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The Mouse on the Mile 11 page

Big House screw before, it's a first."

"I told you - "

"Curiosity, yep. Folks get curious, I know it, I even thank God for it, I'd be out of a job and might

actually have to go to work for a living without it. But fifty miles is a long way to come to satisfy simple

curiosity, especially when the last twenty is over bad roads. So why don't you tell me the truth,

Edgecombe? I satisfied yours, so now you satisfy mine."

Well, I could say, I had this urinary infection, and John Coffey put his hands on me and healed it. The

man who raped and murdered those two little girls did that. So I wondered about him, of course - anyone

would. I even wondered if maybe Homer Cribus and Deputy Rob McGee didn't maybe collar the wrong

man. In spite of all the evidence against him I wonder that. Because a man who has a power like that in

his hands, you don't usually think of him as the kind of man who rapes and murders children.

No, maybe that wouldn't do.

"There are two things I've wondered about," I said. "The first is if he ever did anything like that before."

Hammersmith turned to me, his eyes suddenly sharp and bright with interest, and I saw he was a smart

fellow. Maybe even a brilliant fellow, in a quiet way. "Why?" he asked. "What do you know,

Edgecombe? What has he said?"

"Nothing. But a man who does this sort of thing once has usually done it before. They get a taste for it."

"Yes," he said. "They do. They certainly do."

"And it occurred to me that it would be easy enough to follow his backtrail and find out. A man his size,

and a Negro to boot, can't be that hard to trace."

"You'd think so, but you'd be wrong," he said. "In Coffey's case, anyhow. I know."

"You tried?"

"I did, and came up all but empty. There were a couple of railroad fellows who thought they saw him in

the Knoxville yards two days before the Detterick girls were killed. No surprise there; he was just across

the river from the Great Southern tracks when they collared him, and that's probably how he came down

here from Tennessee. I got a letter from a man who said he'd hired a big bald black man to shift crates for

him in the early spring of this year - this as in Kentucky. I sent him a picture of Coffey and he said that

was the man. But other than that -" Hammersmith shrugged and shook his head.

"Doesn't that strike you as a little odd?"

"Strikes me as a lot odd, Mr. Edgecombe. It's like he dropped out of the sky. And he's no help; he can't

remember last week once this week comes."

"No, he can't," I said. "How do you explain it?"

"We're in a Depression," he said, "that's how I explain it. People all over the roads. The Okies want to

pick peaches in California, the poor whites from up in the brakes want to build cars in Detroit, the black

folks from Mississippi want to go up to New England and work in the shoe factories or the textile mills.



Everyone - black as well as white - thinks it's going to be better over the next jump of land. It's the

American damn way. Even a giant like Coffey doesn't get noticed everywhere he goes - until, that is, he

decides to kill a couple of little girls. Little white girls."

"Do you believe that?" I asked.

He gave me a bland look from his too-thin face. "Sometimes I do," he said.

His wife leaned out of the kitchen window like an engineer from the cab of a locomotive and called,

"Kids! Cookies are ready!" She turned to me. "Would you like an oatmeal-raisin cookie, Mr.

Edgecombe?"

"I'm sure they're delicious, ma'am, but I'll take a pass this time."

"All right," she said, and drew her head back inside.

"Have you seen the scars on him?" Hammersmith asked abruptly. He was still watching his kids, who

couldn't quite bring themselves to abandon the pleasures of the swing - not even for oatmeal-raisin

cookies.

"Yes." But I was surprised he had.

He saw my reaction and laughed. "The defense attorney's one big victory was getting Coffey to take off

his shirt and show those scars to the jury. The prosecutor, George Peterson, objected like hell, but the

judge allowed it. Old George could have saved, his breath - juries around these parts don't buy all that

psychology crap about how people who've been mistreated just can't help themselves. They believe

people can help themselves. It's a point of view I have a lot of sympathy for - but those scars were pretty

ghastly, just the same. Notice anything about them, Edgecombe?"

