One more island, this one in the Caribbean. Our nationalities were mixed, as usual. Hendon was English, handsome in a way that was somehow flat and imbecilic. His sandy forelock was always in place. His eyes were green. His hands were long, with very broad, flat fingers. He wore bathing shorts, with vertical stripes in rainbow colors. Quite late every morning he appeared on the beach with his girl, a tall, dark, thin person in black. It was said that she was one of the most highly paid models in England. Her presence with Hendon on the island had to be kept secret from anyone back home. Any home. It turned out that she had, in fact, been a model in London tabloids. It never did become clear why her secret must be kept. But visitors to the island were always rumored to be one of the best, or most highly paid of something, and preferably to have some mystery as well. Of Hendon it was said, and he cheerfully confirmed it, that he had spent nine years in English prisons, for the crime of having inflicted “grievous bodily harm.” A nine-year sentence meant that he had done his work extremely thoroughly. He had been a gang enforcer. He had beaten several men almost to death. The explanation would have been enough to include Hendon among the other best and most and mysterious members of the beach group, but he had another quality. Whenever he was asked to, and often when he wasn’t, he would pull down the front of his bathing suit and flash. He did this quickly and somehow discreetly. He did not dwell on it. He would pull up his trunks again at once, politely laugh. People began to call him the flasher. Jokes were made about the sexual honor of the white visitors among the black islanders. Other jokes like that.
On the day the Queen was to arrive on the island, all the islanders gathered at the airport — which consisted of a shack and one runway of not altogether smooth tarmac. When everyone had arrived, by jeep or on foot, the governor of the island arranged them in an L-shaped line. The base of the L was parallel to the shack, and stood facing in the direction from which the plane would land; the spine of the L stood along the runway itself. Hendon and his girl stood in the base line, with the few whites who knew the Queen already and the few blacks who were island officials. Some people wore bathing suits. Some people wore sports clothes. Some people, mostly the island blacks, wore dresses, or suits and ties. Hendon was in his striped, many-colored bathing suit. There was the sound of an engine rumble in the sky. The plane appeared from the wrong direction, then circled and landed as it should. Everyone waved as it taxied down the runway. Hands could be seen to wave at the small plane’s window. The door opened. Pilot and passengers got out. Hendon flashed for the Queen.
There was, of course, no way of knowing whether the Queen had noticed. With her lady-in-waiting, and a tall man who appeared to be limping, she paused to shake hands with everybody. The governor introduced Hendon as the flasher. The Queen gave no sign. She shook his hand. When she had said hello to everyone, and gone with her group, by jeep to her house on the tip of the island, Aldo and I somehow got into the jeep with Hendon and his girl. The girl drove. Hendon was in a fugue state. He began an intense monologue, the gist of which was that the Queen had class. “Real class,” he kept repeating. He would emphasize his remarks by grabbing, from time to time, for his girl friend’s crotch. Impassive, she continued driving. She did not even turn her head. “Real class,” he went on. “She sees a man for what he is. She takes me for what I am.” He reached for his girl again. “Not,” he said, staring dreamily out of the window, “like these middle-class cunts.” He rambled on until we were on the hill to our house, when, in a kind of extase, he began to slap his girl friend’s face. With his open palm he slapped the left side of her face, and with the back of his hand the right. His girl just drove, as though this were windshield wipers, or some other feature of the jeep. “Wasn’t that something, luv?” Hendon kept saying. Class.
“I can’t believe it,” people said, almost with passion. It was that year’s version of hello. “I can’t believe it,” people said, on the beach, on the slopes, in hotel lobbies, in cells, at parties. Apparently incredulous, astounded, people met. Sometimes the rejoinder was “For God’s sake,” as in “Harry! Maude! I can’t believe it.” “Marilyn! Well, for God’s sake.” Sometimes people changed it slightly. When we had just come back to the office, a middle-aged couple, he with the heartiness of another era, she with a certain trembly superstition, met in the elevator only yesterday. “Well, as I live and breathe,” he shouted. “Touch wood,” she replied.
WHAT WAR
THE SURVEYOR moon shot was, in many ways, the best, a coltish tripod on its spindly legs; the first shot it transmitted back to earth was a shy little photo of the shadow of its foot. The Russian instrument had been, by contrast, stolid, plump; it sat up there. We were not told what photographs it sent. The second thing Surveyor did was to use its little shovel, and to send back information about what it dug. It kept sending photographs, of its foot, of its other feet, of its own long, thin shadow on the moon. After some weeks, its batteries expired. It had been useful. It was written off as dead. A few weeks later, sunwarmed, it suddenly began to transmit again. Taking those photographs of its shadows and its feet, like a tourist posed, bashful and proud, on its lunar monument. Then, it again expired. But when, some weeks later, Surveyor II was sent up, Surveyor I woke up yet again. They would both transmit. For weeks and months, they would wake up, drowse, wake up, transmit. They were frail and gangling, but they frolicked quite a long time on the moon.
And, right after the first man landed and walked upon the moon, there was a television program in which a reporter for a network interviewed small children in their school about their views of the event. He asked various questions and received various answers, straightforward or coy. When he asked his last question, what was the moon made of, he heard from the smug children, about green cheese. Some said the moon was made of paper, two said neon light. A vote was taken. The green-cheese children, in their nyah nyah voices, seemed to have chanted everybody down. There remained one unconvinced, iconoclastic child. The moon, she said, in a sensible, lofty tone of pure conviction, is made of grabbedy.
“Now, we’ll keep our chin straps down, and the mouthpiece in the mouth,” the coach said to the ten-year-olds, in their expensive uniforms, preparing to play football. “Anybody sees wishbone formation, he yells ‘Wishbone!’ Don’t look at them,” he said, nodding toward the other team, which was from a larger town and looked a little older. “They’re bigger than us, some of them, but they’re leery of us and they’re thinking. Now, we’ll do our huddle, say our Hail Mary, and then,” he said, “we’ll get them.” It is true that we all grew up in a gentler spirit than that might reflect. It is also true that we are all here now, in our city lives, and our city jobs, and nobody came and got us for them in our bassinets.