Cool Hand Luke - Donn Pearce [46]
Inside the Building the radios were going full blast. Preacher had turned on some church hymns. Ears had turned on some jazz to drown him out. Others went back to their poker games and wallet making. But the rest of us stood on the porch and sat on the steps, smoking and watching and remembering how things used to be. Or better yet, as things should have been. With great interest we watched the picnic lunches being opened, the tidbits offered back and forth. We knew perfectly well that there wasn’t a word being said about a man’s Time, his guilt, his regrets or his felony. Except for the question of parole only the most ordinary kind of gossip was discussed. But we were fifty feet away and had to watch the melodrama of the afternoon as a silent pantomime. Except that later we heard about everything that had been said at Luke’s part of the table, getting it practically word for word from Loudmouth Steve who sat next to them with his mother.
Luke ate the lunch his mother had brought along in a basket but he ate very slowly and with a sense of decorum. His young nephew sat beside his father twisting and craning his neck to see all he could of the guns and the stripes and the fences. Turning his head he looked directly into the eyes of Boss Godfrey who sat just behind them. Abruptly the boy turned his head back to the family.
Luke’s brother tried to be cheerful, telling stories of the neighbors back home and telling a couple of the latest jokes he had picked up. Then he snuffled his nose and picked at his teeth with his thumb nail.
I saw Helen the other day.
Luke looked down at his plate, took a strong bite out of the piece of chicken he was holding and said nothing.
She’s got a fine lookin‘ young’un. A boy.
Luke said nothing. His brother said nothing. Struggling to find another subject he turned his head to look around. Then he saw Boss Godfrey sitting behind them, his old black hat pulled down low over his forehead, his eyes covered with the mirrored sunglasses, a cigar in his mouth, his arms folded motionlessly over the back of the chair.
His brother looked back at Luke, at his mother and then down at the ground.
She says to say, Howdy.
Again Luke took a bite out of his chicken.
Luke’s brother was wearing a suit, a white shirt and a tie. His hair was shiny with vaseline and plastered down smooth over his head. And even from the porch I could see that he was a farmer, as clearly as if he had been wearing overalls, brogans and a ragged old hat. You could see it in his hands, the weather-beaten complexion of his face, the awkward movements of his body. Jackson’s people were mountain people from that extreme northeast corner of Alabama which lies adjacent to Tennessee and Georgia, at the very end of the Appalachian Range. They were coal miners, timber cutters and livestock raisers who had always struggled without much luck to make a living out of a hard, tough country.
And I could see from there that Luke’s mother was the strong, enduring breed of woman that you find in those mountains. She was getting old and she was tired but she still had that expression of determination, of suffering long ago accepted without question.
Steve told us about it a few days later when Luke wasn’t around. Mrs. Jackson had been quiet, making sure that Luke got enough to eat but otherwise not saying much, just looking at him, ignoring the prison sights and sounds around her, ignoring Boss Godfrey’s eavesdropping and the pistol guard sitting nearby.
It’s been a long time, Lloyd.
Yes