John Cheever - Falconer

"Fifty-six," said Bumpo.

"Thank you, Bumpo, sweet Bumpo, but if we learn this we will learn how to play our own strategies to our greatest advantage, perhaps even to buy our freedom. With your diamond I can make a radio."

"If you're such a great magician, why can'! you get your ass out of here?" said Bumpo.

"I'm talking about airwaves, Bumpo, not flesh and blood. Air. Sweet air. Thin air. Do you hear me? I wouldn't be able to speak to you softly and with patience at this point if I did not believe that mathematics and geometry are a lying and a faulty analogy for the human disposition. When one finds in men's nature, as I do in yours, some convexity, it is a mistake to expect a corresponding concavity. There is no such thing as an isosceles man. The only reason I continue to plead with you, Bumpo, is my belief in the inestimable richness of human nature. I want your diamond to save the world."

Bumpo laughed. His laughter was genuine and boyish and loud and ringing. "You're the first dude to spring that one on me. That's a new one. Save mankind. All I said was I was going to save some hungry little kid or some old person. I didn't say nothing about the world. It's worth anywhere from nineteen to twenty-six thousand. The diamond's hard but the market ain't. They'd have chopped off my finger years ago if the stone wasn't too big to fence. It's a big, safe stone. I never had an offer like yours. I had twenty-seven offers, maybe more. I been offered every cock in the place, of course, and every asshole, but I can't eat cock and I don't like asshole. I don't mind a nice hand job, but no hand job is worth twenty-six thousand. Years ago there was a guard, he got fired, who offered me a case of whiskey once a week. All kinds of shit like that. Outside food. Tons of it. Also a lifetime supply of cigarettes for a chain smoker. Lawyers. They stand in line to talk with me. They promise me retrials, guaranteed pardons and dismissals. There was one guard who offered me an escape. I was going to go out on the underchassis of a delivery truck. That's the only one that really interested me. This truck was coming in on Tuesdays and Thursdays and he knew the driver, the driver was his brother-in-law. So he rigged up this hammock under the chassis, it was just big enough to hold me. He showed me the whole thing and I even practiced getting into it, but he wanted the rock before I got Out Of course I wouldn't give it to him and the whole thing blew up. But nobody ever told me I could save the world." He looked at his diamond and turned it, smiling at the fire it contained. "You didn't know you could save the world, did you?" he asked the diamond.

"Oh, why would anyone want to get out of a nice place like this?" asked Chicken. He struck some chords on his guitar and while he went on talking in his bluegrass voice his song was unaccompanied. "Who would want to riot in order to get out of a nice place like this? In the paper now you read there's unemployment everywhere. That's why the lieutenant governor is in here. He can't get no job outside. Even famous movie stars with formerly millions is standing in line with their coat collars turned up around their necks waiting for a handout, waiting for a bowl of that watery bean soup that don't keep you from feeling hungry and makes you fart. Out in the street everybody's poor, everybody's out of work and it rains all the time. They mug one another for a crust of bread. You have to stand in line for a week just to be told you ain't got no job. We stand in line three times a day to get our nice minimal-nutritional hot meal, but out in the street they stand in line for eight hours, twenty-four hours, sometimes they stand in line for a lifetime. Who wants to get out of a nice place like this and stand in line in the rain? And when they ain't standing inline in the rain they worry about atomic war. Sometimes they do both. I mean they stand in line in the rain and worry about atomic war because if there's an atomic war they'll all be killed and find themselves standing in line at the gates or hell. That's not for us, men. In case of an atomic war we'll be the first to be saved. They got bomb shelters for us criminals all over the world. They don't want us loose in the community. I mean they'll let the community burn before they'll set us free, and that will be our salvation, friends. They'd rather burn than have us running around the streets, because everybody knows that we eat babies, fuck old women up the ass and burn down hospitals full of helpless cripples. Who would ever want to gel out of a nice place like this?"

"Hey, Farragut, come down and play cards with the Stone," said Ransome. "Let Farragut out, will you, Walton? The Stone wants to play cards with Farragut."

“I will if you'll shut up," said Walton. “I got to pass this exam. You promise to shut up?"

"We promise," said Ransome.

Farragut's cell door opened and he went down the block to the Stone's, carrying his chair. The Stone was smiling like a fool, which he may have been. The Stone handed him the pack of cards and he dealt them out, saying, "One for you and one for me." Then he fanned out his hand, but that many cards were bulky and a dozen fell to the floor. When he stopped to pick them up he heard a voice, not a whisper but a normal voice, tuned to a minimum volume. It was the Glass Ear-the two-hundred-dollar hearing aid-tuned to a radio frequency. He saw the four batteries in their canvas-covered corset lying on the floor and the plastic, flesh-colored orifice from which he guessed the voice came. He picked up his cards and began to slap them out on a table, saying, "One for you and one for me." The voice said, "Registration for continuing education classes in conversational Spanish and cabinet making will be open from five to nine on Monday through Friday at the Benjamin Franklin High School, situated on the corner of Elm and Chestnut Streets." Then Farragut heard piano music. It was the dreariest of the Chopin preludes-that prelude they use in murder films before the shot is fired; that prelude that was expected to evoke for men of his day and earlier the image of a little girl with braids, confined for some cruel hour to a bleak room, where she was meant to produce the bleat of impuissant waves and the sad stir of falling leaves. "The latest news from The Wall, or the Amana Prison," said the voice, "is that negotiations are still proceeding between the administration and the committee of inmates. Forces to secure the institution are available, but reports of impatience among the troops have been denied. Five of the hostages have testified on radio and TV that they have been receiving food, medical supplies and adequate protection under the leadership of the Black Muslim faction. The governor has made it clear for the third time that he does not have the power to grant amnesty. A final petition for the release of the hostages has been presented and the inmates will give their answer at daybreak tomorrow. Daybreak is officially slated for six twenty-eight, but the weather predictions are for cloudy skies and more rain. In the local news, an octogenarian bicyclist named Ralph Waldo won the Golden Age Bicycle Race in the town of Burnt Valley on his eighty-second birthday. His time was one hour and eighteen minutes. Congratulations, Ralph! Mrs. Charles Roundtree of Hunters Bridge in the northeast corner of the state claims to have seen an unidentified flying object at such a close range that the draft raised her skirts while she was hanging out the wash. Stay tuned for details of the five-alarm fire in Tappansville." Then another voice sang:

Garroway toothpaste cleans your teeth. Both the dirt above and the dirt beneath, Garroway toothpaste cavities hate, Garroway toothpaste is for you and your mate.

Farragut slapped down cards for another ten minutes and then began to shout, "I got a toothache. I want to quit. I got a toothache."