Rocket Boys

by Homer Hickam

  “It turns out,” Mom sighed, “that our Ohio owners had made a big deal with General Motors. It needed coal, and fast. The union could’ve asked for little pink hearts to be pasted on their lunch buckets and the company would’ve given it to them. Your dad was caught in the middle.”

  O’Dell’s eyes were wide with excitement. “Then Mr. Dubonnet yells out so everybody can hear, ‘Homer signs this time!’ ”

  Mom said, “Oh, your dad got hot! ‘You can forget that, John!’ he yelled. ‘I’m not signing anything!’ ”

  “Mr. Dubonnet had the agreement all ready,” Billy told me. “He had this folder under his arm and he opened it and took out a paper and brought it over and shoved it right under your dad’s nose.”

  Mom shook her head. “John told your dad, ‘I don’t often agree with you, Homer, but by God I trust you. The company will sign anything and then go do whatever it wants to do. But if your name’s on it, I know you’ll quit if the company tries to pull tricks. You sign it or there’s no agreement.’ ”

  “Mr. Bundini signed it right off,” Roy Lee said. “Then he told your dad to sign it too.”

  Mom was up on her ladder, painting in another seagull. At the rate she was going, her sky was going to be filled with them before she was through. “I told your dad to go ahead and sign. What difference would it make, after all? We were leaving for Myrtle Beach, weren’t we?”

  She put down her brush, climbed down off the ladder, and eyed her work critically. “His look told me all I needed to know. I told him, ‘Oh, Homer, I should have known!’ ”

  “Practically everybody in Coalwood was in a circle around the machine shop by then,” O’Dell said, his eyes wide with the memory of it. “Some women had even brought card-table chairs and were sitting down to watch. It was like a movie.”

  “ ‘Elsie, if I sign this, it’s my word. I’ll have to stay.’ ” Mom shook her head, looked out at her rose garden and her telephone-pole-thick fence. “That’s what he said. I looked at everybody around us and then at the other boys and then up at these blamed old mountains. Well, what else could I say but what I did? I had to do it for you, didn’t I? I said, ‘Sign it, Homer.’ ”

  “I’m sorry, Mom,” I said. I really was, in a way.

  She gave me her look that said she didn’t quite believe me. “Your dad asked me if I was staying with him. I told him if I did, he didn’t deserve it. Then you know what he said?”

  “No, ma’am.”

  “He said that was the truth.” She poured herself a cup of coffee and then went over and dabbed a little brown paint on a coconut. “Well, how could a woman leave a man who admitted he wasn’t good enough for her?”

  Roy Lee shrugged. “And that was that. Your dad signed, and then Mr. Caton ran inside the shop and got busy. We boys went in and swept up while he and a couple of the other machinists did the work. People were coming in all the time, hurrying things up. O’Dell built you some new boxes, and I burned rubber all the way across Welch Mountain to make it to the Trailways station in time. When you called to say you won, I swear it was like the whole town cheered. You could hear it all up and down the valley.”

  I listened to everybody who told me their version of the story and said the same thing to each of them and meant it too. “I wish I’d been there to see it.” In all its history, I think it was Coalwood’s best moment, even though my dad lost to the union, and my mom was forced to stay a little longer in the hills. Jake had it right. There’s a plan. If you’re willing to fight it hard enough, you can make it detour for a while, but you’re still going to end up wherever God wants you to be.

  GRADUATION night finally came, and the Big Creek High School class of 1960 walked proudly down the aisle in the gymnasium to receive our diplomas, the boys in green gowns, the girls in white. Dorothy was our valedictorian. Quentin, his B’s in phys. ed. catching up with him, was the salutatorian, tied with Billy. Sherman and O’Dell were in the top ten. Roy Lee and I were back in the pack.

  Dorothy made a speech. I stirred uncomfortably when she raised her eyes from her prepared remarks and seemed to be looking directly at me. She said, “I know each of us will always care what happens to every other person in our class. We have been very lucky to have been joined together by a wonderful experience—our three years together here at Big Creek High School. I will never forget … you.” Then she went back to her speech while I fidgeted.

  When Mr. Turner handed me my diploma, he stopped me for a personal word. “You’ve brought great honor to this school,” he said. “Not bad work for a bomb builder.”

