Life at Hard Labor chapters 61 FINAL PART

Author: Fumpa
Title: Life at Hard Labor Chapter 61 FINAL PART
Date: 24 March 2013

Chapter 61

We spent years out there, going down in the pit every day, and working up to our knees in mud. My hands were always caked in dirt from swinging a pick axe or working a shovel. The white stripes on the outer seams of my jeans didn’t stay white for long. Same with the blue denim. It might have been called blue at one point, but over the days and years of backbreaking, dirty work, they turned the same shade of grey as the world around us.

Eventually, we stopped sleeping in the cages, and got to lie down on a bunk inside of the box car. This caused many cons to let their guard down, and their cocks out. There were a lot of empty bowls, and a few less wrestling matches. Though when they did happen, they were always a welcome distraction. It was like the man behind me said; wrestling was the closest we came to sex. I watched Craig roll around in the mud with the lead man one night, and I couldn’t help but pop a huge boner. Boss Jones had one just as big, so I doubt he noticed mine. The lead man lost, and that morning Craig and I ate side by side. I could almost see a smile on his face, but it quickly faded as he realized that we still had a long day of digging ahead of us.

I quickly lost count of the days. It seemed like I’d be wading through the mud in that clay pit forever, but eventually they shipped our chain gang off to another detail. It was the rocks again. A row of rocks that we had to break down into gravel. I knew that long pile well. The rocks, and the clay pits are where most of the chain gangs spent most of their time, and we‘d go back and forth between them after a long stretch on each. They’d have a chain gang build or repair a railroad sometimes and the no talking rules were relaxed a bit because of our need for communication doing work that complex. The no cumming rule remained though, and there were plenty of mornings I’d have to go without food, or be forced to wrestle another man for it. A detail like the railroads usually only lasted 20 to 50 years though, and that wasn’t a long time for a convict on the chain gang.

Of course the chains went everywhere. They’d slam on my ankles as we hauled rails and ties back and forth. They’d get buried in mud and clay, and they’d heat up in the light of the sun as we pounded on a pile of rocks. They were always there though. Jangling wherever you stepped, reminding you that every ounce of freedom you ever had was gone. They were always there, clamped tight on my aching, booted feet. Every night, Hutch would tug down on them to make sure they were still secure. His strong, wide hands held my legs firmly as he tugged down on the shackles and the chains. He’d brush me forward, and checked the man behind me.

One morning, we lined up behind the rocks, but the boss man told us to wait. The nameless bastard was back and bossing our chain gang, and he’d been there for a week or so. He didn’t single me out all the time the way he had before, but I could tell it gave him a lot of pleasure and satisfaction to see that I’d lost all my individuality and become just another con on the chain gang. I don’t know if he had gotten that same satisfaction from Mark. It didn’t really matter. He had us both where he wanted us. This morning though, I could see by the way he was moving that something a lot more pleasing to him was on its way. I saw a cloud of dust in the distance, and I knew why we were waiting. We were about to get our ninth convict.

The truck stopped, and the driver got out, and picked up a convict from the back of the truck by the waist of his jeans. The top half of his body was lean, tan, and covered in long, dirty streaks. He had long, ropy muscles, and I could see the bottom of his spine poking out from his shirtless back. His face had a few deep wrinkles, but was otherwise smooth. I could barely make out the number stamped on his jeans. I’d been worked so hard and long on the chain gang, my mind didn’t have much room for letters. I recognized the letters and numbers J-066-D. I smelled cane sap coming from his jeans, and I guessed he’d been working in the cane fields. I’d known a convict that had J in his name at one point, but I could barely remember.

As I stood there listening to the boss man’s intake speech, I zoned out a bit. There was a lot of “you belong right here.” and “You fucked up good boy.” but my mind was elsewhere. There was a pile of rocks sitting there waiting to be broken down. The longer the boss man took inducting this new guy, the longer we’d have to work to make up for lost time.

I watched the new con strip down, and throw on his new uniform. He slowly pulled up the rough hard jeans, feeling the weight of the stripes, and realizing what they meant. He read what was stamped on the thigh, and hung his head down as he zipped and buttoned his fly, locking his cock behind his new identity. He pulled his shirt over his head and then looked over at us. We were all wearing the same thing, only we were a lot dirtier. I stared back with no emotion in my eyes. I just stood there with my tired feet jangling in my leg irons, holding my sledgehammer in my hands. I had no way out. Neither did this new con. He looked exactly like every other con on the chain gang, except for one detail.

