Falconer+-+John+Cheever

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.