VPI academics, however, proved to be more difficult, especially chemistry and mathematics. Without the incentive of building my rockets, I had trouble paying attention in those classes. Sometimes I’d fall asleep, but most of the time my mind simply wandered off on its own. No matter how hard I tried, I just couldn’t focus on those blackboards filled with dull equations and tedious formulae. Where was the glory in it? Where was the adventure? Where were the rockets? I missed them and I missed the boys and I missed Miss Riley, the high school teacher who’d kept me on the straight and narrow during my years as a rocket boy. If it hadn’t been for English class, I might have even gone on academic probation. My shoddy work did not go unnoticed. After the winter quarter, Dr. Johnston, the dean of applied science and business administration, under whose auspices English was taught to engineers, called me into his office. He retrieved one of my themes from a pile on his desk. “Read this for me, Mr. Hickam,” he said.
I read where he pointed his finger: The rocket was steaming like a teakettle.
“What is that?”
I sorted through my possible answers. “A simile?” I guessed.
“Yes!” He put my theme back on the stack and patted it. “Did you know, Mr. Hickam, that I’d warrant there is not a single other engineering student in this whole school who would know a simile if it jumped out of a bush and bit them? Or could invent one?”
I didn’t know that and said so.
“You have a rare talent for writing,” Dr. Johnston continued. “You ought to do something with it.”
“Thank you, sir,” I said, still not fully comprehending what he was getting at.
He picked up another paper and turned it in my direction. “Do you know what this is?”
I recognized it quite well, although it was nothing I cared to study. “My grade transcript,” I said.
“Indeed it is,” he answered, “and based on it, I fear you are wasting your time here at VPI. Perhaps you should leave us and go to another college, one stronger in the liberal arts, for instance, where your writing talents might be better honed.”
Now I knew why I was sitting in front of the dean’s desk. “But I can’t leave, sir,” I said, coming close to whining. “I have to be an engineer.”
“Do tell,” he said, leaning back in his chair with a doubtful expression on his face. “And why is that?”
Since he’d asked me, I urgently explained to Dr. Johnston that I had to study engineering because I needed to go help Wernher von Braun. The great man had even sent me an autographed picture, I said. I owed him for that, and I also owed my high school teachers, especially Miss Riley. She had fought for me, for all the Rocket Boys, so we could build our rockets, and she had done that even though she had cancer, which kept her terribly weak. I also told him about the people in Coalwood who’d gone way out on a limb for me and the other boys. “You see, sir,” I concluded, “that’s why I have to stay here until I become an engineer!”
“It’s an interesting story,” Dr. Johnston said, “but the odds are still against you.”
Often when I found myself intellectually cornered, I tried to remember to quote somebody who was intelligent. “In the queer mass of human destiny, the determining factor has always been luck,” I said, quoting Mr. Turner, Big Creek’s principal.
“If that’s your belief, I predict you will also have trouble with statistics,” Dr. Johnston answered dryly.
The good dean dismissed me with the admonition to take my grade transcript and go instantly to see Dr. Byrne, the assistant dean of engineering. I did as I was ordered, finding this dean in his office working diligently behind a huge metal adding machine on his desk. He waved me into a chair, pecked in a few numbers, and then pulled the handle. Out flew a coil of paper, which he inspected, crumpled up, and tossed into a wastepaper can. “Someday,” he said, patting the huge steel contraption, “these things will be no bigger than a shoebox.”
“Yes, sir,” I said, handing over my grades and silently doubting the accuracy of his prediction.
Dr. Byrne reflected on my sorry document for a moment, then said, “Not everyone is cut out to be an engineer, Mr. Hickam. Perhaps you should save us the trouble of flunking you and leave voluntarily.”
I once again explained why I couldn’t quit. “I suspect Wernher von Braun will get along fine without you,” Dr. Byrne observed with some confidence. He eyed a stack of college catalogs on the corner of his desk. “Why don’t you just thumb through these catalogs, eh? You might find a nice little liberal arts college that would suit you just fine.”
I was cornered. “There’s another reason I have to be an engineer,” I said desperately.
“Let’s hear it.” The assistant dean yawned. He acted as if he’d heard everything to come out of a student’s mouth, which he probably had, except what I said next.
“The moon program,” I said.
“What about it?”
“I think I might be responsible for it.”
“This I really must hear,” Dr. Byrne said, and leaned forward, his arms folded on top of the adding machine.
So I told my tale. It had happened back in the spring of 1960, when then-senator John F. Kennedy was fighting for his political survival in the West Virginia presidential primary. I had come upon him standing forlornly on top of a Cadillac automobile over in Welch, the county seat, and it was my opinion he was in trouble. For one thing, his back seemed to be hurting him. He kept rubbing the small of it with his fist, and when he did, his eyes would squint in pain. He wasn’t doing very well with his speech, either. The miners standing around listening to him were pretty listless. Being a boy of the hills, I immediately recognized what his problem was, at least as far as his speech. The senator’s audience wanted a little entertainment. Why else would they come to hear a politician after a hard day’s work in the mines?
