Falconer (15 page)

“Why did you take this job?”

“I don’t know why I took this job. It was my uncle told me. He was my father’s older brother. My father believed everything he said. So he said I should get a peaceful job in the jailhouse, retire in twenty years on half pay and begin a new life at forty with a guaranteed income. Do anything. Open up a parking lot. Grow oranges. Run a motel. Only he didn’t know that in a place like this you get so tensed up that you can’t digest
a Lifesaver. I threw up my lunch. We had a good meal for once—chickpeas and chicken wings—and I threw up the whole mess, right on the floor. I can’t keep nothing on my stomach. Another twenty minutes and I’m walking to my car and I’m driving my car home to 327 Hudson Street and I’m getting my bottle of Southern Comfort out of the top of the closet and my glass from the kitchen and I’m going to forget everything. When you type those out put them in my office. It’s the one with the plants. The door’s open. Toledo’ll pick them up.”

He closed the glass door. The radio was dead. Farragut typed:
LOUISA PIERCE SPINGARN, IN MEMORY OF HER BELOVED SON PETER, HAS ARRANGED FOR INTERESTED INMATES TO BE PHOTOGRAPHED IN FULL COLOR BESIDE A DECORATED CHRISTMAS TREE AND TO HAVE SAID PHOTOGRAPHS MAILED AT NO COST TO THE INMATE’S LOVED ONES. PICTURE-TAKING WILL BEGIN AT 9OO/8/27 IN THE ORDER OF RECEIVED APPLICATIONS. WHITE SHIRTS ALLOWABLE. DON’T BRING NOTHING BUT A HANDKERCHIEF.

Farragut turned off his light, closed the door and walked down the tunnel to the open door of Marshack’s office. The room had three windows and it was the one, as Marshack had said, with the plants. The windows had vertical bars outside, but Marshack had put horizontal rods on the inside and many plants hung from these. There were twenty or thirty hanging plants. Hanging plants, Farragut thought, were the beloved of the truly lonely—those men and women who, burning with lust, ambition and nostalgia, watered their hanging plants. They cultivated their hanging plants and he
guessed that they talked to them since they talked to everything else—doors, tables and the wind up the chimney. He recognized very few of the plants. Ferns he knew; ferns and geraniums. He picked a geranium leaf, broke it in his fingers and smelled the oil. It smelled like a geranium—the stuffy, complex perfume of some lived-in and badly ventilated interior. There were many other kinds with leaves of all shapes, some of them the color of red cabbage and some of them dull browns and yellows—not the lambent autumnal spectrum, but the same spectrum of death, fixed in the nature of the plant. He was pleased and surprised to see that the killer, narrowly confined by his stupidity, had tried to change the bleakness of the room where he worked with plants that lived and grew and died, that depended upon his attention and his kindness, that had at least the fragrance of moist soil and that in their greenness and their life stood for the valleys and pastures of milk and honey. All the plants hung from copper wire. Farragut had built radios when he was young. He remembered that a hundred feet of copper wire was the beginning of a radio set.

Farragut unhooked a plant from a curtain rod and went after the copper wire. Marshack had looped the wire through holes in the pots, but he had used the wire so generously that it would take Farragut an hour or more to get the wire he needed. Then he heard footsteps. He stood in front of the floored plant, a little frightened, but it was only Toledo. Farragut passed him the ditto sheets and gave him a strong interrogative eye. “Yeah, yeah,” said Toledo. He spoke not in a whisper but in a very flat voice. “They got twenty-eight
hostages. That’s at least two thousand eight hundred pounds of flesh, and they can make every ounce of it sing.” Toledo was gone.

Farragut returned to his desk, broke the least-used key from the typewriter, honed it on the old granite of the wall, thinking of the ice age and its contribution to the hardness of the stone. When he had the key honed to a hair edge, he went back to Marshack’s office and cut the wire off eighteen plants. He put the wire in his underpants, turned off the lights and walked back up the empty tunnel. He walked clumsily with the wire in his pants and if anyone had questioned him about his limp he would have said that the shitty humid day gave him rheumatism.

“734–508–32 reporting in,” he said to Tiny.

“What’s the news?”

“Beginning tomorrow at nine hundred any asshole who wants to be photographed in full color standing beside a Christmas tree has got his wish.”

“No shit,” said Tiny.

“I’m not shitting you,” said Farragut. “You’ll get the announcement in the morning.”

Farragut, loaded with copper wire, sat down on his cot. He would hide it under the mattress as soon as Tiny’s back was turned. He unwound the toilet paper from its roll, folded the paper into neat squares and put this in his copy of Descartes. When he had made radios as a boy he had wound the wire on an oatmeal box. He guessed a toilet paper roll would be nearly as good. The bedspring would work for an aerial, the ground was the radiator, Bumpo’s diamond was the diode crystal and the Stone had his earphones. When this was completed
he would be able to get continuous news from The Wall. Farragut was terribly excited and highly composed. The public address system made him jump.
“SHORT ARM FOR CELLBLOCK F IN TEN MINUTES. SHORT ARM FOR CELLBLOCK F IN TEN MINUTES.”

