Falconer+-+John+Cheever

Falconer 126
depressing and he smelled worse. So did Bumpo and Tennis. A
reproduction of the ditto he had typed was stuck between the bars.
LOUISA PIERCE SPINGARN, IN MEMORY OF HER BELOVED SON
PETER…The chow bell rang at seven. Goldfarb was on duty.
“Single file,” he shouted, “single file and ten paces between youse.
Single file.” They lined up at the door and when it opened,
Goldfarb parceled them out at ten paces, all excepting the Stone,
who had left his glass ear in the cell and couldn’t be made to
understand. Goldfarb shouted at him, roared at him, and raised
ten fingers in the air, but the Stone only smiled and hunkered after
the ass of Ransome, who was ahead. He wasn’t going to be left
alone, not for a minute. Goldfarb let him go. In the tunnel to the
mess hall Farragut saw the precautions he had typed. ALL
PERSONNEL IS TO SHOW TOP STRENGTH IN ALL GATHERINGS.
All along the tunnel at regular intervals were guards in waterproofs
with truncheons and gas cans. The few faces that Farragut saw
seemed more haggard than the prisoners’. In the mess hall a tape
was playing: “EAT STANDING UP IN YOUR PLACE IN LINE. EAT
STANDING UP IN YOUR PLACE IN LINE. NO TALKING….”
Breakfast was tea, last night’s meat scraps and a hard-boiled egg.
“Coffee they don’t got,” a KP said. “They got nothing. Last night’s
delivery man leaked the news. They still got twenty-eight hostages
by the balls. Amnesty they want. Pass it along. I been dishing out
this shit for twelve hours. My feet are living but the rest of me’s
dead.” Farragut wolfed his meat and his egg, dropped his tray and
spoon into the dirty water and went back to his block with his
neighbors. Clang. “What did the cashier say to the cash register?”
said Bumpo.
“I don’t know.”
“I count on you, said the cashier to the cash register.”
Farragut hurled himself onto his bunk and gave an impersonation
of a man tormented by confinement, racked with stomach cramps
and sexual backfires. He tore at his scalp with his nails, scratched