by John Cheever
“All the time he was talking I listened very carefully to him, expecting him to sound like a fairy, but he never did, not that I could hear. I have this very strong prejudice against fairies. I’ve always thought they were silly and feeble-minded, but he talked like anybody else. I was really very interested in what he had to say because he seemed to me very gentle and affectionate and even very pure. Lying in bed with me that night he seemed to me about the purest person I have ever known because he didn’t have any conscience at all, I guess I mean he didn’t have any prefabricated conscience. He just moved through it all like a swimmer through pure water. So then he said he was sleepy and tired and I said I was sleepy and tired and he said he was sorry he robbed me of the money but he hoped he’d made it up to me and I said he had and then he said that he knew I had some cash in my shoe but that he wasn’t going to steal it and that I shouldn’t worry and so we fell asleep. It was a nice sleep and when we woke in the morning I made some coffee and we joked and shaved and dressed and there was all the money in my shoe and I said I was late and he said he was late too and I said late for what and he said he had a client waiting in room 273 and then he asked did I mind and I said no, I guessed I didn’t mind, and then he said could we meet at around half-past five and I said sure.
“So he went his way and I went mine and I made five sales that day and I thought that he wasn’t only pure, he was lucky, and I felt very happy coming back to the motel and I took a shower and had a couple of drinks. There was no sign of him at half-past five and no sign of him at half-past six or seven and I guessed he’d found a customer who didn’t keep his money in his shoe and I missed him, but then sometime after seven the phone rang and I slid a base to get it, thinking it was Michael, but it was the police. They asked if I knew him and I said sure I knew him, because I did. So then they asked could I come down to the county courthouse and I asked what for and they said they’d tell me when I got there so I said I would be there. I asked the man in the lobby how to get to the county courthouse and he told me and then I drove there. I thought perhaps he’d been picked up on some charge like vagrancy and needed bail and I was willing, I was willing and eager to bail him out. So when I spoke to the lieutenant who called me he was nice enough but also sad and he said how well did I know Michael and I said I’d met him at the Chinese restaurant and had some drinks with him. He said they weren’t charging me with anything but did I know him well enough to identify him and I said of course, thinking that he might be in some line-up although I had already begun to sense that it would be something more serious and grave, as it was. I followed him down some stairs and I could tell by the stink where we were going and there were all these big drawers like a walk-in filing cabinet and he pulled one out and there was Michael, very dead, of course. The lieutenant said they got him with a knife in the back, twenty-two times, and the cop, the lieutenant, said he was very big in drugs, very active, and I guess somebody really hated him. They must have gone on knifing him long after he was dead. So then the lieutenant and I shook hands and I think he gave me a searching look to see if I was an addict or a queer and then he gave me a broad smile of relief which meant that he didn’t think I was either although I could have made this all up. I went back to the motel and had about seventeen more drinks and cried myself to sleep.”
It was not that night but sometime later that the Cuckold told Farragut about the Valley. The Valley was a long room off the tunnel to the left of the mess hall. Along one wall was a cast-iron trough of a urinal. The light in the room was very dim. The wall above the urinal was white tiling with a very limited power of reflection. You could make out the height and the complexion of the men on your left and your right and that was about all. The Valley was where you went after chow to fuck yourself. Almost no one but killjoys strayed into the dungeon for a simple piss. There were ground rules. You could touch the other man’s hips and shoulders, but nothing else. The trough accommodated twenty men and twenty men stood there, soft, hard or halfway in either direction, fucking themselves. If you finished and wanted to come again you went to the end of the line. There were the usual jokes. How many times, Charlie? Five coming up, but my feet are getting sore.