At the time, I was wearing a suit I’d just purchased to wear to the National Science Fair, and despite the fact that pride was the number one West Virginia sin, I was completely and utterly full of myself. I thought, as my mom would say, that I was the cat’s meow. The suit I had picked was a bright orange, all the better, I figured, to stand out at the fair. I decided to shake things up by asking a question. For some reason, as soon as I raised my hand, the senator took note of me. My high school pal Emily Sue Buckberry was with me and I heard her moan, “Oh, God, you’re going to embarrass the whole county!”
I did better than that. I embarrassed pretty much the whole state! “What do you think the United States ought to do in space?” I asked a man who’d just talked himself hoarse about unemployment and welfare and food stamps and the raw deal that coal mining was in general.
Kennedy stopped rubbing his back long enough to eye me for what seemed about a century. Then he turned my question back on me. From his lofty perch, he demanded, “What do you think we should do in space?”
So I told him, not because I had given it a lot of thought, but because I’d been looking at the moon a lot through a telescope a junior engineer named Jake Mosby had set up for us boys on top of the Coalwood Club House roof. It just popped out of me. “We should go to the moon!” I said with such vigor that I got applause and cheers from everybody still standing around. There was some laughter, too, but it was good-natured, since the entertainment value of the senator’s entire enterprise had gone up a notch.
The clapping and cheering and laughing seemed to surprise Senator Kennedy. He straightened a little, surveyed the crowd and their grinning faces, and then, as if he had a sudden inspiration, he said maybe I was right, that what we needed to do was get the country moving again, and if going to the moon could help that, maybe it was just the thing. Then he’d asked me what we should do on the moon when we got there, and I said we should find out what it was made of and go ahead and mine the blamed thing. That idea, too, had just popped into my head. Our audience responded with more whoops and hollers and cries that West Virginians could go and “mine that old moon good!” I got a bene
volent smile from the senator before Emily Sue dragged me off to Belcher and Mooney’s men’s store to exchange my beautiful orange suit for something drab and awful.
After that, I’d gone on to win the gold and silver medal for propulsion in the National Science Fair, and Senator Kennedy had gone on to win his elections in West Virginia and the entire country, too. He’d done it by proposing to get the nation moving again, not only around the world but in space, too. To make good on his promise, he’d recently stood up before Congress and announced: I believe this nation should commit itself, before this decade is out, to landing a man on the moon and returning him safely to the earth.
“You can see now, sir, why I have to be an engineer, can’t you?” I asked. “This is all my fault.”
Dr. Byrne perused my grade transcript a little longer, then rolled his eyes. “Well, I’ll tell you what, boy,” he said, reaching across the adding machine to take my hand and give it a good shake, “I still don’t think you’re going to get through my engineering school, but if half of what you say is true, which I sincerely doubt, then I can certainly see why you’ve got to try. Good luck to you. I think you’ll need it.”
I quoted my uncle Robert. “Luck’s a chance but trouble’s sure; I’d be rich if I wasn’t poor.”
Dr. Byrne laughed out loud. “Get out of my office, Hickam,” he said by way of summarizing our interview.
I got out and, since I knew the deans were watching, got to studying. I even stayed awake during chemistry class, at least a significant percentage of the time. During spring quarter, my grades climbed until I was a solidly average engineering student, not bad for a tough place like VPI, I thought.
On a Saturday in early May, I was told to go to the squadron lounge, that a visitor was waiting there for me. It turned out to be my mom, which was quite a surprise. “Sonny boy,” she said, smiling from her seat on the couch. “How nice you look in your uniform.”
Her hair had turned a bit grayer during the past year and her pretty, heart-shaped face looked a bit more drawn and there were a few more wrinkles on her forehead, but otherwise she was the same Mom. I sat beside her. “What are you doing here?” I asked anxiously. It had to be something terrible for her to have made the trip all the way to Blacksburg, uncountable mountains away from Coalwood.
“I’m on my way to Myrtle Beach,” she said. “I finally found a house down there that I can afford. I had to act fast to get it and I did. It just needs a little fixing up, and that’s what I’m heading down there to do.”
Mom had always said a house in Myrtle Beach was what she wanted more than anything in the world, and she’d kept on about it for years. Myrtle Beach, a coastal resort city in South Carolina, was the vacation destination of half the coal miners and their families in West Virginia every summer, including us, and Mom had fallen in love with the place. Still, she’d surprised me by actually following through with her dream, especially since Dad was still some years away from retirement. “Where’s Dad?” I asked.
“He went over to the football practice field to see Jim,” she said. “He’s going to drive me to the beach and then go back to Coalwood.”
That news didn’t surprise me. Somebody had once asked Mom what it would take to get my dad out of Coalwood, and she had replied, “Dynamite.”
I had a sudden idea. Usually, my best ones seemed to come without much thought, don’t ask me why. “Mom, could I come down this summer and help you fix the place up?” I was already thinking about making a run on the girls down at the beach, too, which I failed to mention.
Mom looked me over. “Maybe,” she said. “We’ll see.”
“We’d be a great team,” I said eagerly. I tried to recall the words Dad had used when he’d tried to convince the Captain to take him on. “You tell me what to do, don’t matter what it is, and I’ll do it.”
