Cool Hand Luke - Donn Pearce [37]
After fifteen minutes of just standing there, wondering what was up, a yellow pickup truck appeared up the road. It pulled over to one side and stopped and then we saw the letters painted on the door—S.R.D. Boss Godfrey strolled over and began talking to the engineers who made motions with their hands, gesticulating towards the road and towards the horizon.
But still there were no orders. We shifted our weight from one leg to the other, smoking, leaning on our shovel handles and mumbling to ourselves. Then we saw the tank truck coming and recognized it as the cumbersome machine that sprays hot, liquid asphalt on the surface of a road in order to make a new top. But there must always be an aggregate mixed with the asphalt to give it strength and thickness. Ordinarily a fleet of trucks will dump piles of clean beach sand alongside a road that is to be sprayed. Then we follow along behind the tank truck spreading sand with our shovels. There is a certain way to do it, a clever twist on the handle at the exact moment of the swing and the sand will fan out into long, triangular, finely powdered areas.
But this time there were no piles of clean sand. We would have to dig away the grass and the topsoil in the ditch bottoms to reach the gray Florida loam beneath.
Dragline spit a stream of tobacco juice, shook his head and muttered half aloud,
Oh man. Oh, man. Here’s where the shit hits the fan.
The tank truck turned around at the dead-end and then came back and stopped in the exact center of the road. The two S.R.D. men got out and adjusted a sliding pole attached to the front bumper. At the end of the pole was a vertical antenna that they used as a guide for steering. Then they mounted the rear platform and began fiddling with levers and wheels, adjusting valves and looking at gauges. A fire was roaring inside the furnace under the tank. There was steam and smoke. There was the stench of hot tar. Across the rear of the truck was a heavy pipe with spray nozzles spaced every few inches. It was made in sections that the men unhinged and adjusted so it would reach from one edge of the road to the other.
When the temperatures and the pressures were just right, the driver got in the cab and started up the motor. We were ready. Rabbit had collected our jackets and shirts. We had spaced ourselves on both sides of the road about ten feet apart, the guards well behind us, standing on top of the ditch bank. Our belts were hitched up and our caps readjusted, our breaths held in expectation.
With a pounding roar of the big diesel motor and a snorting blast of air pressure, the truck took off, the nozzles spraying black fountains of tar which left behind a long, hot glistening puddle.
Then the Bull Gang did its stuff.
Each line of men sanded the opposite side of the road, the shovel pans flashing in long, scintillating arcs of shining steel; arms flexing, chest muscles contracting, backs knotting up and relaxing, wrists twisting with expert finesse as the layers of sand shot across the road in swift avalanches streaking over the black glaciers of tar, here—there—the seventeen of us frantic in our labor, knowing that we would get no Smoking Period, our only breaks to be while waiting for the spray truck to return with still another load of asphalt.
And so we rolled.
We rolled for a week; a week of madness, of agony and enthusiasm. Our shovel handles were slimy with sweat, our bodies covered with mud, our lungs choked with the stench of the tar and its heat and with the cloud of dust that billowed away behind us.
It took about fifteen minutes for the truck to empty its load and then it would roar off to the S.R.D. yard in Oakland for still