The Green Mile

  But it was at least two minutes before it was over, the longest two minutes of my whole life, and through most of it I think Delacroix was conscious. He screamed and jittered and rocked from side to side. Smoke poured from his nostrils and from a mouth that had gone the purple-black of ripe plums. Smoke drifted up from his tongue the way smoke rises from a hot griddle. All the buttons on his shirt either burst or melted. His undershirt did not quite catch fire, but it charred and smoke poured through it and we could smell his chest-hair roasting. Behind us, people were heading for the door like cattle in a stampede. They couldn't get out through it, of course--we were in a damn prison, after all--so they simply clustered around it while Delacroix fried (Now I'm fryin, Old Toot had said when we were rehearsing for Arlen Bitterbuck, I'm a done tom turkey) and the thunder rolled and the rain ran down out of the sky in a perfect fury.

  At some point I thought of the doc and looked around for him. He was still there, but crumpled on the floor beside his black bag. He'd fainted.

  Brutal came up and stood beside me, holding the fire extinguisher.

  "Not yet," I said.

  "I know."

  We looked around for Percy and saw him standing almost behind Sparky now, frozen, eyes huge, one knuckle crammed into his mouth.

  Then, at last, Delacroix slumped back in the chair, his bulging, misshapen face lying over on one shoulder. He was still jittering, but we'd seen this before; it was the current running through him. The cap had come askew on his head, but when we took it off a little later, most of his scalp and his remaining fringe of hair came with it, bonded to the metal as if by some powerful adhesive.

  "Kill it!" I called to Jack when thirty seconds had gone by with nothing but electric jitters coming from the smoking, man-shaped lump of charcoal lolling in the electric chair. The hum died immediately, and I nodded to Brutal.

  He turned and slammed the fire extinguisher into Percy's arms so hard that Percy staggered backward and almost fell off the platform. "You do it," Brutal said. "You're running the show, after all, ain't you?"

  Percy gave him a look that was both sick and murderous, then armed the extinguisher, pumped it, cocked it, and shot a huge cloud of white foam over the man in the chair. I saw Del's foot twitch once as the spray hit his face and thought Oh no, we might have to go again, but there was only that single twitch.

  Anderson had turned around and was bawling at the panicky witnesses, telling them everything was all right, everything was under control, just a power-surge from the electrical storm, nothing to worry about. Next thing, he'd be telling them that what they smelled--a devil's mixture of burned hair, fried meat, and fresh-baked shit--was Chanel No. 5.

  "Get doc's stethoscope," I told Dean as the extinguisher ran dry. Delacroix was coated with white now, and the worst of the stench was being overlaid by a thin and bitter chemical smell.

  "Doc . . . should I . . ."

  "Never mind doc, just get his stethoscope," I said. "Let's get this over . . . get him out of here."

  Dean nodded. Over and out of here were two concepts that appealed to him just then. They appealed to both of us. He went over to doc's bag and began rummaging in it. Doc was beginning to move again, so at least he hadn't had a stroke or a heart-storm. That was good. But the way Brutal was looking at Percy wasn't.

  "Get down in the tunnel and wait by the gurney," I said.

  Percy swallowed. "Paul, listen. I didn't know--"

  "Shut up. Get down in the tunnel and wait by the gurney. Now."

  He swallowed, grimaced as if it hurt, and then walked toward the door which led to the stairs and the tunnel. He carried the empty fire extinguisher in his arms, as if it were a baby. Dean passed him, coming back to me with the stethoscope. I snatched it and set the earpieces. I'd done this before, in the army, and it's sort of like riding a bike--you don't forget.

  I wiped at the foam on Delacroix's chest, then had to gag back vomit as a large, hot section of his skin simply slid away from the flesh beneath, the way the skin will slide off a . . . well, you know. A done tom turkey.

  "Oh my God!" a voice I didn't recognize almost sobbed behind me. "Is it always this way? Why didn't somebody tell me? I never would have come!"

  Too late now, friend, I thought. "Get that man out of here," I said to Dean or Brutal or whoever might be listening--I said it when I was sure I could speak without puking into Delacroix's smoking lap. "Get them all back by the door."

  I steeled myself as best I could, then put the disc of the stethoscope on the red-black patch of raw flesh I'd made on Del's chest. I listened, praying I would hear nothing, and that's just what I did hear.

  "He's dead," I told Brutal.

  "Thank Christ."

  "Yes. Thank Christ. You and Dean get the stretcher. Let's unbuckle him and get him out of here, fast."