Considering the fact that the cock is the most critical link in our chain of survival, the variety of shapes, colors, sizes, characteristics, dispositions and responses found in this rudimentary tool are much greater than those shown by any other organ of the body. They were black, white, red, yellow, lavender, brown, warty, wrinkled, comely and silken, and they seemed, like any crowd of men on a street at closing time, to represent youth, age, victory, disaster, laughter and tears. There were the frenzied and compulsive pumpers, the long-timers who caressed themselves for half an hour, there were the groaners and the ones who sighed, and most of the men, when their trigger was pulled and the fusillade began, would shake, buck, catch their breath and make weeping sounds, sounds of grief, of joy, and sometimes death rattles. There was some rightness in having the images of the lovers around them opaque. They were universal, they were phantoms, and any skin sores, or signs of cruelty, ugliness, stupidity or beauty, could not be seen. Farragut went here regularly after Jody was gone.
When Farragut arced or pumped his rocks into the trough he endured no true sadness—mostly some slight disenchantment at having spilled his energy onto iron. Walking away from the trough, he felt that he had missed the train, the plane, the boat. He had missed it. He experienced some marked physical relief or improvement: the shots cleared his brain. Shame and remorse had nothing to do with what he felt, walking away from the trough. What he felt, what he saw, was the utter poverty of erotic reasonableness. That was how he missed the target and the target was the mysteriousness of the bonded spirit and the flesh. He knew it well. Fitness and beauty had a rim. Fitness and beauty had a dimension, had a floor, even as the oceans have a floor, and he had committed a trespass. It was not unforgivable—a venal trespass—but he was reproached by the majesty of the realm. It was majestic; even in prison he knew the world to be majestic. He had taken a pebble out of his shoe in the middle of mass. He remembered the panic he had experienced as a boy when he found his trousers, his hands and his shirttails soaked with crystallizing gism. He had learned from the Boy Scout Handbook that his prick would grow as long and thin as a shoelace, and that the juice that had poured out of his crack was the cream of his brain power. This miserable wetness proved that he would fail his College Board exams and have to attend a broken-down agricultural college somewhere in the Middle West….
Then Marcia returned in her limitless beauty, smelling of everything provocative. She did not kiss him, nor did he try to cover her hand with his. “Hello, Zeke,” she said. “I have a letter here from Pete.”
“How is he?”
“He seems very well. He’s either away at school or camp and I don’t see anything of him. His advisers tell me that he is friendly and intelligent.”
“Can he come to see me?”
“They think not, not at this time of his life. Every psychiatrist and counselor I’ve talked with, and I’ve been very conscientious about this, feels that since he’s an only child, the experience of visiting his father in prison would be crippling. I know you have no use for psychologists, and I’m inclined to agree with you, but all we can do is to take the advice of the most highly recommended and experienced men, and that is their opinion.”
“Can I see his letter?”
“You can if I can find it. I haven’t been able to find anything today. I don’t believe in poltergeists, but there are days when I can find things and there are days when I cannot. Today is one of the worst. I couldn’t find the top to the coffeepot this morning. I couldn’t find the oranges. Then I couldn’t find the car keys and when I found them and drove to get the cleaning woman I couldn’t remember where she lived. I couldn’t find the dress I wanted, I couldn’t find my earrings. I couldn’t find my stockings and I couldn’t find my glasses to look for my stockings.” He might have killed her the
n had she not found an envelope on which his name was written clumsily in lead pencil. She put this on the counter. “I didn’t ask him to write the letter,” she said, “and I have no idea of what it contains. I suppose I should have shown it to the counselors, but I knew you would rather I didn’t.”
“Thank you,” said Farragut. He put the letter into his shirt, next to his skin.
“Aren’t you going to open it?”
“I’ll save it.”
“Well, you’re lucky. So far as I know, it’s the first letter he’s ever written in his life. So tell me how you are, Zeke. I can’t say that you look well, but you look all right. You look very much like yourself. Do you still dream about your blonde? You do, of course; that I can easily see. Don’t you understand that she never existed, Zeke, and that she never will? Oh, I can tell by the way you hold your head that you still dream about that blonde who never menstruated or shaved her legs or challenged anything you said or did. I suppose you have boyfriends in here?”
“I’ve had one,” said Farragut, “but I didn’t take it up the ass. When I die you can put on my headstone: ‘Here lies Ezekiel Farragut, who never took it up the ass.”’
