Falconer+-+John+Cheever

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Falconer 136 “If you’re such a great magician, why can’t 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
Falconer 137 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 in line 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 of 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
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FALCONER JOHN CHEEVER
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Falconer 3 Copyright Falconer Copyr
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Falconer 5 eForeword During a writi
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Falconer 7 Falconer
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Falconer 9 but was manacled to nine
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Falconer 11 the guard. But all of t
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Falconer 13 They went up a sloping
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Falconer 15 Farragut’s first visi
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Falconer 17 “What,” she asked,
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Falconer 19 with his, deeply thrill
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Falconer 21 across his face. Her br
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Falconer 23 gamy; he thought that p
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Falconer 25 “Shall we change the
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Falconer 27 She had begun to have t
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Falconer 29 doing in Falconer. It w
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Falconer 31 class. And willingness,
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Falconer 33 churches, at some times
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Falconer 35 convicts, and there wer
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Falconer 37 It was half and half. H
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Falconer 39 outstripped the human s
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Falconer 41 planted with costly fir
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Falconer 43 avoid excitement. It se
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Falconer 45 water, wiped his ass on
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Falconer 47 Liechtenstein. His back
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Falconer 49 against the image of th
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Falconer 51 will not go to the club
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Falconer 53 rise. This clowning was
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Falconer 55 twice a week. There’s
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Falconer 57 at him,” said Farragu
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Falconer 59 much a citizen. As a ta
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Falconer 61 find a church. In the p
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Falconer 63 shoulder—and I lay on
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Falconer 65 “You are not the most
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Falconer 67 took the funicular up,
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Falconer 69 Farragut was still limp
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Falconer 71 fall, Farragut stood at
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Falconer 73 forty-five-thousand-dol
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Falconer 75 won’t stuff their wiv
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Falconer 77 Now watch me smile. See
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Falconer 79 you outside the infirma
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Falconer 81 University. He would be
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Falconer 83 mileage he could expect
Page 87 and 88: Falconer 85 once, when he got off t
Page 89 and 90: Falconer 87 ice cream and coffee. A
Page 91 and 92: Falconer 89 experience of alienatio
Page 93 and 94: Falconer 91 one another doesn’t g
Page 95 and 96: Falconer 93 money was. They took Ca
Page 97 and 98: Falconer 95 anything but did I know
Page 99 and 100: Falconer 97 remembered the panic he
Page 101 and 102: Falconer 99 As the day of the cardi
Page 103 and 104: Falconer 101 Farragut got what he h
Page 105 and 106: Falconer 103 target and out the doo
Page 107 and 108: Falconer 105 what we might compare
Page 109 and 110: Falconer 107 He took off his robe a
Page 111 and 112: Falconer 109 It was an August day;
Page 113 and 114: Falconer 111 daughter of Ling Chou
Page 115 and 116: Falconer 113 thought, immeasurable,
Page 117 and 118: Falconer 115 “I don’t know the
Page 119 and 120: Falconer 117 PETER, HAS ARRANGED FO
Page 121 and 122: Falconer 119 squares and put this i
Page 123 and 124: Falconer 121 only get into the show
Page 125 and 126: Falconer 123 churches where a beref
Page 127 and 128: Falconer 125 another and the thin,
Page 129 and 130: Falconer 127 his thighs and his che
Page 131 and 132: Falconer 129 “No, no, no,” said
Page 133 and 134: Falconer 131 cashmere sweaters, sil
Page 135 and 136: Falconer 133 flames and a rush of s
Page 137: Falconer 135 about your willingness
Page 141 and 142: Falconer 139 Wall, or the Amana Pri
Page 143 and 144: Falconer 141 with palms. She rams t
Page 145 and 146: Falconer 143 I ain’t going to sin
Page 147 and 148: Falconer 145 Farragut had stolen an
Page 149 and 150: Falconer 147 worse and then she sug
Page 151 and 152: Falconer 149 believe it. Like there
Page 153 and 154: Falconer 151 intended for his last
Page 155 and 156: Falconer 153 from the back. They we
Page 157 and 158: Falconer 155 the room after a page
Page 159 and 160: Falconer 157 there’s your piano a
Page 161 and 162: Falconer 159 before I’ll be mista
Page 163 and 164: Falconer 161 got no fear, no fear a
Page 165 and 166: Falconer 163 his grave was no more
Page 167 and 168: Falconer 165 of some stair. The bla
Page 169 and 170: Falconer 167 At a distant corner un
Page 171 and 172: Falconer 169 Farragut put his arms
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