“Alright Hutch, lock him up.” The boss man said and stood back. I watched the burly man set down an anvil, and I heard a pair of leg irons clank down on the ground. Then there was that old familiar clang. CLANG, CLANG, CLANG. The right shackle was clamped on forever. CLANG, CLANG, CLANG. The left shackle was riveted on for life. Now the guy was on the chain gang. He shuffled forward, wincing at the sound of the chains clinking, and realizing that he’d be hearing that sound everyday from now on.

“File in.” The boss man ordered. The new con slid into place behind the convict who was behind me, and in front of the convict on the butt end. The boss man leaned down, and locked a lead chain to the new convict’s irons. He was filed in his place now, just as I had been those long years before. I’d never know what he did to get sent out here, and that didn’t matter. He was here now, and he’d pay just as hard as all of us. That was the last thought I gave to the guy. We had a long day of hard labor ahead of us.

“SHOULDER UP!” The boss man ordered. I felt the man behind me, and I grabbed Craig’s shoulder. The new guy luckily followed suit. “Here on the chain gang, you always start off with a man on your back. That’s all you get out here, and all you need. You dumb fuckers are in this shit together, and you’re gonna pay your debt as one unit, doing the same work, wearing the same clothes, and locked in the same chains. You’re gonna get to know these cons very well. You’ll see them every morning, you’ll work with them all damn day, and you’re never going to be more than 5 feet away from them. Welcome to the chain gang.”

“ALRIGHT, ROLL OUT! SHUFFLE, LEFT, LEFT, LEFT…” the boss man belted out. We stamped our boots down and marched forward. The long chain went taught when the new guy got out of step, and we came to a halt. “GET IN STEP (edited)!” The boss man snapped, and wailed on the new guy with a strap. The new con straightened out soon afterward.

We marched up to the rocks. Another gang lined up behind another pile. It was the temp chain. There was no D stamped on their uniforms after the words CHAIN GANG, but otherwise they were identical.

“LEFT FACE!” We dropped our hand down from each other’s shoulders, and spread out. We turned and faced the pile of rocks.

“ALRIGHT WORK!!” He shouted out.

“GO ON LIFT!!” The lead man shouted and raised his sledgehammer. It clicked in my mind, and we all followed. The new con stood still however.

“HUH!” we all shouted as we landed our sledges on the pile. The rocks clunked as they settled. Our chains rattled.

“THAT CONVICTS WAS A BASIC DRILL!” the boss man shouted in his hard, military cadence. “WHEN THE LEAD MAN HERE SAYS ‘GO ON LIFT‘, YOU BRING YOUR HAMMER DOWN AND GRUNT AS YOU HIT THE ROCK, THEN BRING IT BACK UP AND GET READY TO SWING AGAIN! DO IT LOUD AND PROUD!”

“ALRIGHT, WORK!” The boss shouted a final time.

“GO ON LIFT!” The lead man droned.

“HUH!” we all grunted, and leaned down to smash the rocks.

“Huh.” the new man came in late, followed by a hammer.

“GO ON LIFT!” The lead man shouted.

“HUH!” We all shouted, but the new man’s hammer was late.

“GET IN LINE BOY!” The boss shouted, and brought his strap down hard on the new convict twice.

“GO ON LIFT!”

“HUH!”

“GO ON LIFT!”

“HUH!” The new guy was finally starting to get it, and after a few long hours of doing our drills, there was a pile of gravel starting to grow at our feet.

“DRILL!” The boss man shouted out as he walked behind the lead man.

“WORKIN HARD!” the lead man shouted as he lifted his sledge.

“WORKIN LONG!” shouted most of the gang as we bought our sledges down on the rocks.

“HUH!” The new guy shouted by mistake. The boss man whipped him on the back, and then halted the gang’s activity.

“THAT BOYS, WAS A WORK SONG.” he shouted out behind the new guy. “WHEN THE LEAD MAN SHOUTS OUT WORKIN HARD, YOU ALL SHOUT OUT WORKIN LONG, AND BRING YOUR HAMMER DOWN. THEN GEAR UP TO DO IT ALL AGAIN. YOU MOTHERFUCKERS ARE OUT HERE TO WORK HARD, AND WORK LONG. AND YOU’RE GONNA SAY IT OVER AND OVER AGAIN, LOUD AND PROUD. ALRIGHT DRILL!!

