uneasy without him nearby, but I wasn’t sure why. In my nightly prayers, I always included by rote Mom and Dad, Jim, my uncles and aunts and grandparents (whether they were already in heaven or not), all the soldiers, sailors, and marines, Daisy Mae, Lucifer, Dandy, Poteet, and Chipper too. For the entire week, I added a special request that my father come back safely from his long journey.

  My prayers worked, and Dad came home with a paper bag full of gifts. Mom got a faux-pearl necklace. Jim got a pair of binoculars. I got a fountain pen. The night after his return, Dad came upstairs and peeked into my room and asked me what I was doing. “Studying calculus,” I replied. I didn’t really want to discuss it with him, because I was sure he’d criticize me for wasting my time.

  “You told me Mr. Turner wasn’t going to let you take calculus,” he said in an accusing voice.

  “I’m learning on my own,” I answered, and reluctantly showed him the book I was using.

  He frowned. “That’s funny. I don’t remember you asking if you could use my book.”

  To divert him, I asked a question that I needed answered anyway. I pointed at an equation that defined the slope of a line. “I don’t understand this little triangle,” I said.

  “You’re not getting anywhere if you don’t understand that,” he said. “It’s called a delta. Delta means change—the difference between one value and a
nother over time.” He went down on one knee and took the pencil from my hand. “You see, if the y coordinate and the x coordinate change, the point they describe changes too. Then if you change the time period—” He stopped in mid-sentence. “If you’re not getting your class, why are you learning calculus on your own?”

  “Dad, we’re doing good down at Cape Coalwood. Come see us.”

  He stood up. “Well, maybe when I have time—”

  “You always have time for Jim,” I blurted out, surprising myself as much as him with my vehemence. I let out a nervous breath. “Just come and see, Dad,” I said. As much as I detested myself for it, I heard pleading in my voice.

  He opened the door. “I still haven’t given up on you being a mining engineer. We could work together.”

  I shook my head. “I don’t want to do that.”

  “You don’t want—little man, when you grow up, you’re going to find out there’s a lot of things you’re going to have to do whether you like it or not.”

  “Yes, sir, I know—”

  “But what I think doesn’t mean a hill of beans to you, does it?”

  “That’s not true!” How could I explain? I struggled to find the words to tell Dad that just because I wanted to work for Dr. von Braun, it didn’t mean I was against him. And why couldn’t he be as proud of my wanting to build rockets as he was of Jim wanting to play football? Jim was leaving Coalwood too, wasn’t he?

  “You’re not going to do anything I ask you to do, are you?” Dad accused.

  “Dad, I …” I couldn’t find the words. I cursed myself for my awkwardness in front of him.

  He gave me a look of such disappointment that tears came to my eyes. Then he left, firmly closing the door behind him. A tear rolled down my cheek. I wiped it away with my shirtsleeve. It disgusted me. How could I let Dad get at me like that? I knew he didn’t understand what I was doing, but I was right, wasn’t I? The future was somewhere else, not in Coalwood, and I had to get ready for it. That’s what Mom believed and a lot of other people too. But if I was so right and my father was so wrong, why did it make me feel so bad? If he’d just come to Cape Coalwood and see …

  Despite my disgust, the tears kept coming. As always when I needed to clear my mind, I went over to my bedroom window and looked outside. Daisy Mae joined me, nuzzling my wet cheek. I could see miners moving up the old path, their lunch buckets glinting from the lights bolted high on the man-hoist. Other men were coming down the path, their work done. Every one of those men knew exactly who he was and what he was supposed to do. I wondered if the day would ever come when I would be able to say the same. I was sincerely beginning to doubt it.

  I ARRIVED home from school the next day and found a note on my desk: Mr. Ferro called—machine shop. How about we countersink the nozzle, one side or the other or both? (Sonny—do you know enough to answer?) Love, Mom.

  I sneaked a call in on the black phone to Mr. Ferro. I told him I thought countersinking the nozzle was a good idea. That meant the removal of cone-shaped material from each end, saving weight. I figured we’d get a little increase in altitude as a result.

  “The men thought you’d like it, Sonny,” Mr. Ferro said. “As a matter of fact, Caton already did it. Got you a three-footer ready, nozzle countersunk forty-five degrees both ends. You want to come get it? And also we were wonderin’ if you might launch this weekend?”

  When I said yes, Mr. Ferro yelled my answer to his machinists and I heard a whoop. “Tell ’at rocket boy we’ll all be there!” someone yelled, and then I heard them do a simulated countdown. “Five—four—three—two—one—whooosh!”

  I biked down to the big machine shop, finding the three-footer laid out on a black cloth on a table in the rear of the facility. Besides the countersunk nozzle, Mr. Caton showed off his new design for attaching the fins to the casement. He had constructed a flange that ran an inch past the length of the fin on both ends and bent it to match the curve of the casement. Two narrow straps cut from cold-rolled sheet steel were lapped over the extended flange and used to clamp the fins solidly in place. As beautiful as the design was, I worried over its weight. I also worried whether Mr. Caton had made too many changes at once. “Naw, Sonny,” Mr. Caton said. “It would take you forever to find the best design if you only made one change at a time.”

