The Mouse On the Mile 12 page

'Hey, Del!' Percy called, half-laughing, starting after Brutal and Delacroix and drifting much too close to Wharton's side of the Green Mile without realizing it. 'Hey, you numb shit, I didn't mean nothin by it! Are you all ri—'

Wharton was up off his bunk and over to the bars of his cell in a flash—never in my time as a guard did I see anyone move so fast, and that includes some of the athletic young men Brutal and I worked with later at Boys' Correctional. He shot his arms out through the bars and grabbed Percy, first by the shoulders of his uniform blouse and then by the throat. Wharton dragged him back against his cell door. Percy squealed like a pig in a slaughter-chute, and I saw from his eyes that he thought he was going to die.

'Ain't you sweet,' Wharton whispered. One hand left Percy's throat and ruffled through his hair. 'Soft!' he said, half-laughing. 'Like a girl's. I druther fuck your asshole than your sister's pussy, I think.' And he actually kissed Percy's ear.

I think Percy—who had beat Delacroix onto the block for accidentally brushing his crotch, remember—knew exactly what was happening. I doubt that he wanted to, but I think he did. All the color had drained from his face, and the blemishes on his cheeks stood out like birthmarks. His eyes were huge and wet. A line of spittle leaked from one comer of his twitching mouth. All this happened quick—it was begun and done in less than ten seconds, I'd say.

Harry and I stepped forward, our billies raised. Dean drew his gun. But before things could go so much as an inch further, Wharton let go of Perry and stepped back, raising his hands to his shoulders and grinning his dank grin. 'I let im go, I 'us just playin and I let im go,' he said. 'Never hurt airy single hair on that boy's purty head, so don't you go stickin me down in that goddam soft room again.'

Percy Wetmore darted across the Green Mile and cringed against the barred door of the empty cell on the other side, breathing so fast and so loud that it sounded almost like sobbing. He had finally gotten his lesson in keeping to the center of the Green Mile and away from the frumious bandersnatch, the teeth that bite and the claws that catch. I had an idea it was a lesson that would stick with him longer than all the advice we'd given him after our rehearsals. There was an expression of utter terror on his face, and his precious hair was seriously mussed up for the first time since I'd met him, all in spikes and tangles. He looked like someone who has just escaped being raped.

There was a moment of utter stop then, a quiet so thick that the only sound was the sobbing whistle of Percy's breathing. What broke it was cackling laughter, so sudden and so completely its own mad thing that it was shocking. Wharton, was my first thought, but it wasn't him. It was Delacroix, standing in the open door of his cell and pointing at Percy. The mouse was back on his shoulder, and Delacroix looked like a small but malevolent male witch, complete with imp.

'Lookit him, he done piss his pants!' Delacroix howled. 'Lookit what the big man done! Bus' other people wid 'is stick, mais oui some mauvais homme, but when someone touch him, he make water in 'is pants jus' like a baby!'

He laughed and pointed, all his fear and hatred of Percy coming out in that derisive laughter. Percy stared at him, seemingly incapable of moving or speaking. Wharton stepped back to the bars of his cell, looked down at the dark splotch on the front of Percy's trousers—it was small but it was there, and no question about what it was—and grinned. 'Somebody ought to buy the tough boy a didy,' he said, and went back to his bunk, chuffing laughter.

Brutal went down to Delacroix's cell, but the Cajun had ducked inside and thrown himself on his bunk before Brutal could get there.

I reached out and grasped Percy's shoulder. 'Percy—' I began, but that was as far as I got. He came to life, shaking my hand off. He looked down at the front of his pants, saw the spot spreading there, and blushed a dark, fiery red. He looked up at me again, then at Harry and Dean. I remember being glad that Old Toot-Toot was gone. If he'd been around, the story would have been all over the prison in a single day. And, given Percy's last name—an unfortunate one, in this context—it was a story that would have been told with the relish of high glee for years to come.

'You talk about this to anyone, and you'll all be on the breadlines in a week,' he whispered fiercely. It was the sort of crack that would have made me want to swat him under other circumstances, but under these, I only pitied him. I think he saw that pity, and it made it worse with him—like having an open wound scoured with nettles.

