lie’s body underwent an alarming series of thrashes and wriggles at
once urgent and random, Prosper pursuing him across the bed to keep
at it. Charlie’s noises were getting louder too, though it was clear he
was trying to suppress them. His hand flew up, maybe trying to pitch
in and help, and caught Prosper a smack in the ear so that Prosper too
cried out. May from upstairs could be heard demanding quiet from the
158 / J O H N C R O W L E Y
boys just as Prosper felt Charlie swell farther, and great lashings of
stuff flew from him and across the bedsheets, Charlie nearly thrown
off the bed onto the floor by his heavings.
“Okay?” Prosper whispered, after Charlie’d grown comparatively
still.
“Oh gay,” Charlie said. “Anks a bunch.”
“You’re welcome.”
“Ooh nigh.”
“Good night, Charlie.”
Prosper telling the tale of those days to Vi in Henryville left out about
Charlie Coutts. He didn’t recount that early time with Elaine, either,
for he didn’t think these stories and what happened would count with
her. He didn’t really know why he was himself tempted to think that
indeed they did count: couldn’t have said what in them was part of that
secret tissue that had no name, only instances. Can you say you’ve
learned something if you don’t know what it is you’ve learned?
Twice or three times more Charlie came to visit ( Prosper you can’t
let Charlie drink Coca-Cola in bed. He spills, and it leaves stains on
the sheets. Brown stains. You hear? ) though somehow May and Bea
hadn’t the heart to organize a journey to Charlie’s house, a failing
they’d remember later with a little shame; and then once when Mr.
Coutts came to pick up his son, a raw November day despite which the
boys sat on the porch together (they were trying to memorize every
make and model of car there was, outguessing each other and then
arguing over which that one was, a Lincoln or a Packard), he announced
that Charlie probably wouldn’t be able to come back. Not anytime
soon anyway.
May and Bea had come out to see him—they’d taken to the quiet
man—and asked what had happened, they enjoyed Charlie’s company,
what was the matter? Well it was nothing about that; only Mr. Coutts
had at length decided it was best if Charlie went to be taken care of in
an institution, a school Mr. Coutts had learned about, in another city.
A school or home for young people like himself. It was a charity, and
there’d be no charge.
He sat down on the step beside his son.
F O U R F R E E D O M S / 159
“Plymouth Roadking,” said Prosper.
“O,” said Charlie. “Chrysle a-felow.”
“No, nope son. Wasn’t a Chrysler Airflow. It was the Plymouth.”
Charlie roused, indignant, but said nothing more. No one said any-
thing for a moment. Prosper knew about it already: Charlie’d told him.
Far: that’s all he knew. He’d get training there, but he didn’t know
what kind, or for what. Prosper tried to imagine him without his gentle
father near him, and couldn’t.
“Jobs the way they are, and his mother with other kids at home,”
Mr. Coutts said, and no more.
“Well we’ll miss you, Charlie,” said May. “We’ve got used to you.”
Charlie smiled. “I’ll sen you a poscar.”
His father helped him stand, and they said good-byes all around.
Prosper wanted to do something but couldn’t think what it should be.
He had given Charlie the only thing from his father’s cases that Charlie
could manage the use of: it was a thin paper book, Drawing the Nude.
I’ll be pobular, Charlie’d said, and tucked it in his shirt.
They got into the car and Mr. Coutts fixed Charlie’s cap on his
head. Charlie flung up a hand by way of a parting wave; to them on the
porch it looked at once triumphant and desperate, but they knew it was
just his muscles.
“He’s just not made for this world,” Bea said.
“Hmp,” May said. “What’s for sure is, this world’s not made for
him.”
“Well, it’s for the best, I’m sure,” said Bea. “I’m sure it’s the best
thing.”
“Oh hush, Bea,” May said, and turned away, an awful catch in her
throat that Prosper had never heard before. “For God’s sake just
hush.”
6
Fenix Vigaron hadn’t actually predicted it, but May later could look
back over their conversations and see it figured there: just when
things seemed like they were going to get a little better—and
things had by then already got a lot better for some of us—May’s
office-supply business went quack. The owner, who’d kept it going
through the worst years of the Depression by various impostures and
financial shenanigans that caught up with him at last, shot himself in
the private washroom behind his office. May was out of a job, with no
prospect at her age of another. Turn around, turn back, said Fenix,
and one hopeless night when Bea was washing May’s hair, they both
seemed to hit on the idea at the same moment.
What they always called the side room—maybe it had once been a
sunporch or a summer kitchen but for as long as the two of them had
owned the place it had gone unused except for boxes and things wait-
ing to be fixed or thrown away—was about big enough and with work
could be made into a cozy place. It had its own door to the alley, though
nailed shut now. They’d have to invest most of their savings in plumb-
ing and carpentry and supplies; they’d start with a single chair, or two.
Bea already had a sort of following from the store, women who trusted
her advice and might take a chance on her. May’d have a lot to learn,
but she knew business and the keeping of books.
F O U R F R E E D O M S / 161
So the uncles were called again—May on the phone and Bea hover-
ing nearby making urgent but ambiguous hand gestures that May
waved off like pestering flies—and in turn Mert and Fred summoned
from the dark pool of their connections a carpenter, a plumber, and a
painter, each appearing without warning at dawn or dusk, needing
instruction, slow mammals or needy and fearful, what debt were they
working off? One a former chemist, another with a college degree, but
it wasn’t hard in those years to find such persons displaced from their
rightful spots into whatever employment they could get. The women
followed the for-sale ads in the paper and went to bankruptcy and
going-out-of-business sales, conscious of the irony, and bought a big
hair dryer and the sinks and mirrors and other things they needed,
deciding after long thought not to acquire a used permanent-wave
machine, a gorgon arrangement of electric rods and springs and wires
such as you’d use to make the bride of Frankenstein, and anyway too
prone to disastrous mishandling, as in a dozen comic movies. They’d
offer waving and cutting, bleaching and dyeing, “consultations,” and
manicures, for the fashion now was for long long nails painted in the
deepest reds, fire engine, blood, though toenails were still done in pale
pinks or clear. Meanwhile May enrolled in a beauty school night class
to get some basics, and in the rather squalid and hopeless studio, amid
girls half her age she practiced pin waving and finger waving, the
Straight Back (and variations), the Bias Wave, the Swirl, the Saucer
Wave, the Sculpture Wave, the Windblown, and for the big night out,