Free Cool Hand Luke by Donn Pearce Page A

up three more. He began to brush it all smooth and I filled in my holes, yelled out to the guards and moved on up to the head of the line.
    But Jackson and Eagle were shoveling like mad and getting nowhere. Not having the right balance and leverage, they were only able to throw the dirt a few feet. They tried harder. Their chests panting, their pitches became
wilder and more frantic. Patiently we demonstrated the proper technique and when the new men couldn’t keep up we would stay back and help them with their sector. And from time to time the new men would have to resort to piss anting the dirt up the slope while we merely tossed it up, shoveling away at perfect ease.
    The sun got higher and hotter. Everyone took off his jacket and shirt and left it on the edge of the road for Rabbit. But when the pasty white skins of the Newcocks were exposed to the sun they began to get a blistering burn. The sweat got in their eyes. They had headaches and their vision blurred. They felt like they were going to vomit, beginning to stagger with wobbling knees. By the time Smoking Period came around both of them were nearly bear caught.
    But somehow everyone always makes the day. And at last it was over. Boss Godfrey pulled out his watch and growled a word and everyone surged towards the tool truck, handing up their shovels to Jim and Rabbit and then clambering into the cage truck. The Walking Boss locked the gate and we headed back to Camp.
    The truck was in an uproar. As far as the rest of us were concerned it had been an easy day. We laughed and joked, lit up smokes and wondered what there would be for supper. We sorted out our jackets and shirts and put them on, some of us dropping to our knees to lean on the bench and look out through the bars of angle iron to eyeball at the passing scenery. The Newcocks just sat there, slumped in an exhausted heap, their hands blistered, their backs burned, their muscles cramped and stiff.

    But the rest of us were tense and excited as we rolled through the teeming Negro section of town, eyeballing like mad at the black girls strolling by on the sidewalk or sitting on the front porches. Half under our breaths we gasped out our frenzied comments and appraisals, gripping each other by the arm or poking with our elbows to bring attention to a sassy hip or a huge breast bulging out of a thin cotton dress. Hoarsely we swore with outraged frustration whenever there was a smile or a winked response to the row of dirty white faces peering wild eyed from the depths of our rolling cage.
    Back at Camp we unloaded, were lined up and shaken down and then counted in through the gate. After supper we all jammed in together in the shower. The Newcocks were a bit reluctant to enter into the community bath but Jackson calmly strolled right into the middle of it all, soap in hand.
    And then we saw his scars. He had several jagged shrapnel wounds on both legs. There was a long grooved mark that went down his left side, skipped a few inches at his waist and then continued down the side of his buttock. We admired his wounds but said nothing. He was still a Newcock.
    For the rest of that week we piss anted the Clay Pit Road. Every night the Newcocks took a shower and stumbled to bed, their backs and legs and arms and hands stiff, blistered and sunburned.
    And then Saturday. All day a guard sat on each gun platform at the corners of the fence and we had the run of the yard. The Building reverberated with whoops and
yells. We let off steam. We blew our tops. Dirty clothes were flung over the fence beside the kitchen and clean ones taken off the pegged board where they had been hung by the Laundry Boy.
    Everyone shaved, combed his hair, strolled about barefooted to give his feet a chance to breathe, glorious in our fresh, clean, wrinkled clothes. The wallet industry boomed; floats and backs, side pockets and liners cut out of sheepskins and calf skins, glued with rubber cement, punched and laced and then shipped out to the