Four Freedoms

by John Crowley

the light off so as not to see, the only light falling on them then the red

  glow of the neon hotel sign that ran up the building’s front), he

  refused the present she had brought, which one of the BBs had given

  her long before as a joke or a tease. I want to feel you baby not a

  sheep’s gut. She felt his fluid absorbed not just into those parts but

  seeping, staining, proceeding—what was the word in chemistry for

  how it happened, it sounded like the thing it meant—into the whole of

  her, her heart and breast and throat. Rather than draining away like

  any other flooding would, the feeling went on increasing, and in not

  too long a time she knew why. She told him as they sat at dawn on their

  bench in the park. He held her a long time very gently and she said she

  felt a little icky-sicky now at morning. And without letting her go he

  told her that he was shipping out again in a week, to go fly real fighters,

  Hellcats, far away. He’d put in for the duty, wangled it, it’s what he’d

  always wanted.

  It didn’t seem to be a disaster, none of it; it was lifted up with

  everything else that was being lifted up all around them, all around

  the world, as by a tornado, lifted and swung around to mean some-

  thing it hadn’t before. When they had been quiet a long time he lifted

  his head suddenly and clipped his hands together and shook them, in

  prayer or triumph, and she saw in the dimness the glow of his eyes

  looking into hers.

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  There was a lot to get straight between them, and it wasn’t easy; faced

  with it she lost some of that lightness and carelessness she’d learned,

  she faltered and felt her eyes fill and then her heart grow small and

  cold. First she had to tell him she wasn’t nineteen, had lied about her

  birthday, she had actually just turned eighteen, had been seventeen in

  fact when they. And he told her he’d guessed she wasn’t as old as she

  said, he didn’t know why he knew. She told him her real name too:

  wrote it on a paper and gave it to him, solemnly, and waited for his

  response.

  “Geraldine,” he said, and shrugged, having no preference and

  thinking it was funny she did. “Noo-nez? What kind of a name is

  that?”

  Another reason she’d withdrawn from the BBs when she and Danny

  had got serious. They were always dropping hints about her when

  Danny was in earshot, telling her she ought to get up and dance to

  “South of the Border,” passing her the chili sauce, things like that,

  though Danny had never picked up the hints.

  “So it’s okay for you to marry a regular white person? It’s legal?”

  “Yes it’s legal. Silly.”

  “Hey, I don’t know. There’s laws in other states.”

  She didn’t respond. He was studying her in a way that made her

  shrink, or swell—somehow both at once. She was glad there had been

  no Mexicans or anybody but palefaces where he’d come from—he said

  it that way himself. Nothing for him to think about except a funny

  name and some dumb songs. She told him her parents couldn’t know,

  that if her brother knew he’d start trouble. She’d tell them after, when

  they were happy and everything had to be the way it was, and they’d be

  happy too.

  He had nothing to tell her, was exactly what he seemed, all one

  piece from front to back. She loved him, the one single thing he was,

  and feared for him, and for herself; but she knew she could tell him she

  was afraid, and it wouldn’t harm him or change him or pollute him.

  The tornado was carrying her on upward away from the city and her

  life and her family and all of it, shedding consequences, futureless,

  awake.

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  They had only a week till he was gone. There was another flier in

  his squad who was going to get married too, a fellow who had grown

  up just outside the city and had a car still parked in his parents’ drive-

  way. He was marrying his high school sweetheart, who was no older

  than Diane and whose parents would never allow it, so they were

  eloping, Danny said, as though the word itself were funny and sexy

  and good. The four of them could get out of the state and across the

  desert to where the wedding chapels were tying the knot for soldiers

  and sailors by the dozen, they all four knew about them, there weren’t

  the laws in that state there were here, you could get the license and get

  married all in an afternoon. They could get back the next day.

  They would leave early in the morning so they could get to the cha-

  pels in time to choose one. They had to have the Wassermann test, but

  the people at the chapel would do all the rest and by evening they could

  have the ceremony, which only took a minute, like the sudden wed-

  dings in old movies—Diane saw in her mind the comic judge or JP

  with wide whiskers, his fat wife playing the harmonium, the couple (as

  happy as any couple marrying anywhere) turning to each other in shy

  delight and expectation. You may kiss the bride.

  Danny’s friend picked them up before dawn downtown near the

  park, Diane wrapped in Danny’s uniform blouse (she had started shiv-

  ering violently in the chilly darkness). The friend was named Poindex-

  ter, but Danny told her to call him Bill, and his girl was Sylvia, big and

  blond and asleep beside Bill almost as soon as they started out. The car

  was ten years old, smelly and noisy, with a spare tire tied on the side

  that didn’t look any worse than the four poor things on the car (that’s

  what Danny said, laughing, unalarmed). In the trunk were tossed a

  dozen big bottles and a couple of empty jerry cans, which they’d fill

  with water somewhere as they came down into the desert, as much for

  the car to have as for themselves; and in there too was Sylvia’s patent

  leather suitcase and now Diane’s round hatbox and case.