  He had placed my National Science Fair medal in the trophy case of gleaming football awards along with an award certificate that read:

  A STUDY OF AMATEUR ROCKETRY TECHNIQUES

  HOMER H. HICKAM, JR.

  BIG CREEK HIGH SCHOOL

  WAR, WEST VIRGINIA

  GOLD AND SILVER AWARD

  1960

  The boys and girls of Big Creek went back to their chairs and held their diplomas and looked at one another, filled with present joy and impending loss. Dorothy left before I could talk to her. I took Melba June to the graduation dance that night. Dorothy wasn’t there. I would not see her again for twenty-five years.

  AFTER graduation, the BCMA gathered in my room. In a more perfect world, perhaps, everything would have worked out as Quentin hoped and we would have all gotten scholarships because of our win. It didn’t happen. Instead, O’Dell, Billy, and Roy Lee took the Air Force recruiter up on his offer. Immediately after graduation, they were headed for Lackland Air Force Base for basic training, and then they would use the GI Bill for college. Sherman said his parents had come up with some money for him to go to West Virginia Tech, and he was going to work for the rest of it. I decided to take my mother up on her offer of an Elsie Hickam scholarship. I was still trying to decide which college to go to, but I thought maybe the engineering program at the Virginia Polytechnic Institute. Quentin may not have gotten his scholarship either, but he said if boys from McDowell County, West Virginia, could win a prize at the National Science Fair, he was sure he could figure out how to go to college even if he didn’t have any money. He had decided to enroll at Marshall College in Huntington, West Virginia. He wasn’t certain how he was going to pay for it, but he’d figure it out when he got there. Somehow, I knew he’d do fine.

  The only thing left for the BCMA to do was to decide what to do with the six rockets I had brought back from Indianapolis. Sherman suggested we split them among us for souvenirs, but Quentin wouldn’t hear of it. “Sonny, I’ve got a great idea,” he said. “See, we get this big balloon and fill it full of helium. Then we hang our best rocket from it and let it float up about ten miles and then launch. I’ve done the calculations. We’ll make it into space.”

  O’Dell had another thought. “Let’s make a day of it,” he proposed. “Launch from morning to night. We’ll put up notices, have Basil write us up, make it a big deal.”

  “It would be a way of thanking everybody,” Roy Lee said.

  Sherman and Billy both said they liked it.

  Quentin sat down hard on the edge of the bed. “We could have done it, you guys,” he said sadly. “We could have gone into space—”

  “Aw, Quentin, it’s a miracle we ever got anything off the ground at all,” Roy Lee laughed. “Let’s do this and get out of town while we still can.”

  FOR the last time, we posted our little notices at the Big Store and the post office. Between the ads for whole chickens and fresh milk in his paper, Basil did us proud:

  It is a moment that may well go down in McDowell County history. On June 4, 1960, the Big Creek Missile Agency, fresh from its medal-winning performance at the National Science Fair, is sponsoring a day of rocket launches at its Cape Coalwood range. Everyone reading these words is invited. I tell you this: This writer will be there and with him everyone I know. There is no more inspiring sight than that of a sleek, silvery BCMA rocket blasting off from its black, sparkling slack
launchpad, hustling into the sky with a backdrop of green mountains, splitting the blue sky with its roar as it hurtles high on a great column of smoke. This may very well be the last chance we will have to see this grand sight, this amazing sight, this glorious sight.…

  My basement lab stank one last time with zincoshine preparation, six rockets curing at once. All the boys came to help, and the fumes of the remnants of John Eye’s elixir left us all a little giggly.

  I woke early on the first Saturday in June, the day of the final launches. I moved to my window as I had done so many times before, to look out at the mountains and the highway that led past the mine. I half expected to see the usual line of miners making their way on the path to and from the tipple, and Dad among them, getting his reports, giving his encouragements and directives, but the path was empty. The mine hadn’t gone to a full seven-day shift, even with the new orders for coal. I heard the familiar sound of the backyard gate opening and closing, and there Dad was, going alone up the path to the mine. He walked hurriedly with his head down, as if the world depended on him getting to his office not a moment late. His hands were jammed deep in the pockets of his loose canvas pants, and his dented hat sat on the back of his head.

