They were gone, the door closed and it was dark. Chicken was whimpering. "Don't sleep, nobody, don't nobody close their eyes. You close your eyes they'll kill you. They'll kill you in your sleep. Don't nobody go to sleep."
In the blessed dark Farragut got his copper wire and his toilet paper roll and began to build his radio. How beautiful the wire seemed, a slender, clean, gold-colored tie to the world of the living, from which he seemed to hear, now and then, the clash of men, the roar of men tearing at one another's heads. It came and went and he dismissed it as an illusion, compared at least to the splendor of building, out of paper and wire, some bond or lock or shining buckle that could fasten two worlds. When it was done he sighed like a gratified lover and mumbled: "Praise be to Thee, O Lord." Chicken was still whimpering: "Don't go to sleep, nobody. Nobody goes to sleep." Farragut slept heavily.
When Farragut woke he saw through the poor light and the dark sky that the weather had not changed. A thunderstorm or a strong northwest wind might break it or it might taper off into a ten-hour rain and a slow clearing. He saw, at the window, that Chisholm had lied. There were no troops around the walls. Had there been troops there he would have heard the noise, he would have felt the stir of troops. There was nothing, and he felt disappointed. Perhaps there were no troops to spare. The heaviness of the air was depressing and he smelted worse. So did Bumpo and Tennis. A reproduction of the ditto he had typed was stuck between the bars. LOUISA FIERCE SPINGARN, IN MEMORY OF HER BELOVED SON PETER…The chow bell rang at seven. Goldfarb was on duty. "Single file," he shouted, "single file and ten paces between youse. Single file." They lined up at the door and when it opened, Goldfarb parceled them out at ten paces, all excepting the Stone, who had left his glass ear in the cell and couldn't be made to understand, Goldfarb shouted at him, roared at him, and raised ten fingers in the air, but the Stone only smiled and hunkered after the ass of Ransome, who was ahead. He wasn't going to be left alone, not for a minute, Goldfarb let him go. In the tunnel to the mess hall Farragut saw the precautions he had typed. ALL PERSONNEL IS TO SHOW TOP STRENGTH IN ALL GATHERINGS. All along the tunnel at regular intervals were guards in waterproofs with truncheons and gas cans. The few faces that Farragut saw-seemed more haggard than the prisoners'. In the mess hall a tape was playing: "EAT STANDING UP IN YOUR PLACE IN LINE. EAT STANDING UP IN YOUR PLACE IN LINE. NO TALKING…" Breakfast was tea, last night's meat scraps and a hard-boiled egg. "Coffee they don't got," a KP said. "They got nothing. Last night's delivery man leaked the news. They still got twenty-eight hostages by the balls. Amnesty they want. Pass it along. I been dishing out this shit for twelve hours. My feet are living but the rest of me's dead." Farragut wolfed his meat and his egg, dropped his tray and spoon into the dirty water and went back to his block with his neighbors. Clang. "What did the cashier say to the cash register?'' said Bumpo.
"I don't know."
"I count on you, said the cashier to the cash register."
Farragut hurled himself onto his bunk and gave an impersonation of a man tormented by confinement, racked with stomach cramps and sexual backfires. He tore at his scalp with his nails, scratched his thighs and his chest and mumbled to Bumpo between groans, "Riot at The Wall. Twenty-eight hostages by the balls. Their balls equal freedom and amnesty." He howled, bucked with his pelvis and then buried his face in the pillow, under which he could feel the beginnings of his radio, safe, he guessed, because with the staff half dead, scared and thinned, he'd bet by sick call there wouldn't be any search for contraband.
"You're a great cash register," said Bumpo clearly. "Why did the raisin look sad?"
"Because he's a dried prune?" asked Farragut.
"No. Because he's a worried grape," said Bumpo.
"No talking," said Goldfarb.
Then Farragut couldn't remember what he had done with the typewriter key he had sharpened and used to cut wire. If it was found, classed as a shiv and traced back to him with fingerprints., he could get another three years. He tried to reenact all his movements in Marshack's office: he counted the plants, heard Toledo speak about the pounds of flesh, went off to his office and sharpened the key. He had cut the wire, stuffed it into his pants, but haste and anxiety obscured what he had done with the key. He had turned off the lights, limped up the tunnel and explained to someone who didn't exist that the humidity gave him rheumatism. He didn't worry about the plants and the wire-it was the key that could incriminate him. But where was the key? On the floor by a plant, stuck into some soil or left on Marshack's desk? The key, the key! He couldn't remember. He could remember that Marshack had said he wouldn't be back until four on Monday, but having said Monday he could not remember the day of the week. Yesterday had been short arm or was it the day before or the day before that when the Cuckold had swiped Chicken's Bible. He didn't know. Then Tiny relieved Goldfarb and read an announcement that opened with a date and Farragut was given the news that this was Saturday. He could worry later about the key.
Tiny announced that all inmates who wanted to be photographed should shave, dress and be ready when their turn came. Everybody on the block had signed up, even the Stone. Farragut observed the success of this maneuver. It did diffuse their explosive unrest. He guessed that a man walking to the electric chair would be happy to pick his nose. Calmly and even happily they shaved, washed their armpits, dressed and waited.
"I want to play cards with the Stone," said Ransome. "I want to play cards with the Stone."
"He don’t know how to play cards," said Tiny.
"He wants to play cards," said Ransome. "Look at him." The Stone was smiling and nodding, as he would for anything. Tiny sprang Ransome, who carried his chair into the corridor and sat down opposite the Stone with a deck of cards. "One for you and one for me," he said.
Then Chicken began to strike his guitar and sing:
There is twenty-eight bottles Hanging on the wail. And if one of them bottles Started to fall.
They'd be twenty-seven bottles Hanging on the wall. And if one of them bottles Started to fall…
Tiny blew. "You want Chisholm in here with that bone-breaking hose crew?"
"No, no, no," said Chicken. "I don't want nothing like that. That ain't what I want. If I was on the grievance committee, whatever that is, one of the first things I'd bring up is the visiting room. Now, they tell me it's a lot better than the visiting room at The Wall, but even so, if I had some chick come in to visit me I wouldn't want to meet her over a counter like I was trying to sell her something. If some chick come in to visit me-"
"You been in here twelve years," shouted Tiny, "and you ain't never once had a visitor. Never once, not ever in twelve years."
"Maybe I had a visitor when you was on vacation," said Chicken. "Maybe I had a visitor when you had that hernia operation. You was out six weeks."
"That was ten years ago."
"Well, as I say, if some chick come to visit me I wouldn't want to have her sweet-talk me across a counter. I'd like to sit down with her at a table with an ashtray for butts and maybe offer her a soft drink."
"They got soft-drink machines."
"But at a table, Tiny, at a table. You can't have no kind of intimacy across a counter. If I could talk to my chick across this table, well, then I'd feel contented and not want to hurt nobody or start no trouble."