Cool Hand Luke - Donn Pearce [56]
Hey Dragline! It looks like old man God’s gettin‘ ready to take himself a piss!
Dragline was just getting ready to swing. Aimlessly he let the bush axe flop over to one side. Looking up at the sky, he turned his head and answered out of the corner of his mouth.
Damn, Luke! Dummy up. Are you done gone nuts? You cain’t talk that a-way about the Lord.
Aw, come on, Dragline. You mean to tell me you still believe in that bearded son of a bitch up there?
Dragline’s mouth fell open. He looked up and then down and then all around him. He took a few aimless swings with his bush axe, doing nothing but splash water and chop up pieces of felled vegetation.
Man—listen. Don’t talk like that. Especially like now when it’s lightnin‘ the way it is. You’re liable to git struck down. God’s liable to git real mad and strike you dead. Jes like that. Don’t you know that you’re bein’ one of them blasphemer guys? Ain’t you scared?
Luke smiled and shook his head, cut down a water oak sapling and then gripped his bush axe with both hands spread apart, the handle resting horizontally against his thighs.
Oh, my poor, baby Dragline. If there’s really a God like you say then he can strike me dead right now. Right? O.K. then. Let him. Let him prove it. Right now.
Luke. Ain’t you scared? Ain’t you scared of dyin‘ and goin’ to hell?
Dyin‘? Ha! It’s livin’ I’m scared of. Livin‘ this nice pretty life you say the Old Man up there can take back whenever he wants. Well, he’s welcome to it. Come on God! Show your stuff, Old Timer! Make me know it! Make me know you’re up there!
Grumbling, the clouds boiled into masses of black and gray billows, thunder volleying into a crescendo of noise, three distant explosions banging one after the other followed by a brilliant flash of lightning crackling over the sky from horizon to horizon. The wind picked up force. Suddenly the air became cold as the first patter of rain began.
Dragline cringed and shrank away from Luke. Desperately he lashed out at the few remaining bushes and began wading frantically through the ditch until he reached the shoulder and clambered up to the road.
Gittin‘ up here, Boss Paul! That crazy Luke says he don’t believe in no God. Ah ain’t gonna work next to no blasphemer! Ah don’t wanna git struck by no lightnin’. Ah may be a sinner aw right. Yeah, But ah believes. Ah damn sure believes!
Boss Paul just stood there, his shotgun cradled under his left arm, smiling down at Luke who was slashing away at the bushes in his berserk manner, cutting left and right in a fury of labor.
It began to rain. Boss Godfrey signaled to the men at the head of the line to load up into the cage truck. As each man finished his strip he clambered out of the ditch, went down to where the truck was parked and got in. Boss Godfrey leaned one hand on the bars beside the open door, holding his cane in the other.
Dragline walked along the edge of the road, looking back over his shoulder, his face full of fear as the lightning cracked and hammered down on the countryside. But Luke was laughing out loud, pausing in his work to turn his face up into the downpour, paying no attention to the rules or the Law, unafraid of the Walking Boss or of the guards, undaunted by their weapons or their deities.
Hey Drag? Where’s that thunderbolt Drag? Where is that big, bad God of yours? That god of power and wrath and vengeance? Or is he a God of love? I forget now Dragline. Which is it, anyway?
Luke raised his bush axe high. From out of the slimy water towards the sky there rose a stiff continuity of striped pants and muscled, sunburned body, his hands tightly gripping the long handle of the bush axe which extended straight above his head to the sharp, curved blade that glinted there in the storm between heaven and earth.
Then it fell with a whack. Left and right it rose and fell again, his arms knotting and bending and flexing as Luke cut a swath through the tangled thicket