by John Crowley
A special bus. A special card allowing him to ride it. A right to sur-
vive.
Prosper put down Elaine’s address as the one he’d need to be picked
up at. That seemed like killing a couple of birds with one stone, though
when he told her, her face didn’t seem to agree that it was birds he’d
killed.
“I can get them to come to my house instead,” he said.
“No it’s fine.”
“I mean if you.”
“It’s fine.”
“I’ll be gone early. The bus’ll stop at the corner. It’ll still be dark.
No one’ll notice.”
“All right.”
Was she displeased? He thought he knew by now something of what
women wanted or needed, what pleased them or most of them, but
somehow with her he could never tell, and suspected he hadn’t done
enough, or done the right thing; it irritated him inside in a way he’d
never known before. He knew women often liked to tell their stories,
their True Stories, and he’d have liked to hear her story, why she was
here in this place, what had become of her in the time since they’d sat
F O U R F R E E D O M S / 191
together on the floor of his room. But no. When he asked about her life
her wary gaze began to move away, as though bad things drew close
around her at the question, and might come closer if she answered.
What’s it matter, she’d say. What’s it to you. The worst was how it
made him work all the harder to ease that dissatisfaction, to draw
down her questioning black brows, to still the turmoil that he sensed in
her being—that he even touched, he thought, when he was within her:
when she lay without moving, always, never letting him move either,
clutching at his arms to keep him still. Until her brief spasm came or
didn’t. Then she was done. Nor would she permit anything French, not
lessons or anything else. Don’t, she’d say, we shouldn’t, that’s only for
married people. Sometimes afterward she was calm for a time and
they’d lie beneath the blankets and swap silly jokes, or she’d rise and in
her ratty plaid robe she’d cook them an egg or boil coffee and they’d sit
at the table together in companionable silence.
He could only visit her after night had fallen (he never saw the
people in the house to which her rooms were attached, almost didn’t
believe there were any there, never more than one window dimly alight
when he came up the street). He’d awaken before dawn—for some
reason The Light in the Woods started work at an early hour, maybe
only to make their difference from a real business obvious—and put
his braces on and dress, wanting to creep back into the bed beside the
unmoving dark lump of her; drink a cup of cold coffee from the night
before, take the lunch he’d made, and go out into the winter darkness
and to the corner to await the bus. Then stand for a few hours at the
clothes tables in the eternal odor of mothballs and moldered wool and
sort the useless from the reclaimable, noting the missing buttons, the
stain (blood?), the decayed lining or detached sleeve, thinking of the
lives of these men and women and children, Fauntleroy suits of possi-
bly dead boys, wedding dresses of disappointed brides, chalk-striped
suits of bank tellers now in prison. The More You Sort the More You
Earn.
Salvageable things went on the cart to Repairs. Silks were reserved
for government reclaiming, whether women’s negligees or men’s fine
monogrammed shirts. Foundation garments contained rubber, wave
them aloft for laughs. Furs, no matter how moth-eaten, were set aside,
for they would be cut up to line the vests of merchant marine sailors;
192 / J O H N C R O W L E Y
Prosper caught in them the faint remains of perfume from their long-
ago wearers, strangely persistent, and thought of men standing watch
on night ships smelling it too, shamingly intimate and evocative.
In addition to all the stuff coming in on the trucks to be sorted and
fixed, The Light in the Woods had contracted with local war industries
to do jobs that could be done off-site. The airplane factory sent them
barrels of floor sweepings, from which dropped bolts and rivets could be
extracted and returned to the works; a number of blind people sat along
one table onto which the contents of these barrels were emptied, feeling
through the sweepings and finding the rivets; after a short time they
were able to distinguish each of the several sizes of rivets in the mix and
distribute them to separate containers. One was a young woman whose
blind eyes were pale and a little crossed, who smiled slightly and con-
tinuously at nothing, her head lifted—why should she look down? But it
made her appear strangely joyful or alight, and Prosper watched her
when he could, guiltily enjoying the fact that she couldn’t tell he looked.
In the late winter afternoon the bus went back, circling the poorer
parts of town, stopping to let off one after another, the driver getting
out to set a wooden step before the door when needed, careful now,
take your time. The Sad Sacks, Prosper called them to Elaine, not to
seem one of them himself. She made him confess what The Light in the
Woods was paying him, though he tried to put her off. She made no
reply when he told her.
