Barnes. Pdf

 
Chapters 
81
moon, but there were never going to be so many that he'd stop being a rarity, a cause for celebrity and reward. Spike Tiggler 
knew a few of the angles, and Betty a whole lot more, which had helped their marriage along on several occasions. He thought 
he was getting a tall, athletic girl with a good figure, who read The Joy of Cooking on honeymoon and kept her fear to herself 
when he was late returning to base; but she turned out a sight more familiar with the reproductive habits of the dollar than he 
was. `You do the flying and I'll do the thinking,' she'd occasionally say to him, which sounded like a tease, or at any rate both 
of them mostly pretended that it was only a tease. So Spike Tiggler went back to his mission and fulfilled his work schedule 
and let no-one suspect that anything had changed, that everything had changed. 
After splashdown came the personal how-de-do from the White House, then the medical, the debriefing, the first call to 
Betty, the first night again with Betty ... and the fame. In the throbbing cities he'd always distrusted - smug Washington, 
cynical New York, nutsy San Francisco - Spike Tiggler was big; in North Carolina he was huge. Tickertape was upended on 
his head like bowls of spaghetti; his right hand discovered the fatigue of congratulation; he was kissed, hugged, pawed, 
slapped, punched. Small boys would dig in his vest pocket and shamelessly beg for moondust. Most of all, people just wanted 
to be with him, beside him for a few minutes, breathe in the air that he was breathing out, wonder at the man from outer space 
who was also the man from the neighboring county. It was after some months of fevered coast-to-coast coddling that the North 
Carolina state legislature, proud of its boy and a little jealous that he seemed to have somehow become a general property of 
the nation, announced that they were striking a medal to be awarded at a special ceremony. What more appropriate place, 
everyone agreed, than at Kitty Hawk, on the flat land beneath the flat sky? 
Appropriate words were pronounced that afternoon, yet Spike could only half apprehend them; Betty had on a new outfit 
with even a hat and needed reassurance that she was looking 
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terrific, which she was, but she didn't get it. A large gold medal, with the Kitty Hawk on one side and the Apollo capsule on 
the other, was hung around his neck; Spike's hand was battered several dozen more times; and all the while, as he gave out the 
polite smile and the inclination of the head, he was thinking about that moment on the drive, the moment that told him. 
It had been cordial, not to say flattering, in the back of the Governor's limousine, and Betty had been looking so good he 
thought he should tell her only was shy of doing so in front of the Governor and his wife. There was the usual conversation 
about gravity and moon-hopping and earth-rise and tell me, what about going to the bathroom, when suddenly, just as they 
were nearing Kitty Hawk, he saw the Ark by the side of the road. A huge, beached ark, high at both ends, with slatted wooden 
sides. The Governor followed Spike's head indulgently as it panned through 180 degrees, then answered his question without it 
being put. `Some kinda church,' said the Governor. `They stuck it up not long back. Probably got a load of animals in it.' He 
laughed, and Betty joined in carefully. 
`Do you believe in God?' asked Spike all of a sudden.
`Couldn't get to be Governor of North Carolina without,' came the good-humored reply. 
`No, do you believe in God,' Tiggler repeated, with a directness that could easily be misread for something they didn't need. 
`Honey,' said Betty quietly. 
`I sure do think we're nearly there,' said the Governor's wife, straightening a box-pleat with a white-gloved hand. 
In their hotel room that evening, Betty was at first inclined to be conciliatory. It must be a strain, she thought, however 
dandy it might be. I wouldn't like to get up on platforms and tell everyone for the fiftieth time what it was like and how proud 
it made me feel, even if it did make me feel proud and I did want to talk about it for the fiftieth time. So she mothered him a 
little and asked if he was feeling tired, and tried to get him to spit out any excuse as to why not once, not once in the whole