Four Freedoms

by John Crowley

  before him: him, poor starveling who’d never partaken, as she was

  probably imagining. But he’d only think all that later. Now they kissed,

  her mouth tasting of the Coke and the rum and her own flavor. After a

  time she put her cheek against his with great tenderness and with one

  hand began unbuttoning his pants.

  This was a first for him, as it happened, and she somehow seemed

  to know it; she was tender and tentative and didn’t have the hang of it,

  no surprise, and he was tempted to help, but no, he just lay cheek to

  cheek with her as she did her best: she gasped or cried a small cry as

  she at length achieved it, maybe surprised. Confused then as to how to

  tidy up, the stuff had gone everywhere, like a comic movie where the

  more you wipe it the farther it spreads, never mind, they laughed and

  then she slept against him as he sat awake and watched clouds eat the

  moon and restore it again. She woke, deflated a little, not ashamed he

  hoped, and started the car—bad moment when it coughed and humped

  once and then failed, but she got it going as he looked on helplessly. At

  the dark house on Z Street she parked the car askew and said she was

  coming in to wash up, if that was all right.

  What was marvelous to him then was that, when they were drawn

  to his bedroom by the force of some logic obvious to them both, she

  wanted to help him take off his pants and divest him of his braces,

  which she unbuckled slowly and unhandily as he sat on the bed. She

  raised her eyes to him now and then as she worked, with an angel-of-

  mercy smile from which he could not look away; he wondered if she

  thought that he needed her helping hand, as he had in the car by the

  river, and was willing to give it; this act seemed even more generous,

  unnecessary as it was. When that was done, though, he drew her to

  him with strong arms that perhaps she didn’t expect, and divested her

  with quick skill, which also maybe she didn’t expect.

  When she awoke again he was deep asleep. She washed again and

  dressed. Now how had that happened, she’d like to know, but gave

  herself no answer. At least he’d known the use of the present as the BBs

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  used to call it, oh so long ago that was, which was good because she’d

  never. She felt a strange trickle down her leg, reminding her of then,

  and she stopped, overcome with something like utter weariness. She

  guessed she’d drunk a lot. What must he think of her. She walked

  around the little dark house, so unlike a house, and found another bed.

  She’d have to think about this, and about Danny, and about every-

  thing: she’d have to think. She’d have to remember. Remember who he

  was; remember—she sort of laughed—who she was.

  When Pancho came home after the Bomb Bay closed, he noticed

  that the Zephyr had somehow misaligned itself with the curb, odd, and

  when he went into his bedroom he found Diane in her blue dress asleep

  there like Goldilocks, one white-socked foot hanging off the bed, an

  unbuckled shoe falling from the foot, which just at that moment

  dropped off and woke her. She rose to see Pancho in the doorway. He

  stood aside as she walked past him with a nod and a smile, head lifted,

  and went out into the night.

  4

  This is the worst thing that’s ever happened to me.”

  “I don’t understand. I mean we did everything right.” Dimly

  Prosper remembered Larry the shop steward, grinning at him in the

  pharmacy: Lucky if they don’t break. “Are you sure?”

  “They did that test with the rabbit.”

  “Oh.”

  “I guess I’m just real fruitful,” Diane said, blowing her wet nose.

  “Oh Jesus what’ll we do.”

  They sat perfectly still in the Aero office, talking to but facing away

  from each other, as though those passing by or working, who could

  look in, might discern what they talked about.

  “Maybe it’ll just go away, like the other one.”

  “I don’t think you can count on that,” Prosper said.

  “I can’t go home again. Not again. This time with a baby. Some-

  body else’s.”

  Nothing more for a time but the periodic clang of work proceeding.

  “You can stay here,” Prosper said, drawing himself up. “Stay in the

  house with us, Pancho and me, and don’t tell your husband. And then

  I can raise the. The child. Raise it myself. When the war’s over and you

  go back, to, to.”

  He still hadn’t looked her way while he made this huge statement,

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  actually unable to, but when he’d said it he turned, and she was look-

  ing at him as though he had spoken in some foreign tongue, or mut-

  tered madness. Then she put her chin in her hands and gazed into the

  distance, just as if he’d said nothing at all. “This is the worst thing

  that’s ever happened to me,” she said, once more. “The worst.”

  He thought of saying to her that after all it couldn’t be the only time

  in the war something like this had happened, it was sort of under-

  standable, forgivable even, maybe, surely: but he hadn’t said any of

  that, luckily, before he had the further thought of not saying it. She

  pulled from the pocket of her overalls a small sheet of paper, one of a

  kind he’d seen before. “He’s here,” she said.

  “Here?”

  “Well I mean in this country, not way out there at sea. He was I

  guess a hero out there somehow and he got hurt, he says not bad, and

  he’s been getting better in a hospital in San Francisco.” She was read-

  ing the little shiny gray V-mail. “He’s going back tomorrow, no the day

  after. They gave him leave, a couple of days. He wishes I could be there

  with him. That’s what he says.” She proffered the letter, but Prosper

  didn’t think he should take it.

