Cool Hand Luke

by Donn Pearce

  But the kids they all let out a howl when the left-over chow got dumped in the hole. Jumped right in after it. Little dirt didn’t matter none to them. Had to stretch ropes around the hole. Push back the crowds. But the kids ducked under, slippin‘ and slidin’ and floppin‘ around right in the mud. Screechin’. Cryin‘. Raisin’ all kinds of hell.

  So the lieutenant sir, he had the sergeant fill the hole up with dirt right away. Then the kids started diggin‘ up the dirt with their hands. So the lieutenant sir, he has the dirt tamped down hard and has it run over with trucks and then he posts a guard over it. Day and night. That learned them little kids all right. Little smart alecks. Ain’t s’posed to eat dirty old slop that-a-way.

  The lieutenant sir, he just played it cool. Like you just gotta do.

  So we learned about the war and we learned about Luke. We heard it as a song and a story, a jeremiad of pain and bitterness, a ragged tale made of scraps of memory, things seen and heard and half dreamed within the nightmare of combat.

  The banjo told us how it felt during the triumphal entry into Rome. The next weekend we heard about the artillery barrage and the shrapnel that put Luke in a base hospital for two months. Afterwards it was France and the mountains, the roads clogged with peasants riding in carts and wagons and automobiles pulled by oxen, carrying rucksacks, pedaling bicycles, all fleeing to the rear to escape the terrors of scorched earth that the Germans left behind.

  But the banjo picked and plucked and reverberated through the monotony, the waiting, the hunger, the heat and the cold and the wet and the filth, the drunken revels and the jokes, the agonies and the horrors. Men were bombed and burned and butchered. Germans and Americans. Frenchmen, Englishmen and Italians. Civilians shot as hostages, as spies, as accidents. Children disemboweled. Women decapitated.

  Luke began to join those who sought out the liquor in every captured village and farmhouse. When the sergeant led his squad into the overrun German dressingstation and pounced on the two nurses who had been left behind with the wounded, Luke took his turn in line. And when again a few weeks later they shot their way into a farmhouse and found three hysterical French girls amidst the wrecked furniture, the corpses, the empty shell cases and littered weapons, again Luke took his turn in line.

  But he and the sergeant were the first of their division to enter into Germany. They crossed the bridge at a dead run, firing their M-is from the hip at the demolition team that was frantically trying to light the fuses on the charges already put in place. Stumbling when they paused to ram another clip of ammo into the breech, running ahead, firing, screaming back at their own men who cowered and took cover, screaming curses at the fumbling Germans who fell, lit fuses, shot back and started running, the two of them kicked explosives into the river, cut lashings, snatched out burning fuses and kept up a continuous, hysterical firing.

  Running so fast and so recklessly that their speed alone kept them alive in the storm of answering fire, their battle fury making them insensitive to danger and pain, the sergeant not even knowing when his helmet was shot off his head, Luke thinking he had merely tripped when the bullet caught him in the leg and then jumping up and hobbling onward, following the sergeant straight towards the machine-gun nest at the bridgehead. After ducking behind steel girders and picking off two of the gunners, they chased away the other two, jumped into the sandbagged position and turned the gun around, the sergeant feeding in the belts of ammunition until the third bazooka rocket exploded on the edge of the parapet and tore off the top of his head. Then Luke fired the gun alone, in a frenzy, trying to pin down the troops that were forming to counterattack and destroy the bridge, clearing a stoppage in the breach, opening a new can of ammo, shooting until there was no ammo left and then snatching up his rifle and using that.

  The tanks saved him. The leader of the rumbling column opened up with its gun, the Germans falling back, Luke’s own platoon coming out from cover, crossing the bridge and carrying him to the rear. Once again he was hospitalized. And once again he was decorated. But this time it was done during formal ceremonies, the presentation made by a lieutenant general with a band and a color guard. And this time the star was silver.

  Again Luke was sent to the front, he himself a sergeant now and the squad leader. He still carried his banjo slung across his pack but he didn’t have as much time for banjo picking. And he drank more and more. Deeper into Germany they went. The war moved faster, the chaos mounting into a climax of lust, confusion and destruction. The concentration camps began to be liberated. The ovens were found. Germans began surrendering by units. Germans began fighting to the last man. German deserters were found hung from lamp posts bearing signs of disgrace on their chests. German boys became Werewolves.

