"But you know what that old sonofabitch Masterman did? He ain't big and he ain't strong, but he starts inching this big, fucking refrigerator across the kitchen floor. Believe me, it was enormous. It was really a nice house with lovely furniture and carpets and he must have had one hell of a time with all those carpets bunching up under the refrigerator, but he got out of the kitchen and down the hall and into the living room, where the telephone was. I can imagine what the police saw when they got there: this old man chained to a refrigerator in the middle of his living room with hand-painted pictures all over the walls. That was Thursday. They picked me up the following Tuesday. They already had Howie. I didn't know it, but he already had a record. I don't blame the state. I don't blame nobody. We did everything wrong. Burglary, pistol-whipping, kidnapping. Kidnapping's a big no-no. Of course, I'm the next thing to dead, but my wife and sons are still alive. So she sold the house at a big loss and goes on welfare. She comes to see me once in a while, but you know what the boys do? First they got permission to write me letters and then Michael, the big one, wrote me a letter saying that they would be on the river in a rowboat at three on Sunday and they would wave to me. I was out at the fence at three on Sunday and they showed up. They were way out in the river-you can't come too close to the prison-but I could see them and feel my love for them and they waved their arms and I waved my arms. That was in the autumn and they stopped coming when the place where you rent boats shut down, but they started again in the spring. They were much bigger, I could see that, and then it occurs to me that for the length of time I'm here they'll get married and have children and I know they won't stuff their wives or their kids into no rowboat and go down the river to wave to old Daddy. So I ain't got no future, Farragut, and you ain't got no future either. So let's go down and wash up for chow."
Farragut was working then part-time with the greenhouse crew, culling lawns and hedges, and part-time as a typist, cutting ditto sheets for the prison announcements. He had the key to an office near the squad room and the use of a typewriter. He continued to meet Jody at the water tower and later, when the afternoons got cold, in his office. They had known one another a month when they became lovers. "I'm so glad you ain't homosexual,'' Jody kept saying when he caressed Farragut's hair. Then, saying as much one afternoon, he had unfastened Farragut's trousers and, with every assistance from Farragut, got them down around his knees. From what Farragut had read in the newspapers about prison life he had expected this to happen, but what he had not expected was that this grotesque bonding of their relationship would provoke in him so profound a love. Nor had he expected the administration to be so lenient. For a small ration of cigarettes, Tiny let Farragut return to the shop between chow and lockup. Jody met him there and they made love on the floor. "They like it," Jody explained. "At first they didn't like it. Then some psychologist decided that if we got our rocks moved regularly we wouldn't riot. They'll let us do anything if they think it will keep us from rioting. Move over, Chicken, move over. Oh, I love you very much."
They met two or three times a week. Jody was the beloved and now and then he stood Farragut up so that Farragut had developed a preternatural sensitivity to the squeak of his lover's basketball sneakers. On some nights his life seemed to hang on the sound. When the classes in banking began, the two men met always on Tuesdays and Thursdays and Jody reported on his experience with the university. Farragut had boosted a mattress from the shop and Jody had hustled a hot plate from somewhere, and they lay on the mattress and drank hot coffee and were fairly comfortable and happy.
But Jody spoke skeptically to Farragut about the university. "It's the same old shit," said Jody. " Success School, Charm School. Elite School. How to Make a Million School. I been to them all and they're all the same. You see, Chicken, banking arithmetic and all that shit is done by computers today and what you have to concentrate on is to inspire the confidence of the potential investor. That's the big mystery of modern banking. For instance, you come on with the smile. Every class I took begins with lessons in this smile. You stand outside the door thinking about all the great things that happened to you that day, that year, for your whole life. It has to be real. You can't fake this selling smile. I mean you remember a great girl who made you happy or winning a long shot if you ever had one or a new suit or a race you won or a great day when you really had everything going for you. Well, then you open the door and go in and smack him with this smile. Only they don't know nothing, Chicken. I mean about smiling. They don't know nothing at all about smiling.
"It's all right to smile, I mean you have to smile to sell anything, but if you don't smile in the right way you get terrible lines on your face like you have. I love you, Chicken, but you don't know how to smile. If you knew how to smile you wouldn't have those wrinkles all around your eyes and those big, disgusting cuts like scars on your face. Look at me, for example. You think I'm twenty-four, don't you? Well, I'm actually thirty-two, but most people when they're asked to guess my age put me down for eighteen or nineteen at the mast. That's because I know how to smile, how to use my face. This actor taught me. He was in on a morals charge but he was very beautiful. He taught me that when you use your face you spare your face. When you throw your face recklessly into every situation you come up against, you come out looking like you do, you come out looking like shit. I love you, Chicken, I really do, otherwise I wouldn't tell you that you got a ruined face.
Now watch me smile. See? I look real happy-don't I, don't I, don't I?-but if you'll notice, I keep my eyes wide open so I won't get disgusting wrinkles all around the edges like you have and when I open my mouth I open it very, very wide so that it won't destroy the beauty of my cheeks, their beauty and smoothness. This teacher from the university tells us to smile, smile, smile, smile, but you go around smiling all the time like he teaches us to, you get to look like a very old person, a very old and haggard person who nobody wants anything to do with especially in the line of banking investments."