Sky of Stone Read Online Free PDF Page B

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.
    After the final parade at the end of the school year, the cadets of my squadron boxed up their uniforms, tidied up their rooms, and took off for wherever their summers led them. I said good-bye to everyone, including my roommate, George Fox, whose parents had come to pick him up. My plan was to spend one more night in the dormitory, then hitchhike down to Myrtle Beach the next day. In my room, I crawled on top of my bunk, pulled out a tattered paperback, and quickly became engrossed in
Starship Troopers.
It was at least the fifth time I’d read it. I loved everything Robert Heinlein wrote. Next to John Steinbeck, he was my favorite author. I liked the way he made me want to turn the page even when I knew what was going to happen.
    I heard the phone ringing in the booth down the hall, and it