Cool Hand Luke - Donn Pearce [62]
They stood shoulder to shoulder around an inner ring of men who sat on the floor, the entire congregation stamping their feet, clapping their hands and singing their lungs out.
Sleep was out of the question. So was reading. I finally gave up and went over to the barrel and with a dipper I filled up a Pepsi Cola bottle with lemonade. Shuffling barefooted towards the hootenanny, I stepped aside to avoid the ponderous bulk of the Floorwalker as he went swaggering by, his massive shoulders rolling from side to side, his cigar going, his eyes sharp as he scowled at his evening charges. Up and down the Building he paced away the hours, Carr, the Floorwalker; half-convict and half-Free Man, as stem and mighty as the Colossus of Rhodes, straddling the fence of crime while we ordinary vessels sailed in and out between his legs.
I went over to the celebrating crowd, taking a long swallow of lemonade and looking over Little Greek’s shoulder at the orchestra within the inner circle. And there stood Cool Hand Luke in the very epicenter of it all, barechested, his banjo going hell bent for election, his eyes closed, that secret smile carved into his lips.
And there was Society Red, down on his hands and knees, working away with a rusty hacksaw blade on the hole he was cutting through the floor.
I joined the chorus, not knowing the words but just letting some kind of noise come out. Desperately I tried to catch somebody’s eye, but everyone was industriously beating out the rhythm of the song, the disarrayed blankets of the lower bunks pulled down and touching the floor, the solid wall of muscled brown skin blocking the view of the Wicker Man and the Floorwalker.
So I wet my throat with lemonade and I stomped my foot and sang. Whenever the broken piece of hacksaw blade hit a nail the screech made my hair stand on end. But there was always a spontaneous chord on the musical instruments played just a little off-key, everyone’s voice strident and loud, our faces red with effort.
Oh, they say you are leaving this valleeeee—
We will miss your bright eyes and sweet smiii—iiiile—
Back and forth paced Carr, the floor of the Building trembling with his weight. And the Wicker Man began to add to the din by working on the silver ring he was making, beating on the rim of a quarter with the back of a tablespoon. One by one the radios would pause for a commercial but we went on with our songs—
If I had the wings of an angel—
Over these prison walls I would fly-y-y-y-y—
Then the Wicker Man stopped tapping with his spoon, pulled out his watch and looked at it, ponderously rose to his feet and opened the switch that shut off all the radios. He shuffled out on the porch, took down the iron bar from the top of one of the rafters and hit the old brake drum that hangs suspended from a wire.
Abruptly we finished our singing, our voices tapering off in ragged confusion as the final words ended in a mumble of innocence—
—g‘wine to run all night, g’wine to run all day—
There was a last tinkle of banjo notes and we were through, Carr plowing through the middle of the dispersing crowd, growling out of the corner of his mouth,
First Bell. Let’s get to bed. You done had your fun.
Men scurried from bunk to bunk to borrow books and tobacco from each other. There was the last minute rush to the toilets. Shoes clumped on the floor.
The movement subsided. Everyone was either sitting on the edge of his bunk or lying down. From my vantage point I could look across the room and see Luke lying on his upper bunk, the sheet pulled up to his chin. Koko was on the lower adjacent bunk, propped up on one elbow and looking back at me with owlish eyes. In the space between, where the hootenanny had been held, a loose pile of clothing completely covered the neat square hole in the floor.
Five minutes later the Wicker Man got up and went out. We could hear his feet scraping on the porch. We waited. Again the gong was sounded, Carr picking up the reverberation and growling in his gruff manner,