Falconer+-+John+Cheever

Falconer 135
about your willingness to give your diamond to some starving
child or some lonely crone, by-passed by the thoughtless world.
Now a much greater opportunity is about to be placed in your
hands. I possess the rudiments of a radio—an aerial, a ground and
a copper-wire tuner. All I need is an earphone and a diode crystal.
The Stone has one and you have the other. With this, with your
diamond, the Gordian knot of communications that threatens the
Department of Correction and the government itself can be cut.
They have twenty-eight hostages by the balls. A single mistake on
the part of our brothers will have us cut down by the hundreds. A
crucial mistake on the part of the Department of Correction may
detonate riots in every prison in this nation and perhaps the
world. We are millions, Bumpo, we are millions, and if our riots
are triumphant we can rule the world, although you and I,
Bumpo, know that we lack the brains for this. So, lacking the
brainpower, the best we can hope for is a truce, and it all depends
on your rock.”
“Take your little prick and go home,” said Bumpo softly.
“Bumpo, Bumpo, dear Bumpo, God gave you your diamond and
God means you should give it to me. It is the balance, Bumpo,
upon which the lives of millions depend. The radio was invented
by Guglielmo Marconi in 1895. It was the beautiful discovery of
that fact that electrified airwaves, containing sound, can, at a
distance, be reconverted into intelligible sound. With the help of
your diamond, Bumpo, we can learn exactly how much they’re
twisting those twenty-eight balls at The Wall.”
“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.”