Short arm was, for the calendar freaks, the first Thursday of every month. It was for the rest of them whenever it was announced. Farragut guessed that short arm, along with the Christmas tree, was a maneuver to dissipate their excitement. They would be humiliated and naked and the power of mandatory nakedness was inestimable. Short arm involved having some medical riffraff and a nurse from the infirmary examine their genitals for venereal suppuration. At the announcement there was some hooting and shouting, but not much. Farragut, with his back to Tiny, got out of his pants and put them neatly under the mattress to preserve their press. He also got rid of the copper.

The doctor, when he was let in, was wearing a full suit and a felt hat. He looked tired and frightened. The nurse was a very ugly man who was called Veronica. He must have been pretty years ago because in a dim, dim light he had the airs and graces of a youth, but in a stronger light he looked like a frog. The ardor that had rucked his face and made it repulsive still seemed to burn. These two sat down at Tiny’s desk and Tiny gave them the records and unlocked the cells. Naked, Farragut could smell himself and he could also smell Tennis, Bumpo and the Cuckold. They had not had a shower since Sunday and the smell was strong and like a butcher’s spoiled trimmings. Bumpo went on first. “Squeeze it,” said the doctor. The doctor’s voice was
strained and angry. “Pull back the foreskin and squeeze it. Squeeze it, I said.” The doctor’s suit was cheap and stained, and so were his tie and his vest. Even his eyeglasses were soiled. He wore the felt hat to stress the sovereignty of sartorial rule. He, the civilian judge, was crowned with a hat while the penitents were naked, and with their sins, their genitals, their boast-fulness and their memories exposed they seemed shameful. “Spread your cheeks,” said the doctor. “Wider. Wider. Next—73482.”

“It’s 73483,” said Tiny.

“I can’t read your writing,” the doctor said. “73483.”

73483 was Tennis. Tennis was a sunbather and had a snowy bum. His arms and legs were, for an athlete, very thin. Tennis had clap. It was very still. For this ceremony, the sense of humor that survived even the darkness of the Valley was extinguished. Extinguished too was the convulsive gaiety Farragut had seen at chow.

“Where did you get it?” the doctor asked. “I want his name and his number.” With a case in hand, the doctor seemed reasonable and at ease. He reset his eyeglasses elegantly with a single finger and then drew his spread fingers across his brow.

“I don’t know,” said Tennis. “I don’t remember any such thing.”

“Where did you get it?” the doctor said. “You’d better tell me.”

“Well, it could have been during the ball game,” said Tennis. “I guess it was during the ball game. Some dude blew me while I was watching the ball game. I don’t know who it was. I mean if I’d known who it was
I would have killed him, but I was so interested in the game that I didn’t notice. I love baseball.”

“You didn’t slip it up somebody’s ass in the shower,” said the doctor.

“Well, if I did it was by accident,” said Tennis. “It was entirely by accident. We only get showers once a week and for a man, a tennis champion, who takes showers three or four times a day, when you only get into the shower once a week it’s very confusing. You get dizzy. You don’t know what’s going on. Oh, if I knew, sir, I’d tell you. If I’d known what was going on I would have hit him, I would have killed him. That’s the way I am. I’m very high-strung.”

“He stole my Bible,” Chicken screamed, “he stole my limp leather copy of the Holy Bible. Look, look, the sonofabitch stole my Holy Bible.”

Chicken was pointing at the Cuckold. The Cuckold was standing with his knees knocked together in a ludicrous parody of feminine shyness. “I don’t know what he’s talking about,” he said. “I ain’t stole nothing of his.” He made a broad gesture with his arms to demonstrate his empty-handedness. Chicken pushed him. The Bible fell from between his legs and hit the floor. Chicken grabbed the book. “My Bible, my Holy Bible, it was sent to me by my cousin Henry, the only member of my family I heard from in three years. You stole my Holy Bible. You are so low I wouldn’t want to spit on you.” Then he spat on the Cuckold. “I never heard, I never dreamed of anybody so low that he would steal from a man in prison a Holy Bible given to him by his loving cousin.”

“I didn’t want your Goddamned Bible and you know
it,” roared the Cuckold. He had much more volume to his voice than Chicken and pitched it at a lower register. “You never looked at your Bible. There was about an inch of dust on it. For years I heard you talking about how the last thing in the world you needed was a Bible. For years I’ve been hearing you bad-mouth your cousin Henry for sending you a Bible. Everybody in the block is tired of hearing you talk about Henry and the Bible. All I wanted was the leather to make wrist-watch straps. I wasn’t going to hurt the Bible. I was going to return the Bible to you without the leather was all. If you wanted to read the Bible instead of complaining about how it wasn’t a can of soup, you would have found the Bible just as readable when I returned it.”

