Red Thunder

“So something went wrong-with the booster, notice-seventy seconds into Challenger’s last flight, and seven more people die.

“Hurry-up is death, when you’re dealing with rockets. So is under-funding.”

“An’ now,” Jubal said, “now it happening all over ’gain.”

Travis threw himself down into his seat, puffed out his cheeks.

“It appears so. The powers that be decided we needed to go to Mars, if the Chinese were going. And soon. Hang the cost. Hang the engineering quibbles.” He looked dubiously at his cousin.

“Tell me this, Jubal. You say we can build us a spaceship, we can go out there and get them home if they get into trouble. And we can do it all-in five months. Isn’t this another space race? Aren’t we likely to build something that will blow up in our faces?”

“Not my Squeezer machine,” Jubal said. “It won’t blow up, I guar-on-tee!”

“Okay, I believe you. But what about all the other things we’d have to do? You really think we have time?”

“Don’ know. Maybe not.”

“This race is a little different, Travis,” Kelly said. “This time there’s no choice as to whether we take it slow and careful. Lives are at stake if we don’t build the rocket.”

“We can try it a step at a time,” I said, and Kelly looked sharply at me. “We can go test the rocket tomorrow, like you said. If it blows up, well, that’s that. But we tried.” Kelly gave me a short, relieved nod.

[165] “Makes sense,” Dak said. Alicia grabbed his hand.

“We do that t’ing tomorrow, Travis,” Jubal said. “Jus’ de test.”

Travis looked at each of us in turn, and sighed.

“Just the test,” he agreed. “Come on, I want to start in an hour.”

IT TOOK AN hour and a half, but we got rolling by that afternoon. I called home and told them I’d be out all night. Mom said things were going smoothly, not to worry.

By nightfall we were passing through Miami.

17

WE TURNED EAST on the Tamiami Trail and drove on into the night. We were in three vehicles: Travis’s Hummer, Blue Thunder, and a Ferrari demonstrator Kelly had chosen because it would piss off her dad to find it gone all night and the next day. The thing would go like a bomb, but what with the traffic we picked up around Palm Beach we never got a chance to open her up. The long, low, infernal machine seemed to be pouting most of the way.

It was one in the morning when we pulled into Everglades City, which was an exaggeration if there ever was one. Most of the few hundred inhabitants were snug in bed as we bounced over mud and shell roads until we stopped in front of an old Airstream trailer set up on cinder blocks. The porch light was on. Flowering plants hung from the awning and from poles.

As Travis pulled the Hummer in beside the rusting hulk of a pickup truck, a dog I later learned was a black-and-tan coonhound lifted his head and bounded down the steps. Half a dozen more came out from under the deck. The dogs didn’t bark, but circled the vehicles nervously. Travis held his hand out and the dominant male sniffed it, then started ru

“I figure we stay in the car until we’re introduced,” Kelly said.

“Good plan.”

The screen door flew open and a huge man came out, followed by a woman almost as big. Not fat, either of them, just built large and powerful. I could see immediately that the man was related to Jubal. They had the same eyes and the same mouth. One of his many brothers?

He shouted something at the dogs and they all came to him and sat, quivering.

“Y’all can come out now,” Travis called to us. “Let the dogs sniff your hands and you’ll be okay. They’re hunting dogs, not guard dogs. Cousin Caleb breeds the best black-and-tans in the state of Florida.”

“Georgia and Mississip’, too,” the big guy bellowed. Then he had his arms around Jubal and was pounding him on the back hard enough to kill a normal man. Travis embraced the woman, then they switched and did it all over again.

Introductions were made all around. Caleb was officially Celebration Broussard, but like all but one of his brothers, he had simplified his name “when Pappy went away.” His wife was Grace. Behind the two of them a boy-young man, really, about fourteen or fifteen-had come out of the trailer and was introduced as Billy, their son.

“Lord have mercy!” Caleb shouted when all that was out of the way. “If that ain’t the finest rig I ever did see. You do all that work yourself, Dak?” Dak allowed as how he had, and the two of them talked pickup trucks while Billy’s eyes went straight to the red Ferrari… and the gorgeous woman who had been driving it. The pimply-faced little jerk. He blushed when Kelly shook his hand. Out here in Everglades City, he probably never saw a pretty female except on television.

“Y’all been driving a long time,” Grace said. “You must be real hungry.”

“We had some ham sandwiches at a 7-Eleven,” Travis said. “Don’t put yourself out, we’re fine.”

[168] Well, I wasn’t all that fine, I was famished. But I was far too polite to say so.

It didn’t matter. Grace would have stuffed food into our mouths with a fu

Jubal was on my right, and he jabbed me with an elbow. He had a twinkle in his eye and was practically wriggling with suppressed joy.

“Watch dis, Ma

“Would somebody say grace?” Jubal asked.

“Grace,” Travis said.

“Yes?” Grace said.

Jubal giggled, and soon we were all laughing. Not much of a joke, I guess you had to be there. Jubal could be so childlike and i

“… and tell my peckerwood little brother not to let another five years go by ’fore he visits us again,” Caleb finished.

“Amen,” Jubal said, with feeling. Travis nodded, looking a bit guilty. Well, he should have been, if the brothers hadn’t seen each other in that long.

Then we all dug in.

I’d already demolished a plateful before I realized the big table was actually too big. Too big for the trailer, anyway. I saw then that Caleb and Grace had added on to the rig, tearing out one side, welding a second trailer to the one out front and then adding a structure on behind that. No telling what all was back there. Welding was one of Caleb’s many professions, along with carpentry and plumbing and “anything needs doing around here.” It looked like very good work to me, not the sort of redneck chaos I’d expected when we pulled up in front.

When we had each turned down a third invitation to eat more, Grace got up and called me and Kelly and Dak and Alicia to the doorway leading further into the trailer-building. We found ourselves in a narrow hallway with doors on each side.

[169] “We’d all love to sit around and chat with y’all all night,” she said, “but Travis says he wants to get an early start, so I figure y’all better catch a little rest. When Travis says early, he means early.”

It turned out all the doors were bedrooms. Grace opened a door and beckoned. On the other side was a room clearly belonging to a girl. From the rock star posters on the wall my guess was she would be twelve or thirteen. The room was immaculate, and smelled slightly of a floral air freshener. There were towels and washcloths neatly folded on the double bed.