Falconer

by John Cheever

  Farragut didn’t reply. Tiny patted him on the head. “I’ll bring you in some fresh tomatoes tomorrow. My wife puts up fifty jars of tomato sauce. We have tomatoes for breakfast, lunch and supper. But I still got tomatoes left over. I’ll bring some in tomorrow. You want anything else?”

  “No, thank you,” said Farragut. “I’d like some tomatoes.”

  “Why is you an addict?” asked Tiny, and he went away.

  Farragut was not disconcerted by the question, but he was provoked. It was only natural that he should be an addict. He had been raised by people who dealt in contraband. Not hard drugs, but unlicensed spiritual, intellectual and erotic stimulants. He was the citizen, the product of some border principality such as Liechtenstein. His background lacked the mountainous scenery, but his passport was fat with visas, he dealt in spiritual contraband, spoke four languages poorly and knew the words to four national anthems. Once when he was sitting in a café in Kitzbühel with his brother, listening to a band concert, Eben suddenly sprang to his feet and clapped his Tyrolean hat over his heart. “What’s up?” Farragut asked, and Eben said, “They are about to play the national anthem.” What the band was about to play was “Home on the Range,” but Farragut remembered this to illustrate the fact that his family had endeavored to be versatile at every political, spiritual and erotic level. It helped to explain the fact that he was an addict.

  Farragut could remember his mother coming down a circular staircase in a coral-colored dress heavily embroidered with pearls on her way to hear Tosca; and he could remember her pumping gas on the main road to Cape Cod at that memorable point in the landscape where scrub pine takes over and the nearness of the Great Atlantic Ocean can be read in the pallor of the sky and the salt air. His mother didn’t actually wear tennis sneakers, but she wore some kind of health shoe and her dress was much lower in the bow than in the stern. He could remember her casually and repeatedly regretting invitations to dine with the Trenchers, who were famous in the village for having, in the space of a week, bought both a pipe organ and a yacht. The Trenchers were millionaires—they were arrivistes—they had a butler; but then, the Farraguts had run through several butlers—Mario, Fender and Chadwick—and now claimed to enjoy setting their own table. The Farraguts were the sort of people who had lived in a Victorian mansion and when this was lost had moved back to the family homestead. This included a shabby and splendid eighteenth-century house and the franchise on two Socony gas pumps that stood in front of the house where Grandmother’s famous rose garden had been. When the news got out that they had lost all their money and were going to run a gas station, Farragut’s Aunt Louisa came directly to the house and, standing in the hallway, exclaimed: “You cannot pump gasoline!” “Why not?” asked Farragut’s mother. Aunt Louisa’s chauffeur came in and put a box of tomatoes on the floor. He wore puttees. “Because,” said Aunt Louisa, “you will lose all your friends.” “To the contrary,” said Farragut’s mother. “I shall discover precisely who they are.”

  The cream of the post-Freudian generation were addicts. The rest were those psychiatric reconstructions you used to see in the back of unpopular rooms at cocktail parties. They seemed to be intact, but if you touched them in the wrong place at the wrong time they would collapse all over the floor like a spatch-cocked card trick. Drug addiction is symptomatic. Opium eaters know. Farragut remembered a fellow opium eater named Polly, whose mother was an on-again off-again recording and club singer. Her name was Corinne. When Corinne was way down and struggling to get back, Farragut took Polly to her mother’s big breakthrough in Las Vegas. The breakthrough was successful and Corinne went on from a has-been to the third-biggest recording star in the world, and while this was important, what he remembered was that Polly, who had trouble with her size, ate all the bread and butter on the table during her mummy’s first critical set and when this was finished—Farragut meant the set—everybody stood up and cheered and Polly grasped his arm and said: “That’s my mummy, that’s my dear mummy.” So there was dear mummy in a hard spot that blazed with the blues of a diamond and would in fact prove to be the smile of the world and how could you square this with lullabys and breast-feeding except by eating opium? For Farragut the word “mother” evoked the image of a woman pumping gas, curtsying at the Assemblies and banging a lectern with her gavel. This confused him and he would blame his confusion on the fine arts, on Degas. There is a Degas painting of a woman with a bowl of chrysanthemums that had come to represent to Farragut the great serenity of “mother.” The world kept urging him to match his own mother, a famous arsonist, snob, gas pumper and wing shot, against the image of the stranger with her autumnal and bitter-smelling flowers. Why had the universe encouraged this gap? Why had he been encouraged to cultivate so broad a border of sorrow? He had not been plucked off some star by a stork, so why should he and everybody else behave as if this were the case? The opium eater knew better. After Corinne’s big comeback and breakthrough there was a big triumphant party and when he and Polly came in, dear Mummy made a straight line for her only daughter, her only child. “Polly,” she said, “I could have killed you. You sat right in front of me, right in front of me, and during the first set of my big comeback you ate a whole basket of rolls—eight: I counted them—and you cleaned up one of those ice cream scoops of butter. How can I follow my arrangements when I’m counting the rolls you eat? Oh, I could have killed you.” Polly, plucked from a star, began to weep, of course, and he got her out of there and back to the hotel, where they had some great Colombian cocaine that made their noses bleed. What else could you do? But Polly was thirty pounds overweight and he had never really liked fat women; he had never really liked any woman who wasn’t a dark-eyed blonde, who didn’t speak at least one language other than English, who didn’t have an income of her own and who couldn’t say the Girl Scout Oath.