  I understood Mr. Caton, but I knew it would spur an argument with Quentin. Quentin preferred making our design changes one at a time so if we had a failure, we’d know its likely cause.

  Mr. Caton used red paint to letter Auk XX down the length of the shiny steel casement on one side, BCMA on the other. The wooden nose cone was also painted a bright red. We stepped back and admired our creation. It looked like a first-rate, professional job. At school, I consulted with the other boys and it was agreed we would load Auk XX with melted rocket candy the following Friday and fire it on Saturday. Quentin caught the school bus to Coalwood to help me do the loading and then spend the night at my house so we could get an early start. When he saw all the changes Mr. Caton had made, his lip went out. “He may be a first-class machinist, but he knows nothing about scientific principles,” he said. “To be successful, we must carefully test before making such modifications.”

  I told him about my conversation with the machinist. “I think he’s right,” I said. “It’ll take us forever your way.”

  “And when this rocket blows up and you don’t have a clue what caused it?” Quentin asked, his face pinched. “What will you have learned then?”

  “The men down at Cape Canaveral say they learn more from a failure than a success,” I countered.

  “Then those men are full of crap.”

  “Is that what you think of me too?” I barked at him. “That I’m full of crap?”

  “No, Sonny,” Quentin replied calmly. “I think you’re in a hurry, but for what I have no idea.”

  I knew how to cheer him up. “That’s right. I am in a hurry. You should be too. We’re going to enter the science fair next year.” The truth was, I had been quietly giving it some thought all along, especially with Miss Riley often asking me if I’d decided to do it. She had been so good to me, getting me the book and all, that I wanted to please her. But what had truly pushed me into it was my anger toward Dad. If we won the science fair, that would show him, wouldn’t it? I could wave whatever medals and ribbons we got under Dad’s nose. If we lost, I would be no worse off than I was.

  Quentin immediately brightened at the prospect. “Are you serious? That’s wonderful. We’ll win it all—county, state, and national! I know it!”

  I put down the spoons I’d been using to measure the ingredients of the rocket candy. “Win it all? I thought you liked to take things one at a time.”

  Quentin stared at me. “Sonny, your parents can put you through college, can’t they?”

  I wondered how much I should tell Quentin about the kind of war being waged between my parents. “Mom’s talked about it,” I said cautiously. “I think she’ll see that I go if I want to.”

  “Well, my parents can’t pay for my college—they just barely keep me and my sisters in clothes and corn bread. I don’t know about the other boys, but I bet their parents can’t do much for them either. Yet I know—and they all know too—that somehow we’re all going. You’re the key, Sonny. You’re our ticket to college.”

  “Me?” I felt like he’d handed me a big sackful of rocks. “Quentin, I don’t know if they give out scholarships at the science fair, even at the national level. Medals and ribbons and such is all we’ll get. It’s for the honor of it, more than anything.”

  He shook his head at me, ever the patient teacher. “Do you not understand how our audacity will be perceived? Do you not understand, even now, what we have already accomplished, us coal miners’ kids down in deepest West by God Virginia? Perhaps there may not be a direct scholarship prize, but success will get us noticed by someone. It’s our chance, Sonny. My chance.”

  The imaginary sack of rocks got even heavier.
I thought our rockets were to help us get jobs someday with Dr. von Braun, but Quentin was saying they were for something much more immediate. I started to tell him to forget it—it couldn’t possibly work out—but then I thought of Dad. I had my own reason to win, didn’t I?

  When I turned back to loading rocket candy, I felt something I had never felt before—powerful, confident, and angry all at once. It seemed a natural arrogance that felt good. “All right, Q” was all I said.

  AUK XX zipped up the launch pole, accelerating a hundred feet in an instant, climbing to two hundred feet, three hundred feet, hurtling vigorously toward the blue spring sky. Quentin and Billy jumped to their theodolites, but just as they got the angle on the speeding rocket, it exploded and steel shrapnel rained down on Cape Coalwood while we boys scrambled back inside the block-house and the machine-shop crew backed away on the road. When we heard the last thunk of rocket remnants hitting slack, we went out and began collecting the pieces. The machinists morosely gathered around the blockhouse. I carried the largest piece of the rocket, a center section of the casement, to Mr. Caton. Our proud lettering along the side was scorched, showing only the k of the Auk and only one X of the XX. “Was it the countersink that made it explode?” he asked.

  “I don’t think so,” I replied. “The blowout seems about a third up the casement.”

  “There’s no way to tell what happened,” Quentin muttered, bringing in a handful of fragments. “You changed so many things at once. Who knows?”

  Mr. Caton sorrowfully inspected the casement piece, running his fingers along the shredded ends. “I never thought there was anything powerful enough to blow out a steel tube like this. Bursting pressure’s got to be in the neighborhood of twenty thousand pounds per square inch, even with the weld.”