  5

  WE GOT HIS BODY down the twelve stairs and onto the gurney all right. My nightmare was that his cooked flesh might slough right off his bones as we lugged him--it was Old Toot's done tom turkey that had gotten into my head--but of course that didn't happen.

  Curtis Anderson was upstairs soothing the spectators--trying to, anyway--and that was good for Brutal, because Anderson wasn't there to see when Brutal took a step toward the head of the gurney and pulled his arm back to slug Percy, who was standing there looking stunned. I caught his arm, and that was good for both of them. It was good for Percy because Brutal meant to deliver a blow of near-decapitory force, and good for Brutal because he would have lost his job if the blow had connected, and maybe ended up in prison himself.

  "No," I said.

  "What do you mean, no?" he asked me furiously. "How can you say no? You saw what he did! What are you telling me? That you're still going to let his connections protect him? After what he did?"

  "Yes."

  Brutal stared at me, mouth agape, eyes so angry they were watering.

  "Listen to me, Brutus--you take a poke at him, and most likely we all go. You, me, Dean, Harry, maybe even Jack Van Hay. Everyone else moves a rung or two up the ladder, starting with Bill Dodge, and the Prison Commission hires three or four Breadline Barneys to fill the spots at the bottom. Maybe you can live with that, but--" I cocked my thumb at Dean, who was staring down the dripping, brick-lined tunnel. He was holding his specs in one hand, and looked almost as dazed as Percy. "But what about Dean? He's got two kids, one in high school and one just about to go."

  "So what's it come down to?" Brutal asked. "We let him get away with it?"

  "I didn't know the sponge was supposed to be wet," Percy said in a faint, mechanical voice. This was the story he had rehearsed beforehand, of course, when he was expecting a painful prank instead of the cataclysm we had just witnessed. "It was never wet when we rehearsed."

  "Aw, you sucker--" Brutal began, and started for Percy. I grabbed him again and yanked him back. Footsteps clacked on the steps. I looked up, desperately afraid of seeing Curtis Anderson, but it was Harry Terwilliger. His cheeks were paper-white and his lips were purplish, as if he'd been eating blackberry cobbler.

  I switched my attention back to Brutal. "For God's sake, Brutal, Delacroix's dead, nothing can change that, and Percy's not worth it." Was the plan, or the beginnings of it, in my head even then? I've wondered about that since, let me tell you. I've wondered over the course of a lot of years, and have never been able to come up with a satisfactory answer. I suppose it doesn't matter much. A lot of things don't matter, but it doesn't keep a man from wondering about them, I've noticed.

  "You guys talk about me like I was a chump," Percy said. He still sounded dazed and winded--as if someone had punched him deep in the gut--but he was coming back a little.

  "You are a chump, Percy," I said.

  "Hey, you can't--"

  I controlled my own urge to hit him only with the greatest effort. Water dripped hollowly from the bricks down in the tunnel; our shadows danced huge and misshapen on the walls, like shadows in that Poe story about the big ape in the Rue Morgue
. Thunder bashed, but down here it was muffled.

  "I only want to hear one thing from you, Percy, and that's you repeating your promise to put in for Briar Ridge tomorrow."

  "Don't worry about that," he said sullenly. He looked at the sheeted figure on the gurney, looked away, flicked his eyes up toward my face for a moment, then looked away again.

  "That would be for the best," Harry said. "Otherwise, you might get to know Wild Bill Wharton a whole lot better than you want to." A slight pause. "We could see to it."

  Percy was afraid of us, and he was probably afraid of what we might do if he was still around when we found out he'd been talking to Jack Van Hay about what the sponge was for and why we always soaked it in brine, but Harry's mention of Wharton woke real terror in his eyes. I could see him remembering how Wharton had held him, ruffling his hair and crooning to him.

  "You wouldn't dare," Percy whispered.

  "Yes I would," Harry replied calmly. "And do you know what? I'd get away with it. Because you've already shown yourself to be careless as hell around the prisoners. Incompetent, too."

  Percy's fists bunched and his cheeks colored in a thin pink. "I am not--"

  "Sure you are," Dean said, joining us. We formed a rough semicircle around Percy at the foot of the stairs, and even a retreat up the tunnel was blocked; the gurney was behind him, with its load of smoking flesh hidden under an old sheet. "You just burned Delacroix alive. If that ain't incompetent, what is?"

