Cool Hand Luke - Donn Pearce [61]
Boss Godfrey lashed out with a high kick, his foot catching Luke on the upper part of his thigh. Swiftly the Walking Stick landed three times on his shoulders and back with loud whacking noises, Luke’s shoes banging and scraping on the steps as he struggled to climb inside.
But instead of moving forward and taking his place Cool Hand turned around in the doorway and stared down at Boss Godfrey, looking directly into the shining silver of his anonymous eyes with an expression of defiance.
Boss Godfrey threw a punch right at Luke’s belly which he barely avoided by stepping back. Boss Godfrey reached in his hip pocket for his blackjack and mounted the steps. Inside the truck there was pandemonium. Again and again the Walking Boss swung his blackjack. There was a wild scramble of arms and legs, scraping feet and rattling chains, a melee of struggling bodies as all of us tried desperately to get out of the way. Luke fell to the floor and rolled away, trying to crawl under the bench and cover his head with his arms to ward off the blows. Boss Godfrey kicked and punched, his big body hampered by the closeness of the cage and the crush of bodies, panting as he cursed at Luke,
Damn you smart ass bastard! Who the fuck do you think you are? Showin‘ your ass around here? Huh? Ah’ll teach you some gawd damn respect. Right now.
Luke ended up under one of the benches, his face to the wall, Boss Godfrey giving him one or two final kicks before stamping out of the cage and down the steps, slamming the gate shut and locking it, leaping into the cab and roaring away.
16
BUT BY THE TIME THE FOURTH OF JULY came around everything had settled down. Boss Godfrey didn’t have such a hard-on for Luke anymore and gradually the Heat began to cool off. He did his work and ate his beans. He shot the bull, cracked jokes and played the Dozens. Every night he sat up and played poker and on Saturday morning he took out his banjo, tuning up the strings and starting the weekend by flailing out a vigorous Lonesome Road melody.
In the Chain Gang the Fourth of July has always been the big holiday of the year. Perhaps the idea is to instill in all of us a burning love of country. And hence a love for law and order. In any case, Independence Day is a very big deal. Nobody worked. Jabo the Cook mixed up twenty-five gallons of lemonade in a big wooden barrel and had two trustees carry it into the Building. In the afternoon a truck came back from town with a load of watermelons and they issued out a half-melon to every man in Camp.
It was a Glorious Fourth all right. All day long the radios blasted away. We boxed and wrestled and played Grab Ass, four Chain Men jitterbugging in the middle of the floor, stamping their feet, leaping and twirling, their shackles jingling and tinkling away in frantic celebration.
After supper we checked into the Building in the usual manner but instead of the eight o‘clock bell that would have ordinarily sent us all to bed in absolute silence, we were allowed to stay up until midnight and make all the noise we wanted.
Each of the four radios was tuned to a different station, hillbilly music wailing and screeching at full volume. At the same time the Terrible Trio was hard at work, Luke’s banjo, Koko’s old, beat-up guitar and Dragline’s harmonica all going at once, banging out a melody all their very own. The Family seemed to have a preference for the live orchestra and gradually men began to gather in a tight