'What goes on here stays here,' Dean said quietly. 'You don't have to worry about that.'

Percy looked back over his shoulder, toward Delacroix's cell. Brutal was just locking the door, and from inside, deadly clear, we could still hear Delacroix giggling. Percy's look was as black as thunder. I thought of telling him that you reaped what you sowed in this life, and then decided this might not be the right time for a scripture lesson.

'As for him—' he began, but never finished. He left, instead, head down, to go into the storage room and look for a dry pair of pants.

'He's so purty,' Wharton said in a dreamy voice. Harry told him to shut the fuck up before he went down to the restraint room just on general damned principles. Wharton folded his arms on his chest, closed his eyes, and appeared to go to sleep.

The night before Delacroix's execution came down hotter and muggier than ever—eighty-one degrees by the thermometer outside the Admin readyroom window when I clocked in at six. Eighty-one degrees at the end of October, think of that, and thunder rumbling in the west like it does in July. I'd met a member of my congregation in town that afternoon, and he had asked me, with apparent seriousness, if I thought such unseasonable weather could be a sign of the Last Times. I said that I was sure not, but it crossed my mind that it was Last Times for Eduard Delacroix, all right. Yes indeed it was.

Bill Dodge was standing in the door to the exercise yard, drinking coffee and smoking him a little smoke. He looked around at me and said, 'Well, lookit here. Paul Edgecombe, big as life and twice as ugly.'

'How'd the day go, Billy?'

'All right.'

'Delacroix?'

'Fine. He seems to understand it's tomorrow, and yet it's like he don't understand. You know how most of em are when the end finally comes for them.'

I nodded. 'Wharton?'

Bill laughed. 'What a comedian. Makes Jack Benny sound like a Quaker. He told Rolfe Wettermark that he ate strawberry jam out of his wife's pussy.'

'What did Rolfe say?'

'That he wasn't married. Said it must have been his mother Wharton was thinking of.'

I laughed, and hard. That really was funny, in a low sort of way. And it was good just to be able to laugh without feeling like someone was lighting matches way down low in my gut. Bill laughed with me, then turned the rest of his coffee out in the yard, which was empty except for a few shuffling trusties, most of whom had been there for a thousand years or so.

Thunder rumbled somewhere far off, and unfocused heat lightning flashed in the darkening sky overhead. Bill looked up uneasily, his laughter dying.

'I tell you what, though,' he said, 'I don't like this weather much. Feels like something's gonna happen. Something bad.'

About that he was right. The bad thing happened right around quarter of ten that night. That was when Percy killed Mr. Jingles.

At first it seemed like it was going to be a pretty good night in spite of the heat—John Coffey was being his usual quiet self, Wild Bill was making out to be Mild Bill, and Delacroix was in good spirits for a man who had a date with Old Sparky in a little more than twenty-four hours.

He did understand what was going to happen to him, at least on the most basic level; he had ordered chili for his last meal and gave me special instructions for the kitchen. 'Tell em to lay on dat hotsauce,' he said. 'Tell em the kind dat really jump up your t'roat an' say howdy—the green stuff, none of dat mild. Dat stuff gripe me like a motherfucker, I can't get off the toilet the nex' day, but I don't think I gonna have a problem this time, n'est-ce pas?'

Most of them worry about their immortal souls with a kind of moronic ferocity, but Delacroix pretty much dismissed my questions about what he wanted for spiritual comfort in his last hours. If 'dat fella' Schuster had been good enough for Big Chief Bitterbuck, Del reckoned, Schuster would be good enough for him. No, what he cared about—you've guessed already, I'm sure—was what was going to happen to Mr. Jingles after he, Delacroix, passed on. I was used to spending long hours with the condemned on the night before their last march, but this was the first time I'd spent those long hours pondering the fate of a mouse.

