Rocket Science Read Online Free

once.”
    We dropped the wooden stakes off the right side of my Dad’s old Mack truck. With a strain on my gimpy right leg I got up on back of the bed where I pulled and tugged with the crow bar on my end of the crate. It had been nailed shut by an expert, that was for sure. The wood groaned and splintered before the first nails loosened. As I worked, I noticed that the crate had the words “Scrap Metal — Sharp Edges” stenciled on the side. I wondered if that was a sample of Floyd’s sense of humor.
    With a mighty grunt, Floyd heaved at his end of the crate. The wooden wall came swinging down. I jumped back out of the way, falling off the truck onto my butt on the littered floor of the old barn. That hurt like blazes, and it was a miracle I didn’t get punctured by some old nails or worse. There was a resounding crash as the wood hit the floor, sending loose straw and dust clouds flying and bringing outraged squawks from the bantam hens. It darn near nailed me, too.
    As the dust settled I stood up off the floor on my shaky legs and craned my neck to look into the crate. After a moment, I knew two things.
    First, even though I couldn’t properly see the oddly twisted and curved lines of the thing, I knew I was looking at the most gorgeous aircraft I had ever seen. It looked as if it had been milled out of solid titanium, so smooth I couldn’t even see the joins.
    Second, I was going to find a way to fly it or die trying.

Chapter Two

    T he Cuban War ! There was a war!” Mr. Bellamy promptly fell into a coughing fit. He had become so ill so fast, it was strange.
    The Bellamys’ dining room was a claustrophobic landscape dominated by a claw-footed dark oak table with matching chairs upholstered in a faded blue floral print. An orphaned breakfront that wasn’t related to any of the rest of the furniture hulked along one wall, while the remaining open space was littered with strangely-carved end tables and stained glass floor lamps from back East somewhere. Doilies were scattered on every flat surface like white crows in a cornfield. Everything was sandwiched between carpets the color of my gums and a pressed-tin ceiling corroded to a splotchy black.
    Mrs. Bellamy patted Mr. Bellamy on the back. They were of a feather, those two, old as the hills and tough as nails, at least before Mr. Bellamy’s latest illness. Mrs. Bellamy looked like everyone’s grandmother, pale with curly white hair and thick around the waist. Mr. Bellamy was an old shoe — wrinkled, brown and tough.
    “Now Daddy, what have I told you about yelling?” Mrs. Bellamy turned to face me and Floyd, her pinched face flushed with anger. “What is the matter with you boys? You know not to excite him.”
    “I, we —” I started to say, then stopped at a look from Floyd. Mrs. Bellamy was already ignoring me again, patting Mr. Bellamy’s back as if he was a colicky baby.
    “Don’t bother,” whispered Floyd. “You’ll just cause a fight. He comes out of nowhere with this stuff, and Mama always blames me. At least you’re here as a diversion.”
    I picked at my baked chicken. One of the yard hens had met an untimely demise to give us a fresh, farm-cooked dinner. The feral bantams in the barn were too small to bother with.
    “Now Archie, there was a hero,” announced Mr. Bellamy as he got his breath back. He resumed his oration as if he had never been interrupted. I was fascinated by the way he blindly waved his carving knife to punctuate his monologue. “Archie rode up San Juan Hill with Teddy Roosevelt, you know.”
    He stabbed the knife at me. “Did you serve in the Spanish-American War, Veldon?”
    “Ah, no sir.” I wasn’t even born during that war. I was certain that the question was rhetorical anyway. Mr. Bellamy wasn’t interested in my biography.
    “He was a hell raiser, that Archie,” said Mr. Bellamy with the great sigh of old man who’d wrested satisfaction from his life.
    “Alonzo, don’t you use those words in my