The Coalwood Way (22 page)

22

BACK TO THE DRAWING BOARD

“WHAT DO YOU think?” Quentin asked nervously. It was the third time within the last minute he’d asked the same question. We were standing at the launchpad.
Auk XXIII-A,
with Mr. Caton’s proud putty-lined De Laval nozzle, was ready to go. Dean Crabtree, an auxiliary Rocket Boy, had come over from Caretta to help Roy Lee get the pad ready. But after I had pressed the cork holding the Nichrome hot wire into the nozzle, I saw Billy emerging from the fog, loping across the slack. He came straight to me. “I’m back,” he said.

I felt like hugging him. Instead, I balled up my fist and hit him on the shoulder, though not too hard. “What happened? I thought you were staying with Mr. Turner clear on the other side of the county.”

The other boys came running. Billy gave them all a small, embarrassed grin. “Tell you what,” he said. “I’ve said my share of bad things about Mr. Turner but never again. You know why he’s so hard on us? It’s because he cares.”

“Yeah, yeah,” O’Dell said impatiently. “But why are you here?”

Billy shrugged, his smile lost. “I decided to just come on home and stick it out. I need to watch after my brothers and sisters, anyway. And just knowing that I have a place to go when things get too rough helps out a lot.”

“Anytime you like, you come stay with me,” Sherman said. Except for Quentin, we all echoed the sentiment for our own homes.

Billy drew me aside. “Tell your mom thanks for me. I don’t know how, but I’m going to pay her back.”

“She doesn’t expect anything, Billy.”

“I’ll figure it out,” he said, going over to the pad to help Roy Lee and Dean.

The sun was taking its time burning off the mists swirling around Rocket Mountain. If we launched through the fog, we had a good chance of losing the rocket. If we lost it, then we couldn’t inspect the nozzle, the real purpose of the launch. We just had to wait, as hard as that was. Quentin came over, and we went over our checklist again. “I think it’s going to be a great rocket,” I said. I had designed this one to reach an altitude of precisely two miles. Included in my calculations was a half-pound payload of smoke-producing, high-sulfur, low-grade zincoshine. This was to help us track the rocket better. When the fog lifted, I hoped for either a high solid cloud layer or blue sky. Both were good for tracking because we could see the casements silhouetted against a solid background, clear or cloudy.

“I should have checked your calculations,” Quentin said, still worrying. “Lord knows you have your problems with logarithms.”

“Did I tell you I got all A’s this semester?” I asked serenely. I was watching Billy show Dean how to set up the launch rod. Nothing was going to dent my good mood.

“About a thousand times,” he said. “It is a depressing statistic, is it not? Once out of how many semesters? Five in high school so far! That means you have failed to reach your potential during eighty percent of your academic career.”

“You’re a pal, Quentin,” I said. “By the way, what kind of grades did you get?”

He frowned. “If Coach Mams had an ounce of fairness in his bones, I would’ve had all A’s, too. Once more, I’ve been unfairly graded a B in phys ed.”

“You know, Q, you might want to actually come to his class once in a while,” I suggested. “I’m not sure, but doing something physical in physical education is probably a good idea if you want an A.”

“Can I help it if I often experience a headache at that precise time of day? Do you think it’s easy to tote around all these brains?” He tapped his noggin.

“Are you ever going to set up the theodolite stations?” I wondered. It was the square on my checklist still unchecked.

“When my assistants arrive,” he said haughtily.

“Your what?”

“My assistants. Ah, there they are. Over here, my good men!”

I looked and spied Tug and Hug Yates strolling across the slack. I knew them well. Tug and Hug were twins who worked on the hoot-owl shift. When my class reached the fifth grade, we’d found Tug and Hug patiently waiting for us to catch up with them. As a matter of fact, they had been patiently waiting in Mrs. Mary Alice Cox’s class for nearly four years. It was their final stand at the Coalwood school. Mr. Likens, the Coalwood school principal, figured if Mrs. Cox couldn’t educate them, nobody could. Mrs. Cox had given it her best, but it had turned out to be hopeless. The thing about Tug and Hug was that they were not the least bit disruptive in class, just uninterested. They sat in the back and read when they were asked to read, or wrote when they were asked to write, and took tests when they were given them to take, none of which they ever passed or even came close. They were marking time until Mr. Likens let them loose to go to work in the mine.

