Cool Hand Luke (28 page)

“Do? Well, Dragline. Ah don't know. Ah reckon about all we can do right now is jest try and play it cool.”

Shit. That was all ah had to hear. “Play it cool?,” ah says. “
Cool?
How can we be cool when we're hotter'n the hinges of hell? They'll blow our ass clean off if we try anything. They got a natural dead-lock right on us.”

But Luke jest stepped down from behind this Bible
thing and he walks real slow right up to the winder. The sun was startin‘ to shine by then and it was comin' right in on him. And he raises bof‘ his two hands right up in the air and he yells out loud and clear—

“Aw right, Boss! Don't shoot! You got us! We give up!”

And right then. He didn't even aim. He didn't even hafta shift his rifle around. He jes let it dangle real loose like in his hands. And jes like that, Boss Godfrey pulled the trigger.

THE BULLET HIT LUKE SQUARELY IN THE throat and passed completely through his neck, the force of it nearly knocking him over, making him stagger back several steps to keep his footing. The bullet ricocheted off the stove pipe and then the brick chimney, bouncing back at an angle to hit the ceiling and finally fell on top of the piano keyboard, the dim interior of the church filled with a puff of soot and of brick dust, the thwacking sounds of the bullet forming a single, instantaneous chord that culminated
with the sounding of several treble notes on the piano.

Dragline began to crawl in a frenzied scuttle towards some sort of cover. He stumbled and kicked and paddled his way through the mass of cane chairs and then scurried behind the home-made lectern, trying to hide himself in the cramped hollow within.

There was silence. After the noise of the gunshot and the frantic, scrambling sounds, it was like a vacuum; ethereal, delicate, vibrating with a sensation of the infinite.

Dragline cowered behind the lectern, not daring to move, his mouth bitter with the taste of desperation that struggled inside his chest. Hearing nothing but the last faint hum of the piano, he cautiously peered around the edge. And he saw Luke standing there in the same place, the floor strewn with tiny glass fragments glittering in the sunlight streaming in through the window. His hands were still raised, his left arm trembling violently as he stared through the jagged window pane. He stood there swaying, trying to say something, blood gushing from the hole in his neck and from out of his mouth, his lips twitching uncontrollably. Slowly he sank to the floor, not falling nor even collapsing but just laying down with weariness.

Seconds later the commotion began. There were shouts outside and curses, the squeaks and rattles and thumps of men running and struggling.

God damn you! What d‘you do that for?

Keep your fuckin‘ nose out of this.

Come on, Boss! Come on!

Hey! You!

There were footsteps out front and then the door burst open. Shoes scraped and pounded, coming inside. Dragline was trying to squeeze himself under the lectern, reaching up to grab the huge Bible and the tablecloth off the top, pulling them over his head. He whimpered and prayed in a low moan, trying not to hear the clear, emphatic voice of the Dog Boy as he yelled out with the excitement of triumph and revenge.

Here he is, Boss! You got ‘iml You got 'im good! Hey, here's the other one too. The fat boy hisself. Hidin‘ in the back. I'll git him for you Boss. You got the other one. Let me get this one.

More footsteps, curses, the sound of a slap.

Put that thing down, you bastard. Put it down. There's been enough killin‘ here for one day.

Hands reached into the lectern, grabbed Dragline's shirt and pulled him to his feet, the Sheriff and his deputy holding his arms with desperate purpose. Dragline saw the Captain standing there inside the door with Boss Paul and Boss Hughes. Boss Godfrey was nearby, his rifle dangling loosely in one hand. A uniformed sergeant of the Highway Patrol grappled with the Dog Boy, slapping him in the face and holding up his gun hand by the wrist.

Breathing heavily, the Sheriff snapped a pair of handcuffs on Dragline and started to hustle him outside. At the same time the two shotgun guards went over to Luke. As soon as they touched him he struggled to rise to his feet. But he couldn't stand up alone, his left arm and
leg shivering, the corner of his lips and his cheek trembling violently.

Dragline was led outside and put in the back seat of the Sheriff's car. There was a small crowd gathered nearby, a dozen Negroes huddled together, three disheveled men in green uniforms, one of them talking nervously.

