by John Crowley
“It wasn’t my fault,” Larry said. “I had no choice.”
“Don’t give me that,” Prosper said. “We’re quite aware.”
“Get the hell out of here,” Larry said. “That was business and I did
what I had to do.”
Later Prosper would try to think whether he’d actually had Larry’s
own advice in his mind as the next moments unfolded. A little crowd
had gathered. “Somebody ought to punch your nose,” Prosper said.
“Nobody’s punching anybody,” Larry said.
“We’ll see,” Prosper said, with all the implacable menace he could
muster. “Come on.” He whirled and started toward the door, Larry
following him.
“Cut it out,” he called to Prosper. “Don’t be a dope.”
“What are you, a coward? Scared of something?” Prosper said this
in fury straight in front of him as he reached the door of the games
room, grabbed the knob, and pushed it open. Larry was just exiting
behind him when Prosper flung the door shut hard and hit Larry smack
in the face. Then as Larry, dazed, pushed it open again to come after
him, Prosper swung around on his heels and with one lifted crutch
caught Larry a blow on the cheek that made the onlookers now crowd-
ing the exit gasp in horror or amazement.
That was all Prosper was holding in the way of an attack, and set-
ting himself then as firmly as he could, he waited for Larry to fall upon
him. His heart felt like it would tear him apart. Larry, red-faced and
with teeth bared, seemed ready now to do terrible things, but after a
pause he throttled down with awesome effort and backed away; threw
his hand into the air, Aw beat it, and turned back into the Community
Center, pushing through the crowd. Sal came squirming out almost
under his arm, went to Prosper and stood beside him as though to shel-
ter him with her own unassailability. “Bully!” she yelled back.
Ironic cheers for the two of them followed them out into the day.
“You’re going to go?” Sal said. It was she who’d rescued Pancho’s
letter in the donnybrook.
“Of course I am.” His heart still pounding.
“I’ll go too,” she said.
“No, Sal. You don’t need to say that.”
F O U R F R E E D O M S / 371
“Listen, mister. He was my friend too.”
That was true: for all her mocking tone, Sal had sat as quietly as
anyone could have been expected to as Pancho expatiated, and Prosper
thought that was about what Pancho’d mean by a friend. “Well,” he
said. “What about your shift?”
“I’m quitting,” Sal said, “if you want to know. I’m blowing.”
“You are? What about Al?”
“Al and I,” Sal said in that record-played-too-fast voice of hers, “are
quits.”
Prosper slowed down. Sal was about the only Associate around who
had to skip to keep up with him. “What? That’s hard to believe.”
“I know,” said Sal. “People look at the two of us and it’s like the
little man and woman on the wedding cake. How could they be apart?
Well lemme tell you.”
“I figured it was a love match. I admit.”
“To tell you the truth,” Sal said, “it was a kind of marriage of con-
venience. And it ain’t convenient anymore.”
“What’s he done?”
“I don’t want to talk about it. When do we leave?”
Sal and Prosper parted at the Assembly Building, Sal to go hand in her
resignation (as she put it) and Prosper to go back to Z Street and pre-
pare for a journey, a train journey with no aid but what Sal, who came
up just past his waist, could provide. He was headed that way when he
felt the presence of someone large coming up behind.
“Listen,” Larry said, without other preface. “What are you going to
do, are you going to do what he asked, go collect him and that?”
“Yes,” Prosper said, looking ahead with dignity, and some fear.
“Alone?”
“Sal Mass just said she’d come too.”
“Oh for Christ’s sake. The two of you? That’s ridiculous. You’ll
pull into town like some carny show. Nobody’ll take you seriously.
There’s legal matters there to resolve.”
Prosper kept on, following his nose.
“Look,” Larry said. “I’ve got no responsibility for this. None. But I
can help. I’ll come along. You can’t do it, you and her.”
372 / J O H N C R O W L E Y
Prosper let that sink in for a few steps. “You can get the time off?”
Larry stopped suddenly, and Prosper did too. Larry fetched breath
and looked to heaven. “Well,” he said, “actually, I’m quitting.”
The doors of the Assembly Building were rolling open, the little
tractors arriving to do their duty. The nose of another completed Pax
was revealed, then its wide wings.
“Well this is quite a day,” Prosper said.
All that Prosper would ever learn about what had caused Larry to turn
in his badge and resign his stewardship wasn’t enough to make a story,
and Prosper wasn’t about to delve deeply. There was a woman, a
woman at the plant, and an angry husband: Larry seemed visibly to
break out in a sweat, like a comic strip worrier, when he let even that
much slip. Prosper’d been tempted to say a lot then, maybe tell Larry
Pancho’s theories about war and the sex urge: but no.
