Four Freedoms

by John Crowley

  lence.

  Prosper felt a little the same. “Swell,” he said when Bea told him.

  “When’s he coming?”

  “Next Saturday,” Bea said.

  “Swell.”

  “Don’t say swell, Prosper. It’s so vulgar.”

  His father brought Charlie in an old heap of a car, which drove past

  the house and then, as though becoming only slowly conscious of the

  address it had passed, cycled back to park against the far curb. Char-

  lie’s father, in a windbreaker jacket and hat, cigarette between his lips,

  got out and went around to the passenger side to get Charlie out. Bea,

  May, and Prosper watched from the house. Prosper remembered the

  hospital, more clearly than he had before, when Charlie’s father lifted

  him up with that careful love and both arms around him. He set him

  down on the pavement. Then with a small grip in one hand and the

  other on his son’s shoulder to keep him steady, he aimed Charlie at the

  house. The three inside watched him come toward them, Charlie

  resembling a man walking under water, seeming to spoon the air with

  lifted arms to help push his knees up against some invisible pressure,

  uncertain feet falling where they had to. His father bent down and said

  something to him around the cigarette, and Charlie hearing it laughed,

  head wagging in glee.

  They came out onto the porch to greet Charlie, his father guiding

  though not aiding him up the stairs. Only when he’d seen the boy to

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  the top did he take off his hat and greet the ladies and Prosper. He was

  grateful for the invitation. Bea said that Charlie surely had grown, and

  certainly he looked to her both larger and more hazardous than she’d

  thought he’d be. May invited them both in, but Charlie’s father with a

  quiet apology said he couldn’t: he was starting a new job, Swing Shift

  at a plant, and didn’t dare take a chance of being late. The women

  understood.

  “Good-bye, son. Behave yourself.”

  “Byda.”

  “Don’t do anything I wouldn’t do.”

  Charlie liked that joke.

  “Charlie!” Prosper said. “Come in and see my art supplies.”

  Charlie’s father with a last touch on his son’s shoulder turned to go,

  and May stepped down off the porch with him.

  “Now, Mr. Coutts, is there anything at all we should know, I mean

  what is it we should, you know.”

  “Oh he’s fine,” said the man, discarding the remnant of his ciga-

  rette in the gutter. “He’ll not give any trouble. You might tuck a big

  napkin in his shirt collar at dinner.” He smiled at May. “I’ll be back

  tomorrow morning.”

  Charlie’d gone into the house with a hand on Prosper’s shoulder.

  Bea following after the two of them was made to think how large the

  world is, and how little of it we see most of the time. When Prosper’d

  got Charlie to his room and seated him on the bed, Bea put her head

  around the corner and with a motion drew Prosper out.

  “Won’t he need help?” she said. “You should offer him help.”

  “No, Aunt Bea. He doesn’t need help. He can do everything fine.

  He just has to go slow.”

  “Well.” Bea glanced back into the room where Charlie sat, rocking

  as though he heard a strange music, or as though now and then some

  small invisible being poked him. “If he needs any help you just call.”

  “All right.”

  “And you give him any help he needs.”

  “I will.”

  “Don’t wait to be asked.”

  “I won’t.”

  The women left the boys alone.

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  They looked over Prosper’s art supplies, but Prosper, realizing they

  weren’t much use to Charlie, shut them up again, and from the drawer

  where they were kept brought out games, cribbage, checkers, that he’d

  seen Charlie manage in the hospital. They talked about the hospital,

  and all that they had shared then, the bedpans, the crutch racing, Nurse

  Muscle Eenie—Charlie laughing as Prosper remembered him doing

  back then, laughter that seemed to run riot throughout him, tugging

  him this way and that so that Prosper watching him laughed harder

  too even as he tried to pull out of Charlie’s orbit the game board or cup

  of coffee that Charlie’s limbs threatened. Upstairs May and Bea lis-

  tened to the hilarity and the banging of the braces and the furniture,

  taking turns rising up in alarm and starting off to go see, till pulled

  back by the other.

  It actually fascinated Prosper how Charlie did things, as though he

  were badly adapted to do many common tasks but had figured out by

  long practice how to get them done. Once in the hospital a man had

  come to entertain the children, a small man in a dress suit with a little

  dog. The dog could do things you wouldn’t think his paws and teeth

  could manage. While the man would pretend to be about to do a magic

  trick or juggle some balls, the little dog would run behind him and pull

  out the hidden scarves or cards from his pockets, nose open the secret

  drawers of trick boxes when the man wasn’t looking, paw out the doves

  from the man’s tall hat—he could do anything, so deft and alert to

  select the moment when the man’s back was turned to spoil his tricks

  (though of course that was the trick), looking up with wide eyes as the

  man scolded him, then doing it again, so busy and satisfied and inno-

  cent. That’s how it was watching Charlie sugar his coffee, or rub his

  chin questioningly, or mark his cribbage score with a pencil.