She seemed suddenly touched by this, suddenly she seemed to find in herself some admiration for him; her smile and her presence seemed accommodating and soft. “Your hair has turned white, dear,” she said. “Did you know that? You haven’t been here a year and yet your hair has turned snow white. It’s very becoming. Well, I’ll have to go. I’ve left your groceries in the package room.” He carried the letter until the lights and the television were extinguished and read, in the glare from the yard, “I love you.”
As the day of the cardinal’s arrival approached, even the lifers said they had never seen such excitement. Farragut was kept busy cutting dittos for order sheets, instructions and commands. Some of the orders seemed insane. For example: “It is mandatory that all units of inmates marching to and from the parade grounds will sing God Bless America.” Common sense killed this one. No one obeyed the order and no one tried to enforce it. Every day for ten days the entire population was marshaled out onto the gallows field, the ball park, and what had now become the parade grounds. They were made to practice standing at attention, even in the pouring rain. They remained excited, and there was a large element of seriousness in the excitement. When Chicken Number Two did a little hornpipe and sang: “Tomorrow’s the day they give cardinals away with a half a pound of cheese,” no one laughed, no one at all. Chicken Number Two was an asshole. On the day before his arrival, every man took a shower. The hot water ran out at around eleven in the morning and cellblock F didn’t get into the showers until after chow. Farragut was back in his cell, shining his shoes, when Jody returned.
He heard the hooting and whistling and looked up to see Jody walking toward his cell. Jody had put on weight. He looked well. He walked toward Farragut with his nice, bouncy jock walk. Farragut much preferred this to the sinuous hustle Jody put on when he was hot and his pelvis seemed to grin like a pumpkin. The sinuous hustle had reminded Farragut of vines, and vines, he knew, had to be cultivated or they could harass and destroy stone towers, castles and cathedrals. Vines could pull down a basilica. Jody came into his cell and kissed him on the mouth. Only Chicken Number Two whistled. “Goodbye, sweetheart,” he said. “Goodbye,” said Farragut. His feelings were chaotic and he might have cried, but he might have cried at the death of a cat, a broken shoelace, a wild pitch. He could kiss Jody passionately, but not tenderly. Jody turned and walked away. Farragut had done nothing with Jody so exciting as to say goodbye. Among the beaches and graves and other matters he had unearthed in seeking the meaning of his friendship, he had completely overlooked the conspiratorial thrill of seeing his beloved escape.
Tiny called the lockup for eight and made the usual jokes about beauty sleep and meat-beating. He said, of course, that he wanted his men to look beautiful for the cardinal. He pulled the light switch at nine. The only light was the television. Farragut went to bed and to sleep. The roar of the toilet woke him and then he heard thunder. At first the noise pleased and excited him. The random explosions of thunder seemed to explain that heaven was not an infinity but a solid construction of domes, rotundas and arches. Then he remembered that the flier had said that in case of rain the ceremony would be canceled. The thought of a thunderstorm inaugurating a rainy day deeply disturbed him. Naked, he went to the window. This naked man was worried. If it rained there would be no escape, no cardinal, no nothing. Have pity upon him, then; try to understand his fears. He was lonely. His love, his world, his everything, was gone. He wanted to see a cardinal in a helicopter. Thunderstorms, he thought hopefully, could bring in anything. They could bring in a cold front, a hot front, a day when the clearness of the light would seem to carry one from hour to hour. Then the rain began. It poured into the prison and that part of the world. But it lasted only ten minutes. Then the rain, the storm, swept mercifully off to the north and just as swiftly and just as briefly that rank and vigorous odor that is detonated by the rain flew up to and above where Farragut stood at his barred window. He had, with his long, long nose, responded to this cutting fragrance wherever he had been—shouting, throwing out his arms, pouring a drink. Now there was a trace, a memory, of this primitive excitement, but it had been cruelly eclipsed by the bars. He got back into bed and fell asleep, listening to the rain dripping from the gun towers.
