Four Freedoms

by John Crowley

  have been grief but that had also begun to seem like it might be regret.

  Diane gave her a hug and lifted Sylvia’s chin the way men tenderly

  lifted the chins of weeping girls in the movies, be brave, but Sylvia

  wasn’t having it, so Diane wished her luck and all the happiness in the

  world, took her case and hatbox from the back and headed through the

  throng to the pier where the immense aircraft carrier was tied up. After

  a long time the crew and the fliers and everyone on board came crowd-

  ing the rail, a vast distance above the people who waved and called,

  moms and dads and girlfriends and wives. A band played, its music

  coming and going with the breeze. She saw Danny, amazed that it was

  possible to identify him, it was as certain as anything, and she waved

  wildly and he waved back to her, and then there was nothing left to do

  but wait—even when it began to move, the carrier was going to take

  forever to be gone. When Danny had to leave the high deck from which

  he had looked down on her, not waving but smiling and holding her

  eyes—she could tell that he was looking right at her—Diane didn’t

  turn away; she sat down on her case and watched the ship, which could

  now definitely be seen to be moving off, its tugs busy around it (Danny

  wanted her to call the ship she but Diane couldn’t, it was silly). Its

  escort, too, oilers and other ships visible now standing out to sea,

  creeping out from other berths to be beside it.

  The ship went on growing smaller very slowly. The crowd around

  her melted away. She remembered from school a teacher saying that

  you can tell the world is round because ships sailing away from shore

  sink over the curve of it and disappear, first their big bodies, then the

  funnels and the tiptops of their masts. Good-bye. Good-bye. She

  couldn’t see that, though, because the haze out at sea erased the ship

  long before it could go beyond the horizon, drawing after it the other

  ships. Diane felt the thread of connection between her and Danny

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  drawn out infinitely thin, until it broke with a hurt to her heart she’d

  known she’d have to feel, but worse than she thought it would be.

  It was late in the afternoon now. She got up and took the suitcase

  and the other bag and started walking toward the streetcars; took the

  car to Union Station, where she checked her two bags, seeming as

  heavy as gold by now. Van Damme Aero ran their own bus service

  from the station around to the plant; she’d taken the bus often, bright

  yellow like a school bus, Van Damme’s slim cartoon plane painted on

  its side, as though pushing the roly-poly bus along on its own curling

  speed line. Tomorrow first thing she’d go out there. In her handbag

  were her marriage license and birth certificate. She’d worked there

  before, on the Sword bomber, and she thought they’d give her a full-

  time job in a minute, the wife of an airman. For a time she’d leave out

  the part about being pregnant.

  When her mother was eighteen and just enrolled in nursing school,

  first in her family to go that far, she’d found out she was pregnant,

  with Pablo as he would come to be, and she’d dropped out to marry

  and have her baby and take care of her man. And no matter that

  Pablito was everything to her, sun around which her planet turned,

  face always to him, she would still press her hand to her heart in grief

  and hurt when she thought of the degree she could have got, the white

  cap she’d have worn, the doctors’ offices and hospitals she could have

  worked in. Diane in her senior year had won the scholarship to St.

  Anne’s College for Women, the letter was there at home on the mantel

  next to the photo of Pablo in uniform. So Diane couldn’t go home, tell

  them that all of that was for nothing, that she’d got a baby, been mar-

  ried by a JP, was going to be an Allotment Annie and sit on her culo

  just getting bigger and cashing her fifty dollars a month. When she

  had the job she’d get a room, somewhere. Her mother never came

  downtown, her friends wouldn’t tell. It was as far as her thinking had

  reached.

  She ate a hot dog at the station buffet, thinking she needed some-

  thing, some nutrition, the baby too, but almost before she finished it

  she knew it had been a bad idea, and she spent some time in the ladies’

  lounge till it was all expelled. She wiped her lips with the stiff toilet

  paper and drank water from a paper cup. The attendant, small and

  dark as a troll, watched her with hostile eyes, proffering a towel, but

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  that would mean a tip. She left the toilets and sat in a broad leather

  armchair in the lounge and for a while knew nothing.

  When she woke she somehow knew, even in that place without win-

  dows, that darkness had come.

  Where would she go now? Everyone knew that every place you

  might look for somewhere to stay was overwhelmed with applicants,

  that every shed and backhouse had a tenant in it, people were sleeping

  on the cement floors of garages and in the basements of unfinished

  houses roofed over with tar paper; hotels were impossible, even if

  Diane had dared to check into one all by herself; the YWCA was full

  every day. She could stay right here, in this chair that had seemed to

  become her friend, but she felt sure that the attendant would put her

  out before dawn. She got to her feet.

