Dad put his hand on the doorknob. “The company did what it had to do.”
“How they turned you into such a company man I’ll never figure,” Mr. Dubonnet said. This time his voice was hard and bitter.
“Better than to throw in with a bunch of John L. Lewis commies!” Dad shot back.
Mr. Dubonnet shook his head. “The trouble with you, Homer, is that you don’t know who your real friends are. When the company gets into trouble, it’ll throw you out like a dead mouse.”
Dad stepped back onto the porch. “And the trouble with you, Dubonnet, is you can’t get over I got the Captain’s job.” Dad was about to say more when he started to cough and grabbed his chest.
“That’s it, Homer,” Mr. Dubonnet chided him, “cough your lungs out. You might be the mine superintendent, but you’ve got the common miner’s disease.”
“Stop it, both of you!” Mom spat.
“Stay out of this, Elsie,” Dad gasped and took a big, strangled breath.
“Look at him,” Mr. Dubonnet said to my mother. “You think the company cares anything about his lungs or anybody else’s? Hell, no! This is what the great Captain did for us with his continuous miners.”
Dad shook his head and searched for air. “You lay off the Captain,” he gasped. “He was a great man. I’ve got allergies, that’s all. Look at my daddy. Look at yours too. They worked in the mine all their life, and they never had any problems with their lungs.”
“Our daddies dug coal out with picks, Homer,” Mr. Dubonnet said, back to being calm again. “The continuous miners grind the coal up, fill the air with dust. After we get this cutoff settled, it’s the next thing I want to talk to you about. We need some way to protect the men from the dust.”
“I’ll thank you to get off my porch,” Dad choked.
“John, maybe it would be best,” Mom said softly, putting her hand on Dad’s arm. He shrugged it off.
Mr. Dubonnet put his helmet back on. “Elsie, you’re a fine woman. I always thought you deserved better.” He turned and went out the gate and walked across the street toward the gas station.
Dad lurched back inside and slumped into his easy chair. “Damned union John L. Lewis sonuvabitch,” he muttered. “Still thinks he’s the great football player. Well, I could’ve played, but I had to work, picking coal at the tipple after school.”
“I know that, Homer,” Mom said, watching him from the foyer. Her gentle tone surprised me.
Dad’s hands were trembling as he reached for his paper. “You’re a good woman, Elsie,” he said.
“I know that too, Homer,” she replied softly.
“You could’ve had your pick.”
“I did.” She looked at me, probably just noticing I was in the living room. “Go to your room,” she barked. “Study!”
I nodded and went up the stairs, two steps at a time. Outside, a line of cars rumbled into the gas station, and I looked out the window to see what was going on. Mr. Dubonnet got into one of the cars and then they all headed down Main Street. I guessed they were headed to the union hall.
JUST before Thanksgiving, Doc Lassiter ordered Dad to get an X ray. When he refused, Doc went to Mr. Van Dyke, the only man in town who could tell Dad what to do. Mr. Van Dyke was the mine’s general superintendent, a courtly man with silver hair who had been sent by the steel company to keep watch on its holdings. Dad, a company man through and through, had no choice but to comply with Mr. Van Dyke’s orders. He went over to Stevens Clinic in Welch. When he came home, I was upstairs in my room, reading. “A spot,” I heard him tell Mom. “About the size of a dime.”
“Oh, Homer, for God’s sake,” I heard her say in a small and worried voice I hadn’t ever heard her use before. “What are you going to do?”
“I’m not going to do anything,” he replied blandly. “Why’re you looking at me like that? Don’t worry about it. I’m only telling you because you’ll find out anyway. The only way to keep a secret in this town would be if I tore down every backyard fence in it.”
Dad went into the living room and sat down and snapped open the Welch Daily News. Mom looked up and saw me. She scowled, crossed her arms, and went back to her kitchen. She was soon rattling pots and pans. I went back to my room and stared at nothing, feeling a little panicky. I’d been around Coalwood long enough to know miners with spots on their lungs were supposed to quit the mine. It was not unusual to see them sitting on the Big Store or post office steps during the day, quietly hacking up black spit. For some reason, if it was their lungs that made them quit, they were allowed to stay in Coalwood as long as they could afford the rent for their houses. But I never imagined the common disease of the mine could affect my dad. He seemed far too tough for that. He had a spot on his lungs the size of a dime. I’d have to ask somebody about how bad that was. Maybe Roy Lee. His older brother worked up around the face where the coal dust was the thickest. Yes, I would ask Roy Lee. He would know.
IN December 1957, the United States made its first attempt to put a satellite into orbit with its Vanguard. I saw the result on television. Vanguard managed three tentative feet off the pad, lost thrust, and then blew up. According to the papers, the whole country was shocked and disappointed. I was too. I read some newspaper editorials and listened to television commentary that wondered if perhaps western civilization itself might soon be at an end with the technologically superior Russians taking over. I might have worried even more about Vanguard’s failure if I hadn’t had rocket problems of my own. Vanguard, after all, had managed to fly a yard higher than I had. There were a lot of smart people working on that project, and I guessed they’d figure things out, sooner or later. I, on the other hand, was all alone. That’s why I decided, like it or not, I had to talk to Quentin.
QUENTIN WAS THE class joke. He used a lot of big words often delivered in a pseudo-English accent, and he carried around an old, cracked-leather briefcase, stuffed to overflowing with books and who-knew-what-else. While the rest of us played dodgeball or did calisthenics in phys. ed., he always had some excuse not to participate—a sprained ankle or a headache or some such—and sat in the bleachers and read one of his books. While all the other students traded gossip and nonsense in the auditorium in the morning and at lunch, Quentin always sat alone. He had no friends as far as I could tell. Although everybody, including me, made fun of him, I was pretty certain he was some sort of a genius. He could expound on nearly any subject in class until the teacher had to ask him to stop, and if he’d ever made less than a hundred on a test, I wasn’t aware of it.
I figured if there was anybody who might know how to build a rocket, it was Quentin. The next morning before classes, I sat down beside him in the auditorium. Startled, he pulled his book down from his face. “I don’t let anybody copy my homework,” he said suspiciously.
“I don’t want to copy your homework,” I replied, although I would have taken his algebra if he had offered. “Do you know anything about rockets?”
A little smile crossed his face. Quentin wasn’t a bad-looking kid for a genius. He had a narrow face, a sharp nose, crisp blue eyes, and jet-black hair that looked as if it had been plastered down with about a quart of Wildroot Cream Oil. “I wondered how long it would take for you to come to me with that question. I heard about your rocket, old boy. Blew up, did it? What made you think you could build a rocket? You can’t even do algebra.”
“I’m getting better,” I muttered. It was amazing to me that everybody, even Quentin, knew my business.