I was on duty. Midnight to eight. Up in the tower. And I saw ‘em. Plain. The two of 'em. They were wearin‘ these striped pants. Sneakin' around behind this here nigger shack. I could see ‘em plain in the glasses. There was frost last night. They were puttin' out smudge pots and fires all over the groves. I had to keep my eyes open. You know. You gotta stay on your toes at a time like that. Case some of them fires get outta hand. So I'm lookin‘ all around. But convicts! Hell, I never figured on seein' no convicts. But there they were. As big as life.

And Dragline heard the sergeant of the Highway Patrol say something to the Captain about providing an escort, about Orlando and the nearest hospital. But then he heard some dry spitting and a slow drawl, the Captain muttering something about not being authorized, about expenses and something about prison hospital.

Luke came out the door of the church supported by both arms between the two guards. And that was the last time that Dragline ever saw him. He was dragged stumbling past the car window, his entire left side twitching and shivering in spasms. They put him in the Captain's black and yellow coupe and put cuffs around his ankles, put a safety belt around his waist and locked his wrists so
that his hands dangled securely in his lap. Luke slumped forward, his head hanging at a strange angle, blood running down his neck and over his chest and belly, his mouth trembling but not making a sound.

Then the Captain got in the car and drove off towards Raiford, a hundred and twenty miles away.

AFTER LUKE AND DRAGLINE HAD TAKEN OFF with the tool truck the Bull Gang finished up the day. But we doubled up and went out on the Road the next morning with Boss Palmer's gang. Boss Godfrey was missing all day and so was Boss Paul and Boss Hughes. But other than that we didn't know anything about what was going on until after we had checked in that night. Then we found Dragline sitting on the floor next to his bunk, smoking a cigarette, staring down in sullen brooding at the
shiny, brand-new set of shackles that were riveted to his ankles.

Silently we listened as Dragline told us about the escape and the shooting. Later in the evening, after the Last bell, Jabo the Cook was let inside the Chute by the Wicker Man. Jabo had been kept up late in order to fix the Captain, who had returned to Camp just after dark, some supper. And it was from Jabo that we got the message, whispered first to Carr and then murmured to the Wicker Man who repeated it to the Dog Boy lying there on his bunk. But the Wicker Man said it loudly enough so that everyone in the Building could hear, speaking in a crude, cruel and rasping manner, his words going right through us.

WELL, THAT LUKE FELLER IS DEAD. THE ONE YOU BEEN OUT CHASIN‘ ALL THE TIME. DIED UP AT RAIFORD. RECKON HE AIN'T GONNA GIVE NOBODY NO MORE TROUBLE NOW.

We just lay there in our beds staring up at the ceiling, at the light bulbs, at the shape of the man's body pressing down on the mattress sagging above us. There was no sound; not even the squeaking of bed springs as men rolled over, not a cough nor a fart, not even the sound of breathing.

And then we heard the stretch and the rub of the Floorwalker's crepe soled shoes and felt the subtle vibration of the Building as he paced back and forth, on guard and alert, wearing away his Time.

DRAGLINE FINISHED HIS STORY. HE TOOK A last drag on his butt and flipped it away, drawing up his knees and shifting his feet, the shackles rattling quietly, muffled by the sand and the dust. Fingering the center link, Dragline looked down at the ground. And I knew that his mind had at last relaxed, had let him forget about Luke. Instead he was wondering how much longer it would be before that link finally broke; remembering that
the Captain had said that Drag would have to wear those chains until he wore them out.

And he was probably thinking of his own Time, his bad luck and his errors. For if he hadn't agreed to run with Luke that day he would have been home by now. His original sentence was finished a month ago but now he is working on that brand new Five Spot for larceny of State property; in other words, for stealing the tool truck.

But the movement of Dragline's chain was the only sound as the Bull Gang sat there, unmoving, our gestures and expressions awkward and fixed. Our throats were tight, our mouths were dry, our heads were ringing with the melody and the hymn called Cool Hand Luke.

Yet we tried to appear casual and tough as our eyes swept over the flimsy shack of a church. We studied the shifting concrete foundation blocks which held the building off the ground, the floor buckling between them. We examined the warped walls, the boards all dried out and cracked with streaks of old paint barely visible in the grain of the wood. We stared at the window which had a gray piece of weather-beaten cardboard inserted in the place of one of the panes. But that blank square spoke with such an eloquent simplicity that to us it had become as solemn as a window of stained glass reflecting a complex of infinities.

