Falconer+-+John+Cheever

Falconer 59
much a citizen. As a taxpayer in the fifty percent bracket I have
made a substantial contribution to the construction and
maintenance of the walls that confine me. I have paid for the
clothes I wear and the food I eat. I am a much more representative
elected member of society than you. There are, in your career,
broad traces of expedience, evasion, corruption and
improvisation. The elective office that I hold is pure.
“We come, of course, from different classes. If intellectual and
social legacies were revered in this country I would not consider
addressing you, but we are dealing with a Democracy. I have never
had the pleasure of your hospitality although I have twice been a
guest at the White House as a delegate to conferences on higher
education. I think the White House palatial. My quarters here are
bare, seven by ten and dominated by a toilet that flushes
capriciously anywhere from ten to forty times a day. It is easy for
me to bear the sound of rushing water because I have heard the
geysers in Yellowstone National Park, the fountains of Rome, New
York City and especially Indianapolis.
“Sometime in April, twelve years ago, I was diagnosed as a chronic
drug addict by Drs. Lemuel Brown, Rodney Coburn and Henry
Mills. These men were graduates of Cornell, the Albany Medical
School and Harvard University, respectively. Their position as
healers was established by the state and the federal governments
and the organizations of their colleagues. Surely, when they spoke,
their expressed medical opinion was the voice of the
commonwealth. On Thursday, the eighteenth of July, this
unassailable opinion was contravened by Deputy Warden
Chisholm. I have checked on Chisholm’s background. Chisholm
dropped out of high school in his junior year, bought the answers
to a civil service test for correctional employees for twelve dollars
and was given a position by the Department of Correction with
monarchal dominion over my constitutional rights. At 9 A.M. on
the morning of the eighteenth, Chisholm capriciously chose to
overthrow the laws of the state, the federal government and the