  Farragut’s father, Farragut’s own father, had wanted to have his life extinguished as he dwelt in his mother’s womb, and how could he live happily with this knowledge without the support of those plants that draw their wisdom from the soil? Farragut’s father had taken him fishing in the wilderness and had taught him to climb high mountains, but when he had discharged these responsibilities he neglected his son and spent most of his time tacking around Travertine harbor in a little catboat. He talked about having outmaneuvered great storms—a tempest off Falmouth was his favorite—but during Farragut’s lifetime he preferred safe harbors. He was one of those old Yankees who are very adroit at handling their tiller and their sheets. He was great with all lines—kite lines, trout lines and moorings—and he could coil a garden hose with an authority that seemed to Farragut princely. Dance—excepting a German waltz with a pretty woman—the old man thought detestable, but dance best described his performance on a boat. The instant he dropped the mooring he began a performance as ordained, courtly and graceful as any pavane. Line squalls, luffing sails, thunder and lightning never broke his rhythm.

  O heroin, be with me now! When Farragut was about twenty-one he began to lead the Nanuet Cotillion. The Nanuet landed in the New World in 1672. The leader of the expedition was Peter Wentworth. With his brother Eben away, Farragut was, after his drunken and cranky father, the principal male descendent of Wentworth, and so he led the cotillion. It had been a pleasure to leave the gas tanks to Harry—a spastic—and dress in his father’s tails. This was again the thrill of living in a border principality and of course the origin of his opium eating. His father’s tails fitted perfectly. They were made of black broadcloth, as heavy as the stuff of an overcoat, and Farragut thought he looked great in tails. He would drive into the city in whichever car was working, lead some debutante, chosen by the committee for her wealth and her connections, down to the principal box, and bow to its occupants. Then he would dance all night and get back to the gas pumps in the morning.

  The Farraguts were the sort of people who claimed to be sustained by tradition, but who were in fact sustained by the much more robust pursuit of a workable im
provisation, uninhibited by consistency. While they were still living in the mansion, they used to have dinner at the club on Thursdays and Sundays. Farragut remembered such a night. His mother had brought the car under the porte-cochere. The car was a convertible called a Jordan Blue Boy that his father had won in a raffle. His father wasn’t with them and was probably on his catboat. Farragut got into the Blue Boy, but his brother remained on the carriage step. Eben was a handsome young man, but his face that night was very white. “I will not go to the club,” he told his mother, “unless you call the steward by his name.” “His name,” said Mrs. Farragut, “is Horton.” “His name is Mr. Horton,” said Eben. “Very well,” said Mrs. Farragut. Eben got into the car. Mrs. Farragut was not an intentionally reckless driver, but her vision was failing and on the road she was an agent of death. She had already killed one Airedale and three cats. Both Eben and Farragut shut their eyes until they heard the sound of the gravel on the club driveway. They took a table and when the steward came to welcome them their mother asked: “What are you going to tempt us with tonight, Horton?” “Excuse me,” said Eben. He left the table and walked home. When Farragut returned he found his brother—a grown man—sobbing in his room; but even Eben, his only brother, had been inconsistent. Years later, when they used to meet for drinks in New York, Eben would summon the waiter by clapping his hands. Once, after the headwaiter had asked them to leave and Farragut had tried to explain to Eben that there were simpler and more acceptable ways of getting a waiter’s attention, Eben had said, “I don’t understand, I simply don’t understand. All I wanted was a drink.”