  A car came down the road from the Welch direction and turned right, toward town central. Another followed it, and then another. When I went to the kitchen and made myself breakfast, I heard the faint rumble of more cars and trucks passing the house. I thought for a moment they might be going to our launch, but that wasn’t possible. It wasn’t to begin for another two hours. I went back to my room and put on my summer launch-day clothes—jeans, short-sleeve shirt, and boots. Before I left, I took a look around my room and suddenly felt as if I’d returned to it after being gone for fifty years. There were my shelves, heavy with books and stacks of note paper filled with the calculations that had defined our rockets. There was my little dresser and the airplane models on top. Pieces of rockets, old nose cones, bent casements, and scarred nozzles were scattered everywhere. The feeling of being gone and then returning was so strong I had to sit down on my bed for a while. In times past, Daisy Mae would have sought me out, rushing to get her head petted and her ears scratched. Nothing stirred. I sat alone, everything quiet except for the sound of cars and trucks passing by.

  Roy Lee came to the back door, knocking politely. I met him in the kitchen. Mom was at the kitchen table in front of her beach painting, which she had finally finished. There was a beach house and a woman standing in front of it looking out to sea. “Don’t blow yourself up,” Mom said, with a look that defied interpretation.

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  Quentin arrived as we were loading rockets in the backseat of Roy Lee’s car. Auk XXXI was so long we had to roll down the window to fit it in. Quentin and I sat in the backseat, gently cradling the rockets. Billy was waiting with Sherman on the bridge that crossed over the creek to Sherman’s house. They wedged into the front of Roy Lee’s car. We met O’Dell at the Frog Level cross-roads, and he squeezed into the back in between rockets, careful not to bend the fragile fins. We spoke little.

  A mile before we got to Cape Coalwood, we came upon the first parked car. Tag was there. He motioned us to him. “Bet there’s never been so many cars in Coalwood since it was built. I’m going to park ’em alongside the road, single file. The people can walk in from there.”

  We were astonished at the number of cars and people. Behind us, more were coming. Roy Lee had put two cases of pop and a gallon jug of water in the trunk to offer our audience. We were going to be a bit short.

  Some people saw the rocket sticking out of the window, and shouts of encouragement rang out. “The rocket boys, hoo!” “We’re proud of you, boys!” “A-OK, all systems go!”

  Some of the people we recognized, but not most. “They’re coming from all over the county, looks like,” Billy said in wonder.

  We drove out on the slack and unloaded our rockets with tender care. Tag seemed everywhere, shooing the curious away from us, turning cars around that violated his single-file parking dictum. I looked up the road past several curves, and the sun sparkled off parked cars as far as I could see. The Coalwood Women’s Club was setting up a picnic table with all kinds of pastries and jugs of punch and tea. Tag reserved special places of honor for Sherman’s and O’Dell’s parents and Roy Lee’s mother.

  It was noon by the time we were ready to get our first rocket off. We ran up our flag. It was the same one O’Dell’s mom had made for us nearly three years before, a little tattered but still serviceable. Wind was negligible. Quentin disappeared downrange trailing telephone wires and carrying his theodolite. We signaled Tag when we were ready, and a hush fell over Cape Coalwood. I looked through the blockhouse portal before beginning the first countdown and saw Miss Riley sitting at the Women’s Club table. Two of the Great Six teachers were fanning her. Jake stood nearby, with Mr. Turner.

  Auk XXVI had a simple countersink nozzle. It zipped off the pad and flew nicely downrange as if buoyed by the cheers and applause. Three thousand feet, we all agreed, and the altitude was reported to the crowd, which ooohed and ahhhed appropriately.

  Auk XXVII was a one-and-one-quarter-inch-wide, three-and-a-half-foot-long rocket, designed to reach ten thousand feet. When it took off, it jumped from the pad on a silvery column of smoke, stuttered strangely in little puffs, and then seemed to find its way, another spout of fire sending it hurtling skyward. Since it had been the last rocket we’d loaded, maybe the zincoshine had not entirely cured. The crowd, still growing, took no notice of its problems and clapped and yelled exuberantly as it disappeared. It hit with a ground-shaking thunk downrange. Nine thousand feet. Not bad for a little rocket not given time to cure.

