Cool Hand Luke - Donn Pearce [74]
This time Dragline had nothing to say. None of us did. It was all too much for us. Flabbergasted into complete silence, we just floated along through the day, thinking of other things, dreaming our fantasies which were far easier to understand and believe than the things that were going on around us.
The following morning we hadn’t been working more than an hour when still again Luke asked if he could dig a hole. For the first time Boss Godfrey showed some sign of being annoyed.
God damn it to hell. Don’t you never take a crap in the mornin‘ before you check out? Didn’t they give you a pot in the Box there with you?
Yes suh. Boss. But it’s them beans. I jes cain’t help it. It’s all them beans I been eatin‘.
All right, damn it. Rabbit! Rabbit! Bring me mah rifle from the truck! And be quick about it!
Pickin‘ up this here paper, Boss Kean! Boss Paul!
Yeah. Pick it up, Luke.
It was still early in the day. The sky was overcast, the air was damp and everyone was sluggish. Even the Walking Boss seemed lethargic and didn’t feel like playing his game. Without interfering he allowed Luke to climb the fence and go out into the bushes, turn over a clump of dirt and stick his shovel in the ground in front of him. Then the shaking of the bush began. There was silence in the air. And boredom. Everyone was doing the usual things.
Then the bush stopped shaking.
Luke!
Bang. Bang. Twice the Walking Boss fired in rapid succession, his hand working the bolt back and forth in a dim blur.
Everything was quiet, a thin blue cloud of bitter smoke hanging in the air. We stopped working and just stood there, the guards nervously holding their shotguns at the ready. Boss Godfrey climbed the fence and ran towards Luke’s shovel which was still visible, vertical in the ground. The shovel handle had been hit twice, the wood splintered, daylight visible through the bullet holes. But Luke was nowhere around.
Waving his rifle, Boss Godfrey shouted,
Jim! Bring up the truck! Hurry it up, damn it! Drive it on up here! Run! Damn your lazy ass! Run!
He clambered down the ditch bank and up the shoulder to the road. Leaping into the truck, the Walking Boss roared away at top speed, headed for the nearest telephone.
What had happened was this:
Luke had seen a dirty old kite string wound around a stick lying in the ditch that some kid must have thrown or dropped out of a passing car. Instantly he recognized his opportunity. He called out to the guards and picked up a piece of scrap newspaper but managed to cover the ball of string and pick it up in his hand at the same time. Reaching the thicket, going out a little farther than he had ever gone before, he tied the string to the trunk of a bush in the same time it would have normally taken him to drop his pants. He kept shaking the bush as he backed away, jerking on the cord as though he were flying a kite or playing a hooked fish, unwinding the string with his left hand as he went. The string was about three hundred feet long. When he reached the end, Cool Hand dropped it, turned around and ran. It was his own private version of the Indian Rope Trick, the rifle firing a salute as he disappeared in a puff of smoke.
When the Dog Boy and his hounds arrived they began the chase by following the string through the thicket. But the route was so simple they couldn’t believe it. There was something eerie about the way that the thin white line led through the bushes. And after all, what can you trust in this world? For instance: if they pulled the string, would the bushes explode?
But the dogs began the hunt with straining eagerness, the posse and the Dog Boy following behind the pack in high spirits. This time it was going to be easy. And they were hoping they would be able to catch up with him alone in some isolated woods so they could fix him once and for all. At the very most Luke didn’t have more than forty-five minutes start and they knew that no man can run very fast while wearing leg