“I can’t go home again. Not again. This time with a baby. Some-
body else’s.”
Nothing more for a time but the periodic clang of work proceeding.
“You can stay here,” Prosper said, drawing himself up. “Stay in the
house with us, Pancho and me, and don’t tell your husband. And then
I can raise the. The child. Raise it myself. When the war’s over and you
go back, to, to.”
He still hadn’t looked her way while he made this huge statement,
334 / J O H N C R O W L E Y
actually unable to, but when he’d said it he turned, and she was look-
ing at him as though he had spoken in some foreign tongue, or mut-
tered madness. Then she put her chin in her hands and gazed into the
distance, just as if he’d said nothing at all. “This is the worst thing
that’s ever happened to me,” she said, once more. “The worst.”
He thought of saying to her that after all it couldn’t be the only time
in the war something like this had happened, it was sort of under-
standable, forgivable even, maybe, surely: but he hadn’t said any of
that, luckily, before he had the further thought of not saying it. She
pulled from the pocket of her overalls a small sheet of paper, one of a
kind he’d seen before. “He’s here,” she said.
“Here?”
“Well I mean in this country, not way out there at sea. He was I
guess a hero out there somehow and he got hurt, he says not bad, and
he’s been getting better in a hospital in San Francisco.” She was read-
ing the little shiny gray V-mail. “He’s going back tomorrow, no the day
after. They gave him leave, a couple of days. He wishes I could be there
with him. That’s what he says.” She proffered the letter, but Prosper
didn’t think he should take it.
“A couple of days?”
“I couldn’t even if I could,” she said, tears now again brightening
her eyes. “I mean can you imagine. What would I tell him? I couldn’t
even say hello.” She folded the little paper on its folds and put it away.
“So it’s good I guess, that I can’t get there.”
She tried a smile then, for Prosper’s sake he knew, but he couldn’t
respond, and just then there came the beeping of an electric car, Horse
Offen’s, just outside the office; Horse was standing up in the car waving
to him urgently.
“I gotta go,” Prosper said.
“Me too,” she said. She took the hankie from her sleeve and dabbed
her eyes, he got into his crutches and rose. Horse had his hat on, so
Prosper grabbed his.
“Diane. This’ll be, this’ll . . .”
“Don’t,” she said softly. “Just don’t.”
“This is going to be great,” said Horse, turning the electric car out of
the shop and heading for the exit to the airfield. “I’ve never had a warn-
F O U R F R E E D O M S / 335
ing before, that they’re coming, but this time I happened—I just hap-
pened—to be up in the control tower when they radio’d in. We’ll get
them arriving.”
Prosper, gripping the rail of the car with one hand and his hat with
the other, asked no questions.
“You do the camera,” Horse said. He preferred to ask the questions
himself on these occasions, Prosper used up too much attention him-
self and wasn’t nosy enough. He had a good eye, though, Horse
thought.
Prosper looked up, as Horse was now doing, his driving erratic. A
plane was nearing, Prosper couldn’t tell what kind, not large. “So
who,” he said.
“Crew coming in to ferry a Pax to the coast,” Horse said. “A crew
of wasps.”
“Oh right.” Not wasps but WASPs—Women Air Service Pilots.
He’d admired them in the magazines—studying hard at their naviga-
tion, suited up for flying, relaxing in the sun, crowding the sinks at
morning in their primitive barracks somewhere in a desert state. He
began to feel anticipation too. Their planes had touched down here
before, just long enough to let out crews, male crews, that would fly the
finished B-30s to the coasts or farther, or the test pilots who’d bring
them right back here. Prosper’d never seen a WASP in person. Now,
Horse said, they were bringing in a crew all of women to train on the
six-engine plane, after which they’d fly it themselves to wherever it was
to go, at least within the States.
“There they come,” Horse cried, seeing the plane bank and begin to
descend toward the field. He gunned the little vehicle—it basically had
one speed, and it wasn’t fast—to where he had guessed the plane would
touch down, then veering when it went where he hadn’t. They were
there, though, when it alighted, a single-engine biplane that seemed
misbuilt somehow.
“Beech Staggerwing,” Horse cried. “Fine little craft. Famous women
won a famous air race in one, six-eight years ago, we’ll look it up.”
Prosper, doing his best to match Horse’s urgency, climbed from the
car and swing-gaited toward the plane as fast as he could, the Rollei-
flex bouncing on his chest. The propeller ceased, kicked back once,
and was still. Prosper had the plane in focus as the door opened and
336 / J O H N C R O W L E Y
the pilot came out, then one two three other women, all smiles, waving
to Horse and Prosper in what Prosper could only feel was an ironic
sort of way, yes it’s us again.
“Hi, hi!” Horse called out, waving grandly. He glanced back at
Prosper to assure himself that shots were being taken and the film
being rolled forward, and it was, Prosper watching and framing them,
and they in the frame seeming to be some ancient painting in the Cyclo-
pedia, stacked like strong goddesses on the step, the door, the ground,
looking this way and that, all the same and all unique. They wore
brown leather flying jackets and fatigues amazingly rumpled; each
came out carrying her parachute and a kit. Warm boots in the unheated
plane, cold aloft these days. How beautiful they were. How grateful he
felt to be there then, and always would, there on that day of all days.
“How was the flight?” Horse asked, pad and pencil already out.
“You ladies going to fly the Pax, is that right? Say, that’s one monster
plane, isn’t it! Well you’ve flown, what, B-25s, B-17s, and yes what? B-
29s? Well well well, Superfortress! Say, for my little paper here, can I
just get some names? Martha, the pilot, okay Kathleen, Jo Ellen,
Honora, that’s h-o-n-o-r-a? Okeydokey!”
Prosper’d never seen Horse in such a lather, the four women just
marching along, actually in step, answering what they were asked but
very obviously on duty here, and tired. They each glanced at Prosper,
their faces making no comment. He caught up with Martha, a dark-
browed wide-mouthed woman who reminded him a little of Elaine.
Seeing that he’d like to speak but was using all his breath to walk, she
slowed down.
“Say,” she said.
“Martha,” Prosper asked, and she nodded confirmingly. “How long
will you be here?”
“Just tonight. Fly out tomorrow for, lessee, San Francisco. 0500
hours.”
“Where’ll you stay?”
“They have this dorm here?”
“Yes.”
“There.”
“So you’ll have the evening. I was just wondering . . .”
She looked again at him, as though he’d appeared from nowhere
F O U R F R E E D O M S / 337
just at that moment, or had in that moment turned into something or
someone he hadn’t been before. He knew the look.