  Luke and his men rolled on, moving too fast to wash or shave, too fast to think or feel, demented by their conquest, their immortality. They carried bottles in their packs. They confiscated civilian cars and charged over pastures and fields like a squadron of mad cavalry pursuing the enemy in any direction, they cared not which. Prisoners were fed. Prisoners were shot. Girls were given chocolate bars. Girls were raped. Orphans were given shelter. Homes were broken into and ransacked.

  In a castle on a hill over a village by a river that none of them could name, having lost a fourth of their number in a ferocious fight that lasted for three days, Luke’s company was quartered for a temporary rest. But they didn’t want to rest. With the tacit permission of the lieutenant who had taken command the day before when the Captain’s jeep ran over an anti-tank mine that blew off both an arm and a leg, the company of soldiers began to loot the place in an orgy of vandalism. Silver was taken, the contents of closets strewn open and trampled on. They shot down a painting of a high ranking officer, laughing hilariously when one of them urinated on it. They shot down chandeliers. Cabinets were smashed open and liqueurs guzzled. They slit open sofas with bayonets, broke windows, built up a fire in the fireplace and fed it with smashed furniture. An old man came tottering in, yelling his protests until he was smashed in the mouth with a rifle butt. Hysterical children were rounded up and locked in a room with an old nurse. Then the women were rounded up, the servants as well as the Countess and her family, all of them carried off kicking and screaming into various rooms to be stripped and mauled and ravaged over and over again.

  Luke followed one of them up the curving stairway as she tried to escape the mob carousing in the hall below, screaming, giving the Nazi salute, cheering, bellowing their drunken laughter as Luke followed behind her, playing a hoe-down melody on his banjo. Trying to cover herself with the torn remains of her clothing she fled from floor to floor, screeching as the haunting strings pursued her with relentless purpose. Reaching the top of the tower she locked herself in a room. But Luke followed, never missing a note, kicking the door open and entering the small dark cell fitted out with medieval furnishings.

  The girl lay curled up in a heap on the floor, burying her face in her arms, refusing to look at the bewhiskered, muddy enemy soldier who stood in the doorway playing his fiendish instrument.

  Then Luke stopped. High on the wall was a huge crucifix, the figure of Christ carved in the crude, macabre style of the Middle Ages, the wood dark and stained and splintered by the years, the face gaunt and tormented.

  Luke stood there and looked at it. He looked down at the girl. He waited for a long time, hanging his head and thinking and quietly slung his banjo over his shoulder and left the room.

  13

  SO WE WORKED OUR WAY THROUGH THE spring, building our Time on The Hard Road. But music had come into our lives and we began our days with a new feeling, not at all afraid of the heat and the labor, the ant and the mosquito bites, the cramps and callouses. For Luke’s music had taught us to understand the melody of the leg chains, the rhythm of the Floorwalker’s feet, the wind of the passing traffic. And for once all was harmony. We knew that our yells to count off, to pour it out, to move on up or dig a hole were just part of a prolonged and complicated hymn
.

  Then the season began for using bush axes to clear away the underbrush from the Shit Ditches. A bush axe has a four-foot handle. At the end is an eighteen-inch blade, double-edged and with a hooked bill at the end. And with the bush axe Luke had found his natural instrument, wading through the chest-deep stagnant water and mud of the briars and vines, the palmettos, the weeds and the swamp willows, every stroke seeming to communicate a vibrant tremor of wild joy that went tingling up his arms and shoulders into his brain.

  And that was a hot summer. We were always bear-caught, the axes moving by themselves as we stumbled blindly through the heat, somehow making it to the end of each day and then loading up into the truck, riding back to Camp with our heads drooping and our shoulders slumped, our legs kicking out from under the benches in convulsive spasms, our shoes and pants and bodies covered with muck.

  But this was the kind of work that Luke liked best. The supple, long, hooked blade of his bush axe flashed as he brought it down and around, forehand and backhand. The rest of us did what we had to do, working up to our belts in the putrid water, the mosquitoes and horse flies, swarming over us in great clouds as we swung our tools, slapped at the insects, floundered in the mire, sweated, swore, scratched and itched in our agony.

