with me. I have paid for a further week at this lodging, after
which they will find I have no more to give them nor any use for
their hospitality.
What I would ask of you, dear friend, is that in the next
days you will come here to this town, where you would not
want otherwise to journey I’m sure, and collect my remains,
both my own poor person and more importantly the papers
and plans to which with painful care I have devoted so many
years, not to enrich or aggrandize myself, no, but for the
increase of human happiness. What though I have failed? The
plans, the philosophy of Attraction and Harmony, these
remain, and if there is any hope and any justice in this
wondrous world we inhabit, they will lie like seeds through
winter upon winter, to be watered and nourished and grow in
the end.
Well enough of all that, just get here if you can, I’ll probably
be on ice at the morgue on my way to the potter’s field, but if
you get here in time they won’t throw me out. The enclosed for
whatever expenses a simple burial might entail, the rest for your
good self.
You know it’s a funny thing how a plan of suicide simplifies
your life. No reason any longer to pay the rent, answer your
mail, wash, dress, even to eat. It’s a strange relief to know that
you’ve had to make a choice between ham and eggs and flap-
jacks for the last time in your life. But I maunder, my friend,
and it is now time to bid you farewell in this life, and to ask
F O U R F R E E D O M S / 369
your pardon for these obligations I have laid upon you. If you
don’t fulfill them I will be none the wiser, of course, but here’s
hoping.
It was signed “Pancho,” and on another sheet of the same statio-
nery was a note headed To Whom It May Concern, that granted to
Prosper Olander the power to take possession of all his effects and
make such disposition of his remains as he deems appropriate, and this
note was signed Pelagius Johann Notzing, BA, Esq., and was dated
three days before.
“What the hell,” he said aloud. “What the hell.”
Sal Mass was there trying to open her box, standing on tiptoe with
her key to reach it, she’d tried to get a lower one but was told they had
to be assigned in alphabetical order. “What is it?” she asked.
Prosper held out the letter to her and watched as she read it. After
frowning over the first sentences she suddenly gasped, and clutched the
letter to her bosom as though to hush its voice, looking at Prosper in
horror. He gestured that she read on. When she was all done she looked
up again, a different face now.
“That god damn son of a bitch,” she said.
Prosper knew who she meant: not Pancho.
Almost as though they’d instantly had the same idea, or communi-
cated it to each other by Wings of Thought as the ads in The Sunny
Side said, Prosper and Sal together went out of the post office and
toward the Community Center where, unless the sun had stopped
going east to west, Larry would at this time of day be found in the
games room playing pool and jawing.
He was there. He saw Prosper and Sal approaching him and took
the damp unlit cigar from his mouth, grinning appreciatively. “Well if
it isn’t,” he said, but then Prosper had reached him and thrust Pancho’s
letter on him.
“Read this,” he said.
Larry looked it over. “It’s not addressed to me.”
“Just read it.”
They watched him read, the game suspended, Sal with her fists on
her hips.
“Oh jeez,” Larry said. “Oh for cripe’s sake.”
370 / J O H N C R O W L E Y
“You oughta,” Sal said, “you oughta,” but couldn’t think what he
oughta, and stopped.
“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-