  Opium had helped Farragut recall with serenity the fact that he had not been sixteen the first time his father threatened to commit suicide. He was sure of his age because he didn’t have a driver’s license. He came in from pumping gas to find the supper table set for two. “Where’s Dad?” he asked—impetuously, because the laconism cultivated by the Farraguts was ceremonial and tribal and one seldom asked questions. His mother sighed and served the red flannel hash with poached eggs. Farragut had already faulted and so he went on: “But where is Dad?” he asked. “I’m not sure,” his mother said. “When I came downstairs to make supper he handed me a long indictment enumerating my failures as a woman, a wife and a mother. There were twenty-two charges. I didn’t read them all. I threw it into the fire. He was quite indignant. He said that he was going to Nagasakit and drown himself. He must have begged rides since he didn’t take the car.” “Excuse me,” said Farragut, quite sincerely. No sarcasm was intended. Some of the family must have said as much as they lay dying. He got into the car and headed for the beach. That’s how he remembered that he was not sixteen, because there was a new policeman in the village of Hepworth, who was the only one who might have stopped him and asked to see his license. The policeman in Hepworth had it in for the family for some reason. Farragut knew all the other policemen in the villages along that coast.

  When he got to Nagasakit he ran down to the beach. It was late in the season, late in the day, and there were no bathers, no lifeguards, nothing at all but a very weary swell from what was already a polluted ocean. How could he tell if it contained his father, with pearls for eyes? He walked along the crescent of the beach. The amusement park was still open. He could hear some music from there, profoundly unserious and belonging very much to the past. He examined the sand to keep from crying. There had been that year a big run on Japanese sandals and also a run on toy knights in armor. There were, left over from the summer, many dismembered knights and odd sandals mixed in the shingle. Respiratory noises came from his beloved sea. The roller coaster was still running. He could hear the clack of the cars on the rail joints and also some very loud laughter—a sound that seemed wasted on that scene. He left the beach. He crossed the road to the entrance of the amusement park. The facade marked a period in the Italian emigration. Workmen from Italy had built a wall of plaster and cement, painted it the saffrons of Rome, and decorated the wall with mermaids and scallop shells. Over the arch was Poseidon with a trident. On the other side of the wall the merry-go-round was turning. There was not a passenger on it. The loud laughter came from some people who were watching the roller coaster. There was Farragut’s father, pretending to drink from an empty bottle and pretending to contemplate suicide from every rise. This clowning was successful. His audience was rapt. Farragut went up to the razorback who ran the controls. “That’s my father,” he said, “could you land him?” The smile the razorback gave Farragut was profoundly sympathetic. When the car carrying his father stopped at the platform, Mr. Farragut saw his son, his youngest, his unwanted, his killjoy. He got out and joined Farragut, as he knew he must. “Oh, Daddy,” said Farragut, “you shouldn’t do this to me in my formative years.” Oh, Farragut, why is you an addict?

  In the morning Tiny brought him four large tomatoes and he was touched. They tasted grievously of summer and freedom. “I’m going to sue,” he told Tiny. “Can you get me a copy of Gilbert’s criminal code?” “I can try,” said Tiny. “Mishkin has one, but he’s renting it out at four cartons a month. You got four?” “I can get them if my wife ever comes,” said Farragut. “I’m going to sue, Tiny, but you’re not whom I’m after. I want to see Chisholm and those other two assholes eating franks and beans for four years with a spoon. And maybe I can. Will you testify?” “Sure, sure,” said Tiny. “I will if I can. I don’t like the way Chisholm gets his kicks out of watching men in withdrawal. I’ll do what I can.” “The case seems very simple to me,” said Farragut. “I was sentenced to prison by the people of the state and the nation. Medicine was prescribed for me, during my imprisonment, by three estimable members of the medical profession. This medicine was denied me by the deputy warden, a man employed by the people to supervise my penance. He then declared my predictable death throes to be an entertainment. It’s that simple.”

