Free Cool Hand Luke by Donn Pearce

Higgins squinted his eyes and scowled, his hand gripping his stomach which we knew was riddled with ulcers. Boss Palmer stared at us over his bifocals, grinned at nothing, leaning forward to spit and then shifting his quid as he pulled out his watch, replaced it, patted his pot belly and then hooked a thumb in his suspenders. Boss Godfrey stood relaxed, leaning heavily on his cane, taking the cigar out of his mouth with his other hand to roll it back and forth with the tips of his fingers.
    Everybody waited. The Captain turned his head and spat.
    All right, Boss Higgins. Take ‘em away.
    The Walking Boss of the big Patch Squad signaled and the men stepped forward, the left hand column counting off by twos. Then the other Patch Squad counted off. Then Boss Palmer’s Bull Gang. And then Boss Godfrey straightened up, replaced the cigar in his mouth and sauntered over to the rear of the cage truck, holding the edge of the gate with one hand. He gestured just once, a slight shift of his cane and then we started forward, two by two, mounting the steps and ducking inside as fast as we possibly could.
    Bouncing and swerving over the ruts, we roared off into the darkness. We crossed our legs and shifted our feet, rolled up cigarettes and smoked. Rabbit climbed underneath the bench to lay on the floor on his back, pulled his cap over his face and fell asleep. Dynamite got down
on his knees, peering through the bars and trying to estimate where the job would be for the day.
    But most of us were glum and silent, staring through the bars at the sleeping Free World outside. Occasionally a match was struck, illuminating a sad, serious face in the gloom.
    Finally the truck pulled over on the shoulder and stopped. The gate was unlocked. We got out. Jim the Trustee handed down our tools and we started to work. Boss Godfrey walked up the road a bit, turned around and leaned on his cane. He stood there, watching us, silhouetted against the dawn, the sun rising up behind his body, right up through his head and out of the black night he wore for a hat. All day the sun rose high up into the sky while we, stripped to the waist, were seared by its burning rays. But we knew that sun was really the left eye of the Walking Boss just as his right eye is the moon.

8
    ON JACKSON’S FIRST DAY ON THE ROAD WE were shoveling dirt up from the bottom of the ditch to fill in the washouts that the rains had worn along the edge of the pavement. When the slope of the embankment was too high to reach we would carry a shovelful of dirt up the slope and than walk back down to the bottom of the ditch for another shovelful. The Chain Men in the gang always stay on top, their shackles making it too difficult for them to clamber up and down. They brush down the piles and
clumps of earth, using the edges of their shovels which they sweep as though they were brooms.
    Back and forth and up and down we moved with the same monotonous regularity as pismire ants carrying their grains of sand. And this is exactly why this job is always referred to as piss anting.
    But unless the terrain is especially hilly we are always able to reach the pavement by pitching the dirt. Each man took a sector of about ten feet. He threw up enough dirt to do the job and then would fill in the holes, that is, he would bevel in the edges of the holes he had dug in the ditch bottom. Then he would move up to the head of the line, leapfrogging the men in front of him.
    All morning long the shovels of the Bull Gang were making shiny arcs with graceful and rhythmic swings of muscled arms and twists of bodies. Clumps of dirt sailed through the air in lazy parabolas. The Chain Man held his shovel blade behind the washout, using it for a backstop. I kicked my shovel into the ground, bent back the handle over my knee and with that timing all of us have developed, the clod of dirt flew off like a projectile to splat against the Chain Man’s shovel. He held it there and in quick succession I threw