Cool Hand Luke - Donn Pearce [19]
Later the guard was relieved by the Wicker Man whose regular job is to sit up all night with his shotgun and pistol, standing guard over the sleeping Building. He is round and immensely fat, his small eyes peering at the Newcocks over rimless glasses. He has short, tottering legs and a hard, tight mouth that has never smiled, squeezed in between his flabby jowls.
Outside, the Newcocks saw a black and yellow truck driving up with a thick crowd of convicts in the back. The guards dismounted, spreading out to the sides. At a signal the men scrambled down and lined up along the sidewalk, heads bared to the Captain who was in his rocking chair, one foot propped up against a column of the porch, turning his head to spit with a dry puff of air.
Meanwhile the Wicker Man had come inside the Building with a sawed-off piece of broom handle. Beginning a hard, repetitious tapping on the floor, he banged the stick on each and every board to sound it for possible saw cuts. He tottered about on his clumsy legs, banging on the walls, the shutters, scraping the stick across the window mesh.
Through this noise came the shouts of the convicts as they streamed through the gate outside, counting off with booming voices that drifted over the camp like gunshots. The Newcocks sat to one side, motionless, embarrassed, smoking with the calmness one learns how to assume. One by one the gangs counted through the gate, running eagerly across the yard to open wooden lockers built against the wall of the Building outside. Some went to the Messhall door to line up. Others came running inside the Building with scraping shoes, with yells, curses and songs, shoving for standing room around the toilets, Dragline growling out like an enraged bear,
Git out’n the way, Onion Haid.
Damn Drag. Ah gotta piss don’t ah?
You gotta piss? Ah’ll piss right in your Gawd damn pocket in about a minute.
And then I saw him. There was Lloyd Jackson, sitting on the bench with his legs crossed, his elbow on top of the table, a butt in his fingers. His eyes were half-closed, watching the men as they came storming in. There was a slight smile on his lips. And it was in that smile that I recognized him, remembering that far away expression that I had seen in the photograph in the paper.
The Wicker Man chased everybody outside and we all lined up in front of the Messhall waiting for the Walking Boss on duty to give us the signal to start going in.
Inside the Messhall there was a stack of aluminum plates by the door and everyone filed by a low table in the center where the trustees ladled out the string beans and rice. And at the other end there was a pan full of crude chunks of fried ham. The Newcocks were amazed. Other than the greasy, slimy fat back served about once a week, there is no meat at all up in Raiford. None. Unless you can afford to buy your own hamburgers at the Canteen. And you have to be a trustee to get to the Canteen.
After supper the rest of us checked into the Building. But the Newcocks waited outside on the porch until we had been frisked and counted and allowed to pass inside. Then Carr counted them in, tolerantly patient if they hadn’t quite learned what they were expected to do.
The last one came through the Chute. Carr entered, the Wicker Man locking the outside door behind him. Then Carr swung the heavy wooden gate shut, the long iron tongue sticking through the slot into the Wicker where the Free Man locked it with a heavy padlock. Again, we were tucked in for the night.
The Newcocks huddled together at the poker table, waiting for someone to tell them what to do. But they were ignored by the Family as we went on with our usual routines.
Since the hot water supply only lasts for fifteen minutes everyone takes a bath at the same time. At least twenty men were in the shower,