The Mouse on the Mile 9 page

little, Harry said, and Percy roused himself enough from his funk to say that the lugoon dripped spittle

from his lax lower lip, a drop at a time, until it had made a puddle between his feet. Like a dog dripping

off the end of its tongue on a hot summer day.

They drove in through the south gate when they got to the pen, right past my car, I guess. The guard on

the south pass tan back the big door between the lot and the exercise yard, and the stagecoach drove

through. It was a slack time in the yard, not many men out and most of them hoeing in the garden.

Pumpkin time, it would have been. They drove straight across to E Block and stopped. The driver opened

the door and told them he was going to take the stagecoach over to the motor-pool to have the oil

changed, it had been good working with them. The extra guards went with the vehicle, two of them

sitting in the back eating apples, the doors now swinging open.

That left Dean, Harry and Percy with one shackled prisoner. It should have been enough, would have

been enough, if they hadn't been lulled by the stick thin country boy standing head-down there in the dirt

with chains on his wrists and ankles. They marched him the twelve or so paces to the door that opened

into E Block, falling into the same formation we used when escorting prisoners down the Green Mile.

Harry was on his left, Dean was on his right, and Percy was behind, with his baton in his hand. No one

told me that, but I know damned well he had it out; Percy loved that hickory stick. As for me, I was

sitting in what would be Wharton's home until it came time for him to check into the hot place-first cell

on the right as you headed down the corridor toward the restraint room. I had my clipboard in my hands

and was thinking of nothing but making my little set speech and getting the hell out. The pain in my

groin was building up again, and all I wanted was to go into my office and wait for it to pass.

Dean stepped forward to unlock the door. He selected the right key from the bunch on his belt and slid it

into the lock. Wharton came alive just as Dean turned the key and pulled the handle. He voiced a

screaming, gibbering cry - a kind of Rebel yell - that froze Harry to temporary immobility and pretty

much finished Percy Wetmore for the entire encounter. I heard that scream through the partly opened

door and didn't associate it with anything human at first; I thought a dog had gotten into the yard

somehow and had been hurt; that perhaps some mean tempered con had hit it with a hoe.

Wharton lifted his arms, dropped the chain which hung between his wrists over Dean's head, and

commenced to choke him with it. Dean gave a strangled cry and lurched forward, into the cool electric

light of our little world. Wharton was happy to go with him, even gave him a shove, all the time yelling

and gibbering, even laughing. He had his arms cocked at the elbows with his fists up by Dean's ears,

yanking the chain as tight as he could, whipsawing it back and forth.

Harry landed on Wharton's back, wrapping one hand in our new boy's greasy blond hair and slamming

his other fist into the side of Wharton's face as hard as he could. He had both a baton of his own and a

sidearm pistol, but in his excitement drew neither. We'd had trouble with prisoners before, you bet, but

never one who'd taken any of us by surprise the way that Wharton did. The man's slyness was beyond

our experience. I had never seen its like before, and have never seen it again.

And he was strong. All that slack looseness was gone. Harry said later that it was like jumping onto a

coiled nest of steel springs that had somehow come to life. Wharton, now inside and near the duty desk,

whirled to his left and flung Harry off. Harry hit the desk and went sprawling.

"Whoooee, boys!" Wharton laughed. "Ain't this a party, now? Is it, or what?"

Still screaming and laughing, Wharton went back to choking Dean with his chain. Why not? Wharton

knew what we all knew: they could only fry him once.

"Hit him, Percy, hit him!" Harry screamed, struggling to his feet. But Percy only stood there, hickory

baton in hand, eyes as wide as soup-plates. Here was the chance he'd been looking for, you would have

said, his golden opportunity to put that tallywhacker of his to good use, and he was too scared and

confused to do it. This wasn't some terrified little Frenchman or a black giant who hardly seemed to be in

his own body; this was a whirling devil.

