Rocket Boys by Homer Hickam

Author:Homer Hickam
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Tags: Biography & Autobiography, Nonfiction
ISBN: 9780440333876
Publisher: Dell
Published: 1999-04-01T00:00:00+00:00

IKE and Mary Bykovski didn’t have a telephone, so I walked to their house after school. Mrs. Bykovski opened the door and frowned when she saw it was me. She was a slender woman with a pale, thin face and sunken cheeks. Her brown hair was short and straight, uneven around the edges as if maybe she had cut it herself and hadn’t tried too hard to make it come out right. Mom said Mrs. Bykovski always looked a little “peaked.” “The Mister’s still napping,” she said. “Working at the face wears him out.”

I blurted out an apology for causing his job change. “It’s all right, I guess, Sonny,” she said in a kindlier tone. “The paycheck’s bigger, anyway.”

She invited me in and I sat alone on the couch in their living room while she went upstairs. The house smelled of corn bread and beans, the Coalwood staple. I saw a pair of reading glasses on a table beside the couch and also a book. Closer inspection revealed that it was a novel titled The Fountainhead. I didn’t know it. Opposite the couch was a television set in a dark, heavy console. On top of it was a framed photograph of Esther, the Bykovski’s daughter. She was in a wheelchair, her head lolling on her shoulder. Mrs. Bykovski stood on one side of her and Mr. Bykovski on the other. None of them was smiling.

After a while, Mr. Bykovski came down the stairs into the living room, yawning and stretching his suspenders over his shoulders. “Hello, young man,” he smiled as his Mrs. set down a saucer and a cup of steaming tea on a little table beside his easy chair. When she asked me if I wanted something, I said, “No, ma’am,” and she disappeared into the kitchen. He noticed I was looking at the photograph on the television and said, “Maybe the day will come when we can bring Esther home and she can go back to school with you.”

“I hope so, sir,” I told him. Actually, Esther had been a disruption during the first and second grade, and I had been shamefully glad when she left. Usually, she sat silently at her desk, staring blankly at the teacher or with her head down on her arms. But at other times, she would gyrate and make grunting sounds and spasmodically sweep her books and pens to the floor. Our teachers would wait patiently until she was through and then direct one of us boys to pick up her things and place them back on her desk. While the rest of us were worrying over getting our printing to match exactly the example shown on the blackboard, Esther got praise for any kind of mark that resembled the letters. Toward the end of the second-grade school year, she had gone into some kind of a seizure and thrown up all over the boy in front of her and then fallen out of her chair and started to choke. Mr.

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