  When long after dinner May called down the stairs to order them to

  turn off the radio and go to bed, Charlie went to the little grip his

  father had brought, worked open its catches, and pulled out a pair of

  gray cotton pajamas. He got into these, and Prosper into his, each using

  his own method and each making fun of the other for his contrivances.

  Prosper noted the knotted muscle in Charlie’s rump and the big testi-

  cles too. In the bathroom they washed their faces and brushed their

  teeth, Prosper in his office chair and Charlie gripping the sink and

  wrestling with the brush as though it were a small animal that had got

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  him. Laughing more, they climbed together into the bed, and Prosper

  pulled the string he had rigged up so he could shut off the light hanging

  from the ceiling.

  “So good night,” Prosper said.

  “Ood nigh,” said Charlie. “Own ledda bebbugs buy.”

  “Don’t let the bedbugs bite. Okay, Charlie.”

  “Oh gay.”

  “Anything else you need?” May’d told him not to wait to be asked.

  “Anything else I can help you with?”

  “Oh well,” Charlie said, and began a series of twitches that might

  have been shy or apologetic, and his knees pushed the bedclothes

  sharply up. “I woont mine few could hep me yerp aw.”

  “What?”

  Charlie was laughing, in embarrassment or maybe not—that’s what

  this spiraling was. “I wool like you. To hep me. YERP AW.”

  Prosper thought
a moment, and got it. “Charlie! What?”

  “Cmaw,” Charlie said sweetly. “Gme a hand.”

  Now they were both laughing, but Charlie didn’t stop. It was appar-

  ent that he meant it, and asked it as a favor. He’d kicked away the cov-

  erlet, purposefully it now seemed. “Ow bowdid? Hey?”

  “Well,” Prosper said. “Well all right.”

  “Oh gay,” said Charlie. He now became a mass of excited ungov-

  erned activity from head to foot; Prosper had to help him get his bot-

  toms down. Charlie’s penis was already big, and bigger than Prosper

  had expected, bigger than his own, which had got up in sympathy,

  though Prosper kept his own pants on. It took a minute to figure how

  to grasp the thing from a point out in front rather than behind where

  he’d always been before, like trying to do something while looking

  only in a mirror, they struggled this way and that before they hit a

  rhythm, which Prosper now divined would be the hard part for Charlie

  when alone, especially as they got going and like a caught piglet Char-

  lie’s body underwent an alarming series of thrashes and wriggles at

  once urgent and random, Prosper pursuing him across the bed to keep

  at it. Charlie’s noises were getting louder too, though it was clear he

  was trying to suppress them. His hand flew up, maybe trying to pitch

  in and help, and caught Prosper a smack in the ear so that Prosper too

  cried out. May from upstairs could be heard demanding quiet from the

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  boys just as Prosper felt Charlie swell farther, and great lashings of

  stuff flew from him and across the bedsheets, Charlie nearly thrown

  off the bed onto the floor by his heavings.

  “Okay?” Prosper whispered, after Charlie’d grown comparatively

  still.

  “Oh gay,” Charlie said. “Anks a bunch.”

  “You’re welcome.”

  “Ooh nigh.”

  “Good night, Charlie.”

  Prosper telling the tale of those days to Vi in Henryville left out about

  Charlie Coutts. He didn’t recount that early time with Elaine, either,

  for he didn’t think these stories and what happened would count with

  her. He didn’t really know why he was himself tempted to think that

  indeed they did count: couldn’t have said what in them was part of that

  secret tissue that had no name, only instances. Can you say you’ve

  learned something if you don’t know what it is you’ve learned?

  Twice or three times more Charlie came to visit ( Prosper you can’t

  let Charlie drink Coca-Cola in bed. He spills, and it leaves stains on

  the sheets. Brown stains. You hear? ) though somehow May and Bea

  hadn’t the heart to organize a journey to Charlie’s house, a failing

  they’d remember later with a little shame; and then once when Mr.

  Coutts came to pick up his son, a raw November day despite which the

  boys sat on the porch together (they were trying to memorize every

  make and model of car there was, outguessing each other and then

  arguing over which that one was, a Lincoln or a Packard), he announced

  that Charlie probably wouldn’t be able to come back. Not anytime

  soon anyway.

  May and Bea had come out to see him—they’d taken to the quiet

  man—and asked what had happened, they enjoyed Charlie’s company,

  what was the matter? Well it was nothing about that; only Mr. Coutts

  had at length decided it was best if Charlie went to be taken care of in

  an institution, a school Mr. Coutts had learned about, in another city.

  A school or home for young people like himself. It was a charity, and

  there’d be no charge.

  He sat down on the step beside his son.

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  “Plymouth Roadking,” said Prosper.

  “O,” said Charlie. “Chrysle a-felow.”

  “No, nope son. Wasn’t a Chrysler Airflow. It was the Plymouth.”

