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Four Freedoms

Page 32

by John Crowley

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

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  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.

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  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.

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  “Wouldn’t mind,” said Mrs. Freundlich. “I warned him. Warned

  you too.”

  “Oh my God my baby!” Connie reached with both hands into the

  closet and lifted Adolph out. Now he was crying, crying Mommy into

  her ear in awful gladness and clinging hard around her neck. “How

  long has he been in there?�
�� Connie said to Mrs. Freundlich. “How

  could you do that, how could you,” she cried, even as she bore the

  child out of the bedroom and out of the apartment as though from a

  fire. “You awful woman!”

  “Serves him right,” said Mrs. Freundlich, tramping after her, still

  red-faced and defiant. “All’s I can say.”

  Connie pushed past her and out the door.

  “You’ll want his trousers,” the old woman called after her.

  Back in her own kitchen Connie decided that the best thing to do

  was never to speak to Adolph about what had happened in that place,

  never, and just love her son and teach him he was a good good boy and

  he didn’t need to be afraid of anybody or anything. She told him so

  now, even as she tried to get him to loosen his hold on her; she could

  feel his heart beating against her.

  “You’re a good boy,” she said. “A good boy.”

  In another part of her heart and mind she was making calculations,

  counting money she had and money she could get. She kept thinking

  and counting while Adolph napped in the bed beside her—unwilling to

  let her go, his big blond head buried in her side. When he awoke and

  after he ate, Connie pulled out his potty from where it was kept behind

  the bathroom door.

  “I don’t want to, Mommy,” he said, regarding it with something

  like alarm, its white basin, its decals of rabbit and kitty.

  “It’s okay,” Connie said. “Just try.”

  He hung back. Connie at last knelt before him, bringing her face

  right before his. “Okay, honey,” she said. “Listen. We have to go on a

  trip. You and me. Okay? On a train. Okay?”

  “Okay.”

  “We’re going to go find your daddy. Okay?”

  “Okay.”

  It occurred to Connie that sons had to love their fathers, but that if

  you were two years old and had never lived a human life before, you

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  might not think it was strange to have your father leave. You wouldn’t

  think anything was strange; you wouldn’t know. You’d know well

  enough what you wanted and what you didn’t, though.

  “So you have to learn,” she said, holding his shoulders in her hands.

  “To go in the potty. So we can travel, ride on the train. Okay?”

  Of this he was less sure. He said nothing.

  “Two weeks,” Connie said. It would take her that long to close up

  the apartment, tell her parents and Bunce’s parents, a hot wave of

  shame and foreboding at that thought, but this first, nothing without

  this. She held up a V of fingers before him. “That’s how long you have,

  till we leave. Okay?”

  “Okay.”

  “Okay!”

  He was laughing now, and she started to laugh too. It was true and

  it was urgent, but it was funny too. “Two. Weeks,” she said again.

  “You bunny.”

  3

  They stretched the rules at the Van Damme dormitory in Henryville

  to let her have a space, because no children were allowed; it didn’t

  seem to Connie that it was the first time the women at the desk

  had stretched the rules, or that the rules were all that important

  to them. They only needed to know that Adolph was toilet trained, and

  Connie could say Yes. Not a single accident since far to the north on the

  Katy Line, too late a warning, too long a line at the smelly toilet. Actu-

  ally he’d got used to facilities of several kinds—rows of station toilets

  with clanging steel doors, overused toilets like squalid privies in crowded

  coaches; old Negro porters helped him, soldiers too, hey give the little

  kid a break. Once in a train so filled with soldiers and sailors it was

  impossible to move, they’d passed him hand to hand over the heads of

  the passengers till the far end of the coach was reached—he’d been game

  even for that, seeming to get braver and more ready for things with

  every mile. Now and then he’d whined and wept, and once worked up a

  nice tantrum, as though the new self coming out hurt like teething: but

  Connie’d have worried for him if he hadn’t had one at least.

  So the dormitory people tucked a little roller cot into the room she

  was allotted, best they could do, and after she’d whispered a story into

  his ear about trains and planes and cars, he slept. Exhausted as she

  was, she couldn’t: not even his soft automatic breathing could seduce

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  her into sleep. The small room was meant for four, two bunk beds,

  their ticking-covered mattresses rolled up, only her bed made. Like the

  first girl in a summer-camp cabin. The sheets were rough and clean.

