Speedboat by RENATA ADLER

Author:RENATA ADLER [Adler, Renata]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Urban, Contemporary Women, Biographical, General, Literary, Fiction
ISBN: 9781590176139
Google: GhWTtMwvwDwC
Amazon: 1590176138
Publisher: NYRB Classics
Published: 1976-03-19T07:00:00+00:00

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.

Later, years later, when nobody was thinking of the moon, the orphans from Vietnam arrived. To a baby, presumably, being picked up by giants and put down in one place seems no more arbitrary than being picked up by other giants and put down in another place entirely. Here they were. A family named Cavanaugh

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