Read Online Sky of Stone by Homer Hickam - Free Book Online

maybe even nose out what kind of trouble he was in, or see if he would tell me what was wrong with Nate Dooley. But it was nearly nine o’clock, and I realized Dad was probably already inside the mine. He wouldn’t be out until sometime later in the afternoon. I cast around for something to do in the meantime and decided to go down to the machine shop. Coalwood’s machinists had once been my rocket builders. I wanted to let them get a look at me, to see how far I’d come as a college man. Maybe I’d also swing by Ginger Dantzler’s house. Ginger was the daughter of Mr. Devotee Dantzler, the company store manager. She and I had been almost boyfriend-girlfriend there for a while, but one thing or another had kept us from it. Maybe Ginger would know something about Tuck or Nate, too, and maybe, I thought hopefully, we could even fire up our friendship, if just a little.
    I checked on the dogs in the basement. They had plenty of food and water and seemed reasonably content. Then I looked around for Lucifer, but there was still no sign of him. The old tom had been known to spend a few days at a time in the mountains, so I wasn’t unduly worried.
    I sorted through the keys hanging on a nail in the basement until I found one for the Buick. I didn’t figure Dad would care if I took his old car out for a spin, so I drove it down Main Street, through Coalwood Main, and then over the railroad tracks to the machine shop. As soon as I walked through the door, I smelled the deliciously pungent mixture of hot oil and burning oxyacetylene. How I loved that smell! To me, it meant progress, work done, and satisfaction. The machines wound down and the torches spat off, and men came up to me, pushing their goggles up on their foreheads. “Sonny, the rocket boy!” somebody said, and I saw big grins. Responding to their rapid-fire questions, I told them I was doing the best I could in college and hadn’t flunked out, not yet, no matter what they’d heard. Their eyes told me they were pleased at the news.
    Clinton Caton, the machinist who’d done most of the lathe work on the Big Creek Missile Agency’s rocket nozzles, grasped my hand. “Got a rocket drawing?” he asked eagerly. “I’ll get right on it if you do!”
    I didn’t and said so. Mr. Caton’s creased face lost its smile. The other men looked grim. I hated to disappoint them. They’d always liked being rocket builders more than working on Dad’s mine machinery.
    “Sonny boy!” The hearty voice that boomed behind me belonged to Bill Bolt, the machine shop supervisor. Leaning back in his chair, he waved to me from his office. “Come have a word!”
    Mr. Bolt offered me a chair, then closed the office door, muffling the roar of the machinery as the men outside revved up their lathes and drill presses again. He sat down at his desk and leaned back in his chair, his hands clasped behind his head. Mr. Bolt’s hair was filled with silver threads I’d never noticed before, but otherwise he was the same hearty fellow I’d always known. He asked me about college, and I covered my classes and talked a bit about the cadet corps, too. “You like all that marching around?” he asked. “Never figured you for a soldier.”
    “Some people around here used to say the army was going to love us rocket boys,” I reminded him. “They said we’d already had our combat training down at Cape Coalwood, what with our rockets blowing up and chasing us around the hollow.”
    Mr. Bolt laughed. “I might have been the one who said it. You boys did dig a few craters in that old slack dump.” He shook his head, smiling at the memory. Then his smile faded. “Have you talked to your dad about the Tuck Dillon mess?”
    “I haven’t seen him yet,” I said. “He came in after I went to bed, was gone before I got up.”
    “Late to bed, early to rise, that’s your daddy.” He ran his tongue inside his lips. I knew he had something to say. “Sonny, Homer’s got steel company, state,