John Cheever - Falconer

"So then she told me that she told her friends, very loudly, that she wasn't going to have any dessert, that she was going to drive home to her empty house and read a book. She said all this so he could hear her and would know that there wasn't going to be any husband or kids around. She knew the bartender and the bartender would give him her address. So she went home and put on a wrapper and then the doorbell rang and there he was. So right in the hallway he began to kiss her and put her hand on his cock and drop his pants, right in the front hallway, and at about this time she discovered that while he was very beautiful, he was also very dirty. She told me that he couldn't have had a bath in a month. As sewn as she got a whiff of him she cooled off and began to figure out how she could get him into a shower. So he went on kissing her and getting out of his clothes and smelling worse and worse and then she suggested that maybe he would like a bath. So then he suddenly got angry and said that he was looking for a cunt, not a mother, that his mother told him when he needed a bath, that he didn't go around looking for sluts in saloons in order to be told when he needed a bath and when to get his hair cut and when to brush his teeth. So he got dressed and went away and she told me this to illustrate how to be a round heels takes all kinds of courage.

"But I did lousy things too. When I came off the road once I said hello and went upstairs to take a crap and while I was sitting there I noticed that there was this big pile of hunting and fishing magazines beside the toilet. So then I finished and pulled up my pants and came out shouting about this constipated fisherman she was fucking. I yelled and yelled. I said it was just her speed to pick up with a boob who couldn't cast a fly or take a shit. I said I could imagine him sitting there, his face all red, reading about catching the gamy muskallonge in stormy northern waters. I said that was just what she deserved, that just by looking at her I could tell it was her destiny to get reamed by one of those pimply gas pumpers who do their fishing in magazines and can't cut a turd. So she cried and cried and about an hour later I remembered that I had subscribed to all these hunting and fishing magazines and when I said that I was sorry she really didn't care and I felt shitty." Farragut said nothing-he seldom said anything to the Cuckold- and the Cuckold went back to his cell and turned up his radio.

Ransome came down with the flux one Tuesday morning and by Wednesday afternoon everyone but the Stone had it. Chicken claimed that it came from the pork they had been eating all week. He claimed that a fly had flown out of his meat. He claimed to have captured the fly and offered to show it to anyone who asked, but no one asked. They all put in for sick call, but Walton or Goldfarb announced that the infirmary was overworked and that no doctor's or nurse's appointment could be made for ten days. Farragut had the flux and a fever and so did everyone else. On Thursday morning they were issued, in their cells, a large dose of paregoric, which granted them an hour's amnesty from Falconer but seemed powerless before the flux. On Friday afternoon there was this announcement over the PA. "A PREVENTIVE VACCINE FOR THE SPREAD OF INFLUENZA THAT HAS REACHED EPIDEMIC PROPORTIONS IN SOME CITIES OF THE NORTHEAST WILL BE ADMINISTERED TO REHABILITATION FACILITY INMATES FROM THE HOURS OF NINE HUNDRED TO EIGHTEEN HUNDRED. WAIT FOR YOUR CELL CALL. THE INOCULATION IS MANDATORY AND NO SUPERSTITIOUS OR RELICIOUS SCRUPLES WILL BE RESPECTED."

"They're trying to use us as guinea pigs," said Chicken. "We're being used as guinea pigs. I know all about it. There was a man in here who had laryngitis. They had this new medicine for him, this needle, they gave it to him two, three days and they couldn't get him out of here up to the infirmary before he was dead. Then they had this guy with clap, a light case of clap, and they gave him inoculations and his balls swole up, they swole up as big as basketballs, they swole and swole so he couldn't walk and they had to take him out of here on a board with these big globes sticking up in the sheet. And then there was this guy whose bones were leaking, the marrow was leaking out of his bones which made him very weak, and so they give him these shots, these experimental shots, and he turned to stone, he turned to stone, didn't he, Tiny? Tiny, tell that's true about the fellow whose bones leaked and who turned to stone."

"Tiny ain't here," said Walton. "Tiny don't come in until Saturday."

"Well, Tiny will tell you when he comes in. He turned to stone. He was just like cement-stone. Tiny carved his initials on his ass. He turned into rock right before our eyes. And the crazies. If they think you're crazy they give you this green shot-yellowish-green, it is-and if it don't work it makes you so crazy you wouldn't believe it. Like there was this guy claimed he could play the national anthem on his toenails-all day long he did this-and then they gave him this experimental shot. Well, first he tore off part of one of his ears-I forget which side-and then stuck his fingers into his eyes and blinded himself. Tiny, isn't that true, Isn't that true, Tiny, about the yellowish-green stuff they give the crazies?”

"Tiny ain't here," said Walton. "He don't come in until Saturday and I got no patience with any of you. I got a wife and a baby at home and they need this vaccine but I can't get none for them. You get medicine that millionaires can't buy and all you do is complain."

"Oh, what the hell," said Chicken. "I'll take anything they give me it's free, but I ain't no guinea pig."

They got their vaccine on Saturday afternoon-not at the infirmary but in the supply room from the windows marked EXTRA LARGE, LARGE, MEDIUM and SMALL. Fifteen or twenty men from that lot whose religious beliefs forbade them to take medicine were corralled by the used-clothes bin and Farragut asked himself if he possessed any religious beliefs for which he would endure solitary. There was his spiritual and his chemical dependence upon drugs, for which he would likely have killed a man. He realized then and only then that he had been given no methadone during the three days of the revolution and the three days of the plague. He did not understand at all. One of the orderlies giving the shots was the man who had given him methadone. When Farragut rolled up his sleeve and presented h is arm for the needle, he asked, "Why haven't I been getting my methadone? It's against the law. It says right in my sentence that I'm entitled to methadone." "You're a dumb sonofabitch," said the orderly kindly. "Some of us have been wondering when you'd notice. You've been on placebos for nearly a month. You're clean, my friend, you're clean." He gave Farragut the needle and he shook a little at this extraneous and unnatural pain and imagined the vaccine coursing through his blood. "It can't be true," said Farragut, "it can't be true." "Count the days," said the orderly, "just count the days. Move along." Farragut was stunned. He went over to the door, where Chicken was waiting. Farragut's singular smallness of mind was illustrated by the fact that he resented that the Department of Correction had been successful where the three blue-ribbon drug cures he had taken had failed. The Department of Correction could not be right. He could not congratulate himself on having mastered his addiction, since he had not been aware of it. Then an image of his family, his hated origins, loomed up in his mind. Had that antic cast-that old man in his catboat, that woman pumping gas in her opera cloak, his pious brother- had they conveyed to him some pure, crude and lasting sense of perseverance? "I made a big decision," said Chicken, hooking his arm in Farragut's. "I made a very big decision. I'm going to sell my gitfiddle." Farragut felt only the insignificance of Chicken's decision in the light of what he had just been told; that, and the fact that Chicken's hold on his arm seemed desperate. Chicken seemed truly feeble and old. Farragut could not tell him that he was clean. "Why are you selling your gitfiddle, Chicken?" he asked. "Why are you going to do a thing like that?" "Three guesses," said Chicken. Farragut had to put an arm around him to get him up the slope of the tunnel and into the block.