Rocket Boys

by Homer Hickam

That sounded hopeful. “Is there an operation?”

  “No, nothing to be done. The doctor said to just stay as healthy as I can. Get plenty of sleep, eat whatever I want, that kind of thing. The worst thing is I won’t be much help to you on the science fair. After a day of teaching, I just can’t keep my eyes open. You’re going to have to prepare for it by yourself. Can you do that?”

  I didn’t know if I could but I said, “Yes, ma’am,” anyway. The bell sounded for the next class and she waved me away.

  “Keep this to yourself,” she said.

  I yes-ma’amed her again and hurried down the hall as the last few students slipped inside their classrooms. I went past Mr. Turner’s office, the last thing any tardy student wanted to do. He saw me, but said nothing, even nodded at me, his mouth set in a grim line. I guess he knew where I’d been.

  “SONNY, I just got told by the union I can’t work on your rockets no more,” Mr. Caton said on the black phone. “We’re out on strike as of tomorrow.”

  I was stunned. “Did you finish my stuff?” I asked him. He was supposed to be working on Auk XXV plus a variety of nozzles, casements, and nose cones for display at the science fair.

  “Nope. Ferro put us to work on hurry-up mine projects after he heard about the strike.”

  “How long’s it going to last?”

  “About twenty-four hours,” Dad said, coming through the foyer. “It doesn’t have a leg to stand on.”

  Mr. Caton overheard Dad. “Your dad’s wrong, Sonny. This is no wildcat strike. Union headquarters is behind it. It’s going to be a long one.”

  I told Mr. Caton good-bye and then went to Dad, who had taken his paper to his easy chair—now moved away from the window. “Don’t start with me,” he warned. “I didn’t cause this strike and I can’t end it. But the machine shop is open. Caton or anybody else who wants to can work.”

  “He can’t fight the union.”

  “Well, apparently neither can I.”

  “Dad, I need your help. I need to be ready for the science fair next week. I’ve got to have the stuff Mr. Caton was building for me.”

  He kept his one good eye on the paper, the other one tightly closed. A year ago the town had cheered his bravery. Now, when things were tough, a lot of people said he was just a mean old one-eyed man. “Sorry, little man, but I can’t let the union get away with striking over nothing.”

  I reported the situation to the BCMA the next morning. We talked things over and hatched a plan. It was risky, but it was all I could think to do.

  The machine shop was unlocked that night, as it was every night, and Sherman was waiting for me when I arrived on my bike. We opened the front door and switched on the fluorescent lights, which blinked on, bathing the rows of lathes and shapers and drill presses in a harsh blue-green glare. I found Mr. Caton’s lathe and set up a piece of bar stock in it as I had seen him do. I got a cutting tool and put it in the special jig he had fashioned for our nozzles. I turned the lathe on and it whirred up to speed. My first cut was serviceable, but when I tried to make the interior angled cut, the tool wobbled and jammed. “Dammit!” I muttered in frustration. I stopped the lathe and pulled out the bar and threw it on the concrete floor.

  Sherman picked up the bar and pondered the wounded piece of steel. “I didn’t realize this was so hard.”

  I wiped the sweat off my forehead with a bandanna. “Neither did I,” I admitted.

  I changed to a fresh tool and went at it again. I got the first cut, but again, when I started cutting the interior angle, the bar worked its way out of the jig, and the tool dug in and broke. An hour had passed and all I had to show for it were two mined pieces of steel.

  That was when the shop door opened and Mr. Caton crept inside, holding his finger to his lips. I wanted to hug him, but of course, I didn’t. He inspected our poor results. “You done pretty good,” he whispered. “Yeah, that interior cut’s a bugger. Whyn’t you boys go on home? Not a word to anybody, okay?”

  That was fine by us. Sherman and I sneaked out the door into the cool, damp night. I biked past the Club House and the Big Store and across the bridge and through the silent darkness. As I approached the line of little frame houses on both sides of the creek, I came upon a knot of men gathered on and around Pooky’s porch. Others sat on the hoods of trucks parked across the road. “Homer’s boy,” I heard somebody say, and I put my head down and pedaled faster. I heard a screen door slam behind me, and my heart thumped as I heard footsteps, but then they stopped.