  But Luke ignored the blisters and the scratches, the callouses and the heat as he lopped off the branches and fronds, jerking each fallen piece out of the way and wading farther into the tangled thicket, pirouetting, struggling, decapitating and trampling down those shadowed demons that rose up writhing all around him.

  Invariably he took a stretch much longer than anyone else’s. Then he managed to finish first, eagerly climbing up the bank and swaggering down the road to the head of the line with long, rapid steps, his shoes and pants sloshing and dripping as he went.

  Spinning the handle of his bush axe with a fast twist, the burnished metal of the blade sparkled in the sunlight. Exulting in his strength, he defied that sun and the sun-god alike, his voice booming out over the countryside,

  Movin‘ up here, BOSS!

  But all the while Boss Godfrey was watching Luke. Some of us began to feel the Heat that was emanating from the smooth, anonymous mirrors of his sunglasses. But he gave no sign, until that day he stood on the edge of the pavement way ahead of the squad, one hand jingling the change in his pocket, the other leaning on his cane. Slowly we hacked and slashed our way towards him, that Shit Ditch running along the edge of a cypress swamp.

  Drawling, barely raising his voice, he called out,

  Rabbit? Yo! Rabbit! Bring my rifle over here to me.

  Waiting for a car to pass, Rabbit then crossed the road to the cage truck, opened the door and dragged out the rifle lying on the floorboards. Again watching the traffic, Rabbit crossed over and approached the Walking Boss, holding out the rifle horizontally, resting on the open palms of both hands.

  Boss Godfrey took his Walking Stick and with a twisting, grinding motion he stuck it upright in the soft, wet ground. Then he lifted the rifle in his left hand, reaching in his hip pocket with his right. With practiced motions, the pieces making noises that sounded precise and well oiled, Boss Godfrey inserted the clip and the bolt assembly, pulled back the handle and rammed it forward again, a cartridge sliding forward into the breech.

  With a smooth, diagonal sweep from over his left shoulder, Boss Godfrey brought the rifle down and around. Just that quick, he fired.

  We heard the flat sound of the bullet ricocheting way off in the swamp. We stood and gawked, our ears ringing, smelling the burned powder. Boss Godfrey pulled back the bolt handle, ejecting the shiny cartridge case which spun out and fell to the ground. As he took out the clip and bolt and put them back in his pocket, Boss Godfrey spoke to Rabbit standing there beside him.

  Go out yonder, behind that old log out there by the edge of the pond. Fetch me that turtle. And git Jim to cook it up for me at Bean Time.

  Reluctantly Rabbit clambered down the bank and into the Shit Ditch, shrinking from the touch of the water and the mud. Then he slipped and floundered and managed to climb the opposite bank. Pulling apart two strands of the barbed wire fence, he ducked his way through. At the edge of the pond he kept looking around for cottonmouths, testing his footing in the swampy ground. But he had to go on. He looked through the weeds near the dead tree that had fallen over into the pond and then gingerly started to wade out into the hyacinths. Reaching down, he picked up the dead turtle by the tail, holding it up and yelling,

  I got him Boss! Deader’n a son of a bitch!

  Boss Godfrey paid no attention, standing there with the rifle over his shoulder at a lazy angle, perhaps watching every member of the squad and then again, perhaps not. Everyone kept on working, finishing his section, clambering out of the ditch to the shoulder of the road, moving around the Walking Boss and up to the head of the line, climbing back in again and chopping away.

  As always, the next man ahead had left Luke an extra-long stretch which he was cutting down with fast, frantic strokes. As it happened I was working behind Luke so that when Rabbit got back to the road I was the last man at the end of the squad. Rabbit stamped his feet, his pants wet and coated with black muck right up to his crotch. He handed the turtle to Jim who held it up with a grin. It was an alligator turtle, shot through the very center of the shell, a monstrous species of reptile with vicious, toothed jaws and an unbelievably large head. Jim grinned again and pushed it towards Rabbit who jerked away. Then he picked up a stick and rapped it against the turtle’s nose. Although it was quite dead, the jaws opened by reflex, biting down on the stick and resisting when Jim tried to pull it out.

  Boss Godfrey handed his rifle to Rabbit and he and Jim crossed the road towards the cage truck. Again Jim swung the turtle towards Rabbit who shrank back, complaining with a whine.