  “A couple of days?”

  “I couldn’t even if I could,” she said, tears now again brightening

  her eyes. “I mean can you imagine. What would I tell him? I couldn’t

  even say hello.” She folded the little paper on its folds and put it away.

  “So it’s good I guess, that I can’t get there.”

  She tried a smile then, for Prosper’s sake he knew, but he couldn’t

  respond, and just then there came the beeping of an electric car, Horse

  Offen’s, just outside the office; Horse was standing up in the car waving

  to him urgently.

  “I gotta go,” Prosper said.

  “Me too,” she said. She took the hankie from her sleeve and dabbed

  her eyes, he got into his crutches and rose. Horse had his hat on, so

  Prosper grabbed his.

  “Diane. This’ll be, this’ll . . .”

  “Don’t,” she said softly. “Just don’t.”

  “This is going to be great,” said Horse, turning the electric car out of

  the shop and heading for the exit to the airfield. “I’ve never had a warn-

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  ing before, that they’re coming, but this time I happened—I just hap-

  pened—to be up in the control tower when they radio’d in. We’ll get

  them arriving.”

  Prosper, gripping
the rail of the car with one hand and his hat with

  the other, asked no questions.

  “You do the camera,” Horse said. He preferred to ask the questions

  himself on these occasions, Prosper used up too much attention him-

  self and wasn’t nosy enough. He had a good eye, though, Horse

  thought.

  Prosper looked up, as Horse was now doing, his driving erratic. A

  plane was nearing, Prosper couldn’t tell what kind, not large. “So

  who,” he said.

  “Crew coming in to ferry a Pax to the coast,” Horse said. “A crew

  of wasps.”

  “Oh right.” Not wasps but WASPs—Women Air Service Pilots.

  He’d admired them in the magazines—studying hard at their naviga-

  tion, suited up for flying, relaxing in the sun, crowding the sinks at

  morning in their primitive barracks somewhere in a desert state. He

  began to feel anticipation too. Their planes had touched down here

  before, just long enough to let out crews, male crews, that would fly the

  finished B-30s to the coasts or farther, or the test pilots who’d bring

  them right back here. Prosper’d never seen a WASP in person. Now,

  Horse said, they were bringing in a crew all of women to train on the

  six-engine plane, after which they’d fly it themselves to wherever it was

  to go, at least within the States.

  “There they come,” Horse cried, seeing the plane bank and begin to

  descend toward the field. He gunned the little vehicle—it basically had

  one speed, and it wasn’t fast—to where he had guessed the plane would

  touch down, then veering when it went where he hadn’t. They were

  there, though, when it alighted, a single-engine biplane that seemed

  misbuilt somehow.

  “Beech Staggerwing,” Horse cried. “Fine little craft. Famous women

  won a famous air race in one, six-eight years ago, we’ll look it up.”

  Prosper, doing his best to match Horse’s urgency, climbed from the

  car and swing-gaited toward the plane as fast as he could, the Rollei-

  flex bouncing on his chest. The propeller ceased, kicked back once,

  and was still. Prosper had the plane in focus as the door opened and

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  the pilot came out, then one two three other women, all smiles, waving

  to Horse and Prosper in what Prosper could only feel was an ironic

  sort of way, yes it’s us again.

  “Hi, hi!” Horse called out, waving grandly. He glanced back at

  Prosper to assure himself that shots were being taken and the film

  being rolled forward, and it was, Prosper watching and framing them,

  and they in the frame seeming to be some ancient painting in the Cyclo-

  pedia, stacked like strong goddesses on the step, the door, the ground,

  looking this way and that, all the same and all unique. They wore

  brown leather flying jackets and fatigues amazingly rumpled; each

  came out carrying her parachute and a kit. Warm boots in the unheated

  plane, cold aloft these days. How beautiful they were. How grateful he

  felt to be there then, and always would, there on that day of all days.

  “How was the flight?” Horse asked, pad and pencil already out.

  “You ladies going to fly the Pax, is that right? Say, that’s one monster

  plane, isn’t it! Well you’ve flown, what, B-25s, B-17s, and yes what? B-

  29s? Well well well, Superfortress! Say, for my little paper here, can I

  just get some names? Martha, the pilot, okay Kathleen, Jo Ellen,

  Honora, that’s h-o-n-o-r-a? Okeydokey!”

  Prosper’d never seen Horse in such a lather, the four women just

  marching along, actually in step, answering what they were asked but

  very obviously on duty here, and tired. They each glanced at Prosper,

  their faces making no comment. He caught up with Martha, a dark-

  browed wide-mouthed woman who reminded him a little of Elaine.

  Seeing that he’d like to speak but was using all his breath to walk, she

  slowed down.

