Free Sky of Stone by Homer Hickam

she’ll be here much the next couple of months.”
    Her answer disappointed me but was no surprise. Ginger was a girl with big dreams. It figured that she’d be off improving herself in every way she could this summer, unlike me, who was so far stuck in Coalwood. I thanked Mrs. Dantzler and headed on up to the mine, hoping to see Dad.
    I put the car back in the garage, then walked to the path that led up to the tipple grounds. Off-shift miners lounging around the gas station across from our house gave me a wave. One of them shouted out a question on my grades at VPI.
    “I haven’t flunked out yet!” I called in reply.
    “Attaboy!” came back a chorus. I figured it would take maybe an entire minute before the news had flashed up to New Camp and down to Frog Level.
    Dad’s office was a low brick building grimy with years of caked-on coal dirt. I trudged up its nasty black wooden steps and peeked inside. Wally Barnes, Dad’s clerk, looked up from his desk. “Well, look who the cat drug in,” the tiny man said. “The rocket boy hisself.”
    Even though he never went inside the mine, Wally was wearing a miner’s helmet with safety stickers plastered all over it. I guess he just liked to look the part. I glanced at Dad’s office door, firmly closed. “Dubonnet’s in there,” Wally said, spitting tobacco juice into a paper cup. “They’re fighting.”
    That news didn’t surprise me. In 1946, after battling the Germans during World War II, John Dubonnet had come to Coalwood looking for work. Mom and Dad and Mr. Dubonnet had all been in the same class at Gary High School. They were friends then. In fact, Mom had even dated Mr. Dubonnet for a while. At Dad’s recommendation, Captain Laird had taken him on. Later, it turned out that Mr. Dubonnet was actually an undercover union organizer. Dad had never forgiven him for the duplicity. About the time Dad got the Captain’s job, Mr. Dubonnet, who never married, took over Coalwood’s local and moved into the Union Hall. The two former Gary boys had been tangling over one thing or another ever since.
    “Can I go in?” I asked Wally.
    Wally shrugged. “I guess so, if you don’t mind hearing a little yelling. They’ve been at it for over an hour.”
    “What’s it about this time?”
    “The usual,” Wally replied, spitting again into his cup. “Dubonnet wants more money for less work.”
    “I guess that’s his job,” I said.
    Wally scowled as if he didn’t like the idea of any Hickam, even me, taking up for a union man. “You gonna build any rockets while you’re here?” he demanded.
    “I’m out of the rocket-building business,” I said.
    “Well, what
are
you going to do?”
    “Maybe if I can ever talk to my dad,” I replied, “I can figure it out.”
    “Give it a shot,” he said, nodding toward the door.
    I knocked and, even though I didn’t hear a response, went on in. Dad was at the huge oak desk he’d inherited from the Captain. He had his head down, writing a note in what I recognized as his daily journal. Woody Marshall, one of his top foremen, sat at a nearby table. Mr. Dubonnet was sitting on a folding chair, bent over with his elbows on his knees. I glanced around at the walls. Nothing had changed, the same mine maps, the same photograph of Captain Laird. There was at least a new 1961 calendar provided by the Joy Mining Machine Company. A pert blonde in a skimpy bathing suit graced it.
    Mr. Dubonnet stared at me for a moment, and then recognition spread across his thin face. He had been a star halfback in high school, and I thought he always looked like he was ready to put on a football helmet and step out onto the field for some heroics. “Well, I’ll be—” he said. “Sonny Hickam home from college!”
    Dad looked up but didn’t seem to share Mr. Dubonnet’s enthusiasm for my sudden presence. “We’re trying to have a meeting here, Sonny,” he said.
    I came close to being sharp-tongued by replying
Nice to see you, too,