Mom gave me a wan smile. “Can I shoot you if you don’t?”
“You sure can.”
She nodded, then said, “Sonny, here’s the thing. It wasn’t just the house at Myrtle Beach I came by to tell you about. Tuck Dillon’s been killed in the mine.”
I let her message sink in. Tuck Dillon was one of Dad’s best foremen. He’d been Coalwood’s scoutmaster for a while, too. I’d risen all the way to the proud rank of Scout Second Class under his tutelage. I was instantly and naturally sad that he’d gotten killed, but I was wondering why she’d felt it necessary to drive fifty miles out of her way to let me know about it.
“Your dad’s taking it pretty hard,” she said.
“Why?” My question just jumped out of my mouth. I didn’t mean to be disrespectful, but I could never remember Dad being particularly bothered by mine accidents. He did everything he could to keep them from happening, of that I was certain considering the hours he spent there, but when they happened, they happened and that was that.
Mom answered, “It’s complicated,” and I knew better than to follow up with another question. I could always tell when she was through talking about something. My survival over the years had honed this particular talent.
I walked Mom across the campus to the football practice field, all the while describing the school buildings and the drill field and the memorials and how I’d learned to march and all the funny things they made us do as cadets. Mom stayed silent the entire time, which was a bit worrisome. A quiet Mom usually spelled trouble. I suspected I hadn’t yet found out her complete purpose in coming to Blacksburg. She could have written me a letter about her Myrtle Beach house, and about Mr. Dillon, too. What was she up to? My whole life, my mom had always been up to something even when I thought she wasn’t.
We found Dad at the practice field, his fingers clawed into the wire fence, watching the team go through their spring drills. “He’s the best player out there,” Dad said of brother Jim as we walked up.
Mom looked at Dad and then at me. “Here’s Sonny,” she said. “Doesn’t he look good in his uniform?”
“Hello, little man,” Dad said, glancing in my direction. Then, after putting on his old snap-brim hat, “You ready to go, Elsie?”
“I thought maybe you and Sonny could have a little talk,” she said.
“What about?” Dad wondered.
I’m sure I didn’t know, either, but it always amazed me when Dad didn’t pick up on what Mom was after. It was clear as rainwater she wanted us to have a father-son moment, whether we wanted one or not. To save us both, I gave Dad a quick rundown of everything I could think of. “Engineering drawing’s my favorite subject this quarter,” I rattled on, “and I get to stop wearing the rat belt in another couple of weeks, and I’ve been asked to write a column in the school newspaper.”
Dad blinked thoughtfully while I made all my points. When it was probable that I had finished, he asked, “Are you going to write for the paper?”
“I think so.”
“You were always a good speller,” he allowed. Then he looked at Mom and asked, “Now are you ready to go, Elsie?”
Mom gave me a terse hug and climbed into the Buick. I noticed what appeared to be a small wooden and wire cage in the backseat. I looked closer and saw Chipper, Mom’s pet squirrel. I opened the car door and put my hand on the cage, and he threw himself against it, trying to bite me through the screen. “You’re taking Chipper to Myrtle Beach?” I couldn’t believe it. Chipper had never been outside Coalwood.
“I am,” Mom said, and once again I knew she was done with the subject.
Dad settled in behind the huge steering wheel and drummed his fingers on it. “Come on, Elsie,” he said. “Miles to go.”
“Love you, Sonny,” Mom said, giving me her hand. I grasped it and then let it slip away when Dad pushed the Buick’s accelerator, spinning wheels in the gravel. Off they went, man, woman, and squirrel, heading south.
I watched until they had disappeared around a curve, and then I walked back to my dormitory and went to my room and sat down at my desk and thought about all that had just happened. After a while, I hit on
what I believed to be the real reason for Mom’s visit, and it came as a shock. She had come to tell me that not only was she going to Myrtle Beach, she planned on staying there. That’s why she’d taken Chipper with her. She might leave Dad behind in Coalwood, but she wasn’t going to abandon her beloved squirrel.
I went out that night and stood in the dim lights of the World War II Memorial, where I could worry in peace. I had known only one boy the whole time I grew up in McDowell County whose parents were divorced, and he was a sorry soul. Now, though I doubted they were going to go through the formality of it, my mother and father were getting a divorce, too, at least geographically. I worried about that for a while, came to no conclusion, then said a prayer for Tuck Dillon. I had really liked Mr. Dillon. He had been a good man and hadn’t deserved to die. Mom’s comment about Dad taking his death hard was still a mystery, though. What had that meant? At the practice field, he’d looked like the same old Dad.
A letter came from Mom the following week. She was having a wonderful time already, she wrote, and was getting the workers going on her house. In my letter back, I begged her to let me come to Myrtle Beach. Where else, after all, could I go? Myrtle Beach, Myrtle Beach became my new song. If Mom would agree to it, I was going to have a summer of fun in the sun like none I’d ever experienced. Then, to my joy, she wrote and said: If you want to come down here, I guess I can’t stop you. At the time I credited myself with the capability of being able to read between Mom’s lines. As far as I was concerned, she could hardly wait to see my bright, shining face beaming up at her from the sands of Myrtle Beach.