The Green Mile

  He took a step toward her, looking both unsure of himself and absolutely furious. I thought it a dangerous combination, but Elaine didn't flinch as he approached. "I bet I know who set off that goddam smoke alarm," Dolan said. "Might could have been a certain old bitch with claws for hands. Now get out of here. Me and Paulie haven't finished our little talk, yet."

  "His name is Mr. Edgecombe," she said, "and if I ever hear you call him Paulie again, I think I can promise you that your days of employment here at Georgia Pines will end, Mr. Dolan."

  "Just who do you think you are?" he asked her. He was hulking over her, now, trying to laugh and not quite making it.

  "I think," she said calmly, "that I am the grandmother of the man who is currently Speaker of the Georgia House of Representatives. A man who loves his relatives, Mr. Dolan. Especially his older relatives."

  The effortful smile dropped off his face the way that writing comes off a blackboard swiped with a wet sponge. I saw uncertainty, the possibility that he was being bluffed, the fear that he was not, and a certain dawning logical assumption: it would be easy enough to check, she must know that, ergo she was telling the truth.

  Suddenly I began to laugh, and although the sound was rusty, it was right. I was remembering how many times Percy Wetmore had threatened us with his connections, back in the bad old days. Now, for the first time in my long, long life, such a threat was being made again . . . but this time it was being made on my behalf.

  Brad Dolan looked at me, glaring, then looked back at her.

  "I mean it," Elaine said. "At first I thought I'd just let you be--I'm old, and that seemed easiest. But when my friends are threatened and abused, I do not just let be. Now get out of here. And without one more word."

  His lips moved like those of a fish--oh, how badly he wanted to say that one more word (perhaps the one that rhymes with witch). He didn't, though. He gave me a final look, and then strode past her and out into the hall.

  I let out my breath in a long, ragged sigh as Elaine set the tray down in front of me and then set herself down across from me. "Is your grandson really Speaker of the House?" I asked.

  "He really is."

  "Then what are you doing here?"

  "Speaker of the statehouse makes him powerful enough to deal with a roach like Brad Dolan, but it doesn't make him rich," she said, laughing. "Besides, I like it here. I like the company."

  "I will take that as a compliment," I said, and I did.

  "Paul, are you all right? You look so tired." She reached across the table and brushed my hair away from my forehead and eyebrows. Her fingers were twisted, but her touch was cool and wonderful. I closed my eyes for a moment. When I opened them again, I had made a decision.

  "I'm all right," I said. "And almost finished. Elaine, would you read something?" I offered her the pages I had clumsily swept together. They were probably no longer in the right order--Dolan really had scared me badly--but they were numbered and she could quickly put them right.

  She looked at me consideringly, not taking what I was offering. Yet, anyway. "Are you done?"

  "It'll take you until afternoon to read what's there," I said. "If you can make it out at all, that is."

  Now she did take the pages, and looked down at them. "You write with a very fine hand, even when that hand is obviously tired," she said. "I'll have no trouble with this."

  "By the time you finish reading, I will have finished writing," I said. "You can read the rest in a half an hour or so. And then . . . if you're still willing . . . I'd like to show you something."

  "Is it to do with where you go most mornings and afternoons?"

  I nodded.

  She sat thinking about it for what seemed a long time, then nodded herself and got up with the pages in her hand. "I'll go out back," she said. "The sun is very warm this morning."

  "And the dragon's been vanquished," I said. "This time by the lady fair."

  She smiled, bent, and kissed me over the eyebrow in the sensitive place that always makes me shiver. "We'll hope so," she said, "but in my experience, dragons like Brad Dolan are hard to get rid of." She hesitated. "Good luck, Paul. I hope you can vanquish whatever it is that has been festering in you."

  "I hope so, too," I said, and thought of John Coffey. I couldn't help it, John had said. I tried, but it was too late.

  I ate the eggs she'd brought, drank the juice, and pushed the toast aside for later. Then I picked up my pen and began to write again, for what I hoped would be the last time.

  One last mile.

  A green one.