I came out of Wharton's cell, dropping my clipboard and pulling my .38. I had forgotten the infection that

was heating up my middle for the second time that day. I didn't doubt the story the others told of

Wharton's blank face and dull eyes when they told it, but that wasn't the Wharton I saw. What I saw was

the face of an animal - not an intelligent animal, but one filled with cunning ... and meanness ... and joy.

Yes. He was doing what he had been made to do. The place and the circumstances didn't matter. The

other thing I saw was Dean Stanton's red, swelling face. He was dying in front of my eyes. Wharton saw

the gun and turned Dean toward it, so that I'd almost certainly have to hit one to hit the other. From over

Dean's shoulder, one blazing blue eye dared me to shoot.

The Green Mile

Part Three:

Coffey's Hands

1.

Looking back through what I've written, I see that I called Georgia Pines, where I now live, a nursing

home. The folks who run the place wouldn't be very happy with that! According to the brochures they

keep in the lobby and send out to prospective clients, its a "State-of-the-art retirement complex for the

elderly." It even has a Resource Center - the brochure says so. The folks who have to live here (the

brochure doesn't call us "inmates," but sometimes I do) just call it the TV room.

Folks think I'm stand-offy because I don't go down to the TV room much in the day, but it's the programs

I can't stand, not the folks. Oprah, Ricki Lake, Carnie Wilson, Rolanda - the world is falling down around

our ears, and all these people care for is talking about fucking to women in short skirts and men with

their shirts hanging open. Well, hell - judge not, lest ye be judged, the Bible says, so I'll get down off my

soapbox. It's just that if I wanted to spend time with trailer trash, I'd move two miles down to the Happy

Wheels Motor Court, where the police cars always seem to be headed on Friday and Saturday nights with

their sirens screaming and their blue lights flashing. My special friend, Elaine Connelly, feels the same

way. Elaine is eighty, tall and slim, still erect and clear-eyed, very intelligent and refined. She walks very

slowly because there's something wrong with her hips, and I know that the arthritis in her hands gives her

terrible misery, but she has a beautiful long neck - a swan neck, almost - and long, pretty hair that falls to

her shoulders when she lets it down.

Best of all, she doesn't think I'm peculiar, or stand-offy. We spend a lot of time together, Elaine and I. If I

hadn't reached such a grotesque age, I suppose I might speak of her as my ladyfriend. Still, having a

special friend - just that - is not so bad, and in some ways, it's even better. A lot of the problems and

heartaches that go with being boyfriend and girlfriend have simply burned out of us. And although I

know that no one under the age of, say, fifty would believe this, sometimes the embers are better than the

campfire. It's strange, but it's true.

So I don't watch TV during the day. Sometimes I walk; sometimes I read; mostly what I've been doing

for the last month or so is writing this memoir among the plants in the solarium. I think there's more

oxygen in that room, and it helps the old memory. It beats the hell out of Geraldo Rivera, I can tell you

that.

But when I can't sleep, I sometimes creep downstairs and put on the television. There's no Home Box

Office or anything at Georgia Pines - I guess that's a resource just a wee bit too expensive for our

Resource Center - but we have the basic cable services, and that means we have the American Movie

Channel. That's the one (just in case you don't have the basic cable services yourself) where most of the

films are in black and white and none of the women take their clothes off. For an old fart like me, that's

sort of soothing. There have been a good many nights when I've slipped right off to sleep on the ugly

green sofa in front of the TV while Francis the Talking Mule once more pulls Donald O'Connor's skillet

out of the fire, or John Wayne cleans up Dodge, or Jimmy Cagney calls someone a dirty rat and then

pulls a gun. Some of them are movies I saw with my wife, Janice (not just my ladyfriend but my best

friend), and they calm me. The clothes they wear, the way they walk and talk, even the music on the

soundtrack - all those things calm me. They remind me, I suppose, of when I was a man still walking on

the skin of the world, instead of a moth-eaten relic mouldering away in an old folks' home where many of

the residents wear diapers and rubber pants.

