Falconer+-+John+Cheever

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Falconer 32 stranger and I felt very guilty so when I come home and took off my pants I felt I had to confess to her that I had been impure and so I did. So then she kissed me and said it didn’t matter and she was glad I had confessed because she had a confession to make herself. She said that on the day I left she got a cab to go to the other side of town to see her sister and this cabdriver had such sparkly black eyes that they seemed to stick into her and so she scored with the cabdriver when he got off duty at ten. And the next day she went to Melcher’s to buy some cat food and there was a traffic pileup to which she was a witness and when this handsome state trooper was questioning her he asked if he could continue the questioning at home and so she scored with him. So then that night, that very night, an old high school chum showed up and she scored, wet-decks, with him. Then the next morning, the very next morning, when she was getting gas at Harry’s she got the hots for this new gas pumper and he comes over to the house on his lunch hour. So at about that time I got back into my pants and went out of the house and down to the bar on the corner and stayed there for about two hours but at the end of two hours I was back in bed with her.” “You were going to give me a piece of ham,” said Farragut. “Oh, yes,” said the Cuckold. He was both stingy and greedy, and Farragut got only a thin, small slice of ham. Chicken bargained with the Cuckold and wouldn’t go into his cell until he had been promised a set quantity of food. Farragut queued up for supper between Bumpo and Tennis that night. They had rice, franks, bread, oleomargarine and half a canned peach. He palmed three slices of bread for his cat and jogged up to cellblock F. Jogging gave him the illusion of freedom. Tiny was sitting down to his supper of outside food at his desk at the end of the block. He had on his plate a nice London broil, three baked potatoes, a can of peas and on another plate a whole store cake. Farragut sighed loudly when he smelled the meat. Food was a recently revealed truth in his life. He had reasoned that the Holy Eucharist was nutritious if you got enough of it. In some
Falconer 33 churches, at some times, they had baked the bread—hot, fragrant and crusty—in the chancel. Eat this in memory of me. Food had something to do with his beginnings as a Christian and a man. To cut short a breast-feeding, he had read somewhere, was traumatic and from what he remembered of his mother she might have yanked her breast out of his mouth in order not to be late for her bridge game; but this was coming close to self-pity and he had tried to leach self-pity out of his emotional spectrum. Food was food, hunger was hunger and his half-empty belly and the perfume of roast meat established a rapport that it would take the devil to cut in two. “Eat good,” he said to Tiny. A telephone was ringing in another room. The TV was on and the majority had picked, through a rigged ballot, some game show. The irony of TV, played out against any form of life or death, was superficial and fortuitous. So as you lay dying, as you stood at the barred window watching the empty square, you heard the voice of a man, a half-man, the sort of person you wouldn’t have spoken to at school or college, the victim of a bad barber, tailor and makeup artist, exclaim: “We present with pleasure to Mrs. Charles Alcorn, of 11,235 275th Boulevard, the four-door cathedral-size refrigerator containing two hundred pounds of prime beef and enough staples to feed a family of six for two months. This includes pet food. Don’t you cry, Mrs. Alcorn—oh, darling, don’t you cry, don’t you cry…. And to the other contestants a complete kit of the sponsor’s product.” The time for banal irony, the voice-over, he thought, is long gone. Give me the chords, the deep rivers, the unchanging profundity of nostalgia, love and death. Tiny had begun to roar. He was usually a reasonable man, but now his voice was high, shattering, crazy. “You rat-fucking, cock-sucking, asstonguing, sneaky, stinking fleabag.” Obscenities recalled for Farragut the long-ago war with Germany and Japan. “In a fucking line-rifle company,” he or anyone else might have said, “you get the fucking, malfunctioning M-1’s,
Page 3 and 4: FALCONER JOHN CHEEVER
Page 5 and 6: Falconer 3 Copyright Falconer Copyr
Page 7 and 8: Falconer 5 eForeword During a writi
Page 9 and 10: Falconer 7 Falconer
Page 11 and 12: Falconer 9 but was manacled to nine
Page 13 and 14: Falconer 11 the guard. But all of t
Page 15 and 16: Falconer 13 They went up a sloping
Page 17 and 18: Falconer 15 Farragut’s first visi
Page 19 and 20: Falconer 17 “What,” she asked,
Page 21 and 22: Falconer 19 with his, deeply thrill
Page 23 and 24: Falconer 21 across his face. Her br
Page 25 and 26: Falconer 23 gamy; he thought that p
Page 27 and 28: Falconer 25 “Shall we change the
