Cool Hand Luke - Donn Pearce [44]
We could hardly wait for Smoking Period so we could consult with each other, all of us wondering if it had been real or if we had all been bear-caught. We also wondered how many of us would have to spend a night or two in the Box.
That school girl had no idea of the extent of the power she wielded over us with the tyranny of her body. For weeks her detailed image remained in our memory. That very night the mere thought of her swinging hips sent all of us rolling over in our bunks to lay on our sides, surreptitiously playing with ourselves with sly, innocent movements.
With great care we tried to keep the double bunks from swaying and informing the man above or below us of our lust, writhing in shame at being compelled to make love to our own hard and calloused fists. Fretfully we grappled with the elusiveness of our fantasies as all around us other bunks were shuddering with an apparently sourceless energy. Our souls coiled and uncoiled within us, wafting upwards in ethereal wisps to tangle with the unclean odors of shoes and sweat and the smell of shit coming from the johns.
Here and there could be heard that drawn-out sound. Not the growl and the whinnying triumph of masculine orgasm nor the quiet moan of satiated passions nor even a sigh of peace, but merely the lightest breathing, held in, checked, smothering a heart that was beating, spasmodic and muffled.
Then a strangled cry:
Gettin‘ up here, Carr!
Yeah. Aw right. Get up.
The bulbs were still burning as incandescent suns orbiting through the pit of snores. Men turned over on creaking beds, the sheets tangled in leg chains. Softly Carr padded back and forth in his crepe soled shoes, his heavy face grim and brooding, chewing on another cigar, reliving every detail of the actions, the emotions and hopes that had led him to that heist job in Jacksonville which had doomed him to fifteen years of sleeplessness.
Outside in the darkness I could hear the hounds. And Big Blue’s baritone reached me as he howled at the full moon. I sat up in bed.
Gittyap!
Eeeaahh!
I got up and wrapped the towel around my waist, walking barefooted to the toilets. The air was hot and thick with smells. Again I stared at the fly-specked cardboard sign tacked to the wall, reminding us forever of the Law.
Do not throw BUTS in URINOL. Anybody caught throwing buts in urinol and caught violating this order about buts will be put in BOX.
By order,
Yard Man.
I went back to bed, relieved, exhausted, lying back and avoiding that wet spot near the edge of the mattress. I stared up at the ceiling and the flakes of old paint peeling off, at the bare light bulbs, at the mattress above me sagging down with the weight of another prisoner.
Again a voice:
iiiiyyyyaaa!
aaahhh!
And I knew that it wasn’t over yet, for any of us. There was still more hope and disappointment way out there in the Free World where the traffic still swished and roared along restless highways. There was more battle to be given and lost, rewards to be sought and forsaken, more loves to be wooed and unrequited.
And I knew that Carr’s answer was for all of us, booming out in the Building and into the night, out among the fences, the guns and the stars—eeeaaahhh!
12
AND THAT’S WHAT THOSE OTHER VOICES seemed to be saying today in the church yard as we had our beans. They were singing their gospel hymns with a grating energy, a song that expressed as much despair as it did of hope and put off the whole question of salvation, confining themselves solely to matters of style.
While they were singing Dragline was still telling the story to the Bull Gang. A group of men lay on their sides and on their bellies, their heads all pointing towards him, the spokes of a fabled wheel that spun backwards through time and space. Drag muttered and whispered, glancing every so often at Boss Godfrey who lay on the tarp without moving, his Walking Stick at his side, his glasses reflecting the pale gray and blue of the clouds and the sky.
Ah’m tellin‘ yo’ll now. That crazy Luke son