There was nothing soothing about what I saw this morning, though. Nothing at all.

Elaine sometimes joins me for AMC's so-called Early Bird Matinee, which starts at 4:00 a.m. - she

doesn't say much about it, but I know her arthritis hurts her something terrible, and that the drugs they

give her don't help much anymore.

When she came in this morning, gliding like a ghost in her white terrycloth robe, she found me sitting on

the lumpy sofa, bent over the scrawny sticks that used to be legs, and clutching my knees to try and still

the shakes that were running through me like a high wind. I felt cold all over, except for my groin, which

seemed to burn with the ghost of the urinary infection which had so troubled my life in the fall of 1932 -

the fall of John Coffey, Percy Wetmore, and Mr. Jingles, the trained mouse.

The fall of William Wharton, it had been, too.

"Paul!" Elaine cried, and hurried over to me hurried as fast as the rusty nails and ground glass in her hips

would allow, anyway. "Paul, what's wrong?"

"I'll be all right," I said, but the words didn't sound very convincing - they came out all uneven, through

teeth that wanted to chatter. "Just give me a minute or two, I'll be right as rain."

She sat next to me and put her arm around my shoulders. "I'm sure," she said. "But what happened? For

heaven's sake, Paul, you look like you saw a ghost."

I did, I thought, and didn't realize until her eyes widened that I'd said it out loud.

"Not really." I said, and patted her hand (gently - so gently!). "But for a minute. Elaine God!"

"Was it from the time when you were a guard at the prison?" she asked. "The time that you've been

writing about in the solarium?"

I nodded. "I worked on our version of Death Row - "

"I know - "

"Only we called it the Green Mile. Because of the linoleum on the floor. In the fall of '32, we got this

fellow - we got this wildman - named William Wharton. Liked to think of himself as Billy the Kid, even

had it tattooed on his arm. Just a kid, but dangerous. I can still remember what Curtis Anderson - he was

the assistant warden back in those days - wrote about him. 'Crazy-wild and proud of it. Wharton is

nineteen years old, and he just doesn't care.' He'd underlined that part."

The hand which had gone around my shoulders was now rubbing my back. I was beginning to calm. In

that moment I loved Elaine Connelly, and could have kissed her all over her face as I told her so. Maybe

I should have. It's terrible to be alone and frightened at any age, but I think it's worst when you're old.

But I had this other thing on my mind, this load of old and still unfinished business.

"Anyway," I said, "you're right-I've been scribbling about how Wharton came on the block and almost

killed Dean Stanton - One of the guys I worked with back then - when he did."

"How could he do that?" Elaine asked.

"Meanness and carelessness," I said grimly. "Wharton supplied the meanness, and the guards who

brought him in supplied the carelessness. The real mistake was Wharton's wrist-chain - it was a little too

long. When Dean unlocked the door to E Block, Wharton was behind him. There were guards on either

side of him, but Anderson was right - Wild Billy just didn't care about such things. He dropped that

wrist-chain down over Dean's head and started choking him with it."

Elaine shuddered.

"Anyway, I got thinking about all that and couldn't sleep, so I came down here. I turned on AMC,

thinking you might come down and we'd have us a little date-"

She laughed and kissed my forehead just above the eyebrow. It used to make me prickle all over when

Janice did that, and it still made me prickle all over when Elaine did it early this morning. I guess some

things don't ever change.

"-and what came on was this old black-and-white gangster movie from the forties. Kiss of Death, it's

called."

I could feel myself wanting to start shaking again and tried to suppress it.

"Richard Widmark's in it," I said. "It was his first big part, I think. I never went to see it with Jan - we

gave the cops and robbers a miss, usually - but I remember reading somewhere that Widmark gave one

hell of a performance as the punk. He sure did. He's pale ... doesn't seem to walk so much as go gliding

around ... he's always calling people 'squirt' . . . talking about squealers how much he hates the squealers .

. !"