Neither Bea nor May would ask him where he spent his nights
now—at least no more than to ascertain he was all right and needed
nothing they had between them to give; he was a grown man now, and
doing the things they imagined grown men did, though when either of
them began a sentence of speculation about just what that might be,
the other cut her off, not wanting to think about it. He seemed not to
be at Mert’s beck and call anyway, and that was a good sign. Bea had
volunteered to be a local War Council block leader, wearing a cute cap
with a Civilian Defense badge on it and going around her block, hand-
ing out pamphlets about reclaiming tin and rubber or growing a Vic-
tory Garden and preserving more food. Bea could talk to anybody.
May missed Prosper’s company more. To her great sadness Fenix
Vigaron had gone away. She’d informed May that the sudden vast
increase in souls coming across to her side was upsetting the economy of
F O U R F R E E D O M S / 193
heaven as nothing had before or since. So many people all over the world
dying such terrible deaths all at once, arriving so sore and shaken and
unprepared, strained the resources of solace and succor that even infinite
Love could provide. Fenix’s work was with them now: she blessed May
and wished her well (the child had become, even as many living persons
seemed to become, strangely nicer and warmer in the emergency) and
promised that someday when the docks weren’t so crowded with the lost
and vastated she’d return to May’s board and her glass and candle; she
expected, though, that it would get worse before it got better.
So it was change in all they saw and did, for them as for everyone:
but still the two women were shocked when Prosper told them he was
l
eaving town to find a job that paid something and, also, to do his part:
he thought there was a part he could do, and he was going to do it. Out
west anybody sitting on a park bench would be approached within an
hour by three people with offers of work. Bea and May could hardly
answer: couldn’t say no, of course, but like any parents who’ve raised a
crippled child, it was going to be hard for them, war or no war, to see
their boy go off: as hard and fearsome (though they’d never say it) as
for any mother seeing off her soldier boy.
He’d quit at The Light in the Woods a week before. Ever since he
began working there he’d been growing angrier, not a feeling he’d felt
very often, somehow new to him, as new as what Elaine made him feel,
and actually not different. Then on a Monday morning not long after
the Sad Sacks had begun their work he’d flung aside the chesterfield
overcoat with mangy collar he’d been assessing, and (hardly knowing
he was about to) he turned himself toward the desk where the area
supervisor, Mr. Fenniman, oversaw them all with his one good eye and
did his paperwork. Like Oliver Twist in the picture with his milk bowl,
he walked up past the eyes of the silent workers to the front table. The
boss took no notice of his standing there.
“Mr. Fenniman,” Prosper said. “There’s a matter I’d like to discuss
with you.”
“You may discuss anything you like with me, Prosper.” He contin-
ued to sort his papers, invoices and orders it appeared, but glanced up
to hand Prosper a brief encouraging smile.
“It’s about the, well the compensation provided here at the Light, as
over against the money that’s coming in.” Mr. Fenniman put down the
194 / J O H N C R O W L E Y
papers now, looked up, no smile. “Mr. Fenniman, I just don’t think I’m
getting my share of the gravy.”
Mr. Fenniman considered him. “Well now, Prosper, I believe you’re
making good money since the work here expanded.”
“Not compared to what the factories are paying.”
“You’re not at a factory, Prosper, are you?”
“I could be.”
Mr. Fenniman’s smile returned, but chilly. “I think you are making
an all right wage as a proportion of any able worker’s. All things con-
sidered.”
Now everyone was listening, at least everyone who could hear,
though many went on sorting rivets or tossing clothes as busily as
ever.
“I’m thinking I’ll go up and get myself one of those jobs,” Prosper
said. “Who’s to say I can’t.”
“I’m to say. You don’t even know what you’re talking about. The
war industries of this city have contracted with The Light in the Woods
to do work for them. We are grateful for the opportunity to do our
part.” His good eye traveled over the benches, and some—not all—
looked back down at their work.
“Well tell me this, then, Mr. Fenniman,” Prosper said, shifting his
stance, hard job standing tall after a time. “Just how much are you
taking out of what those companies are paying for our work?”
“You are an ungrateful wretch.”
“Just a question. For instance I know that the airplane company
down there is paying fifty-sixty cents an hour. An hour.”
A motion passed over the people working within earshot, a wave of
awe or restiveness. Some of them knew this fact very well, some were
just learning it.
“To able-bodied workers,” Mr. Fenniman said. “Not to the likes of
you.” He stared around himself a little wildly, as though he wished he
could take that back, at the same time daring those who now looked
frankly at him to take offense.
“Well we’ll see,” Prosper said. “For I am giving my notice.”
Mr. Fenniman’s shoulders sagged. “Now, son, don’t be foolish. Go
take your place and”—he lifted a weary hand—“the more you sort the
more you earn.”