Page 29 and 30: Falconer 27 She had begun to have t
Page 31 and 32: Falconer 29 doing in Falconer. It w
Page 33: Falconer 31 class. And willingness,
Page 37 and 38: Falconer 35 convicts, and there wer
Page 39 and 40: Falconer 37 It was half and half. H
Page 41 and 42: Falconer 39 outstripped the human s
Page 43 and 44: Falconer 41 planted with costly fir
Page 45 and 46: Falconer 43 avoid excitement. It se
Page 47 and 48: Falconer 45 water, wiped his ass on
Page 49 and 50: Falconer 47 Liechtenstein. His back
Page 51 and 52: Falconer 49 against the image of th
Page 53 and 54: Falconer 51 will not go to the club
Page 55 and 56: Falconer 53 rise. This clowning was
Page 57 and 58: Falconer 55 twice a week. There’s
Page 59 and 60: Falconer 57 at him,” said Farragu
Page 61 and 62: Falconer 59 much a citizen. As a ta
Page 63 and 64: Falconer 61 find a church. In the p
Page 65 and 66: Falconer 63 shoulder—and I lay on
Page 67 and 68: Falconer 65 “You are not the most
Page 69 and 70: Falconer 67 took the funicular up,
Page 71 and 72: Falconer 69 Farragut was still limp
Page 73 and 74: Falconer 71 fall, Farragut stood at
Page 75 and 76: Falconer 73 forty-five-thousand-dol
Page 77 and 78: Falconer 75 won’t stuff their wiv
Page 79 and 80: Falconer 77 Now watch me smile. See
Page 81 and 82: Falconer 79 you outside the infirma
Page 83 and 84: Falconer 81 University. He would be
Page 85 and 86:
Falconer 83 mileage he could expect
Page 87 and 88:
Falconer 85 once, when he got off t
Page 89 and 90:
Falconer 87 ice cream and coffee. A
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Falconer 89 experience of alienatio
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Falconer 91 one another doesn’t g
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Falconer 93 money was. They took Ca
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Falconer 95 anything but did I know
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Falconer 97 remembered the panic he
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Falconer 99 As the day of the cardi
Page 103 and 104:
Falconer 101 Farragut got what he h
Page 105 and 106:
Falconer 103 target and out the doo
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Falconer 105 what we might compare
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Falconer 107 He took off his robe a
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Falconer 109 It was an August day;
Page 113 and 114:
Falconer 111 daughter of Ling Chou
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Falconer 113 thought, immeasurable,
Page 117 and 118:
Falconer 115 “I don’t know the
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Falconer 117 PETER, HAS ARRANGED FO
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Falconer 119 squares and put this i
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Falconer 121 only get into the show
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Falconer 123 churches where a beref
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Falconer 125 another and the thin,
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Falconer 127 his thighs and his che
Page 131 and 132:
Falconer 129 “No, no, no,” said
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Falconer 131 cashmere sweaters, sil
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Falconer 133 flames and a rush of s
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Falconer 135 about your willingness
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Falconer 137 was just big enough to
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Falconer 139 Wall, or the Amana Pri
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Falconer 141 with palms. She rams t
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Falconer 143 I ain’t going to sin
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Falconer 145 Farragut had stolen an
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Falconer 147 worse and then she sug
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Falconer 149 believe it. Like there
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Falconer 151 intended for his last
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Falconer 153 from the back. They we
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Falconer 155 the room after a page
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Falconer 157 there’s your piano a
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Falconer 159 before I’ll be mista
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Falconer 161 got no fear, no fear a
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Falconer 163 his grave was no more
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Falconer 165 of some stair. The bla
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Falconer 167 At a distant corner un
Page 171 and 172:
Falconer 169 Farragut put his arms
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