Farragut got what he had bargained for: a day of incomparable beauty. Had he been a free man, he would have claimed to be able to walk on the light. It was a holiday; it was the day of the big Rugby game; it was the circus; it was the fourth of July; it was the regatta; and it dawned as it should, clear and cool and beautiful. They had two pieces of bacon for breakfast, through the bounty of the diocese. Farragut went down the tunnel to the methadone line and even this rat tail of humanity seemed to be jumping with high spirits. At eight they stood by their cell doors, shaved, wearing their white shirts and some of them with ointment in their hair, you could tell by the clash of perfumes that floated up and down the cellblock. Tiny inspected them and then there was, as there is for any holiday or ceremony, time to kill.
There was a cartoon show on television. They could hear whistles blowing on other cellblocks and guards with military backgrounds trying to shout their men into sharp formations. It was only a little after eight then and the cardinal wasn’t expected until noon, but men were already being marched out onto the gallows field. The walls checked the force of the late spring sun, but it would hit the field by noon. Chicken and the Cuckold shot dice. Farragut killed the time easily at the top of his methadone high. Time was new bread, time was a sympathetic element, time was water you swam in, time moved through the cellblock with the grace of light. Farragut tried to read. He sat on the edge of his bunk. He was a man of forty-eight, sitting on the edge of his bunk in a prison to which he had been unjustly confined for the murder of his brother. He was a man in a white shirt sitting on the edge of a bunk. Tiny blew his whistle and diey stood at attention in front of their cells again. They did this four times. At half-past ten they were lined up two by two and marched down the tunnel, where they formed up in a pie-shaped area marked “F” with lime.
The light had begun to come into the field. Oh, it was a great day. Farragut thought about Jody and wondered if he didn’t bring it off would he get cell lock or the hole or maybe seven more years for attempted escape. So far as he knew, he and the chaplain’s dude were the only ones in on the plot. Then Tiny called them to attention. “Now, I got to have your cooperation,” Tiny said. “It ain’t easy for any of us to have two thousand shit-heads out here together. The tower guards today is been replaced with crack shots and, as you know, they got the right to shoot any inmate they got suspicions about. We got crack shots today so they won’t be no spray firing. The leader of the Black Panthers has agreed not to give the salute. When the cardinal comes you stand at parade rest. Any of you ain’t been in the service, ask some frien
d what parade rest is. It’s like this. Twenty-five men has been picked to take the Holy Eucharist. The cardinal’s got lots of appointments and he’s going to be here only twenty minutes. First we hear from the warden and then the commissioner, who’s coming down from Albany. After this he gives out the diplomas, celebrates mass, blesses the rest of you assholes and takes off. I guess you can sit down if you want. You can sit down, but when you get the order for attention I want you all straight and neat and clean with your heads up. I want to be proud of you. If you have to piss, piss, but don’t piss where anybody’s going to be sitting.” Cheers for Tiny and then most of them pissed. There was, Farragut thought, some universality to a full bladder. For this length of time they perfectly understood one another. Then they sat down.
Somebody was testing the public address system: “Testing, one, two, three. Testing, one, two, three.” The voice was loud and scratchy. Time passed. God’s advocate was punctual. At a quarter to twelve they got the command for attention. They shaped up nicely. The sound of the chopper could be heard then, bounding off the hills, loud at low altitudes, faintly, faintly in the deep river valley; soft and loud, hills and valleys, the noise evoked the contour of the terrain beyond the walls. The chopper, when it came into view, had no more grace than an airborne washing machine, but this didn’t matter at all. It lofted gently onto the target and out the door came three acolytes, a monsignor in black, and the cardinal himself, a man either graced by God with great dignity and beauty or singled out by the diocese for these distinctions. He raised his hand. His ring flashed with spiritual and political power. “I seen better rings on hustlers,” Chicken Number Two whispered. “No fence would give you thirty. The last time I hit a jewelry store I fenced the lot for—” Looks shut him up. Everybody turned and put him down.