"Hey, Farragut, come down and play cards with the Stone," said Ransome. "Let Farragut out, will you, Walton? The Stone wants to play cards with Farragut."
“I will if you'll shut up," said Walton. “I got to pass this exam. You promise to shut up?"
"We promise," said Ransome.
Farragut's cell door opened and he went down the block to the Stone's, carrying his chair. The Stone was smiling like a fool, which he may have been. The Stone handed him the pack of cards and he dealt them out, saying, "One for you and one for me." Then he fanned out his hand, but that many cards were bulky and a dozen fell to the floor. When he stopped to pick them up he heard a voice, not a whisper but a normal voice, tuned to a minimum volume. It was the Glass Ear-the two-hundred-dollar hearing aid-tuned to a radio frequency. He saw the four batteries in their canvas-covered corset lying on the floor and the plastic, flesh-colored orifice from which he guessed the voice came. He picked up his cards and began to slap them out on a table, saying, "One for you and one for me." The voice said, "Registration for continuing education classes in conversational Spanish and cabinet making will be open from five to nine on Monday through Friday at the Benjamin Franklin High School, situated on the corner of Elm and Chestnut Streets." Then Farragut heard piano music. It was the dreariest of the Chopin preludes-that prelude they use in murder films before the shot is fired; that prelude that was expected to evoke for men of his day and earlier the image of a little girl with braids, confined for some cruel hour to a bleak room, where she was meant to produce the bleat of impuissant waves and the sad stir of falling leaves. "The latest news from The Wall, or the Amana Prison," said the voice, "is that negotiations are still proceeding between the administration and the committee of inmates. Forces to secure the institution are available, but reports of impatience among the troops have been denied. Five of the hostages have testified on radio and TV that they have been receiving food, medical supplies and adequate protection under the leadership of the Black Muslim faction. The governor has made it clear for the third time that he does not have the power to grant amnesty. A final petition for the release of the hostages has been presented and the inmates will give their answer at daybreak tomorrow. Daybreak is officially slated for six twenty-eight, but the weather predictions are for cloudy skies and more rain. In the local news, an octogenarian bicyclist named Ralph Waldo won the Golden Age Bicycle Race in the town of Burnt Valley on his eighty-second birthday. His time was one hour and eighteen minutes. Congratulations, Ralph! Mrs. Charles Roundtree of Hunters Bridge in the northeast corner of the state claims to have seen an unidentified flying object at such a close range that the draft raised her skirts while she was hanging out the wash. Stay tuned for details of the five-alarm fire in Tappansville." Then another voice sang:
Garroway toothpaste cleans your teeth. Both the dirt above and the dirt beneath, Garroway toothpaste cavities hate, Garroway toothpaste is for you and your mate.
Farragut slapped down cards for another ten minutes and then began to shout, "I got a toothache. I want to quit. I got a toothache."
"Go home, go home," said Walton. "I got to study."
Farragut picked up his chair, and stopping by Ransome’s cell, he said, "I got this terrible toothache. It's a wisdom tooth. I'm forty-eight years old and I still got my wisdom teeth. This one on the left is just like a clock. It starts aching at around nine at night and stops at dawn. Dawn tomorrow is when I'D know whether the pain is over, whether or not the tooth has to come out. I'll know at daybreak. That's about six twenty-eight."
"Thank you, Miss America," said Ransome.
Farragut stumbled back to his cell, got into bed and slept.
He had a dream that was unlike the day. His dream was in the most vivid colors, those aniline dyes that the eye receives only after this spectrum has been extracted by a camera. Farragut is on a cruise ship, experiencing a familiar mixture of freedom, boredom and sunburn. He swims in the pool, drinks with the international crowd in the bar at noon, gets laid during the siesta, plays deck tennis, paddle tennis, and is in and out of the pool and back in the bar at four. He is all limber, ballsy and turning a golden hue that will be wasted in the dark bars and clubs where he will lunch on his return. So he Is idle and a little uneasy with his idleness when, one afternoon at the end of the siesta, a schooner is seen coming up from the port side. The schooner flies some flags, but he does not understand these. He does notice that the cruiser has reduced her speed. The wave at the bow grows smaller and smaller and then there is none and the schooner sails alongside the towering ship.
The schooner has come for him. He goes below, climbs down a rope ladder onto her deck and as they sail away he waves goodbye to his friends on the cruise-men, women and the members of the ship's orchestra. He does not know who owns the schooner and who greets him there. He remembers nothing except that he stands on her deck and watches the cruise ship regain speed. She is a big old-fashioned cruiser, named for a queen, white as a bride, with three canted stacks and a little gold lace, like a toy boat, at her bow. She goes crazily off course, veers to port and heads at full tilt for a nearby island that looks like one of the Atlantic Islands, only with palms. She rams the beach, heels to starboard and bursts into flame, and while he sails away he can see, over his shoulder, the pyre and the enormous column of smoke. The instant he woke, the brightness of the dream's colors were quenched by the grayness of Falconer.
Farragut woke. He swung his head from his watch to the window. It was six twenty-eight. Rain was falling into that part of the world and he guessed into The Wall. It was Tiny who had waked him. "Reach for a Lucky instead of a sweet," said Tiny. " Chesterfields, they satisfy. I'd walk a mile for a Camel." He had five cigarettes in his hand. Farragut took two. They were loosely rolled and were, he guessed, cannabis. He looked lovingly at Tiny, but any fondness or love he felt for the guard fell way short of Tiny’s haggard ness. His eyes were red. The lines from his nostrils past his mouth were like the ruts in a dirt road and there was no life or responsiveness left in his countenance. He stumbled down the block, saying, "Reach for a Lucky instead of a sweet. I'd walk a mile for a Camel." The old cigarette mottoes were older than either of them. Everyone but the Stone knew what they had and what to do and Ransome helped the Stone. "Suck on it and hold it in your lungs." Farragut lighted his first, sucked on the smoke, held it in his lungs and felt the true, the precious amnesty of the drug spread through his frame. "Wow," he said. "Hot shit," said Chicken. There was groaning all over the place. Tiny bumped into the cell edge and bumped his arm. "There's more where that came from," he said. He fell into his steel chair, buried his head in his arms and began to snore.