Cool Hand Luke by Donn Pearce Page B

he held up his right hand. Then he dropped it.
    There was a tremendous roar from fifty throats as the three Peelers each grabbed an egg and cracked it on the table, their fingers flying as they stripped off the pieces of shell and the thin membrane underneath. But they were barely able to keep ahead of Cool Hand’s jaws which were snapping and chomping so ferociously there was a
very real occupational danger of losing a finger. Luke didn’t even bother to chew. His jaw muscles flexing with dynamic power, he crushed an egg with his teeth, gulped once and it was gone—his mouth gaping wide for another.
    Desperately his assistants strove to keep ahead of him, counting aloud as each egg went down. Curly worked with professional, concentrated efficiency, holding each egg out on the flat of his open, stiffened hand. But Koko held out each one with reluctance, shy of his hazardous duty and flinching every time Luke grabbed an egg out of his hand. But for Dragline it was a labor of love. Grinning, his tongue rolling around his loose and flabby lips, he gently fed them into Luke’s gaping mouth with careful tenderness, his pinkie extended, like tossing a tidbit to some prehistoric monster which he alone had discovered, captured and domesticated.
    Eight—nine—ten—
    Our hearts sank in despair. Never had we seen such form, such coordination, such tactics and control. In the first three minutes twelve eggs disappeared, gobbled down like a turkey drinking water. Then Luke went into a steady, prolonged period of disciplined labor, swallowing them down at the rate of two eggs per minute. Koko monitored the schedule, borrowing Boss Shorty’s watch to hold it with studious concentration. Monotonously he chanted out the beat as Luke bit, chewed and swallowed with apparent serenity for ten minutes more.
    â€”twenty seven —twenty seconds to go—ten seconds to go—and—twenty- eight —twenty seconds to go—ten seconds to go—and—twenty- nine —

    Koko’s voice was the only sound. The rest of us stood, sat or squatted in motionless postures. Stupid Blondie had his mouth open. Possum chewed his fingernails. Babalugats sat there with a fixed grin on his face. Tramp was wringing his cap. Rabbit had an unlighted cigarette dangling loosely in his lips, his eyes bulging out of his head. Onion Head’s eyes were shut, his lips moving silently. Some of us had our arms folded over our chests, our heads bowed in humility. Others stood on one leg, their hands in their pockets. But Society Red couldn’t take it any more and got up to pace the floor of the Building.
    In the meantime Luke had become a Thing, an Appetite. He was nothing but mouth, stomach and rectum—the beginning, the middle and the end.
    After the thirty-second egg he stopped. Slowly he got up from the table, stretched his arms over his head and yawned, his stomach bulging as though he were pregnant. Deliberately he began to waddle towards the water faucet. We gasped aloud. This was a man tottering at the brink of the precipice. But he fooled us, only rinsing his mouth out and gargling, without swallowing anything.
    But as he leaned over for another mouthful of water, his hand cupped beneath the faucet, he let one go, breaking wind with a clear, prolonged note, a trumpet blast of triumph and bravura. And we panicked. We choked for breath, clutched each other in dismay and headed for the door in a stumbling stampede. Outside, the guards on the platforms nervously fingered their weapons, startled by the laughing, crying, shouting, cheering and jeering mob that had rushed out the door to spread out
over the lawn, only gradually returning to peer back inside with exaggerated caution and alarm.
    Luke paced up and down the Building, stretching and gingerly raising first one leg and then the other. Back and forth he walked, pausing every so often to let one go with another blast. Time passed. We began to squirm.