by John Crowley
ing ship going off into the unknown.
She clamped the theodolite and took the reading down. She was
returning to the station to phone in her report—Little Tom Field was
too little even to have a Teletype, it was just a few acres of prairie out-
lined in lights—when she began to feel something. Later she’d say “hear
something,” but in that first moment it seemed to be something she felt.
Tootie felt it too, and barked at it, whatever or wherever it was.
Muriel was used to some strange weather. She’d been knocked over
by a fireball rolling through the station, and ached for a week; when a
downpour followed hard on a dust storm, she called in a report of
“flying mud balls,” which they didn’t like but which she was just then
seeing smack the windows as though thrown by bad boys. So what was
this coming?
Not weather, no. A sound: now it was certainly a sound, a big sound
aloft, and she could start to think it was likely an aircraft of some kind
though no lights were visible yet. It sometimes happened that lost air-
craft would come in to Little Tom Field, or planes would land that
didn’t like the weather—once even a DC-2, the pilot had wanted to fly
under the cloud cover (he told her), but company rules wouldn’t let him
fly that low. There was a dit-da transmitter in the station that sent out
a signal all the time, just an International Code “A” for identification,
but you could ride in on it if you had to, a little footpath in the sky.
Bigger than a DC-2. The high cloud cover was shredding as she
expected it to and a full moon overhead glowed through. Whatever it
was came closer, the felt sound growing into an awful, awesome noise.
It was coming in way too low for its size and coming in fast. She felt
like running away, but which way? Then there it was, good Christ,
blotting out a huge swath of sky, its running lights out but streams of
flame trailing out behind its wings. She’d never seen anything that big
aloft. It lowered itself toward the field, which was almost smaller than
itself, and it seemed just then to realize how hopeless a hope it was, this
field it had come upon in its troubles, and it leveled off, not rising
though but skimming between the earth and the clouds. It had six
engines she could now see, and three of them were on fire and two of
the other props were revolving in a halting hopeless way and they were
all attached to the wrong side of the wing. It was passing overhead, lit
246 / J O H N C R O W L E Y
by the field’s lights, vast belly passing right over her and causing her,
foolishly, to duck.
What was it, was this prairie under attack from some new Jap or
German war machine we’d brought down? It had gone beyond the
field’s lights, but she could still feel its roar and still see, like the candle
of the weather balloon, the sparkle of the fires coming from those
engines. Out there where it went there were only low hills and woods.
She waited, looking into that darkness, almost knowing what she
would see, and yet seized with a huge shudder when not two minutes
later she saw it, a bloom of flame-light that reflected from the clouds;
then the dull thunder following after. Muriel was already headed for
the shack and the telephone.
At about the same hour by the clock (though two hours later by the
sun) Henry Van Damme was awakened in his bedroom that looked out
to the Pacific over the city. It was his brother, who alone knew this
telephone number. The silken body beside Henry in the wide bed
stirred also at the sound, and Henry got up, bringing the phone with
him on its long cord, and pulled on a dressing gown while he listened.
“I’m securing the site,” Julius said. “The weather observer who saw
it asked if it was an enemy bomber, she’d never seen the like.”
“Crew?” Henry asked.
“Lost. Ship had lost power and they were too low to ditch when the
fires started.”
“Oh dear.”
“It’s the cylinder heads overheating,” Julius said. “The cowl flaps
need to be shortened. Ship was on its way to the coast for the modifica-
tions.”
“Won’t be enough,” Henry said. “My guess.”
Julius said nothing. They both knew the problem: that the B-30 was
being designed, prototyped, tested, debugged, retested, built, and deployed
all at the same time, and by ten or fifteen different companies, suppliers,
builders, their old competitors, the government. How could it not keep
going wrong in little ways, little ways that added up to big ways.
“Get everybody together as soon as we can,” Henry said, though of
course Julius would have already begun doing that.
“We’ll ground the ships that are coming off the line now,” Julius
said. “Till we know what modifications work.”
F O U R F R E E D O M S / 247
On the bejeweled map of the city outside Henry’s wide plate-glass
windows, lines of light like airstrips, not so bright as before the war,
ran toward the sea, yellow, bluish, white. In the dark room a clock
glowed, and beside its face a little window showed the date, white tiles
that turned every twenty-four hours with a soft clack. The fourteenth
of April 1944. No one would forget it.
“I’ll call the families,” Henry said. “Get me the names.”
In the morning Connie and her son got breakfast in the dorm cafeteria,
the women gathering around to see a child and touch him and marvel
at him spooning oatmeal into his mouth with a big spoon. The desk
found out where Bunce was, a house in Henryville, not far they said,
and the shop roster said he was on the Swing Shift, so he might be
there now.
