Cool Hand Luke (22 page)

Your nose has been out of joint for so damn long it wouldn't surprise me none. Besides, for a natural-born son of a bitch like you, it oughtta be easy.

Everyone stopped what he was doing. The Dog Boy just stood there, his hands trembling, his eyes popping wide. No one had ever dared to talk in the Messhall that way. Yet we all knew that Luke was going to get away with it. His other sins were of such an awful magnitude that he had a kind of immunity for the breach of ordinary laws such as these.

But we weren't fooled. One word out of any of us and it would have meant the Box.

One afternoon, in the middle of the second week of this routine, Luke had to go. He asked Boss Kean if he would take him off the road and into the bushes so he could dig a hole. At that moment Boss Godfrey came strolling by and overheard the request. Waving his Stick over his head, he called out to Rabbit to bring him his rifle from the truck. When he came up with it, Boss Godfrey took the bolt out of his pocket, inserted it into the breech and then put in a clip of cartridges. He looked at Luke, holding the rifle in the crook of his arm, swinging his Walking Stick very casually.

All right Luke. Go up and dig your hole. Go way out so nobody in the cars will see you. Take your time.
Have a real good one. But keep shakin‘ a bush as you shit. You hear? Don't never stop shakin' that bush. You know what'll happen if you do.

We all kept working, concentrating, looking down at our feet. Again. Something was up.

Luke stared directly into the mirrored eyes of the Walking Boss. There was the faintest sign of a smile on his lips. Then he took up his shovel and bent over to pick up a piece of old newspaper lying in the ditch. Clambering up the bank, he awkwardly began climbing up and over the post of a barbed wire fence, hampered by his chain and getting over it with great difficulty. But he stayed fairly close to the road, almost in plain view of the passing traffic in spite of the Walking Boss' invitations.

Go on Luke. What the hell. Make yourself comfortable. Go on way out so's you can drop your britches in peace. A man's got to have a little privacy sometimes. Right?

Luke just smiled. Digging up a shovelful of dirt, he dropped his pants and squatted. And all the while he hung onto a small live oak bush in front of him, shaking it continuously, the hard, tough little leaves rustling audibly so that all of us down in the ditch could plainly hear the sound.

The Walking Boss let the rifle dangle loosely in his hands as though he were thinking of something else. Switching his Stick to the same hand that held the rifle, he dug out a cigar and lit it clumsily, bending his neck down to strike a match. For a second or two it seemed as though
he were vulnerable. We held our breath. But the bush kept on shaking.

We almost jumped out of our skins when the gun went off. Neither aiming nor raising his arms, Boss Godfrey fired, the bullet ricocheting off the ground right under Luke's bare behind. But there wasn't the slightest reaction from Luke. There was no outcry. He didn't even flinch. It was as though he had felt nothing, as though he hadn't even heard.

Are you still shakin‘ that bush, Luke?

Yes suh, Boss. I'm shakin‘ it all right.

Again Boss Godfrey fired. Again the bullet threw sand on Luke's behind, bouncing off the ground and ricocheting through the bushes and trees with a vicious snarl and a delayed, spiteful echo.

Still shakin‘, Luke?

Still shakin‘, Boss.

Again and again the rifle fired, the woods echoing with the shots, the air bitter with gun smoke. But the bush was still shaking. Luke finally finished. Carefully he wiped his ass with the scrap of old newspaper. Then he stood up, buttoned his pants and buckled his belt, still kicking at the trunk of the bush with his left foot. Covering his cat hole with a shovelful of dirt, he called out loud and clear.

Comin‘ out, Boss.

All right Luke. Sure. Come on out.

We were aghast at this performance on the part of the Walking Boss, dumbfounded at the degree of coolness displayed by Luke. And as soon as we loaded up into the
truck that night Dragline began to raise hell with his buddy.

Man, oh
man!
Are you nuts? Are you out of your feeble, fuckin‘ mind? Defyin' the Walkin‘ Boss that a-way? You're jes
askin'
to git your ass shot off. You know that? Jes a-beggin‘ for it.

But Luke just grinned.

