Homer Hickam - Rocket Boys

“I’LL TAKE CARE of him, Mrs. Hickam,” Emily Sue promised my mother from the Buick’s passenger seat.

I was behind the wheel of the car, my head down, and I was fuming. Emily Sue and I were going to Welch to buy me a suit for Indianapolis. I didn’t see why I needed one. What was wrong with the clothes I planned on wearing, my cotton pants and plaid shirts and penny-loafer shoes? I was supposed to be a young scientist, not some fancy-pants like Peter Gunn on television or somebody. Besides, my displays and charts for Indianapolis needed work. I didn’t have time to traipse over to Welch for clothes.

Emily Sue was already, in her opinion, an adult, unlike certain other members of her class, such as me. It was up to her, therefore, to make certain I would not embarrass Big Creek High School or, for that matter, the entire state of West Virginia in Indianapolis. My clothes, never fancy, were her primary concern. Emily Sue’s mother had driven her across the mountain to make her pitch about proper dress at the National Science Fair to Mom, who called me up from the basement, where I was screwing on the hinges of my new display boards. “Take her to Welch,” she said, nodding toward Emily Sue, who sat on the couch with a big, pleased smile on her face. “Let her help you pick out a suit.”

“What do I need a suit for?” I grumped.

“Because we can’t have you at the National Science Fair looking like a hillbilly,” Emily Sue said.

Mom lifted her chin. “No, Emily Sue,” she said. “There’s a better reason.”

“What’s that?” I demanded.

She laid her eyes on me. “Because I said so.”

The Buick swerved back and forth as I steered it through one curve after another. In the seven miles to Welch, there were thirty-seven switchbacks. I hardly noticed them. It was the straightaways that seemed unusual. On about the twelfth turn, I said “Thanks a lot” to Emily Sue as sarcastically as I could.

“Happy to do it,” she replied.

At least I had the opportunity to ask Emily Sue about Dorothy. Emily Sue was still very much Dorothy’s friend. “Um, so how’s everybody in the Honor Society?” It was my way of asking without asking.

Emily Sue was way too quick for me. “Dorothy? She’s fine. She misses you and she’s sorry you’re mad at her, but I don’t think she stays awake at night worrying about it. Are you still carrying a torch for her?”

“For Dorothy? Don’t make me laugh?

Emily Sue looked across the bench seat at me. “Did you know you raise your eyebrows when you lie?”

I didn’t say anything else to her the whole way to Welch.

It was a Saturday, and Welch was filled with throngs of shoppers. We parked behind the Carter Hotel, paid a quarter to the attendant, and walked down the hill toward Main Street. Emily Sue led me to Philips and Cloony, a men’s shop. I hesitated at the front door. “Now what’s your problem?” Emily Sue asked.

“I don’t want you to go in with me.”

“Why? You afraid they’ll think I’m your girlfriend?”

“I’m just kind of embarrassed. I can pick a suit out by myself.”

She eyed me, a doubtful expression on her face. “Oh, all right,” she sighed. “Meet me at the parking building in an hour. And wear your new suit. I want to see it on you.”

I agreed, took a deep breath, and went inside. Philips and Cloony was a tiny shop, but it had the reputation of being the best men’s store in the county. Its walls were lined with racks of suits and shirts, and it smelled to me like dry-cleaning fluid. When I told the clerk what I wanted, he asked me if I was Jim Hickam’s brother. When I said yes, he called the owners down from their apartment upstairs. They were a married couple, a big chunky man and a tiny, bubbly woman. They came padding in with their eyes lit up like cats finding a bunny in the vegetable garden. They said they missed Jim and wondered how they could help me. I told them about the National Science Fair, and they began to lay out brown, blue, and gray suits for me to consider.

They were the kinds of suits the men in Coalwood wore to church. I scratched my head, unsure of myself. Mom had always bought my clothes. Then O’Dell came into the shop. He was in Welch selling more ginseng for our zinc-dust money and had seen me from the street. “Emily Sue’s right!” he brayed when I told him my situation. “You need some new duds!”

