Barnes. Pdf

 
Chapters 
83
which Betty believed, though she sometimes wondered if that was enough for a girl. But he'd lost his pizzazz. If this was 
putting away childish things, then childish things, according to Betty, had a lot to be said for them. 
The Moondust Diner was full that April evening of 1975 when Spike Tiggler launched his first appeal for funds. Most of 
the town was there, plus a couple of newspapermen and a photographer. Betty feared the worst. She imagined headlines
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like `GOD SPOKE TO ME' CLAIMS GROUNDED ASTRONAUT and WADESVILLE MAN MINUS SOME BUTTONS. 
She sat nervously beside her husband as the local minister welcomed him back to the community where he had grown up. 
There was clapping; Spike gently took her hand and didn't release it until he was on his feet and about to speak. 
`It's nice to be back,' said Spike, and looked around the room, giving hi-there inclinations of the head to those he 
recognized. 'You know, only the other day, I was sitting on my back porch looking up at the stars and thinking about the kid I 
used to be, all those years ago in Wadesville. I must have been fifteen, sixteen or so, and I guess I was a bit of a handful, and 
old Jessie Wade, God rest her, I expect many of you recall Jessie, she said to me, "Young man, you run along screaming and 
shouting like that, one of these days you'll just take off," - and I reckon old Jessie Wade knew a thing or two because many 
years later that's just what I did, though sadly she didn't live to see her prophecy fulfilled, God rest her soul.' 
Betty could not have been more surprised. He was doing a number. He was doing a goddam number on them. He didn't use 
to talk with much fondness about Wadesville; she'd never even heard the story about old Jessie Wade before; yet here he was, 
remembering it all, playing up to the folks back home. He told them a heap of stories about his childhood, and then some more 
about being an astronaut, which after all was what they'd mostly come for, but the message behind it all was that without these 
folks old Spike wouldn't have got further than Fayetteville, that it was these folks who'd really put him up there on the moon 
not those clever guys with wires coming out of their ears at Mission Control. Just as surprising to Betty was that he did this 
part of his address with all the old fun and teasing she thought had gone out of him. And then he came to the bit about every 
man's life being a process of escape and return, escape and return like the waters in the Pasquotank River (which was when 
Jeff Clayton thought it wasn't like that on the way to the World Golf Hall of Fame at Pinehurst); and explained how you 
always came back to the things and places 
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you'd started from. Like he'd left Wadesville years before, and now he was back; like he'd been a regular attender at the Church 
of the Holy Water all through his childhood, had later strayed from the path of the Lord, but had now returned to it - which was 
news, though hardly unexpected news, to Betty. 
And so, he continued, to the serious part of the evening, to the purpose of this meeting (and Betty held her breath, thinking 
nutty as a fruitcake, how are they going to handle this bit, about God telling him to leave his football in the crater and go find 
the Ark instead). But again Betty had underestimated Spike. He didn't refer to lunar commands from the Almighty, not once. 
He invoked his faith several times, and going back to where you came from all over again, and he mentioned the difficulties 
that had to be surmounted in the space program; so when he finally began to explain how he'd been turning over such matters 
on his back porch looking up at the stars, and how it seemed to him that it was time after all these years to go looking for 
where we came from, and that he planned to mount an expedition to recover what could be found of Noah's Ark which as 
everyone knew lay on the summit of Mount Ararat near the borders of Turkey and Iran, it all seemed to make sense, to be a 
logical progression. Project Ararat, indeed, could be seen as the obvious next venture for NASA; and listeners might even be 
free to conclude that NASA was being a little selfish, a little materialistic and narrow-minded, in concentrating solely on space 
flight, when there were other projects, closer to the heart and soul of the tax-payer, which might more usefully receive the 
benefit of their sophisticated technology. 
He'd done a number, he'd done a goddam number, Betty thought as her husband sat down to a roomful of noise. He hadn't 
even mentioned money, he'd just asked them to honor him with their presence while he shared a few ideas with them, and if 
they judged he was thinking straight then he'd get off his tail and start looking for people to help him. That's my Spike, Betty 
found herself muttering, even though it was a rather different Spike from the one she had married. 
'Mrs Tiggler, how do you view your husband's project?' she 
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was asked as they stood hand-in-hand before the photographer from the Fayetteville Observer. 
`Oh, I'm behind him one hundred ten per cent,' she replied, looking up at Spike with a bridal smile. The Observer reported 
her comment, and the journalist even managed to say how striking Mrs Tiggler looked in her mustard dress with matching hat