"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 dude 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. It 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."
"Oh, my," said the lawyer. "Why don't you reform the Department of Correction?"
"The Department of Correction," said Farragut "is merely an arm of the judiciary. It is not the warden and the assholes who sentenced us to prison. It is the judiciary."
"Oh ho ho," said the lawyer. "I have a terrible backache." He leaned forward stiffly and massaged his back with his right hand. "I got a backache from eating cheeseburgers. You got any home remedy for backaches contracted while eating cheeseburgers? Just sign the release and I'll leave you and your opinions alone. You know what they say about opinions?"
"Yes," said Farragut. "Opinions are like assholes. Everybody has one and they all smell."
"Oh ho ho," said the lawyer. His voice sounded very light and youthful. Farragut hid his pen under the bedclothes. "You know Charlie?" the lawyer asked, softly, softly. "I've seen him in chow," said Farragut. "I know who he is. I know that nobody speaks to him."
"Charlie's a great fellow," said the lawyer. "He used to work for Pennigrino, the top pimp. Charlie used to discipline the chicks." Now his voice was very low. "When a chick went wrong Charlie used to break her legs backwards. You want to play Scrabble with Charlie-you want to play Scrabble with Charlie or you want to sign this release?"
Farragut, with a swift, geometrical calculation of the possible charges involved, fired the clipboard at the beard. "Oh, my back," said the lawyer, "oh, God, my back." He got to his feet. He carried the clipboard. He put his right hand in his pocket. He did not seem to notice the loss of his pen. He did not speak to the orderly or the guards, but went straight out of the ward. Farragut began to insert the pen up his asshole. From what he had been told--from what he had seen of the world-his asshole was singularly small, unreceptive and frigid. He got the pen in only as far as the clip and this was painful, but the pen was concealed. The orderly was called out of the ward and when he returned he went directly to Farragut and asked if he had the lawyer's pen. "I know I threw the clipboard at him," said Farragut. "I'm terribly sorry. I lost my temper. I hope I didn't hurt him."
"He said he left his pen here," said the orderly. He looked under the bed, in the drawer of the cabinet, under the pillow, along the window sill and under the mattress. Then a guard joined him in the search, stripped the bed, stripped Farragut naked and made some slighting reference to the size of his cock, but neither of them-through kindness, Farragut thought-went near the pen. "I can't find it," said the orderly. "We've got to find it," said the guard. "He says we've got to find it." "Well, tell him to find it himself," said the orderly. The guard went out and Farragut was afraid that the beard would return, but the guard returned alone and spoke to the orderly. "You're going up in the world," said the orderly to Farragut, very sadly. "They're putting you in a private room."
He passed Farragut his crutches and helped him into his shift. Farragut, swinging forward clumsily on his crutches and with the pen up his ass, followed the guard out of the ward and down a corridor that smelted sharply of quicklime to a door locked with a bar and a padlock. The guard had some trouble with the key. The door opened onto a very small cell with a window too high to be seen from, a toilet, a Bible and a mattress with a folded sheet and blanket. "How long?" asked Farragut. "The lawyer's booked you in for a month," said the guard, "but I seen Tiny give you some tomatoes and if Tiny's your friend you'll be out in a week." He shut and barred the door.
Farragut removed the pen. It was with this precious instrument that he would indict Chisholm and he clearly saw Chisholm in his third year of prison grays eating franks and rice with a bent tin spoon. He needed paper. There was no toilet paper. If he demanded this he would, he knew, with luck get one sheet a day. He seized on the Bible. This was a small copy, bound in red, but the end pages were a solid, clerical black and the rest of the pages were so heavily printed that he could not write over them. He wanted to write his indictment of Chisholm at once. That the lawyer had been determined to deny him a pen may have exaggerated the importance of his writing the indictment, but the only alternative would be to phrase his accusation and commit this to memory and he doubted if he could accomplish this. He had the pen, but the only surface upon which he could write seemed to be the wall of his cell. He could write his indictment on the wall and then commit it to memory, but some part of his background and its influence on his character restrained him from using the wall for a page. He was a man, he preserved at least some vision of dignity, and to write what might be his last statement on the wall seemed to him an undue exploitation of a bizarre situation. His regard for rectitude was still with him. He could write on his plaster cast, his shift or his sheet. The plaster cast was out since he could reach only half of its surface and the roundness of the cast left him a very limited area. He wrote a few letters on his shift. The instant the felt pen touched the cloth, the ink spread to display the complexity of the thread count, the warp and woof of this very simple garment. The shift was out. His prejudice against the wall was still strong and so he tried the sheet. The prison laundry had, mercifully, used a great deal of starch and he found the surface of the sheet nearly as useful as paper. He and the sheet would be together for at least a week. He could cover the sheet with his remarks, clarify and edit these, and then commit them to manory. When he returned to cellblock F and the shop, he could type his remarks and have them kited to his governor, his bishop and his girl.