Falconer+-+John+Cheever

Falconer 150
shook a little at this extraneous and unnatural pain and imagined
the vaccine coursing through his blood. “It can’t be true,” said
Farragut, “it can’t be true.” “Count the days,” said the orderly,
“just count the days. Move along.” Farragut was stunned. He went
over to the door, where Chicken was waiting. Farragut’s singular
smallness of mind was illustrated by the fact that he resented that
the Department of Correction had been successful where the three
blue-ribbon drug cures he had taken had failed. The Department
of Correction could not be right. He could not congratulate
himself on having mastered his addiction, since he had not been
aware of it. Then an image of his family, his hated origins, loomed
up in his mind. Had that antic cast—that old man in his catboat,
that woman pumping gas in her opera cloak, his pious brother—
had they conveyed to him some pure, crude and lasting sense of
perseverance? “I made a big decision,” said Chicken, hooking his
arm in Farragut’s. “I made a very big decision. I’m going to sell my
gitfiddle.” Farragut felt only the insignificance of Chicken’s
decision in the light of what he had just been told; that, and the
fact that Chicken’s hold on his arm seemed desperate. Chicken
seemed truly feeble and old. Farragut could not tell him that he
was clean. “Why are you selling your gitfiddle, Chicken?” he asked.
“Why are you going to do a thing like that?” “Three guesses,” said
Chicken. Farragut had to put an arm around him to get him up
the slope of the tunnel and into the block.
It was very quiet. Farragut’s fever reminded him of the bliss of
drugs, something he seemed to have forsworn. He was torpid.
Then a strange thing happened. He saw, at the open door of his
cell, a young man with summery hair and immaculate clericals,
holding a little tray with a silver chalice and ciborium. “I’ve come
to celebrate the Holy Eucharist,” he said. Farragut got out of bed.
The stranger came into the cell. He had a very cleanly smell,
Farragut noticed as he approached him and asked, “Shall I kneel?”
“Yes, please,” said the priest. Farragut knelt on the worn concrete,
that surface of some old highway. The thought that these might be