  I pedaled on. A car came up behind me and then swerved in front, stopping alongside the road. I recognized the three boys who got out. They were all sons of unemployed miners, including Pooky’s son, Calvin. Calvin was one of the boys who had made a practice of beating me up in grade school every time there was a strike. Well, those days were over as far as I was concerned. There were too many of them to fight, so I pedaled at them and then jumped off my bike and scrambled out of the street light and up the hillside. There was a path there that led to the dirt road that ran to the Coalwood School, and I figured I could hide in the darkness. Once on the road, I dodged into some tall weeds and huddled there until I heard them run past me. “Sonny?” they called. “We just want to talk.”

  I was too smart to fall for that. After a few minutes of silence, I worked my way back down the path, picked up my bike, and darted behind the houses to another path and made my way home. I crawled in bed, with only a few hours before I’d have to get up and catch the school bus. It took me a while to get to sleep and when I did, Mom and Dad and Miss Riley and Mr. Caton and Calvin Suggs alternately intruded into my dreams. Nothing seemed right, the world askew.

  THE newspapers said the strike at Coalwood was just one of many across the county. Since the UMWA was notorious for lacking strike funds, a lot of families were facing a potentially desperate situation. The Salvation Army pitched in as best it could, and commodity food was delivered by the state, but I heard my mother saying across the fence to Mrs. Sharitz that she was afraid people, even in Coalwood, might soon go hungry. The Women’s Club made up baskets of food and delivered them. Mom helped to organize the effort, but did not go on the delivery rounds. She knew the people would resent her if she did.

  Since it was a political season, and Senators Kennedy and Humphrey were crisscrossing the state running for president, the glare of national scrutiny was settling on West Virginia. A lot of people in the state resented the fact that television reporters were flooding in and sending back reports about how ignorant, poor, and helpless everybody was in West Virginia. Both Senator Kennedy and Senator Humphrey thought they had the solution for West Virginia: active assistance from the federal government in the form of free food, with federal-government jobs to follow. If West Virginia agreed to vote for one or the other of the men, food was apparently going to come into the state in dump-truck loads. When Humphrey was asked what was to become of the unemployed miners, he said they would be retrained, which got a big round of applause from his audience. “Retrained for what?” I wondered, watching television at Roy Lee’s house.

  “Retrain miners.” Roy Lee’s mother laughed from the sink where she was washing dishes. “I’d like to see that trick!”

  Dad could hardly stand to read the newspaper anymore. I came up from the lab just as he threw down the paper on the kitchen table. “The union will never come off this strike if they think all this help is coming their way.”

  “Are you ready to go to Myrtle Beach?” Mom asked.

  “Next week,” he said grumpily.

  “That’s what you said last week.”

  “I’ve got to stick around for the negotiating.”

  “Nobody’s negotiating.”

  I went upstairs and closed my door and lay down on my bed. Daisy Mae joined me in the crook of my arm. My stomach gave me a twinge and I felt nauseated. I was feeling sick to my stomach a lot lately. Everything seemed to be piling on top of me.

  SPRING brought rain, and in 1960, everybody was wo
rried about flooding. The problem was that rainwater collected behind the slack dumps up the hollows. Usually, the company bulldozed the slack dams open, but during a strike that wasn’t going to happen. A small slack dam finally let loose in a hollow near Six. I woke up one Saturday morning to see a shallow flood coming down the road past the mine. It continued on down the valley, all the way to the Big Store. It wasn’t so deep I couldn’t bike through it, but I was soaked by the time I got to Mr. Caton’s house. I went around to his back door and knocked, looking around to see if anybody had seen me. Mr. Caton appeared and furtively handed me the nozzles and nose cones in a cloth flour sack. “The casements are in the alley behind the shop, stocked with regular tubing stock,” he said.

  I nodded. Roy Lee would pick them up the next day and hide them in his backseat.

  On my way back home, Calvin Suggs and his two buddies plunged off his porch and came after me, splashing in their bare feet across the road. They almost got me, but I swung the sack over my head and made them duck. It kept them at bay—until the sack slipped out of my hand and went sailing into the creek.

