Stages
by Thaddeus Rutkowski
In the school auditorium, I sat next to a girl who was in my class. Shortly, another boy sat with her, on her other side. We watched a performance by a group of African-American singers. They used humorous lyrics, like "What did Della wear?" in a song about the fifty states.
I didn't want to laugh, because none of my peers were responding to the non-white group. But I knew of Delaware and could picture a person named Della wearing a dress or some other article of clothing, so I laughed.
A student turned around and asked, "Why are you laughing?"
The question made me shut up. After the show, I asked the girl if she liked the other boy better than she liked me.
"I like you both the same," she said.
I was glad she felt that way, but I was disappointed that she left the auditorium with the other boy, not with me.
* * *
At home, my father asked, "Were you harassing a girl in school?"
"No," I said.
"You were seen following her in the hallway."
"I sat next to her in the auditorium, but I didn't follow her."
"You were talking to her!"
"I said something to her."
"You said something! That was harassment!"
I stood in front of my father with my hands in my pockets. I looked at the floor.
"The way you slink around here," he said, "I can tell you're going to become a criminal. You're going to end up in jail."
* * *
I went into my father's workroom and started to put together a model rocket. I glued balsa-wood fins to a ring and fitted the ring around the main cardboard tube. I sanded the nose cone and squeezed lines of glue onto the fin joints. I held the model between two fingers to find its center of gravity. I made sure that point was in front of the center of pressure. Otherwise, the rocket wouldn't be stable in flight.
What interested me more than the model rocket were the firecrackers I found in a drawer. I guessed they had been stored there after a family trip. I couldn't set off the explosives indoors, so I loosened a couple of squibs from the string and put them aside for later use.
* * *
My father told me and my siblings that he was going to take us for a ride in his convertible. We followed him to the gravel pull-off at the side of the house. He unfastened the front of his car's roof and pressed a button. The thick vinyl folded like an accordion as the roof rose up and settled back. He snapped a plastic cover over the folded top.
Wearing jackets, my siblings and I got into the exposed seats, and our father started to drive. When we complained that we were cold, he told us to roll up the windows. We did, but even so, icy air blew around our heads.
Shortly, my father steered off the road and onto a field. He parked the car and opened the trunk. He brought out rocket-launching equipment: a thin metal rod, a firing control box, and a couple of tubular models. He slid the rod into the ground and slipped a rocket along the rod. He opened the car hood, connected wires from the battery to the firing box, and clipped leads from the box to the rocket engine.
"Hitler had a secret weapon," he said, "called the V-2. It was no toy. It was a liquid-fuel missile."
I caught a grasshopper and put it in the rocket's payload section. We could see the insect through the clear plastic.
Neighborhood children came to watch, but I didn't feel comfortable with them there. I took a firecracker and matches from my jacket.
"Are you going to launch a rocket?" a boy asked.
I lit the firecracker and threw it. When it went off, it sounded like a gunshot.
"We want to see a rocket," the boy said.
My father came to me and pressed his chest against my back. He took my arms in his hands and brought me to a crouching position. He guided my fingers toward the control switches. "The V-2 was supposed to end the war," he said. "Too bad things didn't turn out that way."
Reluctantly, I pushed a button to open a circuit between the car battery and the rocket engine. The homemade projectile left the ground with a hiss. Almost immediately, it started to corkscrew through the air. A couple of hundred feet up, it began to pinwheel.
A second charge deployed the parachute. Wind caught the thin material and carried the rocket away. My brother and sister and I ran after the brightly colored swatch but covered only a few dozen yards before we couldn't see it anymore.
* * *
Days later, while I was walking along the creek, I saw the parachute. It was connected to the top part of the rocket, the payload section. The bottom part, the booster, wasn't in sight. The payload compartment still held the traveling grasshopper. I looked at the insect and saw that it wasn't moving.
* * *
In the house, I played loud music on my father's turntable. The music seemed loud where I was sitting, directly in front of the speakers. The sound might have carried down the street to neighbors' houses, or it might not have. I didn't check. I just listened to the notes blasting over me. Some songs made me happy, while others made me sad. I played both kinds.
When my mother heard the happy variety, she said, "I like these songs, because I can understand the words. I can't understand the words of most songs I hear."
When my mother left the room, I played songs that made me both happy and angry. Yes, I thought, that's the ticket
* * *
When I got back to school, I headed for the auditorium. An assembly was letting out, and I stopped the girl I'd sat beside earlier as she came through the double doors.
"What did Della wear?" I asked.
"What?"
"I don't know. Alaska! Get it? I'll ask her."
"You crack me up," the girl said as she walked past me.
I went into the auditorium. The huge room was empty; only the house lights were on. I walked down the aisle and up the steps to the platform. I went into a wing and found the control panel for the overhead lights. I turned on all of the spots—the red, white and blue ones. The stage area looked like it was flooded by daylight.
I pulled a lever that brought all of the rheostats with it. I dimmed the lights, moving the stick all the way down until I achieved a total blackout.
In the darkness, I heard a hum that could have been flowing electricity. I could control it with the switches and handles on the panel. I felt as if I were steering a craft that had no shell. I imagined I was above the Earth, looking down at where I actually was. By moving the master lever, I could adjust the craft's pitch and yaw. When I looked away from the Earth, I could see the void. I threw some switches and went that way.
* * *
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