  Aw, come on. Quit, willya?

  I finished my strip and clumsily waded out of the mire, picking my way through the piles of cut bushes. Reaching high ground, I paused to rearrange my cap, slung my bush axe over my shoulder and began moving forward, water sloshing out of my shoes with every step. Luke had finished at the same time and reached the shoulder of the road just ahead of me. Boss Godfrey was standing a few feet away, lighting up a fresh cigar.

  Suddenly Luke reached over and pulled Boss Godfrey’s cane out of the ground, brazenly holding it out.

  Don’t forget your Walking Stick, Boss.

  I stopped right where I was, rooted to the ground. Boss Godfrey hesitated, holding the burning match, his sightless face turned directly towards Luke who stood there relaxed and easy, smiling as he looked into Boss Godfrey’s glasses. I looked too. But all I could see was the reflection of the flames. Instinctively, I looked away and called out to the guards, loud and clear,

  Movin‘on up here, Boss!

  Yeah, Sailor. Move on up.

  I stepped out on the road and moved in a circle around the two of them, discreetly turning my head to look but only when I was well on the other side. Luke still stood there, smiling, holding the cane in one hand, the bush axe in the other. But Boss Godfrey continued to light his cigar, puffing on it several times, blowing out the smoke, then putting the flame to the tip once again. Satisfied, he tossed away the match and put the box in his shirt pocket. He shifted the cigar in his mouth, licking the side of it twice and then replacing it. Without a word, he reached out and took the Walking Stick from Luke’s hand, putting the end on the edge of the road, shifting his weight and leaning on it. Luke called out to the guards and moved forward, his shoes slurping and clumping behind me.

  I went back to work, not daring to ogle or show any signs of wonder at the phenomenal event I had just witnessed. I kept my eyes on the ground. I cut bushes and said nothing.

  It was nearly Bean Time. Jim and Rabbit moved the two trucks to a dry spot a few blocks up the road and got things ready. With his pocket knife and with an axe from the tool truck, Jim cut the bottom of the alligator turtle’s shell and dressed out the meat. Sticking the chunks
on a green branch, he began to cook it over the fire that Rabbit had built, preparing it for the Free Man’s dinner.

  The Bull Gang was quiet as we ate our beans. Working in a Shit Ditch was a demoralizing job and despite the heat we were waterlogged and chilled, slimy and disgusted. Once in a while a man would stand up to get the file and begin sharpening his bush axe. But the rest of us just sat, lay back on our jackets, stared up at the sky and smoked. Onion Head and Stupid Blondie stacked up the bean plates in the box and put away the corn bread and molasses. Then Onion Head went over to the remains of the turtle’s carcass, squatting down to poke at the shell and the intestines with a stick and then nudging the severed head through the grass.

  Look! Look at that son of a bitch! Lookee here!

  Again the turtle’s mouth had opened, the big eyes staring as slowly the jaws began to shut, clamping down hard. Onion Head raised up the stick, looking at the ferocious head which clung to it, blood still dripping from the severed neck.

  Cool Hand Luke lay on the ground leaning on one elbow. He looked over and muttered half aloud.

  Bite it brother. Bite hard. Real hard.

  Then the stick cracked and broke, the turtle’s head falling to the ground.

  We went back to work. But for the rest of the day I tried to stay away from Luke. He scared me. I didn’t like his carelessness, his sense of humor or his sacrilege.

  But a few days later I found myself once again working just behind him and over to his right. We were sent out to the Rattlesnake Road, right out there where we were this morning. And again we were yo-yoing, working in an echelon formation.

  It was a damp and foggy morning. About two hours after we started working we came to a patch of swamp, the ditch filled with marsh grass, the water just deep enough to reach our ankles. Rhythmically we swung our tools back and forth, our feet cold, our shoes heavy and slimy, our thoughts dim and far away.

  Luke stopped in mid-stroke and quickly jabbed his tool into the water, holding the blade of his yo-yo down on the head of a rattlesnake whose long yellow and brown body rose to the surface not six feet in front of me, thrashing wildly. I leaped back, nearly getting hit by the yo-yo swinging behind me. But Luke just stood there. Grinning, he called out to Boss Paul—