John Cheever: Falconer

This was much older and larger than what he had seen in the house of detention. I-beams crossed the ceiling. In a tin pitcher on a window sill were some wax flowers whose colors, in that somber place, seemed fiery. He ate sour food with a tin spoon and dropped his spoon and plate into dirty water. Silence was enforced by the administration, but they had themselves enforced a segregation that put the blacks in the north, the whiles in the south, with a middle ground for the men who spoke Spanish. After chow his physical, religious and professional characteristics were examined and then, after a long delay» he was led alone into a room where three men in cheap business suits were sitting at a wrecked desk. Al either end of the desk were sheathed flags. On the left was a window in which he could see the blue sky beneath whose light he guessed a man might still be feeding pigeons. His head, neck and shoulders had begun to ache and he was very stooped by the time he reached this tribunal and felt himself to be a very small man, a runt, someone who had never experienced o r tasted or imagined the greatness of immodesty.

"You are a professor," said the man on the left, who seemed to speak for the three. Farragut did not raise his head to see his face. "You are a professor and the education of the young-of all those who seek learning-is your vocation. We learn by experience, do we not, and as a professor, distinguished by the responsibilities of intellectual and moral leadership, you have chosen to commit the heinous crime of fratricide while under the influence of dangerous drugs. Aren't you ashamed?" "I want to be sure that I get my methadone," Farragut said. "Oh, is there no shame in you!" the man exclaimed. "We are here to help. We are here to help. Until you confess to shame you will have no place in the civilian world." Farragut made no reply. "Next," the man said, and Farragut was shown out a door at the back. "Km Tiny," a man there said. "Hurry up. I ain't got all day."

Tiny's size was frightening. He was not tall, but his bulk was so unnatural that his clothes would have had to be sewn for him alone, and in spite of what he said about haste he walked very slowly, impeded by the bulk of his thighs. His gray hair was cut like a brush and you could see his scalp. "You got cellblock F," he said. "F stands for fucks, freaks, fools, fruits, first-timers, fat-asses like me, phantoms, funnies, fanatics, feebies, fences and farts. There's more, but I forget it. The guy who made it up is dead."

They went up a sloping tunnel past groups of men who hung around talking like men on the street. "F is temporary for you, I think," said Tiny. "The funny way you talk, they'll put you in A, where they have the lieutenant governor and the secretary of commerce and all the millionaires." Tiny turned right and he followed him through an open door into the cellblock. Like everything else, it was shabby, disorderly and malodorous, but his cell had a window and he went to this and saw some sky, two high water towers, the wall, more cellblocks and a corner of the yard that he had entered on his knees. His arrival in the block was hardly noticed. While he was making his bed, someone asked, "You rich?" "No," said Farragut. "You clean?" "No," said Farragut. "You suck?" "No," said Farragut. "You innocent?" Farragut didn't reply. Someone at the back of the block struck a guitar and began to sing in a tuneless bluegrass voice: "I got those innocence blues.

“I'm feeling blue all the time…" This could barely be heard above the noise of radios which-talking, singing, performing music- sounded like any city street at closing time or later.

No one spoke to Farragut at all until, just before the lights went off, the man by whose voice he recognized the singer came to his door. He was skinny and old and had a light, unpleasant voice. "I'm Chicken Number Two," he said. "Don't go looking around for Chicken Number One. He's dead. You've probably read about me in the paper. I'm the famous tattooed man, the light-fingered second -Story worker who spent his fortune on body art. I'll show you my pictures someday when I get to know you better." He leered. "But what I come to tell you is that it's all a mistake, a terrible mistake, I mean you being here. They won't find out tomorrow, it'll be a week or two before they discover this mistake they made, but when they discover it they'll be so sorry, so ashamed of themselves, they'll feel so guilty that the governor will kiss your ass on Fifth Avenue during the Christmas rush. Oh, they'll feel so sorry. Because you see, every trip we make, even for the boneheads, has something good at the end of it like a pot of gold or a fountain of youth or an ocean or a river nobody ain't never seen before or at least a big porterhouse steak with a baked potato. There has to be something good at the end of every journey and that's why I wanted you to know that it's all a terrible mistake. And during the time you're waiting for them to discover this big mistake you'll have your visitors. Oh, I can tell, just by the way you sit there, that you got thousands of friends and lovers and a wife, of course. Your wife will come to visit you. She'll have to come and visit you. She ain't going to be able to divorce you unless you sign the papers and she'll have to bring them here herself. So all I wanted to tell you is what you already knew-it's all a big mistake, a terrible mistake."

Farragut's first visitor was his wife. He was raking leaves in yard Y when the PA said that 734-508-32 had a visitor. He jogged up the road past the firehouse and into the tunnel. It was four flights up to eel lb lock F. "Visitor," he said to Walton, who let him into his cell. He kept his white shirt prepared for visits. It was dusty. He washed his face and combed his hair with water. "Don't take nuttin but a handkerchief," said the guard. "I know, I know, I know…" Down he went to the door of the visitors' room, where he was frisked. Through the glass he saw that his visitor was Marcia.

There were no bars in the visitors' room, but the glass windows were chicken-wired and open only at the top. A skinny cat couldn't get in or out, but the sounds of the prison moved in freely on the breeze. She would, he knew, have passed three sets of bars-clang, clang, clang-and waited in an anteroom where there were pews or benches, soft-drink engines and a display of the convicts' art with prices stuck in the frames. None of the cons could paint, but you could always count on some wet-brain to buy a vase of roses or a marine sunset if he had been told that the artist was a lifer. There were no pictures on the walls of the visitors' room but there were four signs that said: NO SMOKING. NO WRITING. NO EXCHANGE OE OBJECTS. VISITORS ARE ALLOWED ONE KISS. These were also in Spanish. NO SMOKING had been scratched out. The visitors' room in Falconer, he had been told, was the most lenient in the East. There were no obstructions- nothing but a three-foot counter between the free and the unfree.

While he was being frisked he looked around at the other visitors- not so much out of curiosity as to see if there was anything here that might offend Marcia. A con was holding a baby. A weeping old woman talked to a young man. Nearest to Marcia was a Chicano couple. The woman was beautiful and the man was caressing her bare arms.

Farragut stepped into this no man's land and came on hard, as if he had been catapulted into the visit by mere circumstance. "Hello darling," he exclaimed as he had exclaimed "Hello darling" at trains, boats, airports, the foot of the driveway, journey's end; but in the past he would have worked out a timetable, aimed at the soonest possible sexual consummation.

"Hello," she said. "You look well."

"Thank you. You look beautiful."

"I didn't tell you I was coming because it didn't seem necessary. When I called to make an appointment they told me you weren't going anywhere."