I had seen the man naked in the shower, and I'd noticed, all right; I knew just what he was talking about.

"They're all broken up. Latticed, almost."

"You know what that means?"

"Somebody whopped the living hell out of him when he was a kid," I said. "Before he grew."

"But they didn't manage to whop the devil out of him, did they, Edgecombe? Should have spared the rod

and just drowned him in the river like a stray kitten, don't you think?"

I suppose it would have been politic to simply agree and get out of there, but I couldn't. I'd seen him. And

I'd felt him, as well. Felt the touch of his hands.

"He's ... strange," I said. "But there doesn't seem to be any real violence in him. I know how he was

found, and it's hard to jibe that with what I see, day in and day out, on the block. I know violent men, Mr.

Hammersmith." It was Wharton I was thinking about, of course, Wharton strangling Dean Stanton with

his wrist-chain and bellowing Whoooee, boys! Ain't this a party, now?

He was looking at me closely now, and smiling a little, incredulous smile that I didn't care for very much.

"You didn't come up here to get an idea about whether or not he might have killed some other little girls

somewhere else," he said. "You came up here to see if I think he did it at all. That's it, isn't it? 'Fess up,

Edgecombe."

I swallowed the last of my cold drink, put the bottle down on the little table, and said: "Well? Do you?"

"Kids!" he called down the hill, leaning forward a little in his chair to do it. "Y'all come on up here now n

get your cookies!" Then he leaned back in his chair again and looked at me. That little smile - the one I

didn't much care for - had reappeared.

"Tell you something," he said. "You want to listen close, too, because this might just be something you

need to know."

"I'm listening."

"We had us a dog named Sir Galahad," he said, and cocked a thumb at the doghouse. "A good dog. No

particular breed, but gentle. Calm. Ready to lick your hand or fetch a stick. There are plenty of mongrel

dogs like him, wouldn't you say?"

I shrugged, nodded.

"In many ways, a good mongrel dog is like your negro," he said. "You get to know it, and often you grow

to love it. It is of no particular use, but you keep it around because you think it loves you. If you're lucky,

Mr. Edgecombe, you never have to find out any different. Cynthia and I, we were not lucky." He sighed -

a long and somehow skeletal sound, like the wind rummaging through fallen leaves. He pointed toward

the doghouse again, and I wondered how I had missed its general air of abandonment earlier, or the fact

that many of the turds had grown whitish and powdery at their tops.

"I used to clean up after him," Hammersmith said, "and keep the roof of his house repaired against the

rain. In that way also Sir Galahad was like your Southern negro, who will not do those things for himself.

Now I don't touch it, I haven't been near it since the accident - if you can call it an accident. I went over

there with my rifle and shot him, but I haven't been over there since. I can't bring myself to. I suppose I

will, in time. I'll clean up his messes and tear down his house."

Here came the kids, and all at once I didn't want them to come; all at once that was the last thing on earth

I wanted. The little girl was all right, but the boy -

They pounded up the steps, looked at me, giggled, then went on toward the kitchen door.

"Caleb," Hammersmith said. "Come here. Just for a second."

The little girl - surely his twin, they had to be of an age - went on into the kitchen. The little boy came to

his father, looking down at his feet. He knew he was ugly. He was only four, I guess, but four is old

enough to know that you're ugly. His father put two fingers under the boy's chin and tried to raise his

face. At first the boy resisted, but when his father said "Please, son," in tones of sweetness and calmness

and love, he did as he was asked.

A huge, circular scar ran out of his hair, down his forehead, through one dead and indifferently cocked

eye, and to the comer of his mouth, which had been disfigured into the knowing leer of a gambler or

perhaps a whoremaster. One cheek was smooth and pretty; the other was bunched up like the stump of a

tree. I guessed there had been a hole in it, but that, at least, had healed.

"He has the one eye," Hammersmith said, caressing the boy's bunched cheek with a lover's kind fingers.

