John Cheever: Falconer

"Oh, my," said the lawyer. "Why don't you reform the Department of Correction?"

"The Department of Correction," said Farragut "is merely an arm of the judiciary. It is not the warden and the assholes who sentenced us to prison. It is the judiciary."

"Oh ho ho," said the lawyer. "I have a terrible backache." He leaned forward stiffly and massaged his back with his right hand. "I got a backache from eating cheeseburgers. You got any home remedy for backaches contracted while eating cheeseburgers? Just sign the release and I'll leave you and your opinions alone. You know what they say about opinions?"

"Yes," said Farragut. "Opinions are like assholes. Everybody has one and they all smell."

"Oh ho ho," said the lawyer. His voice sounded very light and youthful. Farragut hid his pen under the bedclothes. "You know Charlie?" the lawyer asked, softly, softly. "I've seen him in chow," said Farragut. "I know who he is. I know that nobody speaks to him."

"Charlie's a great fellow," said the lawyer. "He used to work for Pennigrino, the top pimp. Charlie used to discipline the chicks." Now his voice was very low. "When a chick went wrong Charlie used to break her legs backwards. You want to play Scrabble with Charlie-you want to play Scrabble with Charlie or you want to sign this release?"

Farragut, with a swift, geometrical calculation of the possible charges involved, fired the clipboard at the beard. "Oh, my back," said the lawyer, "oh, God, my back." He got to his feet. He carried the clipboard. He put his right hand in his pocket. He did not seem to notice the loss of his pen. He did not speak to the orderly or the guards, but went straight out of the ward. Farragut began to insert the pen up his asshole. From what he had been told--from what he had seen of the world-his asshole was singularly small, unreceptive and frigid. He got the pen in only as far as the clip and this was painful, but the pen was concealed. The orderly was called out of the ward and when he returned he went directly to Farragut and asked if he had the lawyer's pen. "I know I threw the clipboard at him," said Farragut. "I'm terribly sorry. I lost my temper. I hope I didn't hurt him."

"He said he left his pen here," said the orderly. He looked under the bed, in the drawer of the cabinet, under the pillow, along the window sill and under the mattress. Then a guard joined him in the search, stripped the bed, stripped Farragut naked and made some slighting reference to the size of his cock, but neither of them-through kindness, Farragut thought-went near the pen. "I can't find it," said the orderly. "We've got to find it," said the guard. "He says we've got to find it." "Well, tell him to find it himself," said the orderly. The guard went out and Farragut was afraid that the beard would return, but the guard returned alone and spoke to the orderly. "You're going up in the world," said the orderly to Farragut, very sadly. "They're putting you in a private room."

He passed Farragut his crutches and helped him into his shift. Farragut, swinging forward clumsily on his crutches and with the pen up his ass, followed the guard out of the ward and down a corridor that smelted sharply of quicklime to a door locked with a bar and a padlock. The guard had some trouble with the key. The door opened onto a very small cell with a window too high to be seen from, a toilet, a Bible and a mattress with a folded sheet and blanket. "How long?" asked Farragut. "The lawyer's booked you in for a month," said the guard, "but I seen Tiny give you some tomatoes and if Tiny's your friend you'll be out in a week." He shut and barred the door.

Farragut removed the pen. It was with this precious instrument that he would indict Chisholm and he clearly saw Chisholm in his third year of prison grays eating franks and rice with a bent tin spoon. He needed paper. There was no toilet paper. If he demanded this he would, he knew, with luck get one sheet a day. He seized on the Bible. This was a small copy, bound in red, but the end pages were a solid, clerical black and the rest of the pages were so heavily printed that he could not write over them. He wanted to write his indictment of Chisholm at once. That the lawyer had been determined to deny him a pen may have exaggerated the importance of his writing the indictment, but the only alternative would be to phrase his accusation and commit this to memory and he doubted if he could accomplish this. He had the pen, but the only surface upon which he could write seemed to be the wall of his cell. He could write his indictment on the wall and then commit it to memory, but some part of his background and its influence on his character restrained him from using the wall for a page. He was a man, he preserved at least some vision of dignity, and to write what might be his last statement on the wall seemed to him an undue exploitation of a bizarre situation. His regard for rectitude was still with him. He could write on his plaster cast, his shift or his sheet. The plaster cast was out since he could reach only half of its surface and the roundness of the cast left him a very limited area. He wrote a few letters on his shift. The instant the felt pen touched the cloth, the ink spread to display the complexity of the thread count, the warp and woof of this very simple garment. The shift was out. His prejudice against the wall was still strong and so he tried the sheet. The prison laundry had, mercifully, used a great deal of starch and he found the surface of the sheet nearly as useful as paper. He and the sheet would be together for at least a week. He could cover the sheet with his remarks, clarify and edit these, and then commit them to manory. When he returned to cellblock F and the shop, he could type his remarks and have them kited to his governor, his bishop and his girl.

"Your Honor," he began. "I address you in your elective position from my elective position. You have been elected to the office of governor by a slender majority of the population. I have been elected to occupy cellblock F and to bear the number 734-508-32 by a much more ancient, exalted and unanimous force, the force of justice. I had, so to speak, no opponents. However, I am very much a citizen. As a taxpayer in the fifty percent bracket I have made a substantial contribution to the construction and maintenance of the walls that confine me. I have paid for the clothes I wear and the food I eat. I am a much more representative elected member of society than you. There are, in your career, broad traces of expedience, evasion, corruption and improvisation. The elective office that I hold is pure.

"We come, of course, from different classes. If intellectual and social legacies were revered in this country I would not consider addressing you, but we are dealing with a Democracy. I have never had the pleasure of your hospitality although I have twice been a guest at the White House as a delegate to conferences on higher education. I think the White House palatial. My quarters here are bare, seven by ten and dominated by a toilet that flushes capriciously anywhere from ten to forty times a day. It is easy for me to bear the sound of rushing water because I have heard the geysers in Yellowstone National Park, the fountains of Rome, New York City and especially Indianapolis.

"Sometime in April, twelve years ago, I was diagnosed as a chronic drug addict by Drs. Lemuel Brown, Rodney Coburn and Henry Mills. These men were graduates of Cornell, the Albany Medical School and Harvard University, respectively. Their position as healers was established by the state and the federal governments and the organizations of their colleagues. Surely, when they spoke, their expressed medical opinion was the voice of the commonwealth. On Thursday, the eighteenth of July, this unassailable opinion was contravened by Deputy Warden Chisholm. I have checked on Chisholm’s background. Chisholm dropped out of high school in his junior year, bought the answers to a civil service test for correctional employees for twelve dollars and was given a position by the Department of Correction with monarchal dominion over my constitutional rights. At 9 A.M. on the morning of the eighteenth, Chisholm capriciously chose to overthrow the laws of the state, the federal government and the ethics of the medical profession, a profession that is surely a critical part of our social keystone. Chisholm decided to deny me the healing medicine that society had determined was my right. Is this not subversion, treachery, is this not high treason when the edicts of the Constitution are overthrown at the whim of one, single, uneducated man? Is this not an offense punishable by death-or in some states by life imprisonment? Is this not more far-reaching in its destructive precedents than some miscarried assassination attempt? Does it not strike more murderously at the heart of our hard-earned and ancient philosophy of government than rape or homicide?