Falconer+-+John+Cheever

Falconer 144
So they were naked again or nearly so, waiting in line to get new
DC issue, choosing their places in front of signs that said EXTRA
LARGE, LARGE, MEDIUM and SMALL, having stripped themselves
of their prison grays and tossed these into a bin. The new issue was
a noncommittal green, scarcely, thought Farragut, a verdant green,
scarcely the green of Trinity and the long summer months, but a
shade up from the gray of the living dead. It was only Farragut
who sang a bar of “Greensleeves” and only the Cuckold who
smiled. Considering the solemnity of this change of color,
skepticism and sarcasm would have seemed to them all trifling and
contemptible, for it was for this light-greenness that the men of
Amana had died or had lain, vomiting and naked, for hours in the
mud. That was a fact. After the revolution, discipline was less
rigorous and their mail was not scrutinized, but their labor was
still worth half a package of cigarettes a day and this change of
uniform was the biggest thing to have been accomplished by the
riot at The Wall. None of them would be so stupid as to say “Our
brothers died for this,” and almost none of them were so stupid as
not to guess at the incalculable avarice involved in changing the
dress of the prison population at a universal cost and for the profit
of a handful of men who could spend a longer time snorkeling in
the Lesser Antilles or getting blown on yachts or whatever they
liked. There was a marked solemnity to this change of dress.
The change of dress was part of an atmosphere of amnesty that
had settled over Falconer after the rebellion at The Wall had been
crushed. Marshack had hung up his plants again with the wire that