“WORKIN HARD,” the lead man droned out again.

“WORKIN LONG!” I shouted along with the rest of the gang, and landed my hammer down on the rocks. God I hated this crap. We sounded completely stupid spouting off phrases like that, and it made me feel like a moron. But I guess that’s what I was. It was like the boss man said. It’s what we were out here to do.

“WORKIN HARD!”

“WORKIN LONG!”

“WORKIN HARD!”

“WORKIN LONG!”

I started to breath heavily between shouting out. The sweat was pooling in my ass crack, and my shirt was soaked in sweat.

“ALRIGHT, WORK IT LOOSE!” The boss man shouted.

“GO ON LIFT” The lead man shouted.

“HUH!” We all said a final time and started to swing our hammers at our own pace, and in silence.

“HUH!” the new guy shouted out again as he landed his sledge. The boss man whipped him five times, and the convict’s sledge fell out of his hands.

“Pick that fuckin hammer up boy.” The boss man waited until the convict retrieved his sledge. “When you’re workin loose, you swing that hammer as fast as you fucking can, and you do it SILENT. Now get your ass back to work.” He walked away as the new guy started to swing his sledge as hard and as fast as he could.

I lifted the hammer, I bought it down. I lifted the hammer, I bought it down. The sun sizzled my back, and my sweat mingled with the cloud of dust we were kicking up with our hammers, making a slick, black mud on my skin. I breathed heavily with my mouth wide open, and my sides hurt from all the bending over, and exhausting work we’d been doing for years on end. It got easier, but it never got easy. It was always hard labor, and I was always dog tired and sore as hell when the day was done.

“HOLD UP!!” the boss shouted some time after the sun had set. “PICK EM UP!” We leaned down, and grabbed the long chain and our sledgehammers in the same hand.

“SHOULDER UP!” the boss shouted, and I felt a hand on my back. That was all I had, and all I’d need. I felt a dick back up into my crack, and I put mine up against Craig’s butt.

“ROLL OUT, SHUFFLE! LEFT, LEFT, LEFT.” my tired feet rose and fell when the boss man said left. The leg irons clanked. My muscles ached as they moved toward the barracks, and my cock rubbed against Craig’s ass through our jeans, as we all marched in lockstep towards what I knew awaited us.

Hutch tugged on my leg irons as I stepped up on the stair to get inside. His strong hand moved me forward, and I waited as he checked the three other cons behind me. When we were all inside, I saw the cages sitting on the floor between the rows of bunks that we wouldn’t be sleeping on for a long time. We’d been in the cages for a week already, and I knew it would probably be a full month or more before we’d feel the cold comfort of our bunks again.

“ALRIGHT, FALL IN.” I crouched down to the ground, and crawled into the cage. I looked at my knees and at the ass of Craig’s dirty jeans as they came to a rest on the hard floor of the cages. They slammed shut, and I put my boots at the front of the cage, and my hands on my knees.

“Comfy ain’t it?” the boss man said to the new man. “This is what you get punk. You’d better get used to it. LIGHTS OUT!” The lamps were dimmed, and the night guard walked by the cages. He smacked the bars of each cage with a club as he walked by. He smacked Craig’s, then mine, then the man behind me, and then he stopped.

“HANDS ON YOUR KNEES CONVCIT!” He stuck his club in through the bars, and smacked the guy on the back of the neck. The convict soon complied. The guard continued. “They better stay there all fucking night boy. I’m gonna be watchin you.”

The guard smacked last occupied cage, and then sat down on a stool. The smell of tobacco wafted through the air, and I was reminded of that day when I put a cigar out on boss Thompson’s forehead, beat him senseless, and landed myself on this chain gang. It’s funny; most of the time I can’t remember a damn thing, or anyone I knew. But sometimes, at night when I can’t sleep, and when there’s nothing else to do but sit in a cage, I can remember everything. I recall every last little detail of my long, hard life.

I knew the new convict was named Josh, and that I’d known him in the quarry. I was there his first day. I remembered that he could barely stand the smell of me, and probably looked down on a stupid old convict like me. That all changed after a week of breaking rocks of course. He knew he wasn’t any better than me, and that he never would be.

