Falconer+-+John+Cheever

Falconer 149
believe it. Like there was this guy claimed he could play the
national anthem on his toenails—all day long he did this—and
then they gave him this experimental shot. Well, first he tore off
part of one of his ears—I forget which side—and then stuck his
fingers into his eyes and blinded himself. Tiny, isn’t that true, isn’t
that true, Tiny, about the yellowish-green stuff they give the
crazies?”
“Tiny ain’t here,” said Walton. “He don’t come in until Saturday
and I got no patience with any of you. I got a wife and a baby at
home and they need this vaccine but I can’t get none for them.
You get medicine that millionaires can’t buy and all you do is
complain.”
“Oh, what the hell,” said Chicken. “I’ll take anything they give me
it’s free, but I ain’t no guinea pig.”
They got their vaccine on Saturday afternoon—not at the
infirmary but in the supply room from the windows marked
EXTRA LARGE, LARGE, MEDIUM and SMALL. Fifteen or twenty
men from that lot whose religious beliefs forbade them to take
medicine were corralled by the used-clothes bin and Farragut
asked himself if he possessed any religious beliefs for which he
would endure solitary. There was his spiritual and his chemical
dependence upon drugs, for which he would likely have killed a
man. He realized then and only then that he had been given no
methadone during the three days of the revolution and the three
days of the plague. He did not understand at all. One of the
orderlies giving the shots was the man who had given him
methadone. When Farragut rolled up his sleeve and presented his
arm for the needle, he asked, “Why haven’t I been getting my
methadone? It’s against the law. It says right in my sentence that
I’m entitled to methadone.” “You’re a dumb sonofabitch,” said
the orderly kindly. “Some of us have been wondering when you’d
notice. You’ve been on placebos for nearly a month. You’re clean,
my friend, you’re clean.” He gave Farragut the needle and he