"I suppose he's lucky not to be blind. We get down on our knees and thank God for that much, at least.

Eh, Caleb?"

"Yes, sir," the boy said shyly - the boy who would be beaten mercilessly on the play-yard by laughing,

jeering bullies for all his miserable years of education, the boy who would never be asked to play Spin

the Bottle or Post Office and would probably never sleep with a woman not bought and paid for once he

was grown to manhood's times and needs, the boy who would always stand outside the warm and lighted

circle of his peers, the boy who would look at himself in his mirror for the next fifty or sixty or seventy

years of his life and think ugly, ugly, ugly.

"Go on in and get your cookies," his father said, and kissed his son's sneering mouth.

"Yes, sir," Caleb, said, and dashed inside.

Hammersmith took a handkerchief from his back pocket and wiped at his eyes with it - they were dry,

but I suppose he'd gotten used to them being wet.

"The dog was here when they were born," he said. "I brought him in the house to smell them when

Cynthia brought them home from the hospital, and Sir Galahad licked their hands. Their little hands." He

nodded, as if confirming this to himself. "He played with them; used to lick Arden's face until she

giggled. Caleb used to pull his ears, and when he was first learning to walk, he'd sometimes go around

the yard, holding to Galahad's tail. The dog never so much as growled at him. Either of them."

Now the tears were coming; he wiped at them automatically, as a man does when he's had lots of

practice.

"There was no reason," he said. "Caleb didn't hurt him, yell at him, anything. I know. I was there. If I

hadn't have been, the boy would almost certainly have been killed. What happened, Mr. Edgecombe, was

nothing. The boy just got his face set the right way in front of the dog's face, and it came into Sir

Galahad's mind - whatever serves a dog for a mind - to lunge and bite. To kill, if he could. The boy was

there in front of him and the dog bit. And that's what happened with Coffey. He was there, he saw them

on the porch, he took them, he raped them, he killed them. You say there should be some hint that he did

something like it before, and I know what you mean, but maybe he didn't do it before. My dog never bit

before; just that once. Maybe, if Coffey was let go, he'd never do it again. Maybe my dog never would

have bit again. But I didn't concern myself with that, you know. I went out with my rifle and grabbed his

collar and blew his head off."

He was breathing hard.

"I'm as enlightened as the next man, Mr. Edgecombe, went to college in Bowling Green, took history as

well as journalism, some philosophy, too. I like to think of myself as enlightened. I don't suppose folks

up North would, but I like to think of myself as enlightened. I'd not bring slavery back for all the tea in

China. I think we have to be humane and generous in our efforts to solve the race problem. But we have

to remember that your negro will bite if he gets the chance, just like a mongrel dog will bite if he gets the

chance and it crosses his mind to do so. You want to know if he did it, your weepy Mr. Coffey with the

scars all over him?"

I nodded.

"Oh, yes," Hammersmith said. "He did it. Don't you doubt it, and don't you turn your back on him. You

might get away with it once or a hundred times ... even a thousand ... but in the end -" He raised a hand

before my eyes and snapped the fingers together rapidly against the thumb, turning the hand into a biting

mouth. "You understand?"

I nodded again.

"He raped them, he killed them, and afterward he was sorry - but those little girls stayed raped, those

little girls stayed dead. But you'll fix him, won't you, Edgecombe? In a few weeks you'll fix him so he

never does anything like that again." He got up, went to the porch rail, and looked vaguely at the

doghouse, standing at the center of its beaten patch, in the middle of those aging turds. "Perhaps you'll

excuse me," he said. "Since I don't have to spend the afternoon in court, I thought I might visit with my

family for a little bit. A man's children are only young once."

"You go ahead," I said. My lips felt numb and distant. "And thank you for your time."

"Don't mention it," he said.

