Cool Hand Luke - Donn Pearce [93]
“Luke! Come on out! This is the end of the line!
Right away ah goes scootin‘ over to a winder on mah hands and knees and real careful like, ah looks outside. Then ah tears ass over to the other side and looks out. After that ah jes fell flat. Ah jes couldn’t look. Ah buries mah haid in mah arms like a gawd damn ostrich does and ah says to Luke—
“Oh damn it, Luke. We’re surrounded. They done caught up with us already. Already! They’s a thousand cops out there. Man, they’re crawlin ‘around behind the bushes and the trees thick as red bugs. And there ain’t no way of gittin’ outta here.”
But Luke, he didn’t even move. He jes stood there like he was, leanin‘ on this table thing, one hand on each side of this Bible. He keeps lookin’ up at the ceilin‘. But he ain’t mad no more. All of a sudden his lips is all puckered up. It looked like it was jes about all he could do to keep from bustin’ out loud and laughin‘ his ass off.
But not me. Ah knew the fix we was in. Ah mean, ah knew. And ah tried to tell ‘im. Ah tried. Ah says to him—
“They got all kinds of Law out there, Luke! The Walkin‘ Boss. The Captain. Shotgun guards. The Dog Boy. The Sheriff. The Highway Patrol. Oh, damn, damn. What are we gonna do? What can we do?”
But he jest grins. Ah’m tellin‘ yuh. He jes grins up at the ceilin’ and he says—
“Do? Well, Dragline. Ah don’t know. Ah reckon about all we can do right now is jest try and play it cool.”
Shit. That was all ah had to hear. “Play it cool?,” ah says. “Cool? How can we be cool when we’re hotter’n the hinges of hell? They’ll blow our ass clean off if we try anything. They got a natural dead-lock right on us.”
But Luke jest stepped down from behind this Bible thing and he walks real slow right up to the winder. The sun was startin‘ to shine by then and it was comin’ right in on him. And he raises bof‘ his two hands right up in the air and he yells out loud and clear—
“Aw right, Boss! Don’t shoot! You got us! We give up!”
And right then. He didn’t even aim. He didn’t even hafta shift his rifle around. He jes let it dangle real loose like in his hands. And jes like that, Boss Godfrey pulled the trigger.
27
THE BULLET HIT LUKE SQUARELY IN THE throat and passed completely through his neck, the force of it nearly knocking him over, making him stagger back several steps to keep his footing. The bullet ricocheted off the stove pipe and then the brick chimney, bouncing back at an angle to hit the ceiling and finally fell on top of the piano keyboard, the dim interior of the church filled with a puff of soot and of brick dust, the thwacking sounds of the bullet forming a single, instantaneous chord that culminated with the sounding of several treble notes on the piano.
Dragline began to crawl in a frenzied scuttle towards some sort of cover. He stumbled and kicked and paddled his way through the mass of cane chairs and then scurried behind the home-made lectern, trying to hide himself in the cramped hollow within.
There was silence. After the noise of the gunshot and the frantic, scrambling sounds, it was like a vacuum; ethereal, delicate, vibrating with a sensation of the infinite.
Dragline cowered behind the lectern, not daring to move, his mouth bitter with the taste of desperation that struggled inside his chest. Hearing nothing but the last faint hum of the piano, he cautiously peered around the edge. And he saw Luke standing there in the same place, the floor strewn with tiny glass fragments glittering in the sunlight streaming in through the window. His hands were still raised, his left arm trembling violently as he stared through the jagged window pane. He stood there swaying, trying to say something, blood gushing from the hole in his neck and from out of his mouth, his lips twitching uncontrollably. Slowly he sank to the floor, not falling nor even collapsing but just laying down with weariness.
Seconds later the commotion began. There were shouts outside and curses, the squeaks and rattles and thumps of men running and struggling.
God damn you! What d‘you do that for?
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