  Morning city, pale and unpopulated, they were all quiet putt-put-

  ting through the streets and out of the suburbs. At the edges of the

  wide farmlands, the low buildings where the picker families lived. Men

  and women and children, awake early, were climbing into the backs of

  trucks. Sylvia said it was an awful life but those people were grateful

  for the chance, they’d never had anything better. What Danny won-

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  dered was how they knew people would want that many artichokes:

  he’d never eaten one in his life.

  They rose up gradually into pine mountains littered with sinister

  boulders as big as cottages, rose until they came to a place where a tower

  of crossed timbers was built topped by a lookout shack high up, you

  could climb up it if you wanted, but they had no time. From that last

  height they could see far into the brown lands they had to cross, and

  effortlessly the old car fell down over the folds of earth that turned at

  length into wind-combed dunes, as though any minute they would reach

  the sea. Bill and Danny joked about life in the service and told stories

  full of acronyms and abbreviations that the girls couldn’t understand,

  but they laugh
ed too. When the road stretched and straightened there

  was a big government sign warning travelers that the desert ahead was

  dangerous, that they shouldn’t attempt it unprepared, that there would

  be little in the way of help for them: and on top of the sign a big black

  bird perched. “A vulture,” Sylvia said in horror, but it wasn’t really.

  They stopped at a gas station building so low and flat it seemed to

  have been stepped on by God. It had a big warning sign too about the

  road ahead, handmade, with a skull and crossbones on it; the place

  claimed it was the last stop for water and gas until the city on the other

  side was reached. They filled the tank, and bought water.

  “Gwaranteed alkali-free,” said the dried old hank of a man work-

  ing the pump.

  “Alkali will kill you,” said Bill.

  Actually in a few miles there was another place that said it was

  really the last, and had rattlesnakes and lizards in cages to look at; and

  then another place farther on, the same. “The last last place’ll be just

  when we get there,” said Bill.

  As the day reached noon Sylvia dropped her joking about vultures

  and mirages and Indians and who painted the Painted Desert; Bill

  drove the straight road with one finger on the wheel. Diane curled her-

  self against Danny in the back, feeling suspended, shaken by the car

  but not in motion at all: becalmed, like a ship. She started awake (when

  had she fallen asleep? She didn’t remember) and felt she was still in the

  same place. Danny’s head against the seat back, eyes closed, mouth

  slightly open: he seemed not to breathe. For an instant she couldn’t

  recognize him, a large stranger close to her.

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  Then there was a sudden band of green, as though drawn by a

  crayon, and a river to cross, they’d known it was to come but it seemed

  to slice across their journey with both a greeting and a warning. After

  that it was easy enough to see where they were supposed to go. Almost

  as soon as the iron bridge was crossed there were signs for competing

  places, billboards with pictures of linked rings, doves, hearts. It seemed

  not to matter which one you picked, but she and Sylvia rejected the

  first one that Bill tried to pull into, not feeling they had to give a reason,

  and the boys didn’t argue. The next was worse, but the next, a white

  cottage under tall slim gray-leaved trees, a little pretend steeple on top

  and a picket fence, looked cheerful. It had a pretty rose-covered arcade

  to enter by and a discreet sign in front that was welcoming and mild

  and helpful and didn’t say Cut-Rate like the others.

  “Here,” Diane said, and tugged Danny’s sleeve.

  Later on, a long time after, when maybe she told the story of those days

  to someone younger, Diane would try to think about having missed so

  much that was so important to so many people, things that she too had

  always thought, when she was a child, or a kid in school, would be

  important. Getting married, after a long courtship; a proposal, and a

  little plush box opened before her to show the ring and its promise

  inside, to put on her finger forever; and the church, with the smiling

  priest and the people and even the flowers seeming eager and impatient

  and glad for her in her hampering white dress coming slowly, slowly up

  to where he stood. Wedding night, and the gift of her innocence; hon-

  eymoon; house. How could she tell them that it never seemed to her to

  be a loss, or to be full of loss: not as it happened, and not as she looked

  back on it. Because what was important then, in that time, was not so

  much what you got as what you escaped. Escaping the worst was like

  joy. It was joy. It was freedom, it was freedom from, and just then

  that’s what freedom meant. She thought she had been lucky. She knew

  she had been.

  The two big hotels downtown were full and the others didn’t look

  nice; at one a bellhop steered them to a place out of town that he said

  would do right by them, he’d call up on the phone, and Danny gave

  him four bits. They had some drinks and a steak dinner and it was

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  deep dark when they reached the place, Desert Courts. The sign said

  modern comfort. telephone. flush toilets.