Inside, the choir was still singing. We could hear the swish and the roar of a passing truck back on the road. We could hear the voices of some little colored kids laughing and screaming at each other while swinging through the limbs of a distant mulberry tree. The piano went banging
on, the trumpet muted and tremulous. But most of all we listened to the cunning notes of a sly banjo echoing from deep within the shadowed obscurity.

Then we began to get tense, began to stretch and shift our feet. Koko took off his cap and wiped his face with it, put it on his head, pulled it over his left ear, then pulled it over his right ear. He took it off again and mauled it with his hands, putting it on once more, the bill pulled down low over his eyes.

Rabbit and Jim came over and began to carry the bean pot and the bread box and the crate of aluminum dinner plates back to the tool truck. Rabbit went around to the guards and collected their buckets and the orange crates. Together they began to roll up the tarps and put out the coffee fire.

Somebody stood up and went over for a drink of water just before Rabbit took the bucket away. Men began snapping open the lids of their tobacco cans and rolling up their last minute smokes. I began to stretch. I knocked the ashes out of my pipe, filled it again and lit it. I shook the sand out of my shoes and put them back on.

I glanced over and saw Boss Godfrey sit up with a yawn, covering his mouth with the back of his fist as he stretched. With deliberate, probing fingers he dug the big watch out of his pocket and held it in his hand. Yet I couldn't say for certain that he actually looked at it. He didn't turn his head nor nod. His face revealed no expression. And where his eyes should have been I could only see the glittering surfaces of his glasses and the reflection
of ourselves captured therein, a reduced image of the Bull Gang sprawled in a huddle, Dragline sitting in the center.

Boss Godfrey took a cigar out of his shirt pocket. He bit off the end and spat it on the ground. Then he put the cigar in his mouth and lit it. But I didn't know if his movements were profound and thoughtful or whether they were lazy and careless. After a long moment, as though he had forgotten all about work, convicts and Time, finally there was a deep, disinterested growl rumbling from his chest.

Aw right. Let's go git it. It's that time.

We all stood up, clutching our yo-yos and waiting as Boss Paul, Boss Kean and the other guards began walking off to strategic positions that gave them a good field of fire. There was a moment's hesitation and then all together, without even a signal, we began to wade through the shifting hot sand towards the road and the ditch. We fell into formation and began swinging our yo-yos back and forth, slowly at first, our hands and arms stiff and cramped, yo-yoing the grass on both sides of the road, the guards scattered, stationed at the cardinal points of the compass. Our easy rhythm began to loosen up, our freshly sharpened yo-yos slicing through the weeds, the soft swishing lulling us once again back to our reverie.

We began our thinking and planning. We imagined, we pretended and we remembered. As we worked our way past the little cemetery next to the church I glanced over at the pathetic graves with their crosses of ordinary lumber, the small lumps of stones, the wilting
flowers stuck into mayonnaise jars of water, the stained and weathered photographs incased in glass and fitted in frames.

And as we passed I couldn't help but think of the dead body of Cool Hand Luke. I knew that by the time the officials got around to notifying his relatives he was already buried, carried out the Main Gate and around the corner of the triple fences of Raiford, interred in that convicts' cemetery which is known to one and all as Gopher Ridge.

I knew that they must have placed a white wooden cross at his grave lettered in black paint with the name Lloyd Jackson and a serial number. And I also knew that before long the paint would crack and peel in the sun and the rains would level the mound of loose sand. Sooner or later the base of the cross would rot and the truck would be hauling in some more boxes and would accidentally knock the cross over, the tires pressing it into the sand.

In a few more minutes the voices singing in the church behind us became dimmer and finally lost in the roar and the whistle of the passing traffic. We worked our way past the sign that read “Lake County Fire Control Headquarters”—then another sign shaped like a huge badge. Farther on we passed a parked green truck that belonged to the forest rangers. Then we cut away the weeds that grew around a concrete anchor for one of the wire stays that supported the watchtower. Again I counted the flights of steps that zigzagged drunkenly up across the sky and towards the eyes hidden there in the clouds. Fifteen.