“He’s such a good football player!”
I shrugged. “Uh huh …”
“I think you’re much more interesting,” she said.
That brightened me up. It seemed like the right moment to ask her out on a date. “Dorothy, you know Roy Lee has a car, and I was just thinking that maybe you and me—”
“Do you know what, Sonny?” she interrupted. “I’ve never been outside of West Virginia. Isn’t that sad? How about you?”
Her question caused my own to die on my lips. I told her I had been several times to Myrtle Beach, South Carolina. Mom loved it there. And Dad had driven the family to Canada when I was in the third grade, all the way to Quebec.
She seemed thrilled. “Tell me about Quebec.”
I remembered how clean everything was. The French language had also made an impression. “It sounded real pretty to hear it,” I told her.
“Someday I’ll go there and hear it too,” Dorothy said solemnly.
I was halfway home before I realized Dorothy had diverted me from asking her out. I resolved to do it the next morning. I scanned the auditorium and found her with a group of her girlfriends huddling around a trio of senior football players. Dorothy was wearing a tight pink sweater and a black poodle skirt and was on her knees in the chair in front of them, her hands covering her mouth as she laughed at something one of the boys had said. I edged in beside her and stood awkwardly while she bantered back and forth with him. “Saturday night then?” he asked, and she nodded eagerly.
“Oh, hi, Sonny!” she said brightly and then slipped past me, to join her future date on a stroll up the aisle. I just stood there, my heart sinking to my toes.
Auks I–IV
ON JANUARY 31, 1958, the Army Ballistic Missile Agency (ABMA), led by Dr. von Braun, was ready to launch the Explorer-1 satellite aboard a Jupiter-C rocket. It was to be a night launch, so I stayed up to watch television, hoping for good news. Around 11:00 P.M., a bulletin interrupted the Tonight Show with an announcement that the launch had been a success. Film of the launch was promised momentarily. I started a vigil, lying on the rug in front of the television set, staring at the set, which displayed nothing but a sign stating STAND BY. Mom, Dad, and Jim had long since gone to bed. Daisy Mae joined me on the rug, curling up behind me in the bend of my knees. The bitter cold outside had also chased our old torn Lucifer in, and he was curled up in Dad’s easy chair. It was good to have them as company. I reached back and patted Daisy Mae’s head. “Good old girl,” I told her. “Good old cat.” She rewarded me with a purr and a lick on my hand.
Daisy Mae was a pretty cat, a fluffy calico, and was special to me. Four years earlier, when she had wandered in from the mountains, I hid her for a day, secretly feeding her in the basement. When Mom discovered her, she said I’d have to find the kitten another home, pointing out we already had two dogs, a squirrel, and a cat, and that was enough animals. After I pouted about it for a day, Mom gave in. “If you want this kitten,” she said, “you’ll have to take care of her.” I readily agreed, easy enough to do (the agreeing part). Daisy Mae had kittens right off, a pretty litter quickly snapped up by the neighbors. By then, Mom had completely adopted her into the family and, as I knew she would, took care of her as she did all the other animals, feeding her and spending hours picking fleas out of her coat. Mom thought Daisy Mae was such a pretty but delicate cat that she decided we’d have her fixed. To my knowledge, no other cat or dog in Coalwood had ever been neutered before. Mom drove Dad’s Buick with me holding Daisy Mae on my lap all the way to the veterinarian over in Bluefield, forty miles and six mountains away. It was the first time any of our animals had ever seen a vet. After she healed, Daisy Mae became even more loving, waiting for me to come home from school and sleeping on my bed at night. I often talked to her before I went to sleep, especially when I was frightened, or worried. She was just a comfort when everybody else in the family seemed at odds. Of course, I never told anyone else I talked to my cat, certainly not any of the other boys. I’d have never lived it down.
Around midnight (it was a Friday and not a school night), I was surprised by a knock on the front door, and in came Roy Lee, Sherman, and O’Dell to join me. They bedded down on the couch and the floor. We talked some, mostly about girls, but then O’Dell and Sherman kind of drifted off. I’d been meaning to ask Roy Lee about the spot on Dad’s lung, so I took the opportunity. He tucked himself in the corner of the couch and gave me a worried look. “I’ll ask Billy,” he said. Billy was his brother.
“Don’t tell him why. Dad doesn’t want anybody to know.”
Roy Lee gave me a funny look. “Sonny, I already knew. I guess everybody in Coalwood knows.”
I put my head down on the rug and pretty soon I went to sleep. I woke during the night, finding the picture on the television turned to snow. I kept waking up and falling back to sleep. At dawn, I was awake when the picture flickered back on and an announcer said to stand by. I woke the others up and then, without preamble, film of the launch was run. Dr. von Braun’s rocket lifted off the pad in a caldron of fire and smoke and went right up into the night sky without a moment of hesitation. We whooped and cheered at the sight of it. O’Dell got up and did a little jig and then fell back on the couch and put his feet up in the air and made like he was riding a bicycle. I wasn’t so demonstrative, but I felt proud and patriotic. Dad came downstairs, let Lucifer and Daisy Mae out, and found us boys clustered around the set. He looked us over. “Did it work?”
It was the first time I remember him ever expressing any interest in space. “Yessir!” we roared.
He stared at the television, where Dr. von Braun’s rocket kept taking off again and again. “I don’t know what to make of it,” he said. I’d never heard him say anything like that before.
“We’re going into space, Dad,” I said, by way of an explanation.
“Little man,” he replied, “in your case, I think sometimes you’re already there.” I took that as a compliment and beamed. He looked back at me with his eyebrows raised.
Mom appeared in her housecoat. She smiled drowsily at me and the other boys. “Did it work?”
“Yes, ma’am!”
“I think that’s wonderful. Don’t you, Homer?”
Dad had gone to the kitchen. “Wonderful,” he said, his voice afar.
Mom looked us over. “You boys want some breakfast? How about some waffles?”
“Yes, ma’am!”
Later that same day, I gathered Roy Lee, Sherman, and O’Dell in my room. “Okay, here’s what we’re going to do,” I said.
Roy Lee fell back on the bed and groaned. “Every time you say that, we always end up in trouble.”
I laid out my plan. I was forming a rocket club to be called the Big Creek Missile Agency (BCMA), named in imitation of von Braun’s ABMA. Quentin and I were going to be in it. We were going to learn all there was about rockets and start building them. This was to be a serious thing, not playing. If the others wanted to join us, they were welcome. I figured Roy Lee would get up and walk out rather than belong to anything with Quentin in it, but instead he sat up on the bed and rubbed his chin thoughtfully. “Sonny, I like it. It sounds like fun. Count me in.” I think he was inspired by the success of the Explorer. Sherman and O’Dell readily agreed too.
“The Big Creek Missile Agency is hereby formed,” I said. “I’m