Now.
The address they gave her didn’t seem even to look like one—8–19-
N? What did it mean? But they pointed her the way and she set out into
the little town, vanishing and gray in the morning light, down the wide
street (wasn’t it too wide, and the houses too low, she thought for a
minute it wasn’t real, like those fake towns you heard were built above
factories to hide them from bombers). Adolph walked a little, then had
to be picked up and carried. Day came on, sweet and cool, the gray
burned off, the town was real, people came out of some houses and
waved to her and smiled. Each of the houses bore a number like the
one written on her paper. At last she came upon a woman watering a
window box of geraniums with a coffeepot and hailed her.
“Howdy,” the woman answered. Connie didn’t think people who
weren’t in the movies or in radio comedies really said Howdy, but the
woman seemed to mean it. She had a huge paper or silk geranium, or
maybe it was a rose, in her curled hair.
“Oh sure,” she said when Connie showed her paper. “That’s number
eight on block nineteen of N Street. This-here’s J Street, block fifteen,
so y’all’s got four blocks to go down and K, L, M, to go over, left. All
right?”
“Yes, all right, thanks.” They regarded each other for a moment.
“Pretty flowers.”
> 248 / J O H N C R O W L E Y
The woman touched the one in her hair, and turned back to her
watering. For some reason Connie found her unsettling, her good
cheer, her strange speech, her being at home here. She kept on, feeling
excluded. When she approached the right block, Adolph had grown
insupportably heavy, like baby Jesus in the Saint Christopher story,
and her armpits were damp. That would be it. No it wasn’t: a small
plump woman, a bottle blonde, just then came out of it, turned to wave
good-bye to someone inside, then closed the door behind her and set
out, smiling and pulling straight her girdle. Was it across the street?
Odd numbers on one side, even on the other. The last house was 9. His
was 8. Connie went on to the next block. Some blocks had no number
or letter signs, never put up or fallen off.
“Mommy.”
“Yes, bunny.”
“Mommy I’m hot.”
“Okay, hon.”
She turned back. The houses were so identical. It must be that one,
but wasn’t that the one the blond woman had come out of? Now she
wasn’t sure. But it had to be it. She went up the path, just a couple of
feet, and knocked at the door, thinking nothing now but that she wanted
to be somewhere inside where she could put Adolph down, and almost
instantly, as though he’d been standing just behind it, Bunce opened it.
“Hello,” she said.
He said nothing. He was in his underwear, a singlet and wrinkled
shorts. Just seeing him a torrent of warm gratitude filled her, her son
grew lighter, she knew she’d done the right thing, it’d been hard and
she’d never been sure and now she was. “Here’s Adolph,” she said.
“Connie, what the hell.” He looked from her to his son as though
trying to remember them and then suddenly remembering. A great grin
broke over his face, he took the boy from her and lifted him high.
Adolph squealed in delight at Bunce’s delight and at the heave Bunce
had given him, but looked away, toward nothing or for something. His
father lifting him in his big hands, his hands.
“I didn’t write to tell you,” she said. “I thought you’d tell me not to come.”
There was almost nothing in the house, an unmade bed, a kitchen
F O U R F R E E D O M S / 249
table and chairs, another smaller bare bed in another room; a new
refrigerator; a big bamboo chair, with a floor lamp beside it; and some
kind of box or crate with rope handles used for a table, covered with
stuff, an apple core, a root beer bottle, papers and comic books. Bunce
liked comic books.
“Why would I tell you not to come?” He wasn’t looking at her but
at Adolph, who was trying to balance standing on Bunce’s thighs where
he sat in the bamboo chair. Their eyes were locked together, as though
a current passed between them. “Who wouldn’t want a visit from his
wife? His son?”
Connie sat on a straight-backed kitchen chair. She hadn’t taken her
coat off. “Well, I guess,” she said. “Sure.”
“Daddy,” said Bunce. “Daddy. Say Daddy.”
Adolph laughed in that funny way he had, as though he didn’t actu-
ally believe you, but he said nothing.
“So how,” Bunce said. “How’d you, I mean, the train and all. I
mean I’ve sent you what I could.”
“I bought the tickets. One way.”
Bunce still smiling turned to her. “With what?”
“I had the money.” This had gone a way she’d known she’d have to
go, but faster than she’d been ready for. “Well,” she said again. “You
won’t believe it. I got a job.”
Now Bunce pulled Adolph’s exploring hands away from his face. “A
job? Connie.”
“You know everybody’s working now. I thought I could help.”
“Did you ask me whether I thought you ought to get a job? Did you
even tell me you had this in mind?”