  Percy's eyes flickered. He had been planning to cover himself by pleading ignorance, and now he saw he was hoist by his own petard. I don't know what he might have said next, because Curtis Anderson came lunging down the stairs just then. We heard him and drew back from Percy a little, so as not to look quite so threatening.

  "What in the blue fuck was that all about?" Anderson roared. "Jesus Christ, there's puke all over the floor up there! And the smell! I got Magnusson and Old Toot-Toot to open both doors, but that smell won't come out for five damn years, that's what I'm betting. And that asshole Wharton is singing about it! I can hear him!"

  "Can he carry a tune, Curt?" Brutal asked. You know how you can burn off illuminating gas with a single spark and not be hurt if you do it before the concentration gets too heavy? This was like that. We took an instant to gape at Brutus, and then we were all howling. Our high, hysterical laughter flapped up and down the gloomy tunnel like bats. Our shadows bobbed and flickered on the walls. Near the end, even Percy joined in. At last it died, and in its aftermath we all felt a little better. Felt sane again.

  "Okay, boys," Anderson said, mopping at his teary eyes with his handkerchief and still snorting out an occasional hiccup of laughter, "what the hell happened?"

  "An execution," Brutal said. I think his even tone surprised Anderson, but it didn't surprise me, at least not much; Brutal had always been good at turning down his dials in a hurry. "A successful one."

  "How in the name of Christ can you call a direct-current abortion like that a success? We've got witnesses that won't sleep for a month! Hell, that fat old broad probably won't sleep for a year!"

  Brutal pointed at the gurney, and the shape under the sheet. "He's dead, ain't he? As for your witnesses, most of them will be telling their friends tomorrow night that it was poetic justice--Del there burned a bunch of people alive, so we turned around and burned him alive. Except they won't say it was us. They'll say it was the will of God, working through us. Maybe there's even some truth to that. And you want to know the best part? The absolute cat's pajamas? Most of their friends will wish they'd been here to see it." He gave Percy a look both distasteful and sardonic as he said this last.

  "And if their feathers are a little ruffled, so what?" Harry asked. "They volunteered for the damn job, nobody drafted them."

  "I didn't know the sponge was supposed to be wet," Percy said in his robot's voice. "It's never wet in rehearsal."

  Dean looked at him with utter disgust. "How many years did you spend pissing on the toilet seat before someone told you to put it up before you start?" he snarled.

  Percy opened his mouth to reply, but I told him to shut up. For a wonder, he did. I turned to Anderson.

  "Percy fucked up, Curtis--that's what happened, pure and simple." I turned toward Percy, daring him to contradict me. He didn't, maybe because he read my eyes: better that Anderson hear stupid mistake than on purpose. And besides, whatever was said down here in the tunnel didn't matter. What mattered, what always matters to the Percy Wetmores of the world, is what gets written down or overheard by the big bugs--the people who matter. What matters to the Percys of the world is how it plays in the newspapers.

  Anderson looked at the five of us uncertainly. He even looked at Del, but Del wasn't talking. "I guess it could be worse," Anderson said.

  "That's right," I agreed. "He could still be alive."

  Curtis blinked--that possibility seemed not to have crossed his mind. "I want a complete report about this on my desk tomorrow," he said. "And none of you are going to talk to Warden Moores about it until I've had my chance. Are you?"

  We shook our heads vehemently. If Curtis Anderson wanted to tell the warden, why, that was fine by us.

  "If none of those asshole scribblers put it in their papers--"

  "They won't," I said. "If they tried, their editors'd kill it. Too gruesome for a family audience. But they won't even try--they were all vets tonight. Sometimes things go wrong, that's all. They know it as well as we do."

  Anderson considered a moment longer, then nodded. He turned his attention to Percy, an expression of disgust on his usually pleasant face. "You're a little asshole," he said, "and I don't like you a bit." He nodded at Percy's look of flabbergasted surprise. "If you tell any of your candy-ass friends I said that, I'll deny it until Aunt Rhody's old gray goose comes back to life, and these men will back me up. You've got a problem, son."

  He turned and started up the stairs. I let him get four steps and then said: "Curtis?"

  He turned back, eyebrows raised, saying nothing.

  "You don't want to worry too much about Percy," I said. "He's moving on to Briar Ridge soon. Bigger and better things. Isn't that right, Percy?"

  "As soon as his transfer comes through," Brutal added.

  "And until it comes, he's going to call in sick every night," Dean put in.

  That roused Percy, who hadn't been working at the prison long enough to have accumulated any paid sick-time. He looked at Dean with bright distaste. "Don't you wish," he said.