I was starting to shiver again in spite of my best efforts. I just couldn't help it.

"Blond hair," I whispered. "Lank blond hair. I watched until the part where he pushed this old woman in

a wheelchair down a flight of stairs, then I turned it off."

"He reminded you of Wharton?"

"He was Wharton," I said. "To the life!"

"Paul----!' she began, and stopped. She looked at the blank screen of the TV (the cable box on top of it

was still on, the red numerals still showing 10, the number of the AMC channel), then back at me.

"What?" I asked. 'What, Elaine?" Thinking, She's going to tell, me I ought to quit writing about it. That I

ought to tear up the pages I've written so far and just quit on it.

What she said was "Don't let this stop you!"

I gawped at her.

"Close your mouth, Paul - you'll catch a fly."

"Sorry. It's just that ... well . . ."

"You thought I was going to tell you just the opposite, didn't you?"

"Yes. "

She took my hands in hers (gently, so gently - her long and beautiful fingers, her bunched and ugly

knuckles) and leaned forward, fixing my blue eyes with her hazel ones, the left slightly dimmed by the

mist of a coalescing cataract. "I may be too old and brittle to live," she said, "but I'm not too old to think.

What's a few sleepless nights at our age? What's seeing a ghost on the TV, for that matter? Are you going

to tell me it's the only one you've ever seen?"

I thought about Warden Moores, and Harry Terwilliger, and Brutus Howell; I thought about MY mother,

and about Jan, my wife, who died in Alabama. I knew about ghosts, all right.

"No," I said. "It wasn't the first ghost I've ever seen. But Elaine - it was a shock. Because it was him."

She kissed me again, then stood up, wincing as she did so and pressing the heels of her hands to the tops

of her hips, as if she were afraid they might actually explode out through her skin if she wasn't very

careful.

"I think I've changed my mind about the television," she said. "I've got an extra pill that I've been keeping

for a rainy day ... or night. I think I'll take it and go back to bed. Maybe you should do the same."

"Yes," I said. "I suppose I should!" For one wild moment I thought of suggesting that we go back to bed

together, and then I saw the dull pain in her eyes and thought better of it. Because she might have said

yes, and she would only have said that for me. Not so good.

We left the TV room (I won't dignify it with that other name, not even to be ironic) side by side, me

matching my steps to hers, which were slow and painfully careful. The building was quiet except for

someone moaning in the grip of a bad dream behind some closed door.

"Will you be able to sleep, do you think?" she asked.

"Yes, I think so," I said, but of course I wasn't able to; I lay in my bed until sunup, thinking about Kiss of

Death. I'd see Richard Widmark, giggling madly, tying the old lady into her wheelchair and then pushing

her down the stairs -"This is what we do to squealers," he told her-and then his face would merge into the

face of William Wharton as he'd looked on the day when he came to E Block and the Green Mile -

Wharton giggling like Widmark, Wharton screaming, Ain't this a pa", now? Is it, or what? I didn't bother

with breakfast, not after that; I just came down here to the solarium and began to write.

Ghosts? Sure.

I know all about ghosts.

2.

"Woooee, boys!" Wharton laughed. "Ain't this a party, now? Is it, or what?"

Still screaming and laughing, Wharton went back to choking Dean with his chain. Why not? Wharton

knew what Dean and Harry and my friend Brutus Howell knew - they could only fry a man once.

"Hit him!" Harry Terwilliger screamed. He had grappled with Wharton, tried to stop things before they

got fairly started, but Wharton had thrown him off and now Harry was trying to find his feet. "Percy, hit

him!"

But Percy only stood there, hickory baton in hand, eyes as wide as soup-plates. He loved that damned

baton of his, and you would have said this was the chance to use it he'd been pining for ever since he

came to Cold Mountain Penitentiary ... but now that it had come, he was too scared to use the

opportunity. This wasn't some terrified little Frenchman like Delacroix or a black giant who hardly

seemed to know he was in his own body, like John Coffey; this was a whirling devil.