F O U R F R E E D O M S / 195
“I’m quitting.” He spoke gently now, as though he’d made the point
a thousand times and was prepared to make it a thousand more.
“Son. The bus won’t even be here till five. You can’t quit. You can’t
get home.”
Now even Prosper could feel the eyes and ears of the Sad Sacks on
him. “I believe I can,” he said. “I believe I can.” He turned himself
around.
“You go out that door, Prosper, don’t you dare try to come back
through. Ever.”
Prosper, aflame within, wanted something more to say, some final,
utter thing, like in the movies. He thought of turning to the others and
saying “Anybody else had enough?” And if it were a movie, first one
and then another and more and more would rise up, the fearful trans-
formed, the oldsters with jaws set, the young alive at last. But what if
no one did? And if they did get up and follow him, a mass of them,
crippled and sightless and feeble, what would he do with them? He
said nothing, went without hurry to the coatrack; he lifted his woolen
scarf (taken from the tables) and laid it around his neck, and then his
wonderful houndstooth jacket. He clipped it with his hand to the cross-
piece of his crutch, not wanting to try struggling into it with everyone
looking on. He pushed out the doors of The Light in the Woods and,
holding the banister, he let himself down, hop, then hop, till he came
to the street. His heart was still hot. He supposed they might be watch-
ing through the big windows, and he thought he might toss them a
finger, but with the crutches and holding the jacket it was inconvenient,
and actually he felt no ill will toward them, not even toward Mr. Fen-
niman, who wasn’t the big boss and had formerly been kind to him.
The bus stop, as it happened, was right in front of The Light in the
Woods, but Prosper couldn’t feature standing there for however long,
peering down the street to see if the thing was coming, then negotiating
the steps up to get into it in view of the Sad Sacks and maybe failing. Or
refused service—it’d been made clear to him on other occasions that
was the driver’s right. So he set off down to wherever the next stop was,
not clear what the bus’s route was or how close it would get him toward
home. At least he had a dime in his pocket. As he went the workers
heading for the airplane plant were beginning to throng the street, lunch
boxes in hand and badges on their coats, he recognized them. He
196 / J O H N C R O W L E Y
thought maybe he would just go and see if the plant would take him
after all; but when the crowded bus lurched to a stop where he stood
with the others, and he struggled to get aboard, holding everyone up
and feeling for the first time profoundly embarrassed by his damn legs
and back, he knew he wouldn’t; and he knew what he’d do instead.
Go ahead and look, he thought, himself looking at no one there. Go
ahead, go make your money, go fight your war. If I have to look out for
Number One, I’ll look out for Number One. You don’t need me, I don’t
need you. A blond wom
an going out the back door glanced at him with
something that looked like pity or reproach, and a furious shame pos-
sessed him.
“You go down Main?” he called to the driver. The bus was nearly
empty now, with the industrial area behind.
“What?”
“I said. Do you. Go down. Main.”
“I cross Main.”
“Can I get out there?”
“It’s not a stop.”
“Can you just stop there? For a minute.”
No answer, dumb lump. When they reached Main he stopped and
opened the doors and gazed, indifferent, out his window as Prosper
made it out, his feet landing on the pavement with a thump he felt up
into his buttocks. It was a few long blocks down to the house where
Elaine lived. He needed to tell her, needed to recount to her what he’d
done and what he’d said, the reasons he’d been in the right, yet afraid
she’d reject his words and his action, why was it always so with her,
that he could be both sure he was right and afraid?
“Well that’s it,” Elaine said. He’d wakened her, she had the night
shift tonight. She took his side even before he finished telling her, was
instantly madder than he was. “Those, those. That’s enough. We don’t
have to, we don’t have to stand for that.” She roamed her tiny space
like a tiger, looking at nothing there, wrapped in her plaid robe, her
feet bare. “We’ll get out of here. We’ll go out west. That’s where the
jobs are, everybody says, sixty cents an hour, closed shops, they can’t
push you around.”
“I’ll get money,” Prosper said. “I know I can.”
“You get money,” she said, coming to look furiously into his face.
F O U R F R E E D O M S / 197
“I’ve got a little. I’m sick of that theater. I’m sick of this town. We’ll go
together.”
All decided, no questions, whatever stood in the way of it of no
account, not her family or his, not his handicap, not distance or fear or
difficulty. Her rageful resolve had caught fire from his like a hot can-
dlewick catching fire from a lit candle brought close. She wrapped his
scarf around his throat as though arming him.
“Tell me you love me,” she said, hands pulling tight the scarf. The
last thing necessary.
“I love you, Elaine.”
She said nothing in return.