“Well anyway,” Prosper said. They were all three on the local train
from Ponca to this city over the state line where Pancho lay dead. Sal in
the opposite seat was asleep, her small feet not reaching the floor. “I’m
sorry I whacked you with the stick there. I’ve been meaning to say.”
Larry touched the side of his face. “Didn’t hurt.”
“Good. Anyway thanks for not punching my lights out.”
“What?” Larry tugged at his collar. He was wearing a fawn-col-
ored suit, a bit too tight, and his suitcase was in the overhead rack: he
was headed farther, somewhere.
“Oh. You know.” Prosper punched the air.
Larry was watching him with an odd look, a look Prosper had seen
in the faces of women more than men: that look toward themselves as
much as at you, waiting to hear their own permission to say some-
thing, maybe something they’ve never said before.
“Well,” he said. “Look. There’s a lot of stories about me. That aren’t
all what you’d call true.”
“Oh?” The stories that Prosper had heard about Larry were all Lar-
ry’s telling. Prosper removed all suggestion of an opinion from his face,
but Larry seemed to strangle on the effort of saying whatever it was
that might come next, and instead removed his hat and furiously wiped
the sweatband with a large handkerchief.
F O U R F R E E D O M S / 373
Midday the train they’d taken toddled into the central station,
which had no platforms, only a little wedding-cake building beside the
tracks. Sal went out the door and down, leaping from the last step as
the conductor looked on. Then Larry. Then Prosper, who stood at the
door looking at the steep declivity. Easy enough maybe to go down the
first two steps, handy rails to hol
d: but the last drop to the ground was
going to take some thought. The conductor, ready to wave the engineer
on, gazed up at him in a kind of disinterested impatience. Finally Larry,
perceiving him stuck, stepped up.
“Come on!” he said. “I’ll getcha!”
All the things that Larry standing there arms open was capable of
doing or not doing passed as in a shiver over Prosper, but he didn’t
seem to have a choice. He dropped himself down the first step and then
bent forward as far as he could so that Larry could take him under the
armpits. Then he gave himself over to him. Strong as he was, Larry
staggered for a second under the weight and Prosper knew they were
going to go over, but Larry held and Prosper got his crutches set and
propped himself, removing his weight from Larry. Larry blew in impa-
tience or embarrassment, twisted his hat right on his head, and walked
away; neither man ever mentioned the moment.
The hotel was across a wide bare street from the station, a wooden
structure with a long front porch where a row of rockers sat. The words
grand hotel painted across the facade were worn somewhat; they
were supplemented by the same words in neon above the porch. Not the
kind of place important oil millionaires would be found, in Prosper’s
view, not that he knew anything about it. Beyond this place and rising
above, the newer buildings, like Ponca City’s, plain or fancy. Even as
they crossed the street to reach it, they could see what they should not
have been able to see, and they could do and say nothing until they were
entirely sure it was what it certainly seemed to be: Pancho Notzing,
seated in a rocking chair, feeding bits of something to a little dog.
“Now what,” Larry said, striding forward. “Now what in hell.”
When all three of them stood before the porch Pancho said, “Hello,
friends.”
“You’re supposed to be at the morgue,” Sal said. “I came a long way
to see that. If you just got out to come and greet us I suggest you beat it
back there.”
374 / J O H N C R O W L E Y
“What in hell,” Larry said again.
“Hello, Pancho,” Prosper said. “I’m glad to see you.”
Pancho nodded solemnly but without seeming to feel that a quick
explanation was in order. The little dog put a paw on his leg to remind
him of what he’d been up to as the others arrived. For the first time it
occurred to Prosper that Pancho, who spent his life and time and
energy planning for the true deep happiness of men and women, every
one of them different and precious, didn’t really perceive the existence
of actual other people. “Well as you see,” he said at last, “I did not in
the end take the step I wrote you about. I was on the point of sending
you a telegram to say so, but approaching the dark door and then
retreating took such an effort that I could do nothing further.”
“It’s all right,” Prosper said.
“All those common questions and tasks that I said had flown away
came right back again—in prospect anyway—and it was a bit appall-
ing. Stops you cold.”
“It’s all right.”
“Life,” said Pancho. He took a bit of something from a plate in his
lap and gave it to the dog, who snapped it up and looked for more.
“Who’s the dog?” Sal asked, unable to frame a different question.
“A stray, belongs to no one,” Pancho said. “As far as I can tell.”
“So you mean to say,” Larry said, “that we came all this way, ready
for a funeral, wearing the suit and tie, and there was never a reason for
it?”
“Larry,” said Pancho. “I can’t imagine why you’ve come, and I’m
sorry to have disappointed you, but I am honored. I am deeply hon-
ored.”
“Aw hell,” said Larry, and he snatched the hat from his head, seem-
ing to be on the point of throwing it to the dusty ground and stamping
on it; instead he jammed it back on his head and turned away, looking
down the empty street, hands in his pockets.
