Falconer+-+John+Cheever

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Falconer 140 eight years old and I still got my wisdom teeth. This one on the left is just like a clock. It starts aching at around nine at night and stops at dawn. Dawn tomorrow is when I’ll know whether the pain is over, whether or not the tooth has to come out. I’ll know at daybreak. That’s about six twenty-eight.” “Thank you, Miss America,” said Ransome. Farragut stumbled back to his cell, got into bed and slept. He had a dream that was unlike the day. His dream was in the most vivid colors, those aniline dyes that the eye receives only after this spectrum has been extracted by a camera. Farragut is on a cruise ship, experiencing a familiar mixture of freedom, boredom and sunburn. He swims in the pool, drinks with the international crowd in the bar at noon, gets laid during the siesta, plays deck tennis, paddle tennis, and is in and out of the pool and back in the bar at four. He is all limber, ballsy and turning a golden hue that will be wasted in the dark bars and clubs where he will lunch on his return. So he is idle and a little uneasy with his idleness when, one afternoon at the end of the siesta, a schooner is seen coming up from the port side. The schooner flies some flags, but he does not understand these. He does notice that the cruiser has reduced her speed. The wave at the bow grows smaller and smaller and then there is none and the schooner sails alongside the towering ship. The schooner has come for him. He goes below, climbs down a rope ladder onto her deck and as they sail away he waves goodbye to his friends on the cruise—men, women and the members of the ship’s orchestra. He does not know who owns the schooner and who greets him there. He remembers nothing except that he stands on her deck and watches the cruise ship regain speed. She is a big old-fashioned cruiser, named for a queen, white as a bride, with three canted stacks and a little gold lace, like a toy boat, at her bow. She goes crazily off course, veers to port and heads at full tilt for a nearby island that looks like one of the Atlantic islands, only
Falconer 141 with palms. She rams the beach, heels to starboard and bursts into flame, and while he sails away he can see, over his shoulder, the pyre and the enormous column of smoke. The instant he woke, the brightness of the dream’s colors were quenched by the grayness of Falconer. Farragut woke. He swung his head from his watch to the window. It was six twenty-eight. Rain was falling into that part of the world and he guessed into The Wall. It was Tiny who had waked him. “Reach for a Lucky instead of a sweet,” said Tiny. “Chesterfields, they satisfy. I’d walk a mile for a Camel.” He had five cigarettes in his hand. Farragut took two. They were loosely rolled and were, he guessed, cannabis. He looked lovingly at Tiny, but any fondness or love he felt for the guard fell way short of Tiny’s haggardness. His eyes were red. The lines from his nostrils past his mouth were like the ruts in a dirt road and there was no life or responsiveness left in his countenance. He stumbled down the block, saying, “Reach for a Lucky instead of a sweet. I’d walk a mile for a Camel.” The old cigarette mottoes were older than either of them. Everyone but the Stone knew what they had and what to do and Ransome helped the Stone. “Suck on it and hold it in your lungs.” Farragut lighted his first, sucked on the smoke, held it in his lungs and felt the true, the precious amnesty of the drug spread through his frame. “Wow,” he said. “Hot shit,” said Chicken. There was groaning all over the place. Tiny bumped into the cell edge and bumped his arm. “There’s more where that came from,” he said. He fell into his steel chair, buried his head in his arms and began to snore. The amnesty on which Farragut exhaled formed a cloud—a gray cloud like the clouds that could begin to be seen outside his window—and raised him nicely off his earthbound cot, raised him above all earthly things. The noise of the rain seemed to be a gentleness—something his bellicose mother, pumping gas in her opera cloak, had missed. Then he heard the squeek-geek-growl of the Stone’s glass ear and some sleepy urging from Ransome.
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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
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Falconer 85 once, when he got off t
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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 and 138: Falconer 135 about your willingness
Page 139 and 140: Falconer 137 was just big enough to
Page 141: Falconer 139 Wall, or the Amana Pri
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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