When my class moved on to the sixth grade, we left Tug and Hug holding down their two desks in Mrs. Cox’s class. That’s when Mr. Likens finally gave up. He came into their classroom and said, “Boys, we’ve done all we can do for you. You are free to go.” With a whoop, they had bounded from their desks and run down to the bridge that crossed from the school over the railroad tracks. Tug was so excited, he vaulted off the bridge into a full coal car passing below. Hug did the same, not noticing that Tug had caught the last coal car. The next one was the caboose. Hug bounced off the top of it, breaking both his legs. That mishap had delayed the two boys getting their job at the mine but not by much. They had become two perpetually cheerful employees of Olga Coal Company, assigned more or less permanently to the hoot-owl shift by my father, who liked the two boys and used their intellectual limitations to the company’s best advantage as well as their own. Tug and Hug were their own best friends. I often heard their distinctive braying laughter at night from my room as they walked in the long line of hoot-owl-shift miners going to work. Everybody in town thought the world of Tug and Hug. “Ready to go to work, Cap’n,” they saluted Quentin.

“What’s the deal, Q?” I demanded.

“The deal is this telephone wire is heavy and I need help. These two fine gentlemen have volunteered to assist me. In return, I have made them honorary members of the BCMA.”

Tug and Hug grinned. “We like being Rocket Boys,” they said. They proceeded to shoulder the telephone wire and Quentin’s theodolite and head downrange.

I grabbed Quentin before he could follow them. “They can’t be part of the BCMA!”

Quentin pulled away. “Why not? They seem like good old boys to me.”

“You want a club full of good old boys or Rocket Boys? Seems to me it has to be one way or the other.”

Quentin looked down his long nose at me, his crisp blue eyes crinkling along the edges. “It never occurred to me until this moment that you are quite the prig, Sonny Hickam. Without a doubt, the result of your privileged life as a mine superintendent’s son.”

I sputtered, searching for a comeback, but couldn’t find one. “Quentin, just tell me you aren’t going to recruit any more fifth-grade dropouts into the BCMA.”

Quentin shrugged and stalked off, shaking his head. “Quite the prig,” he said over his shoulder.

I looked downrange. Tug and Hug already had the telephone wire and theodolite station set up. It would have taken Quentin another hour at the rate he usually went. Maybe the boy was on to something, I didn’t know. But— me, a
prig
? I struck the accusation from my mind as unworthy and went to the blockhouse. “All ready, Sherman?”

Sherman patted the firing box. “Roger that. How’s the audience?”

I went back outside to see. There were about a hundred spectators, I estimated. I saw Basil Oglethorpe pull up in his purple Studebaker. He got out, his notepad at the ready. He was wearing a fur coat that went all the way down to his ankles, and on his head was a straw boater with a red ribbon around the crown. A few of the miners who had never seen him before gave him second and then third looks. “Hey, Basil,” I called.

A big grin split his narrow face. “Ah, Sonny. A delightful day to continue the adventures of the Rocket Boys, eh? I shall be pleased to continue to make you famous. Someone told me you were thinking about entering a science fair. Is that so?”

“I guess it is,” I said. “If we can solve our nozzle-erosion problem. We’re trying out an ablative ceramic coating today.”

Basil kept his pencil poised. “I’d prefer that quote to be a little snappier,” he said.

“We’re going for it,” I said.

“Ah.” Basil scribbled it down. “Going . . . for . . . it! Excellentay!”

I excused myself from Basil when I saw Ginger drive up in her parents’ Buick. She was alone. “Have you seen those awful plywood things the COW ladies put up on the Club House lawn?” she demanded as soon as I got within range. “Are those not the tackiest things you’ve ever seen?” She put her hands on her hips. “So what are we going to do about it?”

“I can’t do anything about it,” I said. “I’m in charge of the BCMA, not Christmas. Anyway, remember you said I shouldn’t try to save the world.”

“No, I didn’t. I just noticed that that’s what you do.”

Sherman came up. “Hi, Ginger.”

Ginger apprised Sherman of the “awful plywood things.”

“I know,” he said. “I hate them, too.”

Billy and Roy Lee and Dean, seeing that Sherman and I had stopped working to talk to Ginger, strolled over. “There’s not going to be a Christmas Pageant this year?” Billy asked. When told it had been canceled, he didn’t try to hide his disappointment. “You know, I really loved going to those things.”