Del considered scenario after scenario, patiently working the possibilities through his dim mind. And while he thought aloud, wanting to provide for his pet mouse's future as if it were a child that had to be put through college, he threw that colored spool against the wall. Each time he did it, Mr. Jingles would spring after it, track it down, and then roll it back to Del's foot. It started to get on my nerves after awhile—first the clack of the spool against the stone wall, then the minute clitter of Mr. Jingles's paws. Although it was a cute trick, it palled after ninety minutes or so. And Mr. Jingles never seemed to get tired. He paused every now and then to refresh himself with a drink of water out of a coffee saucer Delacroix kept for just that purpose, or to munch a pink crumb of peppermint candy, and then back to it he went. Several times it was on the tip of my tongue to tell Delacroix to give it a rest, and each time I reminded myself that he had this night and tomorrow to play the spool-game with Mr. Jingles, and that was all. Near the end, though, it began to be really difficult to hold onto that thought—you know how it is, with a noise that's repeated over and over. After a while it shoots your nerve. I started to speak after all, then something made me look over my shoulder and out the cell door. John Coffey was standing at his cell door across the way, and he shook his head at me: right, left, back to center. As if he had read my mind and was telling me to think again.

I would see that Mr. Jingles got to Delacroix's maiden aunt, I said, the one who had sent him the big bag of candy. His colored spool could go as well, even his "house"—we'd take up a collection and see that Toot gave up his claim on the Corona box. No, said Delacroix after some consideration (he had time to throw the spool against the wall at least five times, with Mr. Jingles either nosing it back or pushing it with his paws), that wouldn't do. Aunt Hermione was too old, she wouldn't understand Mr. Jingles's frisky ways, and suppose Mr. Jingles outlived her? What would happen to him then? No, no, Aunt Hermione just wouldn't do.

Well, then, I asked, suppose one of us took it? One of us guards? We could keep him right here on E Block. No, Delacroix said, he thanked me kindly for the thought, certainement, but Mr. Jingles was a mouse that yearned to be free. He, Eduard Delacroix, knew this, because Mr. Jingles had—you guessed it—whispered the information in his ear.

'All right,' I said, 'one of us will take him home, Del. Dean, maybe. He's got a little boy that would just love a pet mouse, I bet.'

Delacroix actually turned pale with horror at the thought. A little kid in charge of a rodent genius like Mr. Jingles? How in the name of le bon Dieu could a little kid be expected to keep up with his training, let alone teach him new tricks? And suppose the kid lost interest and forgot to feed him for two or three days at a stretch? Delacroix, who had roasted six human beings alive in an effort to cover up his original crime, shuddered with the delicate revulsion of an ardent anti-vivisectionist.

All right, I said, I'd take him myself (promise them anything, remember; in their last forty-eight hours, promise them anything). How would that be?

'No, sir, Boss Edgecombe,' Del said apologetically. He threw the spool again. It hit the wall, bounced, spun; then Mr. Jingles was on it like white on rice and nosing it back to Delacroix. 'Thank you kindly—merci beaucoup—but you live out in the woods, and Mr. Jingles, he be scared to live out dans la for t. I know, because—'

'I think I can guess how you know, Del,' I said.

Delacroix nodded, smiling. 'But we gonna figure this out. You bet!' He threw the spool. Mr. Jingles clittered after it. I tried not to wince.

In the end it was Brutal who saved the day. He had been up by the duty desk, watching Dean and Harry play cribbage. Percy was there, too, and Brutal finally tired of trying to start a conversation with him and getting nothing but sullen grunts in response. He strolled down to where I sat on a stool outside of Delacroix's cell and stood there listening to us with his arms folded.

'How about Mouseville?' Brutal asked into the considering silence which followed Del's rejection of my spooky old house out in the woods. He threw the comment out in a casual just-an-idea tone of voice.

'Mouseville?' Delacroix asked, giving Brutal a look both startled and interested. 'What Mouseville?'

'It's this tourist attraction down in Florida,' he said. 'Tallahassee, I think. Is that right, Paul? Tallahassee?'

'Yep,' I said, speaking without a moment's hesitation, thinking God bless Brutus Howell. 'Tallahassee. Right down the road apiece from the dog university.' Brutal's mouth twitched at that, and I thought he was going to queer the pitch by laughing, but he got it under control and nodded. I'd hear about the dog university later, though, I imagined.

