John Cheever - Falconer

Tiny called the lockup for eight and made the usual jokes about beauty sleep and meat-beating. He said, of course, that he wanted his men to Look beautiful for the cardinal. He pulled the light switch at nine. The only light was the television. Farragut went to bed and to sleep. The roar of the toilet woke him and then he heard thunder. At first the noise pleased and excited him. The random explosions of thunder seemed to explain that heaven was not an infinity but a solid construction of domes, rotundas and arches. Then he remembered that the flier had said that in case of rain the ceremony would be canceled. The thought of a thunderstorm inaugurating a rainy day deeply disturbed him. Naked, he went to the window. This naked man was worried. If it rained there would be no escape, no cardinal, no nothing. Have pity upon him, then; try to understand his fears. He was lonely. His love, his world, his everything, was gone. He wanted to see a cardinal in a helicopter. Thunderstorms, he thought hopefully, could bring in anything. They could bring in a cold front, a hot front, a day when the clearness of the light would seem to carry one from hour to hour. Then the rain began. It poured into the prison and that part of the world. But it lasted only ten minutes. Then the rain, the storm, swept mercifully off to the north and just as swiftly and just as briefly that rank and vigorous odor that is detonated by the rain flew up to and above where Farragut stood at his barred window. He had, with his long, long nose, responded to this cutting fragrance wherever he had been-shouting, throwing out his arms, pouring a drink. Now there was a trace, a memory, of this primitive excitement, but it had been cruelly eclipsed by the bars. He got back into bed and fell asleep, listening to the rain dripping from the gun towers.

Farragut got what he had bargained for: a day of incomparable beauty. Had he been a free man, he would have claimed to be able to walk on the light. It was a holiday; it was the day of the big Rugby game; it was the circus; it was the fourth of July; it was the regatta; and it dawned as it should, clear and cool and beautiful. They had two pieces of bacon for breakfast, through the bounty of the diocese. Farragut went down the tunnel to the methadone line and even this rattail of humanity seemed to be jumping with high spirits. At eight they stood by their cell doors, shaved, wearing their white shirts and some of them with ointment in their hair, you could tell by the clash of perfumes that floated up and down the cellblock. Tiny inspected them and then there was, as there is for any holiday or ceremony, time to kill.

There was a cartoon show on television. They could hear whistles blowing on other cellblocks and guards with military backgrounds trying to shout their men into sharp formations. It was only a lit tie after eight then and the cardinal wasn't expected until noon, but men were already being marched out onto the gallows field. The walls checked the force of the late spring sun, but it would hit the field by noon. Chicken and the Cuckold shot dice. Farragut killed the time easily at the top of his methadone high. Time was new bread, time was a sympathetic element, time was water you swam in, time moved through the cellblock with the grace of light. Farragut tried to read. He sat on the edge of his bunk. He was a man of forty-eight, sitting on the edge of his bunk in a prison to which he had been unjustly confined for the murder of his brother. He was a man in a white shirt sitting on the edge of a bunk. Tiny blew his whistle and they stood at attention in front of their cells again. They did this four times. At half-past ten they were lined up two by two and marched down the tunnel, where they formed up in a pie-shaped area marked "F" with lime.

The light had begun to come into the field. Oh, it was a great day. Farragut thought about Jody and wondered if he didn't bring it off would he get cell lock or the hole or maybe seven more years for attempted escape. So far as he knew, he and the chaplain's dude were the only ones in on the plot. Then Tiny called them to attention. "Now, I got to have your cooperation," Tiny said. "It ain't easy for any of us to have two thousand shit-heads out here together. The tower guards today is been replaced with crack shots and, as you know, they got the right to shoot any inmate they got suspicions about. We got crack shots today so they won't be no spray firing. The leader of the Black Panthers has agreed not to give the salute. When the cardinal comes you stand at parade rest. Any of you ain't been in the service, ask some friend what parade rest is. It's like this. Twenty-five men has been picked to take the Holy Eucharist. The cardinal's got lots of appointments and he's going to be here only twenty minutes. First we hear from the warden and then the commissioner, who's coming down from Albany. After this he gives out the diplomas, celebrates mass, blesses the rest of you assholes and takes off. I guess you can sit down if you want. You can sit down, but when you get the order for attention I want you all straight and neat and clean with your heads up. I want to be proud of you. If you have to piss, piss, but don't piss where anybody's going to be sitting." Cheers for Tiny and then most of them pissed. There was, Farragut thought, some universality to a full bladder. For this length of time they perfectly understood one another. Then they sat down.

Somebody was testing the public address system: "Testing, one, two, three. Testing, one, two, three." The voice was loud and scratchy. Time passed. God's advocate was punctual. At a quarter to twelve they got the command for attention. They shaped up nicely. The sound of the chopper could be heard then, bounding off the hills, loud at low altitudes faintly, faintly in the deep river valley; soft and loud, hills and valleys, the noise evoked the contour of the terrain beyond the walls. The chopper, when it came into view, had no more grace than an airborne washing machine, but this didn't matter at all. It lofted gently onto the target and out the door came three acolytes, a monsignor in black, and the cardinal himself, a man either graced by God with great dignity and beauty or singled out by the diocese for these distinctions. He raised his hand. His ring flashed with spiritual and political power. "I seen better rings on hustlers," Chicken Number Two whispered. "No fence would give you thirty. The last time I hit a jewelry store I fenced the lot for-" Looks shut him up. Everybody turned and put him down.

The crimson of the cardinal's robes seemed living and pure and his carriage was admirable and would have quelled a riot. He stepped out of the helicopter, lifting his robes not at all like a woman leaving a taxi but like a cardinal leaving his airborne transport. He made a sign of the cross as high and wide as his reach and the great spell of worship fell over that place. In nomine Patris et Filii et Spiritus Sancti. Farragut would have liked to pray for the happiness of his son, his wife, the safety of his lover, the soul of his dead brother, would have liked to pray for some enlargement of his wisdom, but the only word he could root out of these massive intentions was his Amen. Amen, said a thousand others, and the word, from so many throats, came up from the gallows field as a solemn whisper.

Then the public address system began to work so well that the confusion that followed could be heard by everyone. "Now you go first," said the commissioner to the warden. "No, you go," said t he warden to the commissioner. "It says here that you go." "I said you go," said the commissioner angrily to the warden, and the warden stepped forward, knelt, kissed the cardinal's ring and, standing, said; "The graciousness of Your Eminence in endangering life and limb in order to come and visit us in the Falconer Rehabilitation Center is greatly appreciated by me and the deputy wardens, the guards and all the inmates. It reminds me of how when I was a little boy and sleepy my father carried me from the car into the house at the end of a long trip. I was a load to carry, but I knew how kind he was being to me, and that's the way I feel today."