  “That’s good to know,” said Sylvia coldly. Then, laughing: “Hear

  about these Okies coming in from Arkansas or someplace, they’ve never

  seen a flush toilet but think it’s mighty nice for washing your feet. Push

  down the little handle and you get clean water for tother foot!”

  Yes, everyone had heard that, and because everyone had heard it

  Diane thought it probably had never happened. They turned in at the

  gate. The tourist cabins were low and heavy, made of adobe; a long

  trellis or breezeway sheltered their fronts and joined them like a happy

  family, and vines grew up from big red pots to clamber over them, and

  tall cacti too in bigger pots, fat and prickly. In the hot white moonlight

  it looked like the land Krazy Kat lived in. The motherly lady at the

  desk gave them keys and smiled on them all; Diane knew she was Mex-

  ican but didn’t know if the others did: there was a cross on the wall

  behind her desk wrapped in last Easter’s plaited palms. She and Danny

  parted from Bill and Sylvia in a sort of hilarity of embarrassment, a

  joke about getting some shut-eye, and then their door closed and she

  was alone with her husband.

  He turned on the little fan at the window and watched its propeller

  whip the air. He was smiling as though at some secret thing.

  “Danny.”

  “So you promised,” he said, turning to her. “You’ll go to tell your

  parents, as soon as we get back.”

  “Yes. I will.”

  She sat on the bed, on the broad red Indian blanket that covered it.

  He came and sat by her. “Show ’em that picture of me,” he said. “The

  one I gave you. They’ll like to see that.”

  “Yes.”

  “What were their names again?”

  “Joe and Maria.”

  “Oh right. And your brother’s . . .”

  “Paul. He’s in the Army.”

  “I’ll be glad to meet ’em all. Uncles and cousins too.”

  She knew what she should say to that but she didn’t say it. She lay

  back on the pillows and he turned to lie and nuzzle her, his arm across

  her. She took his wrist to stop him.

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  “Hey,” he said. “What.”

  “I don’t know, Danny, please. It might hurt the baby.”

  “What?”

  “I mean if we.”

  “Why? Who says?”

  “It’s what I heard.”

  “Aw no,” he said. “My kid’s bound to be tough.”

  “Danny really.”

  He put his hands beneath her white skirt. “Maybe we can give him

  a little brother,” he said smiling. “Come out as twins.”

  “Jeez, Danny. My God.” The bed was as though afloat, about to lift

  and exit out the window into the desert night with them aboard; she

  lay still to keep it still, but his hands kept on, and everything within

  her
flowed toward him.

  “There’s things we can do,” he said. “Now that we’re married.”

  “Oh Danny.”

  “Baby I love you.”

  “Just go gentle, Danny, you have to be very gentle.”

  “I’ll sneak in. Just up beside him. Won’t even wake him. I promise.”

  “How can you talk that way,” she said, but he stopped her with a

  kiss, and stopped talking himself.

  2

  Somehow it was harder going back across the desert with the sun

  at their backs, not an adventure now but only drab miles to

  cover. It was cold till the sun rose high and Bill kept the win-

  dows rolled up and drove stolidly on, leaning over the steering

  wheel. Sylvia wasn’t telling them what she knew about the world and

  people; once, pressed against Bill’s arm, she wept, Diane thought:

  they’d soon be parted, and who knew what might happen then. Diane

  didn’t weep: she felt herself to be living on a higher plane than Sylvia,

  where not weeping was required no matter what you felt, a duty to

  your man, your ser

  viceman. Danny slept—she’d begun to think he

  could sleep anywhere, that he did it out of boredom, like a cat with

  nothing to mouse after.

  For herself she was feeling sick, conscious of her insides in a way

  that was new, of a queasy fullness that was in her stomach and not in

  her stomach. She ignored it, or when she couldn’t, she tried to stay

  calm and will it to pass by. But then, not rising or whelming but stab-

  bing suddenly, she felt a new bad feeling, a real and distinct pain, not

  just in her middle but along a line she could trace from here to there.

  She shivered and made a sound, and Danny’s eyes opened.

  What if she’d been right, and they shouldn’t have done what they

  did the night before? For a moment she was sure, just sure, they

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  shouldn’t have, and an awful premonition filled her from her bottom to

  her heart. Then when the pain passed it passed too. She said nothing.

  Danny slept again.

  Back in the city the two flyboys had to make a run for the embarka-

  tion point, their car stuck in traffic, quick kisses and hugs and tugs

  away, Poindexter turning back just at the last minute to toss Sylvia the

  keys to the car before he and Danny were lost in the crowds. Sylvia got

  into the driver’s seat, now overwhelmed with something that might