I drove directly from Hammersmith's house to the prison. It was a long drive, and this time I wasn't able

to shorten it by singing songs. It felt like all the songs had gone out of me, at least for awhile. I kept

seeing that poor little boy's disfigured face. And Hammersmith's hand, the fingers going up and down

against the thumb in a biting motion.

5.

Wild Bill Wharton took his first trip down to the restraint room the very next day. He spent the morning

and afternoon being as quiet and good as Mary's little lamb, a state we soon discovered was not natural to

him, and meant trouble. Then, around seven-thirty that evening, Harry felt something warm splash on the

cuffs of uniform pants he had put on clean just that day. It was piss. William Wharton was standing at his

cell, showing his darkening teeth in a wide grin, and pissing all over Harry Terwilliger's pants and shoes.

"The dirty sonofabitch must have been saving it up all day," Harry said later, still disgusted and outraged.

Well, that was it. It was time to show William Wharton who ran the show on E Block. Harry got Brutal

and me, and I alerted Dean and Percy, who were also on. We had three prisoners by then, remember, and

were into what we called full coverage, with my group on from seven in the evening to three in the

morning - when trouble was most apt to break out - and two other crews covering the rest of the day.

Those other crews consisted mostly of floaters, with Bill Dodge usually in charge. It wasn't a bad way to

run things, all and all, and I felt that, once I could shift Percy over to days, life would be even better. I

never got around to that, however. I sometimes wonder if it would have changed things, if I had.

Anyway, there was a big watermain in the storage room, on the side away from Old Sparky, and Dean

and Percy hooked up a length of canvas firehose to it. Then they stood by the valve that would open it, if

needed.

Brutal and I hurried down to Wharton's cell, where Wharton still stood, still grinning and still with his

tool hanging out of his pants. I had liberated the straitjacket from the restraint room and tossed it on a

shelf in my office last thing before going home the night before, thinking we might be needing it for our

new problem child. Now I had it in one hand, my index finger hooked under one of the canvas straps.

Harry came behind us, hauling the nozzle of the firehose, which ran back through my office, down the

storage-room steps, and to the drum where Dean and Percy were paying it out as fast as they could.

"Hey, d'jall like that?" Wild Bill asked. He was laughing like a kid at a carnival, laughing so hard he

could barely talk; big tears went rolling down his cheeks. "You come on s'fast I guess you must've. I'm

currently cookin some turds to go with it. Nice soft ones. I'll have them out to y'all tomorrow - "

He saw that I was unlocking his cell door and his eyes narrowed. He saw that Brutal was holding his

revolver in one hand and his nightstick in the other, and they narrowed even more.

"You can come in here on your legs, but you'll go out on your backs, Billy the Kid is goan guarantee you

that," he told us. His eyes shifted back to me. "And if you think you're gonna put that nut-coat on me,

you got another think coming, old hoss."

"You're not the one who says go or jump back around here," I told him. "You should know that, but I

guess you're too dumb to pick it up without a little teaching."

I finished unlocking the door and ran it back on its track. Wharton retreated to the bunk, his cock still

hanging out of his pants, put his hands out to me, palms up, then beckoned with his fingers. "Come on,

you ugly motherfucker," he said. "They be schoolin, all right, but this old boy's well set up to be the

teacher." He shifted his gaze and his darktoothed grin to Brutal. "Come on, big fella, you first. This time

you cain't sneak up behind me. Put down that gun - you ain't gonna shoot it anyway, not you - and we'll

go man-to-man. See who's the better fel-"

Brutal stepped into the cell, but not toward Wharton. He moved to the left once he was through the door,

and Wharton's narrow eyes widened as he saw the firehose pointed at him.

"No, you don't," he said. "Oh no, you d-"

"Dean!" I yelled. "Turn it on! All the way!"