  We hauled out Auk XXVIII and set it up. It was designed for fifteen thousand feet. Readying the rockets for launch was hot work, and refreshments were sent over. Mr. and Mrs. Bundini and their beautiful daughters waved at us from the picnic under the trees that shaded the clearing by the road. I saw Mr. Caton and our machinists in a knot. They were working the crowd like politicians, telling their rocket-building stories. Mr. Dubonnet and his union leaders stood nearby, their arms crossed, contented smiles on their faces.

  Auk XXVIII worried me for a moment when it bent slightly toward the crowd before straightening up and flying past Rocket Mountain, accelerating on a thick plume of smoke. “It’s going to land behind the mountain,” Billy predicted, and he was right. We saw it fall, but the noise of the crowd was too great for us to hear the familiar twang of steel hitting rock and mountain earth.

  I started to tell him to wait, we’d pick it up later, but Billy was off on a run, heading up the mountain. Some of the men from the crowd joined his trek. A half hour later they all came running back with Billy holding the rocket over his head, yellow jackets in close pursuit. The crowd scattered. Jake moved to stand over Miss Riley with a folded newspaper, but the angry bees had too many targets and gave up in confusion, retreating back up the mountain.

  Auk XXIX and Auk XXX were both designed for twenty thousand feet, but with different dimensions. Auk XXIX was two inches in diameter, XXX two and a quarter but shorter. Auk XXIX was six feet long, the longest rocket we had ever fired. It was such a beauty, I almost regretted having to launch it and see it shattered back on earth. It took off in the mightiest roar ever witnessed at Cape Coalwood, tearing out of a caldron of flame and smoke. Our calculations put it just under four miles. Auk XXX vaulted off the pad similarly, its parabola drifting up to twenty-three thousand feet. I looked downrange and saw Quentin out on the slack, joyfully jumping up and down.

  Auk XXXI was our last and biggest rocket—six and a half feet long, two and a quarter inches in diameter. We carefully raised it into a vertical position and then lowered it on the launch rod. Inside it was the nozzle touched by Dr. von Braun. It had been designed to reach an altitude of five miles. With a rocket this size, I thought perhaps we were exceeding the critical dimensions of zincoshine. I hoped it wouldn’t
blow up, but I knew it might. I knelt at its base and started twisting together the ignition-wire connections.

  “Sonny,” Roy Lee said. “Do you see who’s here?”

  I looked up from my work. “Who?”

  “Look.”

  Tag opened a path through the crowd, and there stood Dad in his work clothes. Roy Lee went after him, escorted him out on the slack. I heard Roy Lee say, “Come and help us, Mr. Hickam.”

  “You don’t need my help,” Dad said. “I just came to watch.”

  All the boys protested. “No sir, you can help all you want.” “Whatever you want to do, sir, you go ahead and do it.”

  I stood up, brushing the slack off my jeans. “A rocket won’t fly unless somebody lights the fuse,” I said. “Come on.”

  Dad entered the blockhouse, and I directed him to the firing panel after checking the connections. “This one’s yours, Dad, if you want it.”

  There was no mistaking the pure delight I saw spread across his face as he knelt in front of the panel. Roy Lee called from the back door. “Whenever you’re ready,” he said.

  I counted down to zero and Dad turned the switch. Auk XXXI erupted, blowing huge chunks of concrete loose from the pad. The crowd took a step backward, and some of them started to run. Auk XXXI seemed to split the air that filled the narrow valley, a shock wave rippling across the slack. Women screamed and men clapped their hands to their ears. We boys came pouring outside, Billy at his theodolite, O’Dell with his binoculars. The thunderous din didn’t stop. Auk XXXI kept pounding us as it climbed. Men, women, and children all watched it with mouths agape, eyes wide, their cheers stuck in their throats.

  At the Big Store, those few old men not at the launch got uncertainly to their feet as the thunder reached them. They stumbled into the road, shading their eyes, the trunk of fire and smoke tearing out of the mountains like God’s finger stuck suddenly toward the sky. In his church, Little Richard raced to the belfry and began to toll the bell in celebration. Some of the junior engineers down from Ohio were on the Club House roof with girlfriends and Jake’s telescope. They raised their beers to what they saw rising from the mountains.