Free Sky of Stone by Homer Hickam Page A

Dad.
But I didn’t. I knew better. So I said, “Just wanted to say hello.”
    It seemed every time Dad looked at me, it was as if he were looking at me for the first time. He cocked an eyebrow and scrutinized me carefully. After he’d finished his study of my features, he asked, “What are you doing in Coalwood?”
    “Mom said I needed to keep you company.”
    Dad closed his damaged eye and pondered me with his good one. It was like looking down the barrel of a gun. His eye had been nearly put out the same night Mr. Bykovski had been killed. During the rescue attempt, a cable had snapped and slashed Dad across the face.
    “Company, huh?” I thought I detected a hint of a smile for just a moment, but then it disappeared. “For how long?”
    “Until she says I’ve done it enough, I guess.”
    “Well, you’ve done it enough,” he said. “Go to Myrtle Beach and help your mom.”
    That was the first good thing I’d heard since I’d been back in Coalwood. “Yes, sir!” I said quickly, before he could change his mind. “I’ll hitch out in the morning.”
    “Take the Buick,” Dad said. “Your mom could use a chauffeur. I’ve got the company truck to get around here.”
    This was getting better and better!
I couldn’t believe my luck! With the Buick as bait, I could cut a vast swath through the available females at the beach. “I’ll call Mom, tell her the plan,” I said, even allowing a grin to appear on my face before I could stop it.
    Dad frowned a warning. “Don’t tell your mother anything! Just go.”
    He was absolutely correct. The best thing to do with Mom was to just show up down there, make it a done deal. I could tell her that Dad was fine and so was Nate Dooley, not counting his broken wrist. I nodded to Mr. Marshall and Mr. Dubonnet and started to make my escape, but then I thought to ask a question. I hung by the door. “Dad, where’s Lucifer?”
    The frown on Dad’s face faltered, temporarily replaced by a look I had trouble figuring out. He worked on it for a moment and got the frown back. “Dead, most likely. Every morning, he walked across the road to Substation Mountain to hunt. About three months ago, your mom said she saw him go but he never came back.”
    “He was a real old cat, wasn’t he, Homer?” Mr. Dubonnet asked.
    “Nearly as old as Sonny.”
    “Cats do that,” Mr. Marshall said severely. “Go away to die.”
    “Dogs, too,” Mr. Dubonnet said, and the two men nodded to one another, acknowledging their joint knowledge of feline and canine expiration.
    Lucifer, dead and gone. Our old cat. “Why didn’t Mom write me, let me know?” I asked, feeling a big lump forming in my throat.
    Dad leaned back in his chair, studying me. “What was Lucifer to you?”
    “He was part of the family.”
    Dad kept his study of me, and all of a sudden I felt as if it were just the two of us in the room. I guess Dad felt the same way or else he would have never said what he did. “Sonny,” he said carefully, and tiredly, “in case you haven’t noticed, we don’t have a family anymore.”

6
    SAD TIMES
    E VEN THOUGH I was going to get everything I wanted, I felt peculiarly restless, as if I’d done something wrong. I went home and was drawn to the basement to look at Lucifer’s thin gray rug at the base of the steps. Mom had placed it there just for him after the harsh West Virginia winters had started to chase his old bones inside. When I knelt and picked up the rug, I could still see some of his black fur entwined in its fabric. He had been a tough old tom, but sometimes I would look into his yellow eyes and sense there was more going on inside him than I could possibly know. Once, I’d been in the mountains with Sherman and we’d seen a sick fawn and stayed with it until it died. Afterward, when I came home, I swear Lucifer just seemed to know what I’d seen. Wisdom seemed to radiate out of his eyes, wisdom that said dying is the destination of us all—deer, cat, or