had said, hadn’t he seen it in the papers? Hadn’t his mom and Buster
told him?
“Goddam profiteers,” Bunce said. “Serves them right.” He aimed
this darkly right at Connie, as though she were one of them, or it was
her fault. Then, in sudden realization that time had gone on while she’d
unfolded these things before him, he said to no one or to himself: “Man
I’ve got to go, got to get to work.”
“I couldn’t figure out why,” Connie said.
“Why what? Why they closed? Cause they’re dopes. Crooks. Just
out to take from the working man.”
“No, but why? What did they do so badly?”
“What’s it have to do with you? You don’t have to worry about that
stuff.”
Connie lowered her eyes, catching up with herself. “I was just won-
dering,” she said.
F O U R F R E E D O M S / 251
“So it doesn’t matter anymore,” he said, and came to kneel by her
chair, where Adolph stood to look up at her. “That’s good.”
“So I came,” she said.
“Uh.”
“I just wanted us to be together again. The three of us staying
together.”
He disengaged from their embrace. “Not here,” he said.
“Well I just thought . . .”
“Connie. Our home’s not here. When all this is over . . .”
“My mom’s watching out for the apartment. It’s all all right. I had
the gas turned off and the electricity. She can send the furniture any-
time, Railway Express, it won’t cost that much. I have the money.”
Maybe she shouldn’t have said that last part. He’d risen away from
her now with a look that made Adolph start to cry, she’d cry too if she
didn’t keep up her courage. Why’d she just blurt all that out?
“That’s swell, Connie,” he said, not loud. “That’s just swell. You
don’t ask me a damn thing, you just decide we’re not living in our own
damn house anymore, that you’re a working girl, that you— Shut up!”
He shot that at Adolph, who only cried louder, and Bunce picked him
up and held him.
“I read about this place here,” she said. “It was at your mom’s.”
Tears were leaking from her eyes, she tried to just keep on. “It seemed
so wonderful. That you could help, that you could be a help and be
useful, and still have a good life, a family life. You could have what you
needed.”
“You’re going back,” he said, his words soothing in sound for
Adolph’s sake but not in import.
“I saw the pictures of the nursery in the plant, and the part about
the free clinics, the way everything was thought of.” She thought of
telling him about Mrs. Freundlich but stopped herself. She wiped her
eyes with her wrists. “I just wanted to help.”
Bunce holding Adolph put his hand in Connie’s hair.
“Well you’re not working here,” he said, grinning as at an impossi-
bility, but not actually amused. “Honey no.”
“Oh Bunce.”
He lifted her up and by the hand and led her to the broad bamboo
chair. He sat, drawing both of them into his lap. “Connie,” he said,
252 / J O H N C R O W L E Y
and stroked her cheek with the back of his hand. “Baby. You think I
want to see you every day on that floor in a pair of trousers? What are
we going to do, head out for work together every day with our tool-
boxes?”
“Women do. People do.”
He pressed his face against her neck, his sweet lips. “Sure they
work. Till they get enough money to get their fur coat. Then they quit.
Or when their man comes home from overseas. You’ll see them down
tools right in the middle of the shift. ‘My man’s home, I’m done.’ ”
“Oh Bunce.”
“You know when my dad was first hurt, Mom went to work, in that
hotel kitchen. It almost killed Dad; it was worse than his back. Him
sitting home and his wife working. My mom.”
Just as he said that, Connie’s eyes fell on a comic poking out from
under the others on the box-table. The part of the cover she could see
showed a woman, caped and booted in red, her arms extended the way
flying heroes always held them and she never did when she flew in
dreams. The woman was shooting straight down through the clouds,
toward earth presumably, and toward the bottom of the book, where
huge red letters spelled MOM.
“I gotta get to work,” he said, lifting her.
She let him go and dress, watched him and talked with Adolph: See
Daddy put on socks, put on boots and lace them up, put on his shirt
and button it up to his neck, and his jacket. She wandered the little
place, went into the bathroom, where Bunce’s razor and brush and cup
of soap stood on the back of the sink. He used a straight razor, liking
the skill it took, proud of his skill with it. A comb there too, clogged
with hair. Blond hair.
“Do you live here all alone?” she called to Bunce, and when he
couldn’t hear she came out with the comb in her hand and asked again.
“Of course not,” he said. “Couldn’t afford it. I have a fellow lives
here, that’s his room over there. Except he just got fired for some black
market stuff, stealing from the company, and he’s gone. Good riddance
to bad rubbish.”
He was done dressing, he was Bunce again, broad belt buckled and
the long end tucked in, crushed cap on—he put it on Adolf, then back
on himself as Adolph reached for the buttons on it.
F O U R F R E E D O M S / 253
“What’ll I do?” Connie said. “Adolph’s going to get hungry.”
“There’s milk in the icebox,” Bunce said. “And here.” From the
table he picked up his brown pay envelope, two-fingered out the bills,
a thick wad it seemed to her, and took a five to give her. “There’s a bus
that stops at the corner, that way. It goes out to the market. They’ll tell
you where. Go buy some food.”
“Okay.”
He took her in his arms. “So no more about working,” he said.
“You make a home for us.”
“All right I’ll try,” she said—what else, in his arms, could she do?—
and it wasn’t as though she lied, or didn’t mean it; it was as in Confes-
sion, when you had a Firm Purpose of Amendment in regard to
something sinful (Bunce, the back seat of the Plymouth) and meant it
with all your might even as you heard yourself dissent deep inside, a
you that you knew you’d listen to, the you on whose side you always
really were. The priest called that a Mental Reservation.
“Good,” he said. “I love you, Connie.”
“Oh God I love you too Bunce, so much.” So rarely could he say it
to her with that kind of plain sincerity that it swept her hotly to hear it,
and she assented within herself, she’d do what he asked, all that he
asked, with only the Mental Reservation because there was no help for
that.
When he’d shut the door she looked around herself. She could
clean up.
“Daddy,” said Adolph, as you might say A storm.
“Daddy,” Connie said, nodding. “Tell him that. Daddy.”
She pushed the papers on the table into a pile, and the comic book
with the red-clad heroine on it came out, and she saw she’d got it
wrong. The girl—Mary Marvel, a windblown skirt and cascade of
chestnut curls—was flying not down but up, through the clouds to blue
sky beyond, and the real title of the book, now right side up, was
WOW.
4
Toward the end of his shift, as he was making his way up the
Assembly Building, Prosper caught sight of the woman from the