  6

  WE WERE BACK on the block by one-fifteen or so (except for Percy, who had been ordered to clean up the storage room and was sulking his way through the job), me with a report to write. I decided to do it at the duty desk; if I sat in my more comfortable office chair, I'd likely doze off. That probably sounds peculiar to you, given what had happened only an hour before, but I felt as if I'd lived three lifetimes since eleven o'clock the previous night, all of them without sleep.

  John Coffey was standing at his cell door, tears streaming from his strange, distant eyes--it was like watching blood run out of some unhealable but strangely painless wound. Closer to the desk, Wharton was sitting on his bunk, rocking from side to side, and singing a song apparently of his own invention, and not quite nonsense. As well as I can remember, it went something like this: "Bar-be-cue! Me and you!

  Stinky, pinky, phew-phew-phew!

  It wasn't Billy or Philadelphia Philly, it wasn't Jackie or Roy!

  It was a warm little number, a hot cucumber, by the name of Delacroix!"

  "Shut up, you jerk," I said.

  Wharton grinned, showing his mouthful of dingy teeth. He wasn't dying, at least not yet; he was up, happy, practically tap-dancing. "Come on in here and make me, why don't you?" he said happily, and then began another verse of "The Barbecue Song," making up words not quite at random. There was something going on in there, all right. A kind of green and stinking intelligence that was, in its own way, almost brilliant.

  I w
ent down to John Coffey. He wiped away his tears with the heels of his hands. His eyes were red and sore-looking, and it came to me that he was exhausted, too. Why he should have been, a man who trudged around the exercise yard maybe two hours a day and either sat or lay down in his cell the rest of the time, I didn't know, but I didn't doubt what I was seeing. It was too clear.

  "Poor Del," he said in a low, hoarse voice. "Poor old Del."

  "Yes," I said. "Poor old Del. John, are you okay?"

  "He's out of it," Coffey said. "Del's out of it. Isn't he, boss?"

  "Yes. Answer my question, John. Are you okay?"

  "Del's out of it, he's the lucky one. No matter how it happened, he's the lucky one."

  I thought Delacroix might have given him an argument on that, but didn't say so. I glanced around Coffey's cell, instead. "Where's Mr. Jingles?"

  "Ran down there." He pointed through the bars, down the hall to the restraint-room door.

  I nodded. "Well, he'll be back."

  But he wasn't; Mr. Jingles's days on the Green Mile were over. The only trace of him we ever happened on was what Brutal found that winter: a few brightly colored splinters of wood, and a smell of peppermint candy wafting out of a hole in a beam.

  I meant to walk away then, but I didn't. I looked at John Coffey, and he back at me as if he knew everything I was thinking. I told myself to get moving, to just call it a night and get moving, back to the duty desk and my report. Instead I said his name: "John Coffey."

  "Yes, boss," he said at once.

  Sometimes a man is cursed with needing to know a thing, and that was how it was with me right then. I dropped down on one knee and began taking off one of my shoes.

  7

  THE RAIN HAD QUIT by the time I got home, and a late grin of moon had appeared over the ridges to the north. My sleepiness seemed to have gone with the clouds. I was wide awake, and I could smell Delacroix on me. I thought I might smell him on my skin--barbecue, me and you, stinky, pinky, phew-phew-phew--for a long time to come.

  Janice was waiting up, as she always did on execution nights. I meant not to tell her the story, saw no sense in harrowing her with it, but she got a clear look at my face as I came in the kitchen door and would have it all. So I sat down, took her warm hands in my cold ones (the heater in my old Ford barely worked, and the weather had turned a hundred and eighty degrees since the storm), and told her what she thought she wanted to hear. About halfway through I broke down crying, which I hadn't expected. I was a little ashamed, but only a little; it was her, you see, and she never taxed me with the times that I slipped from the way I thought a man should be . . . the way I thought I should be, at any rate. A man with a good wife is the luckiest of God's creatures, and one without must be among the most miserable, I think, the only true blessing of their lives that they don't know how poorly off they are. I cried, and she held my head against her breast, and when my own storm passed, I felt better . . . a little, anyway. And I believe that was when I had the first conscious sight of my idea. Not the shoe; I don't mean that. The shoe was related, but different. All my real idea was right then, however, was an odd realization: that John Coffey and Melinda Moores, different as they might have been in size and sex and skin color, had exactly the same eyes: woeful, sad, and distant. Dying eyes.