  “Say,” she said.

  “Martha,” Prosper asked, and she nodded confirmingly. “How long

  will you be here?”

  “Just tonight. Fly out tomorrow for, lessee, San Francisco. 0500

  hours.”

  “Where’ll you stay?”

  “They have this dorm here?”

  “Yes.”

  “There.”

  “So you’ll have the evening. I was just wondering . . .”

  She looked again at him, as though he’d appeared from nowhere

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  just at that moment, or had in that moment turned into something or

  someone he hadn’t been before. He knew the look.

  “All I want,” she said, “is a drink and a steak. If I don’t fall asleep

  first.”

  “Actually,” he said, “that might be a tall order. The cafeteria’s the

  only eats for a long way.”

  “Then that’ll do,” said Martha.

  “For a drink,” he said, “there’s the Bomb Bay.”

  “The what?”

  He explained, she thanked him, gave him a wave, and caught up

  with the other women. Meanwhile Horse had gone back for the car

  and now drew up beside him.

  “What did you learn?” he asked.

  Prosper didn’t answer, and climbed into the car, thinking that some

  word, some name, had occurred in those minutes that meant a lot, but

  in a way he couldn’t grasp, and he kept thinking about it as Horse,

  talking a mile a minute, drove him back and dropped him at the

  office.

  “Get those films developed,” he said, as he drove away.

  “Yessir.”

  On Prosper’s desk lay an envelope containing the new Upp ’n’ Adam

  cartoons for him to letter. He sat down and slid them out, Bristol board

  eleven-by-fourteen inches, on which the artist had sketched his picture

  of the two fools—fat Upp blithely driving his forklift to disaster as

  Adam points at him and calls out to the viewer. The line that Prosper

  was to add was “Adam sez: If you see something, SAY something!!!”

  Prosper didn’t think the picture was very expressive of what he took

  that phrase to mean, that the bosses wanted you to watch out for pil-

  fering, waste, slacking, even sabotage: it was about getting workers to

  watch one another and report to management. Well it was hard to pic-

  ture that using the two friends, with Adam turning Upp in. The blue

  lines of the initial sketch were overlaid in black ink, improving it here

  and there; those blue lines, the first thoughts, would magically disap-

  pear when the whole was photographed.

  If you see something, say something.

  Prosper remembered what it was that Martha the pilot had said that

  had tinkled a bell in his brain. San Francisco: she’d said San Francisco.

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  He got up, hoisting himself so fast he nearly tumbled over. If you

  see something say something. He made it out the door and down

  through the plant, people calling hellos after him, and toward the caf-

  eteria. If she hadn’t gone there, then the dorm, or the Bomb Bay. He

  was already speaking to her, making a case. Sure it’s against the regu-

  lations but hell what isn’t, listen her husband’s an airman, an airman,

 
; a fighter pilot. And who’m I, I’m, well, I heard the story and gosh she

  seems like such a swell kid, so young, I’ll tell you something, she was

  married one day and he was off to the Pacific, she hasn’t seen him

  since. Her husband. Shot down in the Pacific, a hero. It’s important,

  really. And Martha, you’re the pilot, aren’t you, and what you say goes

  in that plane, isn’t that right?

  The faster he spoke to Martha the faster he walked, hardly feeling

  the effort, the din of his blood in his ears. Probably, probably, it’d be

  harder to convince Diane of this than Martha, you could tell Martha

  was fearless and made up her own mind, but Diane? It’d work, it would,

  she’d just have to see, he’d make her do it. He invoked Mary Wilma,

  prayed to Mary Wilma for power, he’d be Mary Wilma and make

  Diane do his plan, by his will and by his certainty, he’d.

  He stopped still, not only because his arms had at last got in touch

  with his brain and said No more, and his breath was gone: also because

  he had another thought. The thought was to not do this at all, no, to

  forget about it and not tell Diane and forget he ever thought of it.

  Because that might be better for him.

  In the Bomb Bay she’d said to him I don’t even remember what he

  looks like.

  But he was here, Prosper, before her. She didn’t need to try to

  remember him. Those good-bye marriages didn’t need to last, every-

  body said they didn’t last. She said this was the worst thing that’d ever

  happened to her, but what if it was for the best, what if she forgot

  Danny more and more until he was gone altogether, and he himself

  was still here, not going anywhere.

  And alive. At the war’s end he’d certainly be still alive.

  At that shameful thought he started again toward the cafeteria. No.

  No. She was beautiful and she’d known how to be kind to him without

  diminishing him or treating him like an infant, she was just good at

  that and so he knew she was good inside, and inside her too was his

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  own baby. But he had no right. Just because of that he had no right. No

  fair even making her the offer, posing a choice, it could only hurt her to

  hear it: the war was winding down and he’d soon be out of a job,

  maybe for life, and what kind of a prize did that make him? She couldn’t