I came out of Wharton's cell, dropping my clipboard and pulling my .38. For the second time that day I

had forgotten the infection that was heating up my middle. I didn't doubt the story the others told of

Wharton's blank face and dull eyes when they recounted it later, but that wasn't the Wharton I saw. What

I saw was the face of an animal - not an intelligent animal, but one filled with cunning ... and meanness

... and joy. Yes. He was doing what he had been made to do. The place and the circumstances didn't

matter. The other thing I saw was Dean Stanton's red, swelling face. He was dying in front of my eyes.

Wharton saw the gun in my hand and turned Dean toward it, so that I'd almost certainly have to hit one to

hit the other. From over Dean's shoulder, one blazing blue eye dared me to shoot. Wharton's other eye

was hidden by Dean's hair. Behind them I saw Percy standing irresolute, with his baton half-raised. And

then, filling the open doorway to the prison yard, a miracle in the flesh: Brutus Howell. They had

finished moving the last of the infirmary equipment, and he had come over to see who wanted coffee.

He acted without a moment's hesitation - shoved Percy aside and into the wall with tooth-rattling force,

pulled his own baton out of its loop, and brought it crashing down on the back of Wharton's head with all

the force in his massive right arm. There was a dull whock! Sound - an almost hollow sound, as if there

were no brain at all under Wharton's skull - and the chain finally loosened around Dean's neck. Wharton

went down like a sack of meal and Dean crawled away, hacking harshly and holding one hand to his

throat, his eyes bulging.

I knelt by him and he shook his head violently. "Okay," he rasped. "Take care ... him!" He motioned at

Wharton. "Lock! Cell!"

I didn't think he'd need a cell, as hard as Brutal had hit him; I thought he'd need a coffin. No such luck,

though. Wharton was conked out, but a long way from dead. He lay sprawled on his side, one arm

thrown out so that the tips of his fingers touched the linoleum of the Green Mile, his eyes shut, his

breathing slow but regular. There was even a peaceful little smile on his face, as if he'd gone to sleep

listening to his favorite lullaby. A tiny red rill of blood was seeping out of his hair and staining the collar

of his new prison shirt. That was all.

"Percy," I said. "Help me!"

Percy didn't move, only stood against the wall, staring with wide, stunned eyes. I don't think he knew

exactly where he was.

"Percy, goddammit, grab hold of him!"

He got moving, then, and Harry helped him. Together the three of us hauled the unconscious Mr.

Wharton into his cell while Brutal helped Dean to his feet and held him as gently as any mother while

Dean bent over and hacked air back into his lungs.

Our new problem child didn't wake up for almost three hours, but when he did, he showed absolutely no

ill effects from Brutal's savage hit. He came to the way he moved - fast. At one moment he was lying on

his bunk, dead to the world. At the next he was standing at the bars - he was silent as a cat - and staring

out at me as I sat at the duty desk, writing a report on the incident. When I finally sensed someone

looking at me and glanced up, there he was, his grin displaying a set of blackening, dying teeth with

several gaps among them already. It gave me a jump to see him there like that. I tried not to show it, but I

think he knew. "Hey, flunky," he said. "Next time it'll be you. And I won't miss."

"Hello, Wharton," I said, as evenly as I could. "Under the circumstances, I guess I can skip the speech

and the Welcome Wagon, don't you think?"

His grin faltered just a little. It wasn't the sort of response he had expected, and probably wasn't the one I

would have given under other circumstances. But something had happened while Wharton was

unconscious. It is, I suppose, one of the major things I have trudged through all these pages to tell you

about. Now let's just see if you believe it.

3.

Except for shouting once at Delacroix, Percy kept his mouth shut once the excitement was over. This was

probably the result of shock rather than any effort at tact - Percy Wetmore knew as much about tact as I

do about the native tribes of darkest Africa, in my opinion - but it was a damned good thing, just the

same. If he'd started in whining about how Brutal had pushed him into the wall or wondering why no one

had told him that nasty men like Wild Billy Wharton sometimes turned up on E Block, I think we would

have killed him. Then we could have toured the Green Mile in a whole new way. That's sort of a funny

idea, when you consider it. I missed my chance to make like James Cagney in White Heat.