O’Dell looked through the suits the owners had put out, shaking his head. “Old people’s clothes,” he said. He went through the racks until he found one in the back he liked. He hauled it out to show me. “Man, you’d look great in this!” he said, and I had to agree. It was the finest-looking suit I’d ever seen.

I tried on O’Dell’s suit. It was a perfect fit, and it cost only twenty-five dollars, marked down from twenty-seven fifty. “I’ll take it!” I chirped, mining this way and then that while looking in the mirror. The owners looked at each other and shrugged.

I exited the shop, dressed in my fine new suit. I couldn’t wait to show it off to Emily Sue. I waved good-bye to O’Dell. He was going to see his ginseng buyer, with two grocery bags full of the root. “After I sell all this, we’ll be able to buy enough zinc dust to go to the moon,” he promised.

I was a little early to meet Emily Sue, so I walked down to the main street. It was clogged with shoppers. I noticed I was getting some stares from some of them. I guessed they hadn’t seen a high-school boy dressed so fine since my brother had left the county. I strutted to the big concrete municipal-parking building, a three-tiered structure that was the pride of the city. It was advertised as the first of its type in the United States, a place where cars were parked on three levels in the same building. I gawked at it every time I saw it. It was too imposing for a Coalwood boy. That’s why I chose to park behind the Carter Hotel.

I wormed my way through a crowd of people and saw a table with a JACK KENNEDY FOR PRESIDENT sign on it. Some men were setting up some loudspeakers. Then the martial strains of “Anchors Aweigh” blared out, followed by “High Hopes,” sung by Frank Sinatra. “What’s going on?” I asked a man putting up a Kennedy poster on a telephone pole.

He looked me over, as if maybe I had two heads, and then said, “The senator’s going to make a speech right here in Welch. He’ll be here any minute.”

Attracted by the music, more people were crowding in. Somehow, Emily Sue found me. She took one look and said, “Oh, my stars!” Her mouth stayed open.

I thought there was something going on behind me that had scared her. I looked over my shoulder, but didn’t see anything. “What?” I demanded, turning back.

Her mouth was still open. “What color is that?”

“My suit?” I looked at my sleeve. “I dunno. It’s sort of an orange, I guess.”

“Orange! You bought an orange suit?”

I shrugged. “Well, yeah…”

Just then, a convoy of Lincolns and Cadillacs wheeled into the parking building, their tires shrieking. Emily Sue and I had to step aside or we’d have been run over. We found ourselves tight up front in the crowd. “Hey, this is great!” I said.

Emily Sue hadn’t even glanced at the signs or the cars. She was still staring at me. “You don’t like my suit?” I asked her. “O’Dell came by and helped me pick it out.”

She slowly shook her head and then said, “That explains everything.”

The crowd was applauding politely as a man got out of one of the Lincolns. He waved and I guessed he was Senator Kennedy. When he was hoisted to the top of a Cadillac, I knew I was right. He was a thin man with a large head and a lot of hair and a brown face. My first thought when I saw him was to wonder how in the world it was possible to get such a tan in the spring. The senator waved again, cleared his throat—somebody handed him up a glass of water, which he sipped—and then he started to talk. The crowd was milling, not everybody paying attention. He was giving it his all though, and I thought it only polite to listen. His speech, delivered with a clenched fist punching out nearly every word, was about Appalachia (which I was surprised to hear we were part of) and the need for the government to help the whole area, maybe, he said, with a TVA-style project. I’d been taught about the Tennessee Valley Authority in high-school history. Mr. Jones said President Roosevelt had used it to help the economy of the hill country of Tennessee and Alabama. I heard my dad say once to my uncle Ken that the TVA was just socialism, pure and simple. Uncle Ken said it wasn’t either, that it was just the government looking out for the little man. Dad had replied that the government didn’t look out for anybody but itself.