What's the matter Drag? Ain't you got no faith? You know that man Luke there is a pretty good shot.

Pretty
good? Shit. He could shoot the tail feathers off'n a
fly.
But ah knows more about that Man than you do. And ah'm tellin‘ yuh. You'd better watch yore ass.

So when Luke asked to dig another hole the very next day we couldn't believe it. Yet the same performance was repeated, the Walking Boss firing away at Luke's feet as he climbed up the ditch bank, a bullet cutting a strand of wire right out of his hands as he climbed the fence, three or four shots flicking sand on his bare ass as he squatted and another making the pan of his shovel ring like a bell as he returned to work, the handle slung over his shoulder. But the bush-shaking never faltered and the rattling cadence of Luke's shackled step never stumbled nor hesitated.

This time Dragline had nothing to say. None of us did. It was all too much for us. Flabbergasted into complete silence, we just floated along through the day, thinking of other things, dreaming our fantasies which were far easier to understand and believe than the things that were going on around us.

The following morning we hadn't been working more than an hour when still again Luke asked if he could dig a hole. For the first time Boss Godfrey showed some sign of being annoyed.

God damn it to hell. Don't you never take a crap in the mornin‘ before you check out? Didn't they give you a pot in the Box there with you?

Yes suh. Boss. But it's them beans. I jes cain't help it. It's all them beans I been eatin‘.

All right, damn it. Rabbit! Rabbit! Bring me mah rifle from the truck! And be quick about it!

Pickin‘ up this here paper, Boss Kean! Boss Paul!

Yeah. Pick it up, Luke.

It was still early in the day. The sky was overcast, the air was damp and everyone was sluggish. Even the Walking Boss seemed lethargic and didn't feel like playing his game. Without interfering he allowed Luke to climb the fence and go out into the bushes, turn over a clump of dirt and stick his shovel in the ground in front of him. Then the shaking of the bush began. There was silence in the air. And boredom. Everyone was doing the usual things.

Then the bush stopped shaking.

Luke!

Bang. Bang. Twice the Walking Boss fired in rapid succession, his hand working the bolt back and forth in a dim blur.

Everything was quiet, a thin blue cloud of bitter smoke hanging in the air. We stopped working and just
stood there, the guards nervously holding their shotguns at the ready. Boss Godfrey climbed the fence and ran towards Luke's shovel which was still visible, vertical in the ground. The shovel handle had been hit twice, the wood splintered, daylight visible through the bullet holes. But Luke was nowhere around.

Waving his rifle, Boss Godfrey shouted,

Jim! Bring up the truck! Hurry it up, damn it! Drive it on up here! Run! Damn your lazy ass!
Run!

He clambered down the ditch bank and up the shoulder to the road. Leaping into the truck, the Walking Boss roared away at top speed, headed for the nearest telephone.

What had happened was this:

Luke had seen a dirty old kite string wound around a stick lying in the ditch that some kid must have thrown or dropped out of a passing car. Instantly he recognized his opportunity. He called out to the guards and picked up a piece of scrap newspaper but managed to cover the ball of string and pick it up in his hand at the same time. Reaching the thicket, going out a little farther than he had ever gone before, he tied the string to the trunk of a bush in the same time it would have normally taken him to drop his pants. He kept shaking the bush as he backed away, jerking on the cord as though he were flying a kite or playing a hooked fish, unwinding the string with his left hand as he went. The string was about three hundred feet long. When he reached the end, Cool Hand dropped it, turned around and ran. It was his own private version of the Indian
Rope Trick, the rifle firing a salute as he disappeared in a puff of smoke.

When the Dog Boy and his hounds arrived they began the chase by following the string through the thicket. But the route was so simple they couldn't believe it. There was something eerie about the way that the thin white line led through the bushes. And after all, what can you trust in this world? For instance: if they pulled the string, would the bushes explode?

But the dogs began the hunt with straining eagerness, the posse and the Dog Boy following behind the pack in high spirits. This time it was going to be easy. And they were hoping they would be able to catch up with him alone in some isolated woods so they could fix him once and for all. At the very most Luke didn't have more than forty-five minutes start and they knew that no man can run very fast while wearing leg shackles.

