John Cheever - Falconer

It was not that night but sometime later that the Cuckold told Farragut about the Valley. The Valley was a long room off the tunnel to the left of the mess hall. Along one wall was a cast-iron trough of a urinal. The light in the room was very dim. The wall above the urinal was white tiling with a very limited power of reflection. You could make out the height and the complexion of the men on your left and your right and that was about all. The Valley was where you went after chow to fuck yourself. Almost no one but killjoys strayed into the dungeon for a simple piss. There were ground rules. You could touch the other man's hips and shoulders, but nothing else. The trough accommodated twenty men and twenty men stood there, soft, hard or halfway in either direction, fucking themselves. If you finished and wanted to come again you went to the end of the line. There were the usual jokes. How many times, Charlie? Five coming up, but my feet are getting sore.

Considering the fact that the cock is the most critical link in our chain of survival, the variety of shapes, colors, sizes, characteristics, dispositions and responses found in this rudimentary tool are much greater than those shown by any other organ of the body. They were black, while, red, yellow, lavender, brown, warty, wrinkled, comely and silken, and they seemed, like any crowd of men on a street at closing time, to represent youth, age, victory, disaster, laughter and tears. There were the frenzied and compulsive pumpers, the long-timers who caressed themselves for half an hour, there were the groaners and the ones who sighed, and most of the men, when their trigger was pulled and the fusillade began, would shake, buck, catch their breath and make weeping sounds, sounds of grief, of joy, and sometimes death rattles. There was some rightness in having the images of the lovers around them opaque. They were universal, they were phantoms, and any skin sores, or signs of cruelty, ugliness, stupidity or beauty, could not be seen. Farragut went here regularly after Jody was gone.

When Farragut arced or pumped his rocks into the trough he endured no true sadness-mostly some slight disenchantment at having spilled his energy onto iron. Walking away from the trough, he felt that he had missed the train, the plane, the boat. He had missed it. He experienced some marked physical relief or improvement: the shots cleared his brain. Shame and remorse had nothing to do with what he felt, walking away from the trough. What he felt, what he saw, was the utter poverty of erotic reasonableness. That was how he missed the target and the target was the mysteriousness of the bonded spirit and the flesh. He knew it well. Fitness and beauty had a rim. Fitness and beauty had a dimension, had a floor, even as the oceans have a floor, and he had committed a trespass. It was not unforgivable-a venal trespass-but he was reproached by the majesty of the realm. It was majestic even in prison he knew the world to be majestic. He had taken a pebble out of his shoe in the middle of mass. He remembered the panic he had experienced as a boy when he found his trousers, his hands and his shirttails soaked with crystallizing gism. He had learned from the Boy Scout Handbook that his prick would grow as long and thin as a shoelace, and that the juice that had poured out of his crack was the cream of his brain power. This miserable wetness proved that he would fail his College Board exams and have to attend a broken-down agricultural college somewhere in the Middle West…

Then Marcia returned in her limitless beauty, smelling of everything provocative. She did not kiss him, nor did he try to cover her hand with his. "Hello, Zeke," she said. "I have a letter here from Pete."

"How is he?"

"He seems very well. He's either away at school or camp and I don't see anything of him. His advisers tell me that he is friendly and intelligent."

"Can he come to see me?"

"They think not, not at this time of his life. Every psychiatrist and counselor I've talked with, and I've been very conscientious about this, feels that since he's an only child, the experience of visiting his father in prison would be crippling. I know you have no use for psychologists, and I'm inclined to agree with you, but all we can do is to take the advice of the most highly recommended and experienced men, and that is their opinion."

"Can I see his letter?"

"You can if I can find it. I haven't been able to find anything today. I don't believe in poltergeists, but there are days when I can find things and there are days when I cannot. Today is one of the worst. I couldn't find the top to the coffeepot this morning. I couldn't find the oranges. Then I couldn't find the car keys and when I found them and drove to get the cleaning woman I couldn't remember where she lived. I couldn't find the dress I wanted, I couldn't find my earrings. I couldn't find my stockings and I couldn't find my glasses to look for my stockings." He might have killed her then had she not found an envelope on which his name was written clumsily in lead pencil. She put this on the counter. "I didn't ask him to write the letter," she said, "and I have no idea of what it contains. I suppose I should have shown it to the counselors hut I knew you would rather I didn't."

"Thank you," said Farragut. He put the letter into his shirt, next to his skin.

"Aren't you going to open it?"

“I’ll save it."

"Well, you're lucky. So far as I know, it's the first letter he's ever written in his life. So tell me how you are, Zeke. I can't say that you look well, but you look all right. You look very much like yourself. Do you still dream about your blonde? You do, of course; that I can easily see. Don't you understand that she never existed, Zeke, and that she never will? Oh, I can tell by the way you hold your head that you still dream about that blonde who never menstruated or shaved her legs or challenged anything you said or did. I suppose you have boyfriends in here?"

"I've had one," said Farragut, "but I didn't take it up the ass. When I die you can put on my headstone: 'Here lies Ezekiel Farragut, who never took it up the ass.' "

She seemed suddenly touched by this, suddenly she seemed to find in herself some admiration for him; her smile and her presence seemed accommodating and soft. "Your hair has turned white, dear," she said. "Did you know that? You haven't been here a year and yet your hair has turned snow white. It's very becoming. Well, I'll have to go. I've left your groceries in the package room." He carried the letter until the lights and the television were extinguished and read, in the glare from the yard, "I love you."

As the day of the cardinal's arrival approached, even the lifers said they had never seen such excitement. Farragut was kept busy cutting dittos for order sheets, instructions and commands. Some of the orders seemed insane. For example: "It is mandatory that all units of inmates marching to and from the parade grounds will sing God Bless America." Common sense killed this one. No one obeyed the order and no one tried to enforce it. Every day for ten days the entire population was marshaled out onto the gallows field, the ball park, and what had now become the parade grounds. They were made to practice standing at attention, even in the pouring rain. They remained excited, and there was a large element of seriousness in the excitement. When Chicken Number Two did a little hornpipe and sang: "Tomorrow's the day they give cardinals away with a half a pound of cheese," no one laughed, no one at all. Chicken Number Two was an asshole. On the day before his arrival, every man took a shower. The hot water ran out at around eleven in the morning and cellblock F didn't get into the showers until after chow. Farragut was back in his cell, shining his shoes, when Jody returned.

He heard the hooting and whistling and looked up to see Jody walking toward his cell. Jody had put on weight. He looked well. He walked toward Farragut with his nice, bouncy jock walk. Farragut much preferred this to the sinuous hustle Jody put on when he was hot and his pelvis seemed to grin like a pumpkin. The sinuous hustle had reminded Farragut of vines, and vines, he knew, had to be cultivated or they could harass and destroy stone towers, castles and cathedrals. Vines could pull down a basilica. Jody came into his cell and kissed him on the mouth. Only Chicken Number Two whistled. "Goodbye, sweetheart," he said. "Goodbye," said Farragut. His feelings were chaotic and he might have cried, but he might have cried at the death of a cat, a broken shoelace, a wild pitch. He could kiss Jody passionately, but not tenderly. Jody turned and walked away. Farragut had done nothing with Jody so exciting as to say goodbye. Among the beaches and graves and other matters he had unearthed in seeking the meaning of his friendship, he had completely overlooked the conspiratorial thrill of seeing his beloved escape.