  Charlie roused, indignant, but said nothing more. No one said any-

  thing for a moment. Prosper knew about it already: Charlie’d told him.

  Far: that’s all he knew. He’d get training there, but he didn’t know

  what kind, or for what. Prosper tried to imagine him without his gentle

  father near him, and couldn’t.

  “Jobs the way they are, and his mother with other kids at home,”

  Mr. Coutts said, and no more.

  “Well we’ll miss you, Charlie,” said May. “We’ve got used to you.”

  Charlie smiled. “I’ll sen you a poscar.”

  His father helped him stand, and they said good-byes all around.

  Prosper wanted to do something but couldn’t think what it should be.

  He had given Charlie the only thing from his father’s cases that Charlie

  could manage the use of: it was a thin paper book, Drawing the Nude.

  I’ll be pobular, Charlie’d said, and tucked it in his shirt.

  They got into the car and Mr. Coutts fixed Charlie’s cap on his

  head. Charlie flung up a hand by way of a parting wave; to them on the

  porch it looked at once triumphant and desperate, but they knew it was

  just his muscles.

  “He’s just not made for this world,” Bea said.

  “Hmp,” May said. “What’s for sure is, this world’s not made for

  him.”

  “Well, it’s for the best, I’m sure,” said Bea. “I’m sure it’s the best

  thing.”

  “Oh hush, Bea,” May said, and turned away, an awful catch in her

  throat that Prosper had never heard before. “For God’s sake just

  hush.”

  6

  Fenix Vigaron hadn’t actually predicted it, but May later could look

  back over their conversations and see it figured there: just when

  things seemed like they were going to get a little better—and

  things had by then already got a lot better for some of us—May’s

  office-supply business went quack. The owner, who’d kept it going

  through the worst years of the Depression by various impostures and

  financial shenanigans that caught up with him at last, shot himself in

  the private washroom behind his office. May was out of a job, with no

  prospect at her age of another. Turn around, turn back, said Fenix,

  and one hopeless night when Bea was washing May’s hair, they both

  seemed to hit on the idea at the same moment.

  What they always called the side room—maybe it had once been a

  sunporch or a summer kitchen but for as long as the two of them had

  owned the place it had gone unused except for boxes and things wait-

  ing to be fixed or thrown away—was about big enough and with work

  could be made into a cozy place. It had its own door to the alley, though

  nailed shut now. They’d have to invest most of their savings in plumb-

  ing and carpentry and supplies; they’d start with a single chair, or two.

  Bea already had a sort of following from the store, women who trusted

  her advice and might take a chance on her. May’d have a lot to learn,

  but she knew business and the keeping of books.

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  So the uncles were called again—May on the phone and Bea hover-

  ing nearby making urgent but ambiguous hand gestures that May

  waved off like pestering flies—and in turn Mert and Fred summ
oned

  from the dark pool of their connections a carpenter, a plumber, and a

  painter, each appearing without warning at dawn or dusk, needing

  instruction, slow mammals or needy and fearful, what debt were they

  working off? One a former chemist, another with a college degree, but

  it wasn’t hard in those years to find such persons displaced from their

  rightful spots into whatever employment they could get. The women

  followed the for-sale ads in the paper and went to bankruptcy and

  going-out-of-business sales, conscious of the irony, and bought a big

  hair dryer and the sinks and mirrors and other things they needed,

  deciding after long thought not to acquire a used permanent-wave

  machine, a gorgon arrangement of electric rods and springs and wires

  such as you’d use to make the bride of Frankenstein, and anyway too

  prone to disastrous mishandling, as in a dozen comic movies. They’d

  offer waving and cutting, bleaching and dyeing, “consultations,” and

  manicures, for the fashion now was for long long nails painted in the

  deepest reds, fire engine, blood, though toenails were still done in pale

  pinks or clear. Meanwhile May enrolled in a beauty school night class

  to get some basics, and in the rather squalid and hopeless studio, amid

  girls half her age she practiced pin waving and finger waving, the

  Straight Back (and variations), the Bias Wave, the Swirl, the Saucer

  Wave, the Sculpture Wave, the Windblown, and for the big night out,

  the Wet Mae Murray, a tricky finger wave that May mastered, making

  an effort out of fellow-feeling with poor Mae, the Hollywood castoff.

  “You can teach this old dog new tricks,” she said.

  Prosper was a part of this plan, the other important part, it was the

  hope of solving two problems at once that had given Bea and May the

  energy to carry it out. He was eighteen; without any high school and

  his physical limitations, work at home was the best he could just now

  aim for (“just now” was Bea’s addition to this judgment, the future

  ever unknowable but dimly bright to Bea). He’d been making some-

  thing with his artwork, engrossing documents and signs that said con-

  gratulations or welcome home or other things, lettering price

  cards for the butcher whose meat he bought; and of course he’d kept

  house for the absent women, a job that now didn’t need doing.

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  So he’d go into business with them. He began by making the posters