a cripple. Weak and twisted as his body was, he seemed unbreakable
within, elastic, immune to whatever it was that pierced you and then
was never after withdrawn. If it was so he was lucky, maybe, because
how could he live otherwise? How could he risk it, falling for some-
body, with that? Even the words “fall for” still induced in Vi a kind of
panic, a vertigo that she’d once been sure she’d eventually pass beyond,
and hadn’t.
She wondered if she’d really been right about him and that married
woman. She thought most likely yes, the way he’d responded when
she’d brought it up. A married woman. With a kid, and a husband
F O U R F R E E D O M S / 275
right there at the plant where you worked too. That just took the cake,
in Vi’s mind. Not that she herself hadn’t ever. But surely it was differ-
ent if you could do it with a cold heart: if you could, it would actually
make you kinder, more careful, less likely to do stupid bad things, hang
on, wreck everything the way maddened lovers in the movies did. She
hadn’t done any of that with her married man, hadn’t thought to do it,
she’d stayed cool.
A cool heart. Not cold; not hardened with cold. She didn’t know if
Prosper had a cool heart. She’d write, and maybe learn how it turned out.
7
Oh my heavens look at you,” Connie said. “Oh I’m so sorry.”
“It’s all right,” Prosper said. “My own damn fault. Just not
watching my step. So to speak.”
She came in, pushed the door shut behind her, not taking her
eyes from the ravages that she’d inflicted on him—that’s what her face
said. She put the dish in the kitchen and came to where he lay. He
described his injuries, just as he had to Vi, and just as Vi had, she sat
down on the bed’s edge the better to study him, sat in fact perilously
close to his legs, the third included, which was only just then starting
to take it easy.
“I can help,” she said. “I’ve got time. All the time in the world. I can
run errands, I can get you things. Aspirins. Vaseline for the scabs.”
“No no.”
“I want to. I should.”
“Okay thanks.”
“My mother was a nurse.”
“Oh.”
She jumped up then, the bed bouncing painfully under Prosper, to
take a magazine from Adolph, who’d found out how easily and sweetly
it tore.
“Oh let him have it,” said Prosper.
F O U R F R E E D O M S / 277
She turned to face him, still stricken. “He’s joining up,” she said.
“Who is? Joining up with what?”
“They said that he’d have to reestablish his deferment with the draft
board because his situation changed. They said they thought it might
be all right if he produced the documents, but he just said oh the heck
with it, he’s not going to, he’s going to volunteer. He leaves in a
week.”
She was weeping now, not desperately but steadily, the way women
can, he’d always marveled at it, the tears one by one tumbling out,
hovering on the lashes, as though all on their own, while the weeper
kept on making sense, sniffling now and then.
“He said his life was too damn complicated.”
“Oh.”
“That’s what he said to me.”
“Well, kind of in a way, I mean . . .”
“It’s my fault,” she said. “I drove him away.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?” Prosper said. He pulled his hand-
kerchief from under his pillow and proffered it. She came and sat again
on the bed.
“I should never have left my home,” she said. “I should never have
come down here. I should have stayed up there.”
“Well,” Prosper said. True Story was full of accounts from women
who felt that they’d driven their man away, by withholding themselves,
by not meeting his needs, by indulging in finery or jewels or frolicking.
But you often wondered if they meant it, or really believed they deserved
what they got for it.
“I mean shouldn’t I have? Shouldn’t I have just stayed home?”
“Keep the home fires burning,” Prosper said, with what he hoped
was sincere gravity, but Connie made a face and looked away, as though
she knew better.
“Oh yes. So I’d stay home and light my little light in the window
and he could just go wherever he pleased and do whatever he pleased.”
Her eyes, dry now, roamed in a rather scary way, unseeing, or seeing
things and people not present. “Sure. Oh sure.”
“No, well.”
“That woman,” Connie said.
“Oh Francine’s okay,” Prosper said. “She means no harm, she’s . . .”
278 / J O H N C R O W L E Y
The glare she gave him stopped that line of thinking.
“So um,” he said. “The army? That’s what he’s joining?”
She seemed to come to, grow conscious of what he’d said, its mean-
ing for her. “Oh God,” she said. “I ought to go. I have to go.”
“You’re not going back north now, are you?” She hadn’t arisen from
his bed.
“No. No.”
“You’ll take a job here maybe?” he said.
“I might,” Connie said, as though Prosper might dispute this with
her. “Otherwise I’d have to live on this allotment they give you. With
my son. ” She looked toward Adolph, who, smiling, showed her the
destruction he’d wrought.
“You’ll do what you have to do,” Prosper said.
“I’ll do what I want,” Connie said. She put her hand with grave
gentleness on his cheek, looking into him with thrilling intensity. “I’m
going to come again,” she said. “I don’t care, I’m going to come every
day and help and see what you need until you’re better and up and
around again. It was my fault and his fault and I don’t care what he
thinks.”
She patted his arm, stood, and went to the kitchen, discreetly tug-
ging down the legs of her shorts. She picked up the dish she had put
down there and held it up to him, tears again maybe glittering a little
in her eyes, and gave him a big smile. “Tuna casserole,” she said.
Vi never did write—too many things, too much life happening then—
but years afterward, in a different world, she was sitting in a dentist’s
office and picked up a magazine called Remember When, and saw,
amid the articles about bottle collectors and old crafts, a collection of
memories about the Ponca City plant, with a photograph of all of the
Associates going in on the day shift; most of the people who’d sent in
anecdotes were unknown to her, but in one of the letters there was
Prosper’s name, amazing thing, and Vi thought she could guess who’d
written it. She put the magazine in her bag; read it again later at night
and thought of responding herself, even got out the typewriter, but in
the end she wrote nothing. What had happened there couldn’t be recov-
ered, because too much was happening at the same time, and how
F O U R F R E E D O M S / 279
could you express it all without wiping away all that had made it what
it was—as this Connie W. person had done in her letter?
I have so many memories of the men and women who worked
there at Van Damme Aero P.C. and when I look back it all
comes so vividly into my mind, the good things and other things.
“It was the best of times, it was the worst of times.” I don’t sup-
pose that anyone who hadn’t been there could imagine what it