  For a moment she wanted not to wonder at any of it, or think of it, just

  lie and look and feel. She was nowhere she’d ever thought to be.

  Those two men who’d given her a ride out here hadn’t been able to

  think of a way to find Bunce: the plant and its processes went on around

  the clock, but offices where inessential paperwork was done closed

  sometimes, and the union office was closed too when they tried to call

  there from the desk of the dormitory.

  That crippled fellow: looking around the dormitory lounge where

  the women sat or played cards or table tennis or just came and went.

  The expression on his face. Never been inside here, he’d said. Connie

  wanted to tell him to withdraw a bit; he looked like a kid in a toy store,

  watching the electric train go around. Maybe that’s why she tugged his

  coat, made him turn to face her, thanked him and kissed his cheek

  with gratitude. She thought about him, his handicap, what that would

  be like. She thought of the first day she’d gone to work at the Bull

  plant. It had taken all her strength to act on what she’d known she had

  to do—to get here with Adolph—and she didn’t know what she’d do

  now, or what would come of it. She slept.

  That night a hundred miles and more to the north of Ponca City, Muriel

  Gunderson headed out on the dirt road from town to Little Tom Field

  and the weather station there. Muriel was on rotation with three other

  FAA weather observers, and while two shared the day and evening

  shifts, Muriel would be all by herself on the 0000 to 0008 shift. The

  drive out to the station was twenty miles—she got extra stamps—and

  while she didn’t mind the night she got lonely and fretful sometimes, so

  she brought her old dog Tootie along with her for the company.

  She let herself into the weather station, a small gray building and a

  shed between the two hangars that Little Tom Field offered. A couple

  of Jennys and an old retired Kaydet were tied up by their noses out on

  the field. She lit the lights and checked the instrument array, the ther-

  mometer, the wet bulb, and then the anemometer, which was at the top

  of a pole on the roof. She had to climb up the outside stair and then up

  244 / J O H N C R O W L E Y

  a staggered row of iron footholds, detach the machine, take it down

  into the station, and record the wind speed—not much at all this still

  night—and then climb back up the pole to replace it while Tootie

  barked at her from below. She wa
s always nervous about climbing the

  pole, not because she was afraid of heights—she wasn’t, and was glad

  she’d wiped the grin off the face of the chief observer when he first told

  her she’d have to climb it. No, she was afraid that if a rusted step broke

  off or was wet or icy and she fell, there’d be no one who’d know about

  it for hours, except Tootie, and he was no Rex the Wonder Dog who’d

  go for help. Tootie’d bark and bark and then quit while she just lay

  there and died.

  She made coffee on the hot plate and plotted her observations on

  the weather map, the part of the job she liked the best. At 0002 she

  went out to the shed to launch the balloon. It was cold now and she

  pulled on gloves—the helium tanks could be icy to the touch and the

  connections could take a long time to get right, especially for a single

  observer on a night shift. The empty balloon was slick and sticky like

  peeled skin when you took it from the box and you had to get it

  unfolded right and connected to the tank, and then you had to inflate

  it enough to get it aloft but not so much that it would burst from the

  decreasing pressure before it reached the cloud ceiling, which was high

  tonight. Muriel had set up the theodolite on its tripod to track it as it

  rose. When the limp balloon had started filling and swelling and lifting

  itself—there were always jokes about what it reminded you of, you

  couldn’t make them around the unmarried girls—Muriel prepared the

  little candle in a paper lantern that it would carry upward. During the

  day you could just track the balloon itself against the sky until it disap-

  peared, but at night you needed that light. Muriel thought: better to

  light one candle than to curse the darkness. She thought that once on

  every night shift: better to light one candle than to curse the darkness.

  She got tired of herself, sometimes, alone.

  This night she got the balloon off all right, it rose lightly and confi-

  dently, there was no wind to snatch it out of her hand (take her hand

  too and maybe herself upward with it) and the candle stayed lit, and

  Muriel followed it with the scope of the theodolite, racking it upward

  steadily, losing the little dot of light and finding it again. Until at last it

  came to the cloud layer and dimmed and was gone. It always seemed

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  brave to her, that little flickerer, like the light of an old Columbus sail-

 

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