  She could walk for a while. Something could turn up. She did walk,

  one second per step, wearing away an hour and another hour. Evening

  was soothing, the dark blue sky reminding her of childhood and trips

  downtown to the movies. Even as she thought this she saw ahead a

  movie theater, its great marquee projecting over the street, its tall sign

  rising with the name vista and the lines of lights chasing themselves

  around the edges. A lot of people milling around out front, a lot of them

  kids it looked like. Diane didn’t notice the title of the show playing; she

  was only drawn to the booth where tickets were sold, as though to the

  gatekeeper of a realm of safety and refuge. Twenty cents. She passed

  inside. More children, coming out of the curtained entrance to the audi-

  torium, going in again, sitting on the steps to the balcony looking weary

  or dejected, or running wildly. An usherette in pursuit like a comic cop.

  Diane went into the darkness and found a seat; the feature was just

  starting. It was called No Room at the Inn. Diane knew the names of

  the young people who would play the main parts but hadn’t seen them

  in a picture before. The music covered her and filled her at once, like a

  kind of warm nourishing syrup, and she sank lower in her seat. Snow

  was falling in a dark city, people hurrying through the streets. The two

  young people had just arrived from somewhere else, they had an old car

  that was almost out of gas; she wore a white kerchief tied under her

  chin that seemed both humble and rich; he was unshaven and his pale

  eyes were worried. He had a job at a war plant and they were going to

  do all right but they couldn’t find a plac
e to live. The landladies and old

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  men in carpet slippers who opened the door to them were mean and

  tight-lipped, or kindly but helpless. The girl was pregnant! They needed

  someplace safe and warm. The car busted an old tire and ran out of gas

  at the same time, which was funny and was supposed to be funny, you

  could tell, and it made you think everything would actually come out

  all right. They started walking in the snow and he was worried and

  gentle and she carried a little suitcase. They went to a sinister motel

  where a single light burned and you could hear laughter of the wrong

  kind, and a night clerk (Diane recognized the greasy-faced actor from a

  dozen pictures) got the wrong idea about the girl and the guy, and asked

  if they wanted to stay the whole night, and they were so nice they didn’t

  even get what was going on or where they were, which was funny too

  for a minute and then horrid, you wanted them to get out of there. They

  went on through the snow and the hurrying crowds. Diane fell asleep.

  When she woke up, the man and his wife had somehow found a place to

  stay, only it was almost a barn, a shed with a donkey looking in the

  window, and it was funny again but sweetly serious too: something

  about the light or the music told you. The old man with a foreign accent

  who rented the space to them and helped them out talked to them about

  freedom and decency in a world gone wrong, his white hair like a halo.

  It was Christmas. Kids came caroling down the streets, singing about

  Peace on Earth, Good Will to Men. As though you were a visitor, some-

  one come to call or to investigate, you went into the yard and through

  the gate and up to the little shed, and there in a corner in a made-up bed

  of blankets is the young woman, and glowing in her arms, revealed to

  you as though you’d crept up to take a peek, the baby. Just before that—

  just as the carollers came in to see—Diane all of a sudden got the idea

  of the picture, no room at the inn, which she hadn’t got all along because

  it had made her think only of herself and Danny and where she’d go and

  what she’d do. Her heart heaved and she started to sob, that awful won-

  derful sobbing that can happen in this darkness, where with all these

  people you were alone and spoken to.

  The usherette of the Vista—the only one on duty late—was having a

  hell of a night. She’d come to believe that all the human beings in the

  city without a house of their own were sleeping in the movies. Or they

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  just left their kids there to watch the show, and told them Mommy’d be

  back later when her shift was done, just stay there. Damn shame.

  Shame of the nation, she thought, these were war workers, doing what

  needed to be done, and no place for them or their families to go. Kids

  falling asleep in heaps on the stairs, picking butts out of the ashtrays to

  try out. When the owl show let out and the place finally turned its

  lights out at 2 a.m., the kids would still be there, and she’d have to put

  them out and line them up on the curb to wait. Then there were the

  older ones, “teenagers” they got called nowadays, in the back rows

  necking or worse, she’d seen some rather striking things and not been

  very descriptive about them when talking to the manager, who thought

  it was swell management to leave the whole thing to her for these last

  hours of the night. Every hour on the hour it was required of her to

  check each of the four thermostats in the theater, see that they all read

  right. One was up on the wall behind the last row of seats, and that’s

  where she damn well went, flashlight aglow so they saw her coming,

  and still they said awful things to her. Just doing my job, said under

  her breath because after all the damn picture was playing, not that

  these types cared.