“Question is,” said Sal, “if we can’t bury you, what are we going to
do with you?”
“And yourself?” Pancho asked.
“Well that too,” Sal said. She’d taken a seat on the edge of the porch,
her feet on the step below, looking more than usual like a child, and
petted the little black dog, who seemed to take to her.
F O U R F R E E D O M S / 375
“We’re all out of a job,” Prosper said. “One way or another.”
Pancho stared at Larry’s back, and Larry’s pose softened, though he
didn’t turn.
“Him too,” said Prosper.
There seemed to be nothing for it except to go into the dining room of
the hotel, where overhead fans spooned the air around and wicker
chairs were set at the tables, and treat the dead man to a lunch; all his
money was in the check he’d sent to Prosper. What should they do
now? Some ideas more or less reasonable were put forward. For his
part, Prosper knew he could go back to Bea and May’s house, they’d
take him in, and certainly there’d be something he could do somewhere
in the art line, after all his experience. So long as he could get into the
building and into a chair in front of a desk. It was the safest thing, and
it was hard for somebody like him not to think Safety First. Safety was
rare and welcome. He’d had some close calls; in fact it sometimes
seemed that, for him, every call was close.
“I suppose you might not have heard,” Larry said, tucking a napkin
into his collar, “that while you were busy here, we won the war. Against
Hitler anyway. He’s done.”
“I did hear that, Larry,” Pancho said. “On that day I was reminded
of a passage in a book I often carry with me. For consolation, though
it hasn’t worked so well that way lately.”
He fished in his coat pockets, but found no book there, and then
bowed his head, clasped his hands, and began to speak, as though he
asked a blessing before their meal. “ ‘This is the day,’ ” he said, gravely
and simply, “ ‘which down the void abysm, at the Earth-born’s spell
yawns for Heaven’s despotism. And Conquest is dragged captive
through the deep.’ ”
He lifted his eyes. “Shelley,” he said. “Prometheus. The Earth-born.
Friend to man. Unbound and triumphant.”
The rest of them looked at one another, but got no help. Prosper
wondered if this strange gentle certitude with which Pancho spoke had
been acquired somehow in his trip toward the other side, as May
always called it, and back again.
“ ‘And if with infirm hand,’ ” Pancho went on, and lifted his own,
376 / J O H N C R O W L E Y
“ ‘Eternity, Mother of many acts and hours, should free the serpent
that would clasp her with his length’ ”—here Pancho seized the air dra-
matically—“ ‘these are the spells by which to reassume an empire o’er
the disentangled doom.’ ”
He seemed to arise slightly from his chair, enumerating them, the
spells, on his fingers: “ ‘To suffer woes which
Hope thinks infinite. To
forgive wrongs darker than death or night.’ ”
Sal and Prosper looked at Larry.
“ ‘To defy Power, which seems omnipotent. To love, and bear. To
hope till Hope creates from its own wreck the thing it contemplates.’ ”
Full hand open high above them: “ ‘Neither to change, nor falter, nor
repent.’ ”
“Hey I have an idea,” said Sal.
“ ‘This, like thy glory, Titan, is to be good, great and glorious, beau-
tiful and free! This is alone Life! Joy! Empire! And Victory!’ ”
He was done, sank, put his hands on the table; lifted his head and
smiled at them, as though awaking and glad to find them there.
“ ’Scuse me, but you know what?” Sal got up and knelt on the chair
seat to address them. “Right this minute, in San Francisco, California,
the United Nations are meeting. You’ve read about it. All the ones on
our side in the war, and all the others too, that’s the idea. They’re there
talking about peace in the world and how to do it. How to make it last
this time. About the rights everybody should have, all of us, how to
keep them from being taken away.”
“Four freedoms,” said Prosper. “Yes.”
“So, Mr. Notzing. Why don’t you go there? Bring your plans and
your proposals, your writings. That’s the bunch that needs to hear
them. Am I right?”
She looked around at the others, who had no idea if she was or
wasn’t.
“Oh,” said Pancho. “Oh, well, I don’t know, no, I.”
She scrambled down from her chair and came to his side. “Oh come
on!” she said.
“Mrs. Roosevelt will be there,” Larry said, lifting his eyes as though
he saw her, just overhead.
“We’ll all go,” Sal cried. “You’ve got a car, haven’t you? We’re all
flush. Let’s do it.”
F O U R F R E E D O M S / 377
“Will you all?” Pancho asked with something like humility. Nobody
said no. “Very well,” he said.
“Yes,” said Sal.
“We’ll just take French leave. When we choose, we’ll return for
what we’ve left behind—if we think there’s any reason to.”
“It’ll all be there when we get back.”
“The things and the people.”
“Yes.”
“If you don’t mind,” Larry said, and picked up his fork and knife,
“I’d like to have my lunch before we go. Maybe you people can live on