Wharton jumped forward, and Brutal hit him a good smart lick - the kind of lick I'm sure Percy dreamed

of - across his forehead, laying his baton right over Wharton's eyebrows. Wharton, who seemed to think

we'd never seen trouble until we'd seen him, went to his knees, his eyes open but blind. Then the water

came, Harry staggering back a step under its power and then holding steady, the nozzle firm in his hands,

pointed like a gun. The stream caught Wild Bill Wharton square in the middle of his chest, spun him

halfway around, and drove him back under his bunk. Down the hall, Delacroix was jumping from foot to

foot, cackling shrilly, and cursing at John Coffey, demanding that Coffey tell him what was going on,

who was winning, and how dat gran' fou new boy like dat Chinee water treatment. John said nothing, just

stood there quietly in his too-short pants and his prison slippers. I only had one quick glance at him, but

that was enough to observe his same old expression, both sad and serene. It was as if he'd seen the whole

thing before, not just once or twice but a thousand times.

"Kill the water!" Brutal shouted back over his shoulder, then raced forward into the cell. He sank his

hands into the semi-conscious Wharton's armpits and dragged him out from under his bunk. Wharton was

coughing and making a glub-glub sound. Blood was dribbling into his dazed eyes from above his brows,

where Brutal's stick had popped the skin open in a line.

We had the straitjacket business down to a science, did Brutus Howell and me; we'd practiced it like a

couple of vaudeville hoofers working up a new dance routine. Every now and then, that practice paid off.

Now, for instance. Brutal sat Wharton up and held out his arms toward me the way a kid might hold out

the arms of a Raggedy Andy doll. Awareness was just starting to seep back into Wharton's eyes, the

knowledge that if he didn't start fighting right away, it was going to be too late, but the lines were still

down between his brain and his muscles, and before he could repair them, I had rammed the sleeves of

the coat up his arms and Brutal was doing the buckles up the back. While he took care of that, I grabbed

the cuff-straps, pulled Wharton's arms around his sides, and linked his wrists together with another

canvas strap. He ended up looking like he was hugging himself.

"Goddam you, big dummy, how dey doin widdim?" Delacroix screamed. I heard Mr. Jingles squeaking,

as if he wanted to know, too.

Percy arrived, his shirt wet and sticking to him from his struggles with the watermain, his face glowing

with excitement. Dean came along behind him, wearing a bracelet of purplish bruise around his throat

and looking a lot less thrilled.

"Come on, now, Wild Bill," I said, and yanked Wharton to his feet. "Little walky-walky."

"Don't you call me that!" Wharton screamed shrilly, and I think that for the first time we were seeing real

feelings, and not just a clever animal's camouflage spots. "Wild Bill Hickok wasn't no range-rider! He

never fought him no bear with a Bowie knife, either! He was just another bushwhackin John Law! Dumb

sonofabitch sat with his back to the door and got kilt by a drunk!"

"Oh my suds and body, a history lesson!" Brutal exclaimed, and shoved Wharton out of his cell. "A feller

just never knows what he's going to get when he clocks in here, only that it's apt to be nice. But with so

many nice people like you around, I guess that kind of stands to reason, don't it? And you know what?

Pretty soon you'll be history yourself, Wild Bill. Meantime, you get on down the hall. We got a room for

you. Kind of a cooling-off room."

Wharton gave a furious, inarticulate scream and threw himself at Brutal, even though he was snugly

buckled into the coat now, and his arms were wrapped around behind him. Percy made to draw his baton

- the Wetmore Solution for all of life's problems - and Dean put a hand on his wrist. Percy gave him a

puzzled, half-indignant look, as if to say that after what Wharton had done to Dean, Dean should be the

last person in the world to want to hold him back.

Brutal pushed Wharton backward. I caught him and pushed him to Harry. And Harry propelled him on

down the Green Mile, past the gleeful Delacroix and the impassive Coffey. Wharton ran to keep from

falling on his face, spitting curses the whole way. Spitting them the way a welder's torch spits sparks. We

banged him into the last cell on the right while Dean, Harry, and Percy (who for once wasn't complaining

about being unfairly overworked) yanked all of the crap out of the restraint room. While they did that, I

had a brief conversation with Wharton.