When I was a free man, I was a lot like Josh. I would look down on my coworkers in the factory for reasons that were stupid, petty, and insignificant. Maybe it was because they had different political views, or because I was convinced I would move on to bigger and better things than they could conceive in their factory drone minds. I felt I deserved better out of life. Of course what I really wanted was a good man to talk to, and be with. They were there in that factory, but I was too blinded by my own personal ambition to see it.

Of course I had no reason to look down on them. They were good men, and they were a hell of a lot happier than me. They were down to earth, they knew their place and their limitations, they worked hard, and they were satisfied. Most of them didn’t act very different from Craig, or Buck, or Miner especially, and I hadn’t known any degree of true happiness in my life until I had spent a long day breaking rocks, and a short night playing cards with them in the bunk house; laughing my ass off at each other’s bad jokes.

But even that wasn’t good enough for me. I wasn’t content to just let the bosses walk all over us. I got angry, I got even, and I got thrown on the chain gang forever because of it. I looked down at my leg irons, and my dusty work boots. The words “CHAIN GANG D” on my thigh were splotched with dirt and sweat. The bars in front of me were hard and unmoving, and the man in front of me would wake up to the same long day of hard labor that I’d go through. I belonged right there. No question about my future, and all the time in the world to answer the questions of my past. I wasn’t Matt. I wasn’t M-067-D. I was on the chain gang, and that was where I belonged.

“GET ON UP!!” the boss man shouted as he rattled his club on the bars of the cage. The doors swung open and I stood up.

“PICK EM UP!” I leaned down to the ground, and picked up the heavy, strong chain that bound the nine of us together.

“SHOULDER UP!” I grabbed Craig’s shoulder in my hard, calloused hand. I covered up part of the letter C in “CHAIN GANG D.” The man behind me patted me on the shoulder, and backed up into my crack. We all squeezed in together.

“ROLL OUT! SHUFFLE! LEFT, LEFT, LEFT…..” we stomped our boots down, and lock stepped out to the pile. The chains rattled rhythmically as we marched forward, and our boots rattled the floor boards until we had left the barracks. Then they crunched down on the hot, dry earth. The sun was rising, and it was already hot and bright as hell.

We sat on our haunches, and ate our bowls of mush. Everyone got fed that morning, which meant that no one had gotten off, or if they had, they didn’t get caught. I know I didn’t, and I was still hard as hell. Watching sweaty, dirty men swinging a sledgehammer all day, and being right there with them, I couldn’t be blamed for being hard. There was one day that I got so hard, I blew my wad right in my pants as I was bringing a pick axe down. The bosses were none the wiser, as my pants were already soaked in sweat. Those were the lengths I had to go to in order to get relief. But it always felt incredible. It almost made me enjoy swinging a sledge for two thirds of the day. Then I’d remember how dog tired and sore I was. It didn’t matter. Tired, relieved, happy, sad, angry, or apathetic, I was going to work hard, all day, every day.

“ALRIGHT, WORK!” The boss man shouted.

“GO ON LIFT!” The lead bellowed.

“HUH!” The hammers kicked up a cloud of dust and flakes of rock. My leg irons tensed on my feet. The bones in my back crackled as I stood back up, and geared up for another swing.

“GO ON LIFT!”

“HUH!”

“GO ON LIFT!”

“HUH!”

“ALRIGHT, WORK IT LOOSE!” The boss ordered.

I lifted the hammer, I bought it down. I lifted the hammer, I bought it down. That’s where I am today. Swinging my sledgehammer. My jeans are covered in grit. They only show blue on my thighs and ass, where I’m sweating the most. The rest of them are the same color as the rocks we’re breaking.

My chains are rattling all the damn time. There’s a convict on either side of me, working just as hard, and covered in the same amount of dirt and sweat. I’m boxed in between them, the boss man, and a pile of rocks I’ve got to break down. Tomorrow it might be a pit full of clay, or a truck full of tar, or a pile of manure for all I know. The sun is bouncing straight up off the rocks and the dusty ground. It’s early in the morning and we’ve got a whole long day ahead of us. Then another long day after that. Then another, and another, on and on. That’s all we have to look forward to. I’m going to be spending every damn day with the same eight men, and they really are the same. Same as me too. I’m just a con on the chain gang, and all I know is work, sweat, dirt, other convicts, and the boss man’s whip. I know I belong here, and I know it’s never going to change. There are nine of us out here. Room for one more.

THE END