whose face was attempting to express nothing but a pleasant detach-
ment, and rose to follow Bunce out.
“So what the hell’s all that?” Bunce said, still a step ahead of her.
“I came to visit. To see if I could find you, see where you worked.”
She showed him her pass.
“And you found that guy instead.” He flicked one look her way,
then fiercely on ahead again. “You don’t know what it’s like around
here,” he said. “The men around here.”
She caught up with him, took his arm.
“Bunce,” she said with soft urgency. “Just look at him.”
Prosper was gathering himself now to leave the table, and Bunce
stopped, looked back to see him manipulate his crutches, swing his
inert legs away from the table, steady himself, and attempt to rise; fail;
try again, and succeed. Then set off.
“Yeah well,” Bunce said.
258 / J O H N C R O W L E Y
“I was being nice.”
“Yeah.” He looked down at her. “Yeah well. Be careful too.”
She took his arm. Adolph was still held in his other arm. She wanted
to look back too, and see how Prosper had managed in the milk bar, if
he’d got out all right, but that only made her cling tighter to her hus-
band. “So you’ll be home for dinner,” she said. “I’ll make a Swiss
steak.”
“I can’t come home. I’ll be back late.”
“Why? Where are you going? Do you have overtime?”
“No.”
“Then what—”
“Nothing.”
“Well what—”
“Connie, you don’t ask me!” He shifted Adolph violently in his
grip. “Connie you just come down here, you bust right into my life here
without asking, and you . . . Just listen when I tell you. I’ll be back
later.”
She said nothing more, marched along beside him, didn’t shrug away
his arm when again he took hers. She’d come so far. She’d come to fight
for him, and she knew what that meant, it meant actually not fighting.
She knew what happened to the desperate weepers and beggars, the
cold schemers and the furious hair-pullers, they never won and she
wasn’t going to be one of them. You just kept your head high. You
waited and you saw it through and stayed ready and kept your head
high. The only way you could lose was if you stopped wanting to win.
In that month a directive came down from the front office, ultimately
from the War Department, that all men with deferments had to report
to their local draft boards to be reassessed. Rollo Stallworthy told the
men on his team that this did not, repeat not, mean that anyone was
necessarily going to lose his deferment. Just Our Government at Work,
he said: they want to make sure they’re using every available person to
maximum gain. Most of the men at Van Damme had registered at draft
boards far away, so arrangements were made to bus the men to the
capital, rather than burden the local Ponca City board and cause delays
in getting back to work. Chits were handed out.
F O U R F R E E D O M S / 259
Prosper’s draft status was ambiguous. He’d gone down that first
time to register, before the war began. Then somehow the notice to
report for his physical never came, or had been missed. (Actually Bea
had discarded it, supposing the army must know better and it had come
in error.) Then he’d worked at The Light in the Woods, and all the
workers there who weren’t already iv-F got a provisional deferment, till
they quit or were otherwise let go; then he’d left town. So he signed up
to be sent with the others, in order to be finally rejected. On a morning
growing fearsomely hot, he mounted a bus with the skilled machinists,
tool-and-die men, draftsmen, engineers, farm laborers, Indians, and
fathers in war work (fatherhood alone wasn’t enough now), and took an
empty seat. A school trip hilarity prevailed on the bus as it set out,
except among a few men who found the exercise a waste of time (the
unions were arguing with Van Damme Aero as to whether the men
would be paid for this jaunt) or who actively feared losing their status:
not every floor sweeper or lightbulb changer or pharmacist’s helper in
the vast complex was “a man necessary to national defense” and might
see his cozy iii-A rating evaporate. We didn’t all want to be heroes.
The bus had turned out onto the highway, a hot breeze coming in
the window, when someone changing his spot sat down next to Pros-
per. Momentarily, Prosper tasted chocolate ice cream. It was Connie’s
husband. Bunce.
Prosper moved his crutches out of the way and gave Bunce a nod;
Bunce thumbed the bill of his cap in minimal greeting. He neither
spoke nor smiled, and turned away. Neither of them remarked on
Bunce’s having shifted seats. Bunce pulled from his denim coat pocket
a toothpick, and chewed delicately. Prosper felt sweat gather on his
neck and sides.
“So this is stupid,” Bunce said at last, but not as though to Prosper.
“I’ve got a war job, I’ve got a family dependent on me.” He turned then
to point a look at Prosper. “You know? A family.”
Prosper made small sympathetic facial movements, what’re you
gonna do. They rode in silence a time, looking forward, till Bunce, still
unsmiling, began to regard Prosper more deliberately, as though he
were a thing that deserved study. Prosper had been the object of hostile
scrutiny before, though not often so close to him. He thought of Lar-
ry’s instructions, how to win a fight, or not lose one.
260 / J O H N C R O W L E Y
“So that’s tough,” Bunce said. He made a gesture toward Prosper’s
body.
Prosper made a different face.
“What’s the toughest thing?” Bunce said. “I mean, living that
way.”
Prosper cast his eyes upward thoughtfully, as though considering
possibilities. “Well I think,” he said, “the toughest thing is drying my
ass after I get out of the bath.”
Not the shadow of a smile from Bunce. That line always got a
laugh.
Bunce withdrew the toothpick. “I think I’m asking a serious ques-
tion.”
“Do you mean,” Prosper said, “not having the chance for a wife
and kids, a family I mean, such as yours?”
Bunce made no response.
“Well yes,” Prosper said. “Yes, I’d have to say. Not having that.
That’s hard.”
“I knew this guy,” Bunce said. “He used to go around the bars and
the Legion hall. He had no legs. He rolled on a little truck, with these
wooden blocks on his hands to push with. He made candies, and sold
them. Always smiling.”
Prosper smiled. Bunce didn’t.
“Funny thing was,” Bunce said, “if you saw him in his own neigh-
borhood, not making his rounds. I did once. He had a couple of, I
guess, wooden legs. And two canes. He was dressed in a suit. He
looked fine.”
“Oho,” said Prosper, not wanting to seem too familiar with this
dodge.
“He had a wife,” Bunce said.
“He did. Well.”
“Not bad looking, either.”
“How do you like that.”
The bus swung around a sharp right, entering the streets of the
capital. Bunce fell heavily against Prosper somehow without taking his
eyes from him. Then he climbed out of the seat. “Do yourself a good
turn,” he said. “Stay away from my family.”
5
On a Friday night the Teenie Weenies bused or drove into Ponca
City to watch Vi play fast-pitch softball with the Moths under
the lights. The little stadium had been built by the oil company,
but the new lights were Van Damme’s gift to Ponca City. The