  2

  WHEN WE BROUGHT JOHN back to E Block that night, the gurney was a necessity instead of a luxury. I very much doubt if he could have made it the length of the tunnel on his own; it takes more energy to walk at a crouch than it does upright, and it was a damned low ceiling for the likes of John Coffey. I didn't like to think of him collapsing down there. How would we explain that, on top of trying to explain why we had dressed Percy in the madman's dinner-jacket and tossed him in the restraint room?

  But we had the gurney--thank God--and John Coffey lay on it like a beached whale as we pushed him back to the storage-room stairs. He got down off it, staggered, then simply stood with his head lowered, breathing harshly. His skin was so gray he looked as if he'd been rolled in flour. I thought he'd be in the infirmary by noon . . . if he wasn't dead by noon, that was.

  Brutal gave me a grim, desperate look. I gave it right back. "We can't carry him up, but we can help him," I said. "You under his right arm, me under his left."

  "What about me?" Harry asked.

  "Walk behind us. If he looks like going over backward, shove him forward again."

  "And if that don't work, kinda crouch down where you think he's gonna land and soften the blow," Brutal said.

  "Gosh," Harry said thinly, "you oughta go on the Orpheum Circuit, Brute, that's how funny you are."

  "I got a sense of humor, all right," Brutal admitted.

  In the end, we did manage to get John up the stairs. My biggest worry was that he might faint, but he didn't. "Go around me and check to make sure the storage room's empty," I gasped to Harry.

  "What should I say if it's not?" Harry asked, squeezing under my arm. " 'Avon calling,' and then pop back in here?"

  "Don't be a wisenheimer," Brutal said.

  Harry eased the door open a little way and poked his head through. It seemed to me that he stayed that way for a very long time. At last he pulled back, looking almost cheerful. "Coast's clear. And it's quiet."

  "Let's hope it stays that way," Brutal said. "Come on, John Coffey, almost home."

  He was able to cross the storage room under his own power, but we had to help him up the three steps to my office and then almost push him through the little door. When he got to his feet again, he was breathing stertorously, and his eyes had a glassy sheen. Also--I noticed this with real horror--the right side of his mouth had pulled down, making it look like Melinda's had, when we walked into her room and saw her propped up on her pillows.

  Dean heard us and came in from the desk at the head of the Green Mile. "Thank God! I thought you were never coming back, I'd half made up my mind you were caught, or the Warden plugged you, or--" He broke off, really seeing John for the first time. "Holy cats, what's wrong with him? He looks like he's dying!"

  "He's not dying . . . are you, John?" Brutal said. His eyes flashed Dean a warning.

  "Course not, I didn't mean actually dyin"--Dean gave a nervous little laugh--"but, jeepers . . ."

  "Never mind," I said. "Help us get him back to his cell."

  Once again we were foothills surrounding a mountain, but now it was a mountain that had suffered a few million years' worth of erosion, one that was blunted and sad. John Coffey moved slowly, breathing through his mouth like an old man who smoked too much, but at least he moved.

  "What about Percy?" I asked. "Has he been kicking up a ruckus?"

  "Some at the start," Dean said. "Trying to yell throug
h the tape you put over his mouth. Cursing, I believe."

  "Mercy me," Brutal said. "A good thing our tender ears were elsewhere."

  "Since then, just a mulekick at the door every once in awhile, you know." Dean was so relieved to see us that he was babbling. His glasses slipped down to the end of his nose, which was shiny with sweat, and he pushed them back up. We passed Wharton's cell. That worthless young man was flat on his back, snoring like a sousaphone. His eyes were shut this time, all right.

  Dean saw me looking and laughed.

  "No trouble from that guy! Hasn't moved since he laid back down on his bunk. Dead to the world. As for Percy kicking the door every now and then, I never minded that a bit. Was glad of it, tell you the truth. If he didn't make any noise at all, I'd start wonderin if he hadn't choked to death on that gag you slapped over his cakehole. But that's not the best. You know the best? It's been as quiet as Ash Wednesday morning in New Orleans! Nobody's been down all night!" He said this last in a triumphant, gloating voice. "We got away with it, boys! We did!"

  That made him think of why we'd gone through the whole comedy in the first place, and he asked about Melinda.

  "She's fine," I said. We had reached John's cell. What Dean had said was just starting to sink in: We got away with it, boys . . . we did.