“It stinks,” muttered Chicken. He was holding the Bible to his nose and making loud noises of inhalation. “He stuck my Bible up under his balls. Now it stinks. The Holy Scripture stinks of his balls. Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Deuteronomy stink.”

“Shut up, shut up,” said Tiny. “The next time any of you opens your mouth you get a day’s cell lock.”

“But,” said Chicken.

“There’s one,” said Tiny.

“Religious hypocrite,” said the Cuckold.

“Two,” said Tiny wearily.

Chicken clapped the Bible over his heart as some men put their hats over their hearts when the flag is passing by. He raised his face into the light of that late August afternoon. Tennis was crying. “Honestly I don’t remember. If I could remember I’d tell you. If I’d known who it was I’d kill him.”

It was a long time before the doctor gave up on
Tennis and wrote him a prescription. Then one by one the others exhibited themselves and were checked off the roster. Farragut felt hungry, and glancing at his watch, saw how late it had gotten. It was an hour past chow. Tiny and the doctor were arguing about something on the roster. Tiny had locked the cells after the Cuckold grabbed the Bible and they stood naked, waiting to get back into their cells and into their clothes.

The light in the prison, that late in the day, reminded Farragut of some forest he had skied through on a winter afternoon. The perfect diagonal of the light was cut by bars as trees would cut the light in some wood, and the largeness and mysteriousness of the place was like the largeness of some forest—some tapestry of knights and unicorns—where a succinct message was promised but where nothing was spoken but the vastness. The slanting and broken light, swimming with dust, was also the dolorous light of churches where a bereft woman with a hidden face stood grieving. But in his darling snowy forest there would be an everlasting newness in the air, and here there was nothing but the bestial goat smell of old Farragut and the gall of having been gulled. They had been gulled. They had gulled themselves. The word from The Wall—and it was known to most of them—had promised them the thrust, the strength of change, and this had been sapped by quarrels about clap and prayerbooks and wrist-watch straps.

Farragut felt impotent. No girl, no ass, no mouth could get him up, but he felt no gratitude for this cessation of his horniness. The last light of that sweaty
day was whitish, the white afterglow you see in the windows of Tuscan paintings, an ending light but one that seems to bring the optical nerve, the powers of discernment, to a climax. Naked, utterly unbeautiful, malodorous and humiliated by a clown in a dirty suit and a dirty hat, they seemed to Farragut, in this climax of the light, to be criminals. None of the cruelties of their early lives—hunger, thirst and beatings—could account for their brutality, their self-destructive thefts and their consuming and perverse addictions. They were souls who could not be redeemed, and while penance was a clumsy and a cruel answer, it was some measure of the mysteriousness of their fall. In the white light they seemed to Farragut to be fallen men.

They dressed. It was dark. Chicken began to scream, “Chow. Chow. Chow.” Most of the others joined in on the chant. “No chow,” said Tiny. “Kitchen’s closed for repairs.” “Three squares a day is our constitutional right,” screamed Chicken. “We’ll get a writ of habeas corpus. We’ll get twenty writs….” Then he began to shout: “TV. TV. TV.” Almost everyone joined in on this. “TV’s broken,” said Tiny. This lie increased the loudness of the chanting and Farragut, weary with hunger and everything else, found himself sinking, with no resistance at all, into a torpor that was the worst of his positions of retreat. Down he seemed to go, his shoulders rounded and his neck bent, down into a lewd and putrescent nothingness. He breathed, but that seemed to be all he did. The din of the shouting only made his torpor more desirable, the noises worked on him like the blessing of some destructive drug, and he
saw his brain cells like the cells of a honeycomb being destroyed by an alien solvent. Then Chicken set fire to his mattress and began to blow on the small flames and ask men to pass him paper to keep the fire going. Farragut barely heard him. They passed up toilet paper, hoarded announcements and letters from home. Chicken blew so hard on the flames that he blew out all his teeth—uppers and lowers. When he got these back into place he began to yell—Farragut barely heard him—“Set fire to your mattress, burn the fucking place down, watch the flames leap, see them coughing to death, see the flames shoot up through the roof, see them burning, see them burning and crying.” Farragut heard this remotely, but he distinctly heard Tiny pick up the phone and ask: “Red Alert.” Then Tiny shouted: “Well, what the hell did you tell me you got a Red Alert for when you ain’t got no Red Alert. Well, all right—I got them all yelling and throwing stuff around and setting fire to their mattresses, so why ain’t my cellblock just as dangerous as C and B? Just because I ain’t got no millionaires and governors in here don’t mean that my cellblock ain’t as dangerous as some other cellblock. I got all the boobs in here and it’s like a dynamite cap. I tell you they’re burning their mattresses. Well, don’t tell me you got this Red Alert when you’re drinking whiskey in the squad room. All right, you’re scared. So am I. I’m human. I could use a drink. Well, all right, then, but step on it.”