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
air, but not me.”
Outside on the porch as they all went out—Pancho with the two bags
that he had intended to leave for Prosper, still neatly labeled as to their
contents—the little black dog was still waiting, and happy to see
them.
“We’ll take him too,” Sal said.
“Oh no,” Larry said. “I hate dogs.”
But she’d already picked up the mutt and was holding him tenderly
and laughing as he licked at her face. Pancho led them to the side street
where the car was parked.
“Best be on our way,” Pancho said, climbing into the driver’s seat.
“Look at that sky.”
A roiling darkness did seem to be building to the north, and little
startled puffs of breeze reached them. Larry licked his forefinger and
held it aloft. “Headed the other way,” he averred. “Back toward where
we came from.”
“So we’re off,” said Pancho, and turned the key.
“ ‘Git for home, Bruno!’ ” Sal shouted from the back.
“There’s no place like home,” said Prosper; he said it though he
didn’t know and had never known just what that meant. It did occur to
him that if seen from the right point of view, they in the Zephyr were
like one of those movies where the picture, which has all along been
moving with the people in it one after the other or in twos and threes
wherever they go, takes a final stance, and the people move away from
it. (Prosper, in the days when he’d come to pick up Elaine or wait while
378 / J O H N C R O W L E Y
she changed, had seen the beginnings and endings of many movies, the
same movie many times.) Maybe there’s one more kiss, or one more
piece of comic business, and then the car with the lovers or the family
or the ill-assorted comedians in it moves off, hopeful suitcase tied on,