Cool Hand Luke - Donn Pearce [16]
Hey, what are you doin‘?
I gotta park my truck don’t I? I ain’t gonna leave the motor runnin‘ for some thief to just come and help himself.
Before the cop knew what was happening, Jackson was in the cab. He shifted gears, gunned the motor and roared down the street at top speed.
Hey! Stop! Come back here! Halt! Halt!
The cop dropped the pipe cutter and yanked out his pistol. He aimed up at the sky and squeezed the trigger. Nothing happened. Then he squeezed again and yelled out his challenge, his voice loud and echoing down the empty street.
Halt! In the name of the Law!
Looking at his pistol, he snapped off the safety and started to aim at the fleeing truck. But this time he squeezed the trigger too quickly. The gun went off with a tremendous noise, the window of a second story dentist’s office collapsing in a rattle of glass fragments.
Quickly the cop began firing. The bullets cracked and whined as they ricocheted off the street, the curb, and then a “No Parking” sign. Jackson turned a corner, just in time for the last bullet to hit the front left tire. The steering wheel wrenched itself out of his hands, the truck bouncing over the curb and across the sidewalk, crashing with a splintering roar through the plate glass window of a closed restaurant, crushing tables and chairs and finally coming to rest after jarring the end of the counter out of place and tearing the fastenings out of the floor.
The cop came running up, out of breath, fumbling with trembling fingers as he tried to reload his pistol and run at the same time. He dropped several bullets along the way, swore, started to pick them up, hesitated, ran on. Coming to the restaurant, he cautiously stepped inside, his shoes crunching on broken glass, crouching carefully as he approached the truck.
There was a long pause. Then the door to the cab clicked open and Jackson slowly and laboriously climbed out, humming under his breath.
Stop! Stay right where you are!
Jackson ignored the cop. It was as though he hadn’t heard him as he fumbled in his pocket for some change, rubbed his nose with his fingers and gingerly felt the cut on his forehead. He looked at the blood on his fingertips, tasted it with his tongue and then wiped it off on his pants.
Staggering ever so slightly and favoring his left leg, he went over to the juke box in the corner and dropped in a quarter, hesitating over the buttons as he scanned the titles. But the cop insisted.
Hey! Come on, you!
Jackson punched one button after another, frowning and squinting his eyes as he considered each of his selections. The cop was shaking with frustrated rage.
Come on! God damn it! You’re under arrest! Get ‘em up!
The juke box burped, swallowed and groaned. It began to come alive with glowing, bubbling colors. Levers clicked, gears meshed, a disc was removed from a rack visible through the glass front, placed on the table and started turning. The playing arm moved over, setting the needle in the proper groove. Then a quartet of gospel singers began a vigorous hymn accompanied by a complicated harmony of banjos and guitars picking and strumming in the background.
Oh Lawd! Ah’m a-comin‘, a-comin’ to that Angel La-and!
Snapping his fingers and shaking his lowered head with ecstasy, Jackson shuffled over the broken glass and splintered wood, dancing out onto the sidewalk as the cop followed behind him with his pistol, tremulous and agitated.
And so Jackson committed his very own crime and was brought before the wrath of the Law. He left behind him an anguished chorus of forlorn voices praying over an abandoned city as he danced his way heel and toe right over the debris and into his cell.
7
IT WAS ABOUT THREE WEEKS AFTER THAT when Boss Paul showed Rabbit an item in the Orlando paper about the trial of a man called Lloyd Jackson. And of course we heard all about it that night in the Building. The article repeated the story that I had found in the bottom