  And where did they get the bottles they smuggled in, the smell of

  booze was distinct in the auditorium, floating here to there in the stale

  air like a wandering cloud. It wasn’t her affair, except when the boys

  got into fights she had to stop or she had to hold some retching girl’s

  head over the toilet, too young to drink, too young to be here, without

  anywhere else to go. If she kicked them out, what would become of

  them? Churches should stay open, maybe that’d help.

  She’d already had it when in the littered and foul-smelling ladies’

  she heard some kind of moaning from a closed stall. What now? She

  knocked on the door with her flashlight, a harsh sound, and from

  inside came a startled cry. Then no more.

  Something really wrong.

  “All right in there?”

  No answer, and she looked down at the tiles and could see what

  was certainly blood on the floor of the stall, which the someone inside

  had tried to wipe up and failed, oh Lord.

  “What is it? Open the door. I can help.” She could? Help by doing

  what, exactly, for who, a murdered girl, attacked, raped? The small

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  sounds came again, but the door wasn’t opened. She waited. There was

  some movement, and the latch was lifted but no more. The usherette

  pushed it open.

  “Oh my Lord.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  Blood everywhere, all over her lap, her legs, the toilet, a pile of tis-

  sues reddened. The woman, child, girl, was gray, as though all that

  colored her had drained away.

  “It came out, all this blood,” she said.

  “I got to call an ambulance,” said the usherette. “You wait. Don’t

  move.” In the movies they always said that, for the first time she knew

  why.

  “Don’t,” said Diane. “Please don’t. It’s over. I think it is.”

  “Dear, you could die. I know so. Don’t move and I’ll come back.

  The phone’s right there.”

  Diane looked up at the usherette, whose great breasts strained the

  uniform she wore, little pillbox hat absurd on her wide wings of hair.

  Horror and pity in her face.

  “I want to go home,” she said. “Please.”

  3

  The Bomb Bay was nothing but an extra building not far from the

  main assembly plant that had lost its use as more and more Pax

  components were being built in other plants in other places. It was

  square, low, and window-less, with a makeshift stage hung with

  bunting; it was decorated as though for a high school cotillion in crepe

  paper streamers and silver and gold moons sprinkled with shiny stuff

  (actually duralumin dust, produced when Pax parts were cut or drilled,

  but it glittered prettily in the light of a mirrored ball that turned overhead

  and reflected the lights). The main reason for the Bomb Bay’s existence

  was that it was big enough to hold a crowd, bigger than any place in the

  city, and you could drink there. The Oklahoma dry laws came and went

  and came again in Ponca City, but the Bomb Bay had been established as

  a private club of which all the employees of Van Damme Aero were auto-

  matically members—just show your badge at the door, when there was

  somebody there to check�
�and the church ladies and dour legislators

  could go hang. The trucks rolled in from the Coast bringing the Lucky

  Lager, the unrationed tequila came from south of the border, and the rest

  of the array behind the long bar when and if. Waiters were in short supply;

  best get your drink from the bar and carry it to a paper-covered table.

  “I’d like,” Diane said—her cheeks flushed and eyes alight as though

  she’d already consumed it—“a Cuba libre, please.”

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  “I’ll have the same,” Prosper said, not quite sure what it was. The

  volunteer barman filled two glasses with ice and snapped the tops from

  two bottles of Coca-Cola. He added a shot of clear rum to each glass,

  and then the Coke.

  “Wha,” said Prosper.

  “Should have a lemon,” the barman said, “but we’re fresh out.”

  Diane picked up the glasses—both his and hers, without hesitation

  or inquiry, which endeared her to him immediately, and brought them

  to a table.

  “Why Cuba libre?” he asked.

  She lifted one shoulder fetchingly. She was a different person here

  than in the plant. “It means Free Cuba,” she said. “Maybe from that

  war?”

  “Remember the Maine, ” Prosper said and lifted his glass to her.

  The band was just setting up on the stage, the drummer tapping

  and tightening his drumheads. There was a trio of lady singers, like the

  Andrews Sisters, going over sheet music.

  Diane told him (he asked, he wanted to know) about Danny, her

  guy, flying a Hellcat in the Pacific. She got V-mail from him, not often:

  little funny notes about coconuts and palm trees and grass skirts, not

  what you really wanted to know, because of course he couldn’t say. She

  lifted her dark drink from another war, and looked at nothing.

  “So he,” Prosper began, just a nudge, he had nothing to say; and

  though it didn’t draw her eyes to him she told him more, remembering

  more. The Lucky Duck. The journey across the desert. At last the lost

  baby.

  “Aw,” he said. “Aw Diane.”

  She shrugged again, a different kind. “I really only knew him a

  couple of weeks. Not even a month, and I wasn’t with him unless he

  could get a pass.”

  “Testing, testing,” said the bandleader into the microphone.

  “I can almost not remember what he looks like. Sometimes I dream