Falconer+-+John+Cheever

Falconer 161
got no fear, no fear at all. I got class. I mean like right now, right
now if they were going to take me out before a firing squad I’d go
out laughing—I don’t mean bitter laughing or broken-hearted
laughing, I mean real laughing. I’d go out there and I’d dance my
soft-shoe and with luck I’d have a good hard-on and then when
they got the command to fire I’d throw my arms out so as not to
waste any of their ammunition, so as to get the full benefit of their
banging, and then I’d go down a very happy man because I’m
intensely interested in what’s going to happen next, I’m very
interested in what’s going to happen next.”
There was still a little light in the window. Dance music came from
Ransome’s radio and at the end of the corridor on TV he could see
a group of people having trouble. An old man was intoxicated
with the past. A young man was intoxicated with the future. There
was a young woman who had trouble with her lovers and an old
woman who could be seen hiding gin bottles in hatboxes,
refrigerators and bureau drawers. Out of the window beyond their
heads and shoulders Farragut could see waves breaking on a white
beach and the streets of a village and the trees of a forest, but why
did they all stay in one room, quarreling, when they could walk to
the store or eat a picnic in the woods or go for a swim in the sea?
They were free to do all of this. Why did they stay indoors? Why
didn’t they hear the sea calling to them as Farragut heard it calling,
imagined the clearness of the brine as it fanned out over the
beautiful pebbles? Chicken Number Two snored loudly or his
breathing was guttural or perhaps this was the death rattle.
The instant seemed conspiratorial in its intensity. Farragut felt
pursued but easily ahead of his pursuers. Cunning was needed;
cunning he seemed to possess, that and tenderness. He went to the
chair beside Chicken Number Two’s bed and took the dying man’s
warm hand in his. He seemed to draw from Chicken Number
Two’s presence a deep sense of freeness; he seemed to take
something that Chicken Number Two was lovingly giving to him.
He felt some discomfort in the right cheek of his buttocks, and