He’d put Adolph down and stood, looming over her a little. She
knew better than to answer right off, that these weren’t actual ques-
tions but statements to be listened to without expression.
“Jesus, Connie. What the hell.”
“Bunce,” she cautioned him in a whisper, pointing to Adolph. He
turned away from both of them and seemed suddenly to realize he
wasn’t dressed. He went into the bedroom and from the floor picked
up a pair of trousers and began furiously pulling them on. Why was
this house such a mess? He hated mess.
“So where was this job?” he said. “By the way.”
250 / J O H N C R O W L E Y
“Well that’s the crazy part,” Connie said, willing a big smile. “It
was at the Bull plant. That’s where I was sent. How do you like that.”
So that was said, and he didn’t blow up, just went into the bath-
room and stood for a minute looking in the little mirror over the sink,
then turned on both faucets, cupped his hands, splashed water on his
face and neck, and took a towel from a hook to rub himself. Then he
stood looking into the mirror a long time.
“You know you made a liar out of me, Connie?” he said.
“What?” she said, feeling a stab of panic.
“Maybe a criminal too,” he said, still looking only in the mirror. “My
draft registration. It says I do necessary war work, and that I’m the sole
support of my family.” He turned to her at last. “You think of that?”
“Well you could have maybe changed it,” she said softly.
“Sure. And lost my deferment maybe too,” he said. He tossed away
the towel. “Okay. You’re gonna quit.”
“I don’t need to quit,” she said. “That’s the next crazy part. They
went out of business.”
“What?”
“The whole plant. There were marshals and everything. They threw
us all out.”
“What the heck. Where was the union? They can’t do that.”
Connie explained what she’d seen, what she knew, what the papers
had said, hadn’t he seen it in the papers? Hadn’t his mom and Buster
told him?
“Goddam profiteers,” Bunce said. “Serves them right.” He aimed
this darkly right at Connie, as though she were one of them, or it was
her fault. Then, in sudden realization that time had gone on while she’d
unfolded these things before him, he said to no one or to himself: “Man
I’ve got to go, got to get to work.”
“I couldn’t figure out why,” Connie said.
“Why what? Why they closed? Cause they’re dopes. Crooks. Just
out to take from the working man.”
“No, but why? What did they do so badly?”
“What’s it have to do with you? You don’t have to worry about that
stuff.”
Connie lowered her eyes, catching up with herself. “I was just won-
dering,” she said.
F O U R F R E E D O M S / 251
“So it doesn’t matter anymore,” he said, and came to kneel by her
chair, where Adolph stood to look up at her. “That’s good.”
“So I came,” she said.
“Uh.”
“I just wanted us to be together again. The three of us staying
together.”
He
disengaged from their embrace. “Not here,” he said.
“Well I just thought . . .”
“Connie. Our home’s not here. When all this is over . . .”
“My mom’s watching out for the apartment. It’s all all right. I had
the gas turned off and the electricity. She can send the furniture any-
time, Railway Express, it won’t cost that much. I have the money.”
Maybe she shouldn’t have said that last part. He’d risen away from
her now with a look that made Adolph start to cry, she’d cry too if she
didn’t keep up her courage. Why’d she just blurt all that out?
“That’s swell, Connie,” he said, not loud. “That’s just swell. You
don’t ask me a damn thing, you just decide we’re not living in our own
damn house anymore, that you’re a working girl, that you— Shut up!”
He shot that at Adolph, who only cried louder, and Bunce picked him
up and held him.
“I read about this place here,” she said. “It was at your mom’s.”
Tears were leaking from her eyes, she tried to just keep on. “It seemed
so wonderful. That you could help, that you could be a help and be
useful, and still have a good life, a family life. You could have what you
needed.”
“You’re going back,” he said, his words soothing in sound for
Adolph’s sake but not in import.
“I saw the pictures of the nursery in the plant, and the part about
the free clinics, the way everything was thought of.” She thought of
telling him about Mrs. Freundlich but stopped herself. She wiped her
eyes with her wrists. “I just wanted to help.”
Bunce holding Adolph put his hand in Connie’s hair.
“Well you’re not working here,” he said, grinning as at an impossi-
bility, but not actually amused. “Honey no.”
“Oh Bunce.”
He lifted her up and by the hand and led her to the broad bamboo
chair. He sat, drawing both of them into his lap. “Connie,” he said,
252 / J O H N C R O W L E Y
and stroked her cheek with the back of his hand. “Baby. You think I
want to see you every day on that floor in a pair of trousers? What are
we going to do, head out for work together every day with our tool-
boxes?”
“Women do. People do.”
He pressed his face against her neck, his sweet lips. “Sure they
work. Till they get enough money to get their fur coat. Then they quit.
