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 improvisation, 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 Nagasaki 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 lo 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 Nagasaki, he ran down lo 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 façade 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 tour 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 to morrow, 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.