Cool Hand Luke - Donn Pearce [42]
For a whole week we worked on Eyeball Boulevard. There were sentimental lumps in our chests, in our throats and in our pants as our eyes watered with frustration. Yet we showed not a sign, stoic, calm, concentrating on our labors, pretending to be unaware of the fancy homes, the enticing billboards, Cadillacs, kids, gardens, blonds and brunettes, restaurants, bars, sport clothes—everything. But secretly and discreetly our eyeballs bulged and strained. Every passing car was inspected for raised skirts, shorts, halters and low-cut dresses.
It was a wild, impossible week. Miracles occurred every day. From the orange juice canning plant at Plymouth all the way to Apopka, three miles up the road, we worked our way through the suburbs of Paradise. By a stroke of luck four Newcocks had arrived just in time to take the Heat off the rest of us who in the meantime weren’t missing a thing.
Because we know all about those beauties way out there that you don’t even suspect. The traffic lights on a rain-swept Free World street that are like emeralds and rubies. The ordinary citizen strolling into a bank for some change who walks with the ponderous righteousness of a Caesar. A fat, homely woman walking a dog on a leash who becomes in the wink of a passing eye a voluptuous Diana out on the hunt. Oh, the beer signs! The grocery stores! Shoes shining there in the window!
Early on Tuesday afternoon the entire squad was herded across the road to do some work on the other side. For a moment we stood there in a cluster, waiting for the signal to cross while the guards shifted their positions. The traffic was thick and had slowed to a crawl as we stood there peeking through the windows of the Buicks, Chewies and Fords, looking at bulging bosoms, thighs, bellies swelling against the cloth of bright colored summer dresses.
Then a convertible crawled by in the congestion and stopped behind a truck. We didn’t move. Our faces revealed no expression. But we could have reached out and touched the voluptuous blond who sat there cringing in the stare of our eyes, tugging at the hem of her skirt to pull it down below her knees.
The car began to move again, a succession of semitrailers, pickups and busses taking its place. There was a gap in the traffic, we were given the signal, crossed the road and resumed our work. But for a full fifteen minutes our heads reeled with the memory of the vision, our nostrils clogged with the lingering odor of perfume, of whiskey, the smell of her sex and skin that had wafted out to us in a cloying, strangulating aroma. There wasn’t a word in the Bull Gang as we went on with our chores. But we were busily inhaling, analyzing those various scents that contrasted so strongly with the hot, dirty, sweaty smells of our own world—lipstick, rouge, face powder, fresh clean skin, eau de cologne and Canadian Club.
Dragline said it; for all of us.
Damn. Damn. Ah been chain gangin‘ so long ah’m gittin’ so’s ah kin sniff jes like a bloodhound.
The following day Dragline appeared out on the road wearing a cracked, broken pair of sunglasses that he had picked up somewhere in a ditch. One arm was gone and he had attached that side to his ear with a piece of string. Luke grinned at him and drawled,
Well, lookee here. Ole Clark Gable’s joined up with us. In disguise. But damn if it don’t look just like my old friend, Fat Boy.
Dragline scowled back at him.
Man, you got no ‘magination a-tall. These here are mah Eyeballin’ glasses. Like Boss Godfrey’s got. Ah’m a-gonna play peekaboo at all that young pussy struttin‘ up and down