Falconer

This was much older and larger than what he had seen in the house of detention. I-beams crossed the ceiling. In a tin pitcher on a window sill were some wax flowers whose colors, in that somber place, seemed fiery. He ate sour food with a tin spoon and dropped his spoon and plate into dirty water. Silence was enforced by the administration, but they had themselves enforced a segregation that put the blacks in the north, the whiles in the south, with a middle ground for the men who spoke Spanish. After chow his physical, religious and professional characteristics were examined and then, after a long delay» he was led alone into a room where three men in cheap business suits were sitting at a wrecked desk. Al either end of the desk were sheathed flags. On the left was a window in which he could see the blue sky beneath whose light he guessed a man might still be feeding pigeons. His head, neck and shoulders had begun to ache and he was very stooped by the time he reached this tribunal and felt himself to be a very small man, a runt, someone who had never experienced o r tasted or imagined the greatness of immodesty.

"You are a professor," said the man on the left, who seemed to speak for the three. Farragut did not raise his head to see his face. "You are a professor and the education of the young-of all those who seek learning-is your vocation. We learn by experience, do we not, and as a professor, distinguished by the responsibilities of intellectual and moral leadership, you have chosen to commit the heinous crime of fratricide while under the influence of dangerous drugs. Aren't you ashamed?" "I want to be sure that I get my methadone," Farragut said. "Oh, is there no shame in you!" the man exclaimed. "We are here to help. We are here to help. Until you confess to shame you will have no place in the civilian world." Farragut made no reply. "Next," the man said, and Farragut was shown out a door at the back. "Km Tiny," a man there said. "Hurry up. I ain't got all day."

Tiny's size was frightening. He was not tall, but his bulk was so u

They went up a sloping tu

“I'm feeling blue all the time…" This could barely be heard above the noise of radios which-talking, singing, performing music- sounded like any city street at closing time or later.

No one spoke to Farragut at all until, just before the lights went off, the man by whose voice he recognized the singer came to his door. He was ski

Farragut's first visitor was his wife. He was raking leaves in yard Y when the PA said that 734-508-32 had a visitor. He jogged up the road past the firehouse and into the tu

There were no bars in the visitors' room, but the glass windows were chicken-wired and open only at the top. A ski

While he was being frisked he looked around at the other visitors- not so much out of curiosity as to see if there was anything here that might offend Marcia. A con was holding a baby. A weeping old woman talked to a young man. Nearest to Marcia was a Chicano couple. The woman was beautiful and the man was caressing her bare arms.

Farragut stepped into this no man's land and came on hard, as if he had been catapulted into the visit by mere circumstance. "Hello darling," he exclaimed as he had exclaimed "Hello darling" at trains, boats, airports, the foot of the driveway, journey's end; but in the past he would have worked out a timetable, aimed at the soonest possible sexual consummation.

"Hello," she said. "You look well."

"Thank you. You look beautiful."

"I didn't tell you I was coming because it didn't seem necessary. When I called to make an appointment they told me you weren't going anywhere."