"You think you're tough," I said, "and maybe you are, sonny, but in here tough don't matter. Your

stampeding days are over. If you take it easy on us, we'll take it easy on you. If you make it hard, you'll

die in the end just the same, only we'll sharpen you like a pencil before you go."

"You're gonna be so happy to see the end of me," Wharton said in a hoarse voice. He was struggling

against the straitjacket even though he must have known it would do no good, and his face was as red as

a tomato. "And until I'm gone, I'll make your lives miserable." He bared his teeth at me like an angry

baboon.

"If that's all you want, to make our lives miserable, you can quit now, because you've already

succeeded," Brutal said. "But as far as your time on the Mile goes, Wharton, we don't care if you spend

all of it in the room with the soft walls. And you can wear that damned nut-coat until your arms gangrene

from lack of circulation and fall right off." He paused. "No one much comes down here, you know. And

if you think anyone gives much of a shit what happens to you, one way or another, you best reconsider.

To the world in general, you're already one dead outlaw."

Wharton was studying Brutal carefully, and the color was fading out of his face. "Lemme out of it", he

said in a placatory voice - a voice too sane and too reasonable to trust. "I'll be good. Honest Injun."

Harry appeared in the cell doorway. The end of the corridor looked like a rummage sale, but we'd set

things to rights with good speed once we got started. We had before; we knew the drill. "All ready,"

Harry said.

Brutal grabbed the bulge in the canvas where Wharton's right elbow was and yanked him to his feet.

"Come on, Wild Billy. And look on the good side. You're gonna have at least twenty-four hours to

remind yourself never to sit with your back to the door, and to never hold onto no aces and eights."

"Lemme out of it," Wharton said. He looked from Brutal to Harry to me, the red creeping back into his

face. "I'll be good - I tell you I've learned my lesson. I ... I ... ummmmmahhhhhhh-!"

He suddenly collapsed, half of him in the cell, half of him on the played-out lino of the Green Mile,

kicking his feet and bucking his body.

"Holy Christ, he's pitchin a fit," Percy whispered.

"Sure, and my sister's the Whore of Babylon," Brutal said. "She dances the hootchie-kootchie for Moses

on Saturday nights in a long white veil." He bent down and hooked a hand into one of Wharton's armpits.

I got the other one. Wharton threshed between us like a hooked fish. Carrying his jerking body, listening

to him grunt from one end and fart from the other was one of my life's less pleasant experiences.

I looked up and met John Coffey's eyes for a second. They were bloodshot, and his dark cheeks were

wet. He had been crying again. I thought of Hammersmith making that biting gesture with his hand and

shivered a little. Then I turned my attention back to Wharton.

We threw him into the restraint room like he was cargo, and watched him lie on the floor, bucking hard

in the straitjacket next to the drain we had once checked for the mouse which had started its E Block life

as Steamboat Willy.

"I don't much care if he swallows his tongue or something and dies," Dean said in his hoarse and raspy

voice, "but think of the paperwork, boys! It'd never end."

"Never mind the paperwork, think of the hearing," Harry said gloomily. "We'd lose our damned jobs.

End up picking peas down Mississippi. You know what Mississippi is, don't you? It's the Indian word for

asshole."

"He ain't gonna die, and he ain't gonna swallow his tongue, either," Brutal said. "When we open this door

tomorrow, he's gonna be just fine. Take my word for it."

That's the way it was, too. The man we took back to his cell the next night at nine was quiet, pallid, and

seemingly chastened. He walked with his head down, made no effort to attack anyone when the

straitjacket came off, and only stared listlessly at me when I told him it would go just the same the next

time, and he just had to ask himself how much time he wanted to spend pissing in his pants and eating

baby-food a spoonful at a time.

"I'll be good, boss, I learnt my lesson," he whispered in a humble little voice as we put him back in his


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