But for the next several hours we could faintly hear the hounds barking and baying out in the woods. After a long period of silence we could hear them again, coming closer, their voices faint and far away. The day went by. We had our Smoking Period and then we had beans. Still the posse didn't return. Yet all this time we went about our work with straight faces and in dead silence, unable to express our inner hilarity, our derision for the inept forces of the Free Men who weren't even able to catch a man in chains.

After we checked into the Building that night and found that there was still no word of Luke we began to
grin at each other. We knew. We knew that in some miraculous way he was going to make it.

So again, we were simply overjoyed. After the Last Bell we turned over in our bunks to smirk at the doubled mattress as Carr finished his count and reported to the Wicker Man.

Fifty-one, Boss. And two in the bushes.

What? Another one? Who is it this time, Carr?

The same one, Boss. Cool Hand Luke.

AGAIN, THERE WAS NO SLEEP. IN THE SILENCE of the Building our imaginations were roaring. We lay there with closed eyes, the inner surfaces of our lids emblazoned with that fugitive landscape across which Cool Hand was running, his legs making that quick, shortstepping gait of a Chain Man, the shackle leaping and snapping like an iron viper clinging to his heels.

Fitfully we tossed in our bunks. It was a hot and airless night and we sweated in the dank humidity. At one end of the Building someone let go with a loud fart, one that
made a moist flapping sound. Eighteen bunks away, someone answered with a high pitched, alternating note. For an hour there was the soft sound of a poker game, cards riffling, coins clinking, then the quiet tread of Carr's shoes as he paced away another night of his sentence. Always there were the noises of a man getting up to go to the john, the squeaking of springs as a man turned over in his bunk.

An hour or so before dawn there was a commotion outside the fence. A truck drove up. There were voices. The truck motor started again and droned its way around the Messhall, the kitchen and the laundry shed, past the woodshed and the Floorwalker's Shack. There were rattles and bangs. A few dogs let out some brief, unenthused barks. It was quiet. There were footsteps on the porch. A voice spoke to the Wicker Man who went outside and unlocked the door, locking it again as the Dog Boy stepped into the Chute. Carr swung the gate open, the Dog Boy came in, Carr shut the gate and the Wicker Man locked it. The Dog Boy shuffled over to his bunk, pulled off his shoes and his clothes and then fell back with a sigh, throwing his arm across his eyes to shut out the light from the bare bulbs in the ceiling.

A few of us rolled over on our sides, raising our heads and exchanging puzzled looks with other men. It looked as though they had given up. The dogs had been called off. But it wasn't until the end of the following day that we were able to get the full story of how Luke managed to get away, piecing it together from fragments of random information.

When the posse started out they expected to run him down in an hour, especially since he was making no attempt to lay down a false trail but instead was running in a perfectly straight line. At first they thought that he had no choice. He was in orange grove country. The ground was well cultivated and soft and his footprints were so clear and unmistakable they didn't even need the dogs.

But then they began to get suspicious. His traces were too definite and showed no signs of indecision. He was just running, running as hard as he could. But he was heading somewhere. He had a plan.

The groves came to an end and they reached an area of scrub pines and palmetto bushes, approaching a place where two unimportant state roads joined together in a junction. In the apex there was a tiny hamlet of Negro shacks huddled together in a warped and sagging, unpainted heap.

This was the same hamlet that had been attacked by a mob of white men about a year before after two teenaged colored boys had been jailed for attempting to rape a white woman. Luke knew about this place. One day the Bull Gang had worked with bush axes in the drainage ditches that ran along the road. Luke had also worked his way past the wrecked and burned remains of the cabins that had been attacked after the mob discovered that the boys had been whisked away from the county jail and taken to Raiford for protective custody. They had turned their fury on the village, terrorizing the inhabitants, firing pistols and shotguns through windows and walls, breaking
into abandoned cabins where the boys had lived and smashing up the furniture. When they began to set fires the highway patrol finally interfered, dispersing the mob and dousing the flames.