This time Del didn't throw the spool, although Mr. Jingles stood on Del's slipper with his front paws raised, clearly lusting for another chance to chase. The Cajun looked from Brutal to me and back to Brutal again. 'What dey do in Mouseville?' he asked.

'You think they'd take Mr. Jingles?' Brutal asked me, simultaneously ignoring Del and drawing him on. 'Think he's got the stuff, Paul?'

I tried to appear considering. 'You know,' I said, 'the more I think of it, the more it seems like a brilliant idea.' From the comer of my eye I saw Percy come partway down the Green Mile (giving Wharton's cell a very wide berth). He stood with one shoulder leaning against an empty cell, listening with a small, contemptuous smile on his lips.

'What dis Mouseville?' Del asked, now frantic to know.

'A tourist attraction, like I told you,' Brutal said. 'There's, oh I dunno, a hundred or so mice there. Wouldn't you say, Paul?'

'More like a hundred and fifty these days,' I said. 'It's a big success. I understand they're thinking of opening one out in California and calling it Mouseville West, that's how much business is booming. Trained mice are the coming thing with the smart set, I guess—I don't understand it, myself.'

Del sat with the colored spool in his hand, looking at us, his own situation forgotten for the time being.

'They only take the smartest mice,' Brutal cautioned, 'the ones that can do tricks. And they can't be white mice, because those are pet-shop mice.'

'Pet-shop mice, yeah, you bet!' Delacroix said fiercely. 'I hate dem pet-shop mice!'

'And what they got,' Brutal said, his eyes distant now as he imagined it, 'is this tent you go into—'

'Yeah, yeah, like inna cirque! Do you gotta pay to get in?'

'You shittin me? Course you gotta pay to get in. A dime apiece, two cents for the kiddies. And there's, like, this whole city made out of Bakelite boxes and toilet-paper rolls, with windows made out of isinglass so you can see what they're up to in there—'

'Yeah! Yeah!' Delacroix was in ecstasy now. Then he turned to me. 'What ivy-glass?'

'Like on the front of a stove, where you can see in,' I. said.

'Oh sure! Dat shit!' He cranked his hand at Brutal, wanting him to go on, and Mr. Jingles's little oildrop eyes practically spun in their sockets, trying to keep that spool in view. It was pretty funny. Percy came a little closer, as if wanting to get a better look, and I saw John Coffey frowning at him, but I was too wrapped up in Brutal's fantasy to pay much attention. This took telling the condemned man what he wanted to hear to new heights, and I was all admiration, believe me.

''Well,' Brutal said, 'there's the mouse city, but what the kids really like is the Mouseville All-Star Circus, where there's mice that swing on trapezes, and mice that roll these little barrels, and mice that stack coins—'

'Yeah, dat's it! Dat's the place for Mr. Jingles!' Delacroix said. His eyes sparkled and his cheeks were high with color. It occurred to me that Brutus Howell was a kind of saint. 'You gonna be a circus mouse after all, Mr. Jingles! Gonna live in a mouse city down Florida! All ivy-glass windows! Hurrah!'

He threw the spool extra-hard. It hit low on the wall, took a crazy bounce, and squirted out between the bars of his cell door and onto the Mile. Mr. Jingles raced out after it, and Percy saw his chance.

'No, you fool!' Brutal yelled, but Percy paid no attention. Just as Mr. Jingles reached the spool—too intent on it to realize his old enemy was at hand—Percy brought the sole of one hard black workshoe down on it. There was an audible snap as Mr. Jingles's back broke, and blood gushed from his mouth. His tiny dark eyes bulged in their sockets, and in them I read an expression of surprised agony that was all too human.

Delacroix screamed with horror and grief. He threw himself at the door of his cell and thrust his arms out between the bars, reaching as far as he could, crying the mouse's name over and over.

Percy turned toward him, smiling. Toward the three of us. 'There,' he said. 'I knew I'd get him, sooner or later. Just a matter of time, really.' He turned and walked back up the Green Mile, not hurrying, leaving Mr. Jingles lying on the linoleum in a spreading pool of his own blood.

Part Four.

Date: 2015-12-11; view: 756