  "Was it like . . . you know . . . the mouse?" Dean asked. He glanced briefly at the empty cell where Delacroix had lived with Mr. Jingles, then down at the restraint room, which had been the mouse's seeming point of origin. His voice dropped, the way people's voices do when they enter a big church where even the silence seems to whisper. "Was it a . . ." He gulped. "Shoot, you know what I mean--was it a miracle?"

  The three of us looked at each other briefly, confirming what we already knew. "Brought her back from her damn grave is what he did," Harry said. "Yeah, it was a miracle, all right."

  Brutal opened the double locks on the cell, and gave John a gentle push inside. "Go on, now, big boy. Rest awhile. You earned it. We'll just settle Percy's hash--"

  "He's a bad man," John said in a low, mechanical voice.

  "That's right, no doubt, wicked as a warlock," Brutal agreed in his most soothing voice, "but don't you worry a smidge about him, we're not going to let him near you. You just ease down on that bunk of yours and I'll have that cup of coffee to you in no time. Hot and strong. You'll feel like a new man."

  John sat heavily on his bunk. I thought he'd fall back on it and roll to the wall as he usually did, but he just sat there for the time being, hands clasped loosely between his knees, head lowered, breathing hard through his mouth. The St. Christopher's medal Melinda had given him had fallen out of the top of his shirt and swung back and forth in the air. He'll keep you safe, that's what she'd told him, but John Coffey didn't look a bit safe. He looked like he had taken Melinda's place on the lip of that grave Harry had spoken of.

  But I couldn't think about John Coffey just then.

  I turned around to the others. "Dean, get Percy's pistol and hickory stick."

  "Okay." He went back up to the desk, unlocked the drawer with the gun and the stick in it, and brought them back.

  "Ready?" I asked them. My men--good men, and I was never prouder of them than I was that night--nodded. Harry and Dean both looked nervous; Brutal as stolid as ever. "Okay. I'm going to do the talking. The less the rest of you open your mouths, the better it'll probably be and the quicker it'll probably wrap up . . . for better or worse. Okay?"

  They nodded again. I took a deep breath and walked down to the Green Mile restraint room.

  Percy looked up, squinting, when the light fell on him. He was sitting on the floor and licking at the tape I had slapped across his mouth. The part I'd wound around to the back of his head had come free (probably the sweat and brilliantine in his hair had loosened it), and he'd gotten a ways toward getting the rest off, as well. Another hour and he would've been bawling for help at the top of his lungs.

  He used his feet to shove himself a little way backward when we came in, then stopped, no doubt realizing that there was nowhere to go except for the southeast corner of the room.

  I took his gun and stick from Dean and held them out in Percy's direction. "Want these back?" I asked.

  He looked at me warily, then nodded his head.

  "Brutal," I said. "Harry. Get him on his feet."

  They bent, hooked him under the canvas arms of the straitjacket, and up he came. I moved toward him until we were almost nose to nose. I could smell the sour sweat in which he'd been basting. Some of it probably came from his efforts to get free of the quiet-down coat, or to administer the occasional kicks to the door Dean had heard, but I thought most of his sweat had come as a result of plain old fear: fear of what we might do to him when we came back.

  I'll be okay, they ain't killers, Percy would think . . . and then, maybe, he'd think of Old Sparky and it would cross his mind that yes, in a way we were killers. I'd done seventy-seven myself, more than any of the men I'd ever put the chest-strap on, more than Sergeant York himself got credit for in World War I. Killing Percy wouldn't be logical, but we'd already behaved illogically, he would have told himself as he sat there with his arms behind him, working with his tongue to get the tape off his mouth. And besides, logic most likely doesn't have much power over a person's thoughts when that person is sitting on the floor of a room with soft walls, wrapped up as neat and tight as any spider ever wrapped a fly.

  Which is to say, if I didn't have him where I wanted now, I never would.

  "I'll take the tape off your mouth if you promise not to start yowling," I said. "I want to have a talk with you, not a shouting match. So what do you say? Will you be quiet?"

  I saw relief come up in his eyes as he realized that, if I wanted to talk, he really did stand a good chance of getting out of this with a whole skin. He nodded his head.

