Sky of Stone by Homer Hickam Page A

machine shop. It made me think of Mr. Bykovski. Four years ago, my visit to him in that shop had sealed his fate—and mine.
    I opened the back gate and went into the yard. A scramble of paws at the basement steps announced the imminent appearance of our dogs. Poteet appeared first, followed by Dandy, our pure-bred golden cocker spaniel. Poteet was a thin black mongrel who had been taken in by my mom, primarily to keep Dandy company. She trotted up to me, her tongue lolling, and gave me a perfunctory sniff, and then whined in recognition. I stroked her head, then did the same for Dandy and felt the ancient dog shudder as if afraid. Poteet nuzzled Dandy’s neck. It looked like she was consoling him. Mom had written to me some months back that Dandy was just about blind. Then he licked my hand and I knew he’d finally remembered me, at least by smell.
    Satisfied with the overall situation, Poteet led Dandy out of the rain and back down into the basement. I climbed the steps to the back porch. There were two covered pans in front of the door and a note. It said
Supper,
and was signed
Rosemary.
I figured it was from Rosemary Sharitz, our next-door neighbor. Cecil Sharitz, her husband, was one of Dad’s most trusted foremen. In Mom’s absence, I supposed the Sharitzes were looking after Dad as best they could.
    I picked up the pans, took them inside, and switched on the light with my elbow. The first thing I saw was Mom’s mural of Myrtle Beach painted on the kitchen wall. She had worked on it for years and had finally finished it just before I’d graduated from high school. It showed a beach, a rolling surf, some shells, seagulls, blue skies, a few puffy clouds, palm trees, a house, and a woman standing alone atop a sand dune. The woman, I believed, was Mom. There was no one else in the picture, not Dad or me, or my brother, Jim, either.
    Then I looked closer. Mom had apparently worked on her painting recently. There was what appeared to be a small dog sitting beside her. It was red, had pointy ears, a long snout, and a bushy, half-silver tail wrapped around its legs. It was her fox, Parkyacarcass.
    I studied the painting for a long time. Mom was gone, but the sad story of her fox continued right where Dad would see it every day. “What happened to you, Parky?” I asked the little fox in the mural. “Where did you go?”
    The electric stove sat bare and cold. I opened the bread and snack drawers but found them empty. The refrigerator had some milk in it and some old lunch meat, both past their prime. In Mrs. Sharitz’s pans, I found a stew in one and green beans in the other. There was plenty, more than enough for two people, so I turned on the stove and set the pans on it, stirring them a bit.
    While the food heated, I decided to go down into the basement and have a look around my old rocket laboratory. The other rocket boys and I had spent hours there, building our rockets, loading them with various chemical concoctions, and, until we’d blown it up, testing our propellants in the coal-fired hot water heater. Mom had gotten herself a new electric hot water heater out of that deal, so she’d never yelled at us about it too much.
    I opened the door and went down the wooden steps, hoping to see old Lucifer, our tomcat, asleep at the bottom of the steps on a rug. The rug was still there but he wasn’t. I ducked my head beneath the big furnace pipes and went to the back of the basement, where I found the sinks and shelves that were all that was left of our lab. Someone, Dad probably, had pitched out all our chemicals. The bare shelves looked as lonely and forlorn as I felt.
    Sherman Siers had been the rocket boy who’d helped me most often mix up our compositions. I imagined him standing there, dressed in his heavy coat, rubber gloves, and the ridiculous ball cap with a piece of clear plastic taped to its bill that was supposed to protect his eyes. Some people said we were lucky we hadn’t blown the house, and