Cool Hand Luke - Donn Pearce [18]
Eventually the Bus left the main highway, following a narrow State road until coming to the clay road that goes through the orange groves. At the turn-off there was a small, neatly lettered white sign—
S.R.D. Camp #93.
The Bus stopped on the asphalt apron. The driver got out and stretched, walking stiffly towards one of the white-painted frame buildings. The convicts inside whispered to each other, their feet shifting awkwardly, peering out through the grated windows at the lawns, the fences, the sidewalk.
There was a long wait. Then the driver returned with a fat man wearing a Panama hat, a short sleeved sport shirt and pastel blue slacks. The fat man made continuous spitting movements with his lips as though trying to spit out an invisible grain of tobacco. In the background stood a man with deeply tanned skin and vacant eyes, on the alert and tense. In his hand dangled a pump action shotgun.
The driver looked at the guard who nodded his head. Unlocking the door, the driver stood aside and the men climbed out, awkward and stiff and blinking. At a command they lined up, trying not to look the fat man in the eye. They waited, clutching the paper bags and cigar boxes which contained their worldly goods. The Captain spat three times, producing nothing but tiny jets of air. Without looking at any of them, he read their names off a list, the men answering, careful to say “sir.”
Then the Yard Man came up, his shoulders hunched and thin, his lined and wrinkled face tight and cruel over the protruding bones of his skull. He wiggled his jaw and shifted his false teeth back and forth, staring with cold eves at the Newcocks.
I can still remember how it felt to sit there in the empty Building, looking around and waiting for something to happen. Everyone does the same thing. He sits and smokes and stares here and there, walking up and down the Building a few times between the rows of empty bunks. Without really meaning to, he counts them. Fifty-one. But he feels like a trespasser, like Goldilocks, knowing that some other man sleeps in every one of those bunks. Another man who gets tired and hungry and who worries. Another man who has committed a felony and who is building Time.
The Building is built of wood. The windows are only square holes without any glass, covered over with chain link fence material and also with fly screen. Outside there are heavy shutters propped up by sticks. The room itself is a large rectangle with an alcove on one side which has a floor of concrete and in which is located the big iron coal stove, a urinal, four toilets and the shower. The shower is in the corner, a large area partitioned off by a low curb of concrete. There is a small, cracked mirror and one faucet. There are also two wooden tables with benches, the kind they have in the parks for picnics. Directly opposite this alcove is the Wicker, the basket-turret where an armed guard sits up all night keeping watch over all the little things we do. There is no privacy whatever in the Building. Just as there are no wash basins nor cups. You drink, wash, shave and brush your teeth beneath the one faucet in the shower stall.
The Newcocks sat on the benches of the two tables. They waited. Trustees came in from the kitchen from time to time. They took showers or went to the john. But actually they came in to size up the Newcocks and to get the latest news from the Rock.
Later the Yard Man came inside the Wicker and shoved a wad of clothes through a small slot in the screen down at the bottom next to the floor. The clothes were numbered with India ink. The pants were of the standard Raiford variety but the shirts and the jackets were of much heavier material. They were also given striped bill caps and heavy work shoes, the heels rimmed with steel. After sorting out the clothes according to the laundry numbers