“Well, I say there’s got to be a Christmas Pageant for Billy’s sake, if for no other reason,” Sherman said. “Anyway, it’s our last Christmas here. That’s a reason right there.”

I had to challenge him. “Come on, Sherman. You don’t think you’ll come back to visit your parents at Christmas?”

“Sure I will,” he said, “but I won’t be a Coalwood boy. You know how it is. When somebody leaves here, they can come back but they’re not part of the town anymore, not really. This is our last Christmas.”

Roy Lee piped up. “Hell, if we can build a rocket, we can put on some little Christmas Pageant.”

“Is that right, Roy Lee?” I asked, taken aback that he, of all people, wanted to do this thing. “And how do you propose that we do it?”

“You can do it, Sonny,” Sherman said. “You have a talent for planning.”

I had sensed that was coming. “No way,” I said. “You’re not going to put this on me.”

“I’ll help and so will my mom,” Ginger said as if I hadn’t said a word. “The teachers will pitch in, they always do. And we can get the Community Church choir.”

O’Dell came over, Quentin with him. Tug and Hug brought up the rear. “Heck, yes,” O’Dell said when Sherman told him what we were talking about. “It wouldn’t seem like Christmas without a pageant, would it?”

“What are you talking about?” Quentin asked. Since he wasn’t a Coalwood boy, he’d never seen one of our pageants.

“We sing carols!” Sherman said.

“There’s a manger scene,” Billy said.

“Everybody plays a role like an angel or something,” Roy Lee said. “Hey, can I be an angel?”

“How can the Big Creek lovemaster be an angel?” I asked sarcastically.

Roy Lee looked hurt. “We’re talking about acting, Sonny.”

“It sounds prodigious!” Quentin fairly exploded. “Can I help?”

“No, you can’t,” I said, “because there’s not going to be any pageant. Like I said, to pull one of these things off takes company support. I mean the Club House lawn is company property, for one thing.”

“So’s Cape Coalwood,” O’Dell said. “It hasn’t stopped us from using it.”

“We have permission, O’Dell,” I said. “I’m the one who got it, remember?”

“So get it for the Club House.”

“Another thing,” I said. “It takes weeks to plan one of these things. Today’s December 19. If we start tomorrow, we’d barely have five days.”

“Then start today,” Sherman said. “Plan it out, tell us what to do and we’ll do it.”

“The union’s going out on strike,” I said, still trying to head the thing off. “We get miners and foremen together, there’ll be a riot, not a pageant.”

I was wasting my breath. Sherman said, “All in favor say aye!”

“Aye!”

“Nays?” he asked.

“Nay,” I said, but my heart wasn’t into it. The truth was I was starting to catch some of their enthusiasm, but I wasn’t about to admit it. For one thing, Mom wouldn’t be around to see our pageant, and that would be pretty sad. For another, I truly doubted our ability to pull such a thing off in the short amount of time we had. I didn’t want to get excited over nothing.

“The ayes have it,” Sherman said smugly.

Ginger laughed. “This is going to be so much fun!”

I sincerely doubted the accuracy of her statement but kept my opinion to myself. “Can we just launch our rocket now?” I asked the assembly instead.

I stabbed the launch button and
Auk XXIII-A
took off smoothly, climbing swiftly on a towering funnel of zincoshine smoke. Our audience applauded and hooted with joy. Zincoshine-propelled rockets seemed to have that effect on most people. They were exuberant rockets, and they brought out exuberance in everybody who watched them go.

After it hit downrange, we stampeded over to the Auk. A quick calculation revealed that we’d flown under my altitude projection by a thousand feet. I rolled the casement over a couple of times with a stick to help it cool. When it did, I turned it on its end and peered inside the nozzle. “Not as much erosion,” I reported, “but we’ve still got some and it’s at the worst place. Right at the throat.”

Quentin groaned. “If we don’t solve this puzzle, we can just kiss the science fair—and our futures—good-bye.”

Dean put his finger inside the nozzle and swiped it around, his finger coming out covered with metal filings and soot. “Maybe this edge right at the throat is so sharp the putty can’t stick to it very well.”

Mr. Bolt and Mr. Caton came walking up. Mr. Caton inspected the results. “I think Dean’s right,” he said. “That edge is probably a hot spot, too. How about I smooth it out, make it curved rather than have that sharp angle?”

“Better hurry,” Mr. Bolt said. “I hear the strike’s not more than a day or two away. A strike will close the machine shop, too.”