Anyway, when we were sure that Dean was going to keep breathing and that he wasn't going to pass out

on the spot, Harry and Brutal escorted him over to the infirmary. Delacroix, who had been absolutely

silent during the scuffle (he had been in prison lots of times, that one, and knew when it was prudent to

keep his yap shut and when it was relatively safe to open it again), began bawling loudly down the

corridor as Harry and Brutal helped Dean out. Delacroix wanted to know what had happened. You would

have thought his constitutional rights had been violated.

"Shut up, you little queer!" Percy yelled back, so furious that the veins stood out on the sides of his neck.

I put a hand on his arm and felt it quivering beneath his shirt. Some of this was residual fright, of course

(every now and then I had to remind myself that part of Percy's problem was that he was only

twenty-one, not much older than Wharton), but I think most of it was rage. He hated Delacroix. I don't

know just why, but he did.

"Go see if Warden Moores is still here," I told Percy. "If he is, give him a complete verbal report on what

happened. Tell him he'll have my written report on his desk tomorrow, if I can manage it."

Percy swelled visibly at this responsibility; for a horrible moment or two, I actually thought he might

salute. "Yes, sir. I will."

"Begin by telling him that the situation in E Block is normal. It's not a story, and the warden won't

appreciate you dragging it out to heighten the suspense."

"I won't."

"Okay. Off you go."

He started for the door, then turned back. The one thing you could count on with him was contrariness. I

desperately wanted him gone, my groin was on fire, and now he didn't seem to want to go.

"Are you all right, Paul?" he asked. "Running a fever, maybe? Got a touch of the grippe? Cause there's

sweat all over your face."

"I might have a touch of something, but mostly I'm fine," I said. "Go on, Percy, tell the warden."

He nodded and left - thank Christ for small favors. As soon as the door was closed, I lunged into my

office. Leaving the duty desk unmanned was against regulations, but I was beyond caring about that. It

was bad - like it had been that morning.

I managed to get into the little toilet cubicle behind the desk and to get my business out of my pants

before the urine started to gush, but it was a near thing. I had to put a hand over my mouth to stifle a

scream as I began to flow, and grabbed blindly for the lip of the washstand with the other. It wasn't like

my house, where I could fall to my knees and piss a puddle beside the woodpile; if I went to my knees

here, the urine would go all over the floor.

I managed to keep my feet and not to scream, but it was a close thing on both counts. It felt like my urine

had been filled with tiny slivers of broken glass. The smell coming up from the toilet bowl was swampy

and unpleasant, and I could see white stuff - pus, I guess - floating on the surface of the water.

I took the towel off the rack and wiped my face with it. I was sweating, all right; it was pouring off me. I

looked into the metal mirror and saw the flushed face of a man running a high fever looking back at me.

Hundred and three? Hundred and four?

Better not to know, maybe. I put the towel back on its bar, flushed the toilet, and walked slowly back

across my office to the cellblock door. I was afraid Bill Dodge or someone else might have come in and

seen three prisoners with no attendants, but the place was empty. Wharton still lay unconscious on his

bunk, Delacroix had fallen silent, and John Coffey had never made a single noise at all, I suddenly

realized. Not a peep. Which was worrisome.

I went down the Mile and glanced into Coffey's cell, half-expecting to discover he'd committed suicide in

one of the two common Death Row ways either hanging himself with his pants, or gnawing into his

wrists. No such thing, it turned out. Coffey merely sat on the end of his bunk with his hands in his lap,

the largest man I'd ever seen in my life, looking at me with his strange, wet eyes.

"Cap'n?" he said.

"What's up, big boy?"

Date: 2015-12-17; view: 794