  I jumped off my bike and knocked Calvin down with a solid fist to his chest. Astonished, he sat down in the flooded road and watched while I plunged into the swirling, muddy water. The flood nearly swept my feet out from under me, but I kept flailing, frantically reaching down to feel the bottom of the creek. All I felt were rocks, mud, and cold water. When I clambered out empty-handed, I walked right up to him and punched Calvin again. He went down, his nose spraying blood. The other two boys rushed up. I started swinging at them too, and they scattered. When Calvin got up and tried to grab me, I elbowed him in the ribs and he staggered back. “What the hell’s wrong with you?” he gasped, wiping his bloody nose with the back of his hand. His left eye was swelling up.

  “You made me lose my nozzles and nose cones!”

  “Your rocket stuff?”

  “Yes, you moron. My rocket stuff!”

  The three union boys and I stood in the swirling waters coming down the road and looked at one another. Calvin was definitely going to have a black eye. “Calvin, what the crap are you doin’?” Pooky called from his porch.

  “Looks like little Sonny’s got your boy’s measure, Pook,” one of the miners sitting on his porch guffawed.

  “Gawddamm you, Calvin, smack ’im, smack ’im good.”

  Calvin ignored his father. “I’m sorry you lost your rocket stuff,” he told me, truly contrite. “I … we just wanted to talk to you.”

  I didn’t believe him. I balled up my fists. “Come on, let’s get it over with!”

  “When the creek goes down, we’ll help you look for your stuff,” he said, running his hand through his wet hair.

  I finally saw that there was no fight in him. I looked at the creek and its swift water. “No need to. It’s gone, thanks to you.”

  “Calvin!”

  “Shut up, Paw!” Calvin helped me pick up my bike and then held on to it. “Sonny? When you get out of here and go live at Cape Canaveral, could you maybe help us get jobs?”

  The other boys nodded, hope written on their wet faces, their long hair down in their eyes. “It’ll be a while before I’m down there,” I said.

  Calvin let go of my bike. “That’s okay. We’ll be here or in the Army. You’ll be able to find us.”

  I rode thoughtfully away, another fragment of the known world gone.

  The next day, Mom said she heard a light knock on our front door, and when she opened it she saw Calvin running off. There was a wet, dirty sack on the porch. Inside it were my nozzles and nose cones.

  THE next Thursday afternoon, Mom drove me over the mountain to the McDowell County Science Fair in Welch. The Buick was loaded down with the panels, posters, and rocket hardware of my fair exhibit. I had decided to title my entry A Study of Amateur Rocketry Techniques. The other boys followed in Roy Lee’s car and helped me carry my hardware up to the Welch High School gymnasium, which sat high on the side of a steep hill. Mr. Turner had given us the afternoon off from school. Except for Mom, we were on our own. Miss Riley was out sick.

  Nervously, we set up the display, which consisted of a three-hinged fiberboard on which I had taped a number of posters showing nozzle calculations, the parabolic trajectory of our rockets, and the trigonometry we had used to calculate altitudes. I also had drawings of the nozzles and casements and how they worked. Wernher von Braun’s autographed photograph sat in a place of honor, and in front, lying down, was the Auk XXV casement. Beside it was one of the nozzles that Mr. Caton had surreptitiously built. It was a beautiful construction, the intricate curves glowing silvery in the light.

  We made a quick audit of our competition. A Welch High School display of plant fossils found in coal mines seemed our stiffest competition. “Just a bunch of old rocks,” O’Dell said. “Nothing to worry about.”

  I wasn’t so certain. Each fossilized plant was identified, and there was also a chart showing the evolution of plants from the dinosaurs to the present day. I thought it was a good job, and I suspected the judges would think so too.

  The Pocahontas Industrial Council for Education was the sponsoring organization, a committee created by the businesses in Welch and some of the larger coal mines. O’Dell said the judges were “Welch courthouse politicians,” whatever that meant. There were six of them, and they came and stood in a little semicircle around me when it was my turn. They each carried a clipboard. “Which high school are you from, son?”

  “Big Creek, sir. Miss Riley’s physics class.”

  One of them squinted at a casement. “You ever blow anything up?”

  I thought about Mom’s rose-garden fence and mentally crossed my fingers. “We tend to be careful, sir.”

  “Didn’t you set that forest fire over at Davy?”

  “No, sir. That was an airplane flare.”

