that the vengeance for that would be wreaked on him, not Connie.
He’d got up from his seat and stepped into the aisle, Connie after him,
and as he turned to get out of the way downward, the tip of his right
crutch landed on something, a candy wrapper maybe, something slick
that slid away, turning him halfway around; in putting out his left
crutch in haste to stabilize himself, he overshot the step and put it into
air—it went down to the next step, and he knew he was falling, stiff-
legged, face forward and one arm behind. The steps were concrete, as
he’d already noticed; he actually had a moment to consider this as they
rushed up toward him and a high shriek filled his ears, not because of
something happening on the field—out, home run, grandstand play—
but for his own disaster. Then for a while he knew nothing at all.
F O U R F R E E D O M S / 265
“You look bad,” Vi said. “Very bad.”
“It’s just my face,” Prosper said. The scabs had hardened around his
chin and cheek, and the bruises at his nose, spreading under his left
eye, were the colors of a sinister sundown. Plaster bandage across his
forehead. He lay in his bed on Z Street, where Vi the morning after the
game had gone to find him. “I’m all right otherwise. Except for the
wrist.”
He held it up to her, rigid in its wad of windings. He’d “come to”
pretty quickly, though he had little memory now of what had hap-
pened before the stretcher that the ambulance men rolled him onto was
lifted to slide into the little brown van with its flashing red light. A
small crowd gathered there at the ballpark entrance to see him off.
“I can’t walk,” he said. “Not for a week or so. Not broken though.
Just a sprain.” He didn’t describe the bruises up and down his thighs
from the contact of the stone steps with the metal that encased them.
By the bed he lay in, which Pancho had pulled out into the sitting room
for him, was the wheelchair the clinic had furnished him with, an old
model with a wicker seat and wooden arms. It wouldn’t fit into the
bathroom; getting out of it and then up onto the john with only one
hand working was a process. Of course when he was without his braces
he always sat on the pot, like a girl. He kept all that to himself.
“I heard at the shop they were making you a new pair of crutches.”
“So they said.” He tried a smile. “They’re good fellows. It’s kind.”
“People like to help.”
“I’ll be up and around before they’re done.”
“Well you might still use this chair, though. Easier for getting to
work, maybe. Or church. You know.”
“Oh. Well I wouldn’t want to use it in the street.”
“Why not?”
“Oh I don’t know.” He knew: lame but upright was one thing, but
in a wheelchair he knew how he’d be regarded. Even by Vi herself,
maybe, at first sight anyway, and that would be the only sight he’d
likely get. “So who won the game?”
“They did. Ten-six.” She looked at him long and somehow appre-
ciatively. “I’m not ashamed. We came off better than you did.”
266 / J O H N C R O W L E Y
“Hum.” With his elbows he hoisted himself up a little on the bed,
bandaged wrist held up.
“Was this the worst one ever?” Vi’d seen him go down once before,
not badly.
“Just about. I fell a lot when I was a kid. I got used to it. But the
older I got the farther my head got from the floor. It’s a long way down
these days.”
“The way you do it,” Vi said. With her forearm she illustrated his
headlong fall, like a felled tree. “Anyway,” she said. “That was my last
game.”
“What,” said Prosper. “Season’s just starting.”
“I’m quitting, Prosper,” she said. “Not the team. Van Damme. I’m
done.”
“What do you mean?” A coldness began to grow in him, starting
from way down in, below any physical part of him. “What’s that sup-
posed to mean?”
“I’m quitting means I’m quitting,” she said. For a moment her eyes
left his, and then returned, frank and warm.
“You’re not leaving,” he said.
“Well I’m not staying here if I’m not working.” She put a hand on
him. “Listen, this is really amazing. There was a woman I met when I
first left home. Maybe you remember—I told you—I think I did . . .”
“The one in the truck.”
“Yes! You know I’ve never stopped thinking about her, I don’t know
why. Maybe because she was the first, the first war worker I met. I
don’t know. But anyway guess what.”
“What.”
“She found out I work here, and she came to see me.”
“Okay,” Prosper said, his apprehension unrelieved. “Good.”
“Guess how she found me.”
“Stop making me guess, Vi.” That coldness was growing, going far-
ther up, it was nothing he’d known before and at the same time he
knew it.
“She saw that big magazine article that Horse wrote about the team.
She knew right away.”
“Oho.”
“And so. We’ve been talking. She quit the place she was working,
F O U R F R E E D O M S / 267
driving trucks, and we’re going up north together. Up to my daddy’s
place. We’re going to get it going again. We’ve decided.”
Her eyes looked down away again, as though they knew how much
they shone and were a little shy about it, but they came back, alight,
ablaze. “You want to meet her?”
“Sure. Sometime.”
“She’s outside now. Her name’s Shirley.” She rose, holding out a
hand at him that meant Stay there, which was ridiculous, and she
laughed at herself, but Prosper didn’t laugh.
“Wait, Vi.”
“Yes?”
“What about me?”
“What do you mean, what about you? You’re not aiming to come
be a cowboy, are you?” When he said nothing, she stopped. “Do you
mean,” she asked, “you and me?”
He didn’t need to answer that. She came back and sat on the edge of
the bed. She took his shoulders in her long wise hands. “Prosper. You
and me. That was good, that was such fun, it meant a lot. You’re a fine
man, the best kind. But now. It’s got to be the way it is.”
Prosper, looking up at her, thought for a horrified moment that he
might weep, for the first time since childhood. “Is that what he said? Is
that what he said to you, Vi, something like that? Is that the thing
you’re supposed to say?”
The door opened then, tentatively, at the same time as the person
entering knocked on it. A dark blonde, large-mouthed and large-eyed,
older than Vi and a bit stringy, but Prosper responded, his Sixth Sense
alerted, which made the whole thing worse, as he wanted to say to Vi
but could think of no reason to.
“This is Shirley,” Vi said.
Shirley lifted a tentative hand to Prosper, not sure how welcome she
was but smiling.
“Hi, come on in. Sorry I can’t, you know.”
She waved him still, talking with her hands, to Vi too, whose shoul-
der she patted.
“So you two,” Prosper said, still uncertain of his self-control.
“Going off to, to wherever it is. Where the buffalo roam.”
“Yep,” said Vi. “Back in the saddle again.”
268 / J O H N C R O W L E Y
“Yep,” Shirley said. “Rockin’ to and fro.”
They both laughed.
“The war’s not over, you know, Vi,” Prosper said, with something
like reproach. “There’s more to do.”
“Oh sure,” Vi said. “Yes. Well I’m going back into the cattle busi-
ness. Those boys in the service will soon be eating my meat.”