  “Well, you can try,” said Tiny. “Ten, fifteen years ago a fellow who got beat up sued and they gave him a lot of skin grafts. And when they knocked out Freddy the Killer’s teeth he sued and they gave him two new sets of teeth. He never wore them except when we had turkey. Freddy was a great basketball star, but that was long before your time. Twenty-five, twenty-four years ago we had an undefeated basketball team here. I’m off tomorrow, but I’ll see you the day after. Oh, Farragut, why is you an addict?”

  When the bandages were taken off Farragut’s skull, he found, of course, that his head had been shaven, but there were no mirrors around the infirmary and he didn’t have his appearance to worry about. He tried with his fingers to count the stitches on his skull, but he could not keep an accurate count. He asked the orderly if he knew how many there were. “Oh, sure, sure,” the orderly said. “You got twenty-two. I went to cellblock F to get you. You was lying on the floor. Tony and I got the stretcher and brought you up to the operating room.” The fact that he, Farragut, had it in his power to send Chisholm, the deputy warden, to prison appeared to him as an unchallengeable fact. The image of the deputy warden eating franks and rice with a spoon appeared to him with the windless serenity of a consummated obsession. It was simply a question of time. His leg was in a cast, he had been told, because he had torn the cartilage in his knee. That he had twice before torn the cartilage in his knee in skiing accidents was something that he was absolutely incapable of remembering. He would limp for the rest of his life and he was profoundly gratified to think that the deputy warden had made an entertainment of his death throes and left him a cripple.

  “Tell me again,” Farragut asked the orderly. “How many stitches were there in my skull?” “Twenty-two, twenty-two,” said the orderly. “I already told you. You bled like a pig. I know what I’m talking about because I used to kill pigs. When Tony and I went down to your cellblock there was blood all over the place. You was lying on the floor.” “Who else was there?” asked Farragut. “Tiny, naturally,” said the orderly. “Chisholm, the deputy warden, and Lieutenant Sutfin and Lieutenant Tillitson. Also there was a du
de in cell lock. I don’t know who he was.” “Would you repeat what you’ve just said to a lawyer?” asked Farragut. “Sure, sure—it’s what I saw. I’m a truthful man. I say what I see.” “Could I see a lawyer?” “Sure, sure,” said the orderly. “They come in once or twice a week. There’s a Committee for the Legal Protection of Inmates. The next time one comes in I’ll tell him about you”

  A few days later a lawyer came over to Farragut’s bed. His hair and his beard were so full that Farragut couldn’t judge his age or his face, although there was no gray in his beard. His voice was light. His brown suit was worn, there was mud on his right shoe and two of his fingernails were dirty. The investment in his legal education had never been recouped. “Good morning,” he said, “let’s see, let’s see. I’m sorry to be so slow, but I didn’t know that you wanted the law until the day before yesterday.” He carried a clipboard with a thick file of papers. “Here are your facts,” he said. “I think I’ve got everything here. Armed robbery. Zip to ten. Second offense. That’s you, isn’t it?” “No,” said Farragut. “Burglary?” the lawyer asked. “Breaking and entering with criminal intent?” “No,” said Farragut. “Well, then, you must be second-degree homicide. Fratricide. You attempted escape on the eighteenth and you were disciplined. If you’ll just sign this release here, no charges will be brought.” “What kind of charges?” “Attempted escape,” said the lawyer. “You can get seven years for that. But if you sign this release the whole thing will be forgotten.” He passed Farragut the clipboard and a pen. Farragut held the board on his knees and the pen in his hand. “I didn’t attempt escape,” he said, “and I have witnesses. I was in the lower tier of cellblock F in the sixth lock-in of a maximum-security prison. I attempted to leave my cell, driven by the need for prescribed medicine. If an attempt to leave one’s cell six lock-ins deep in a maximum-security prison constitutes an attempted escape, this prison is a house of cards.”