  “What’s that?” another judge asked, pointing at the nozzle, and I got my chance to expound on what it was for, how its dimensions were calculated, and what it did.

  A judge peered at von Braun’s photo. “I read about you in that grocery-store newspaper. Sounds like you boys do some crazy stuff,” he added.

  “How high will it fly?” another said, pointing at Auk XXV.

  “I think around three miles,” I said, and then explained how I made that judgment and how we’d measure it when the time came.

  The six men rocked on their heels and looked at one another and all hmmed at the same time. “Looks to me like this could be really dangerous,” said the one who had already called us “crazy.” He frowned, wrote something down, and then they went off to look at the other displays.

  “Those morons won’t let you win,” O’Dell griped, coming out from behind the display. “Not after you said you were from Big Creek.”

  “Looks to me like this could be really dangerous!” Quentin muttered. “Like what isn’t, in the pursuit of science?”

  At that point, I was just happy to have it over with. I had done the best I could. Mom took us all to lunch at the Flat Iron drugstore. When we returned, the judges were waiting for me in front of my display. The lead judge shook my hand and handed me a blue ribbon. “Congratulations, Mr. Hickam,” he said. “Looks like you’re going to Bluefield for the area finals.”

  “I knew we’d win!” O’Dell yelled, and took the ribbon out of my hand and, to the amusement of the judges, did a little jig.

  Mom stood to one side, a pleased, proud smile on her face. She hugged Quentin when he came over to her.

  I was still trying to accept what had happened. I couldn’t entirely believe it. We’d won! I couldn’t wait to tell Miss Riley—and Dad.

  DAD was up at the mine all that evening, inside working with his foreman doing safety inspections. Mom said she’d tell him the first thing the next morning. As soon as I got off the school bus, I headed for Miss Riley’s classroom. She was at her desk. When I told her we’d won, she gave me a big happy grin and sent a runner to tell Mr. Turner. Th
e principal tracked me down in history class and ordered me out into the hall. He stared at me. “I just made five dollars off the county superintendent,” he said, nearly grinning. “When’s the next contest?” I told him the area finals in Bluefield were to take place in two weeks. “Got to get my bet in,” he said, and went at a near trot back toward his office.

  The win at the County Science Fair made us a little more famous. The Coalwood Women’s Club invited us to speak at their monthly meeting in the room above the post office. All our grade-school teachers were there, of course. They beamed with pride. Quentin and I did most of the talking, boisterously proclaiming how difficult the calculations were and describing how our rockets flew. The ladies breathlessly applauded us. We were next invited to the Kiwanis Club in War and were a hit there as well. The president of the club gave us a speaker’s certificate and proclaimed us the “Pride of the Hollows.”

  Mom and Dad left for Myrtle Beach the following Friday, and I had the house to myself. It was also the weekend of the junior–senior prom. With the Buick gone, Uncle Clarence agreed to let me use his car. I had asked Melba June, the junior that I had danced with at the Christmas formal, to be my date, and she had jumped into my arms, right there in the auditorium. I saw Dorothy sitting alone, watching us. She looked away quickly. Dorothy had a new boyfriend, Roy Lee said, another college guy, but he also said things weren’t working out. I made it a special point not to care.

  We scheduled a rocket launch on the same day as the prom. Basil’s effusive prose summoned our audience:

  The BCMA will be launching from their Cape Coalwood this Saturday. It is a thing of glory to see, all right. Your reporter has already posted their adventures in this space, but it is worth repeating that just about anything can happen at one of their blast-offs, as witness the one where two of our intrepid boys crept out under the cover of swiftly manufactured armor.…

  The people gathered on the road as usual, except this time I noticed they were separated into union and company families, each keeping an icy distance. We ran up our flag and launched. Auk XXV peaked out at the predicted fifteen thousand feet, neatly falling downrange, landing with a solid thunk near the end of the slack. The impact bent the casement and shattered the wooden nose cone. I had decided to line the interior of the nozzle with a veneer of water putty, an inspiration that I hoped would act as an ablative heat sink. It had worked as I hoped, the only erosion just a few BB-size pits tight past the throat. Quentin peered at it and put his hand on my shoulder. “Prodigious, Sonny, prodigious.” He looked at me with heightened respect. “You know, every so often I think you really are a rocket boy.”