  "If you start noising off, the tape goes back on," I said. "Do you understand that, too?"

  Another nod, rather impatient this time.

  I reached up, grabbed the end of the runner he'd worked loose, and gave it a hard yank. It made a loud peeling sound. Brutal winced. Percy yipped with pain and his eyes watered.

  "Get me out of this nut-coat, you lugoon," he spat.

  "In a minute," I said.

  "Now! Now! Right n--"

  I slapped his face. It was done before I'd even known I was going to do it . . . but of course I'd known it might come to that. Even back during the first talk about Percy that I'd had with Warden Moores, the one where Hal advised me to put Percy out for the Delacroix execution, I'd known it might come to that. A man's hand is like an animal that's only half-tame; mostly it's good, but sometimes it escapes and bites the first thing it sees.

  The sound was a sharp snap, like a breaking branch. Dean gasped. Percy stared at me in utter shock, his eyes so wide they looked as if they must fall out of their sockets. His mouth opened and closed, opened and closed, like the mouth of a fish in an aquarium tank.

  "Shut up and listen to me," I said. "You deserved to be punished for what you did to Del, and we gave you what you deserved. This was the only way we could do it. We all agreed, except for Dean, and he'll go along with us, because we'll make him sorry if he doesn't. Isn't that so, Dean?"

  "Yes," Dean whispered. He was milk-pale. "Guess it is."

  "And we'll make you sorry you were ever born," I went on. "We'll see that people know about how you sabotaged the Delacroix execution--"

  "Sabotaged--!"

  "--and how you almost got Dean killed. We'll blab enough to keep you out of almost any job your uncle can get you."

  Percy was shaking his head furiously. He didn't believe that, perhaps couldn't believe that. My handprint stood out on his pale cheek like a fortune-teller's sign.

  "And no matter what, we'd see you beaten within an inch of your life. We wouldn't have to do it ourselves. We know people, too, Percy, are you so foolish you don't realize that? They aren't up in the state capital, but they still know how
to legislate certain matters. These are people who have friends in here, people who have brothers in here, people who have fathers in here. They'd be happy to amputate the nose or the penis of a shitheels like you. They'd do it just so someone they care for could get an extra three hours in the exercise yard each week."

  Percy had stopped shaking his head. Now he was only staring. Tears stood in his eyes, but didn't fall. I think they were tears of rage and frustration. Or maybe I just hoped they were.

  "Okay--now look on the sunny side, Percy. Your lips sting a little from having the tape pulled off them, I imagine, but otherwise there's nothing hurt but your pride . . . and nobody needs to know about that but the people in this room right now. And we'll never tell, will we, boys?"

  They shook their heads. "Course not," Brutal said. "Green Mile business stays on the Green Mile. Always has."

  "You're going on to Briar Ridge and we're going to leave you alone until you go," I said. "Do you want to leave it at that, Percy, or do you want to play hardball with us?"

  There was a long, long silence as he considered--I could almost see the wheels turning in his head as he tried out and rejected possible counters. And at last, I think a more basic truth must have overwhelmed the rest of his calculations: the tape was off his mouth, but he was still wearing the straitjacket and probably he had to piss like a racehorse.

  "All right," he said. "We'll consider the matter closed. Now get me out of this coat. It feels like my shoulders are--"

  Brutal stepped forward, shouldering me aside, and grabbed Percy's face with one big hand--fingers denting in Percy's right cheek, thumb making a deep dimple in his left.

  "In a few seconds," he said. "First, you listen to me. Paul here is the big boss, and so he has to talk elegant sometimes."

  I tried to remember anything elegant I might've said to Percy and couldn't come up with much. Still, I thought it might be best to keep my mouth shut; Percy looked suitably terrorized, and I didn't want to spoil the effect.

  "People don't always understand that being elegant isn't the same as being soft, and that's where I come in. I don't worry about being elegant. I just say things straight out. So here it is, straight out: if you go back on your promise, we'll most likely take an ass-fucking. But then we'll find you--if we have to go all the way to Russia, we'll find you--and we will fuck you, not just up the ass but in every hole you own. We'll fuck you until you'll wish you were dead, and then we'll rub vinegar in the parts that are bleeding. Do you understand me?"