toward the lunchroom and then came back again. Connie saw coming
down the line a number of men, her own supervisor and some others in
shirtsleeves, and three or four men grim-faced in overcoats and hats
whom she had seen roving through the plant lately asking questions
and making notes. They stopped at each station and said a few words
F O U R F R E E D O M S / 237
to the workers and went on. The man next down from Connie listened
and then tossed his cigarette to the floor and ground it with his heel in
disgust.
“The plant’s closing, sweetheart,” said the man who reached her
first. She could see that a badge was clipped to his lapel beneath the
overcoat. “Everybody’s going to be let go. Pack your gear and go down
to payroll for severance.”
She had no gear. He had moved on before she could speak. The
union man, looking harried and put-upon—his wiry hair springing in
exasperation from his temples—gave her a numbered chit and told her
to hand it in with her time card. Connie opened her mouth to speak.
“Bankruptcy,” said the union man. “Receivership. The jig’s up. Go
home. Apply tomorrow at the union office for unemployment compen-
sation forms.” One of the other men took his arm and drew him along.
Workers were leaving their places and falling in behind them. The
union man began walking backward like an usher at the movies, trying
to answer questions. Connie could hear the big thuds of electric motors
being shut down.
She followed the crowd. She thought it was a good thing that the
union steward stood between the workers and the officers and manag-
ers who strode forward carrying their news; some of the people were
angry and shouting, women were crying; some seemed unsurprised,
they’d known it all along, mismanagement, big shots, profiteers. It felt
like a march, a protest. At the juncture where you turned off to the
cafeteria and the coatrooms and the exit, the crowd parted, some to go
out and others, querulous or angry, still in pursuit of the closed-faced
officers.
Connie turned back against the traffic.
She went, begging pardon, through the people and back down the
now near-empty factory. A glimmer of dust that seemed to have been
stirred up by the upheaval stood in the haloes of the big overhead lights.
Connie went down the stairs and along the passage to the Number 3
building, where she had first been examined and tested. Once there—
after a wrong turn into a wing of offices where more harried people
were emptying file drawers and piling up folders, who looked up in
suspicion to see her—she found the yellow line painted on the floor
and followed it back toward the intake rooms. At first there seemed no
238 / J O H N C R O W L E Y
one there at all, the nurse’s station closed and the X-ray machine
hooded in black, but in the room where tests were given she found the
gray man in the gray cloth coat who had administered the Manual
Dexterity and Visual Acuity Test. He was sitting on a table, a coffee
mug beside him, swinging his legs like a child.
“Hello,” she said.
He looked up, weary, maybe sad. She suddenly felt sorry for him.
“I wonder,” she said. “If I could get back my test.”
He said nothing; lifting his eyebrows seemed all he had the strength
to do.
“I took a test when I came here. A month ago, or really five weeks.
I . . . You said I did well. Visual Acuity. My name is Constance
Wrobleski. I would like to have that test. Or a copy if you have one.”
He seemed to remember, or maybe not, but he let himself down
gingerly off the table—his socks fallen around his white ankles were
dispiriting—and motioning to Connie to follow him he went back the
way Connie had come. She wanted to say something, that she was
sorry about the plant and the Bull, and would it be opening again later,
and what would become of him now, but all these seemed like the
wrong thing. At a turning he led her into those offices where she had
earlier found herself by mistake. Now a woman had lowered her head
onto her desk and apparently was weeping; no one paid attention to
her, only kept on with what they were doing, which seemed at once
pointless and urgent to Connie.
The man she followed was oblivious to all this, only went on stooped
and purposeful as though this were a day like any other, moving along
a rank of tall filing cabinets until he found the drawer he wanted;
clicked its catch and slid it open on its greased tracks; fingered through
the papers within, by their upstanding tabs; stopped, went back a few,
and pulled out a paper, which he looked at up and down to make sure
it was what he thought it was. It was a plain white form with the name
of the test on it and her name and employee number. It listed the tests
she’d taken, with a blue check next to each, and at the bottom a row of
boxes to check, labeled Below Normal, Normal, Above Normal, Supe-
rior. Hers was checked in the Superior box.
“All yours,” he said.
“You sure you don’t need it?” she asked.
F O U R F R E E D O M S / 239
He laughed gently. “I certainly don’t,” he said. “You take that and
go on. Find something else. You can help. You ought to.”
It was after two by the time Connie got off one of the crowded buses
that were carrying away all the laid-off Bull workers. She’d been given
ten days’ severance pay but she hadn’t worked long enough to get any
unemployment compensation; there was, she was told, always welfare.
The no-strike agreement the unions had all made with the government
meant they wouldn’t or couldn’t stand up for the workers and get any
better deal; things just had to go on as fast as they could, everybody
dispersed to look for work elsewhere. Maybe the Bull works would be
reorganized and reopen, maybe not, but you couldn’t wait.
When she got to her building she realized that at this hour Mrs.
Freundlich wouldn’t be waiting for her with Adolph; she pressed the
electric doorbell, but it didn’t seem to be working, and she opened the
door and went up. Just as she reached the apartment door it was flung
open, Mrs. Freundlich red-faced and with an expression Connie
couldn’t name, shock or fear or guilt or.
“I’m off early,” Connie said. She didn’t feel like explaining. “I’ll
take Adolph now, all right?”
The woman glanced behind herself, as though she’d heard some-
thing that way. And back at Connie.
“You’ll get the whole day’s pay,” Connie said.
Mrs. Freundlich turned from the door and marched away with a
heavy tread that Connie realized she’d often heard without knowing
what it was. She followed, across the worn Turkey carpet and the hulk-
ing mahogany table and sideboard—who brought such stuff into an
apartment?—and into a bedroom. Adolph wasn’t there, but on the
steam radiator a pair of his pants was laid to dry.
“Oh dear,” said Connie. “Oh no.”
Without a word—she hadn’t spoken one yet—Mrs. Freundlich
opened the closet door. At first Connie couldn’t see into the dark space,
or was so unready for what was in there that she misread it. Adolph.
Adolph had been put there, in the dark, amid the old lady’s coats and
dresses and shoes, on a little stool, and shut in. He looked like a culprit,
eyes wide, holding his hands together as he did when he was frightened.
240 / J O H N C R O W L E Y
“Wouldn’t mind,” said Mrs. Freundlich. “I warned him. Warned