The Green Mile (27 page)

When I walked back up the path twenty minutes later, I could feel a worm of hunger stirring in my belly, and thought I could eat something a little more substantial than toast. A dish of oatmeal, perhaps even a scrambled egg with a sausage on the side. I love sausage, always have, but if I eat more than one these days, I'm apt to get the squitters. One would be safe enough, though. Then, with my belly full and with the damp air still perking up my brain (or so I hoped), I would go up to the solarium and write about the execution of Eduard Delacroix. I would do it as fast as I could, so as not to lose my courage.

It was Mr. Jingles I was thinking about as I crossed the croquet course to the kitchen door—how Percy Wetmore had stamped on him and broken his back, and how Delacroix had screamed when he realized what his enemy had done—and I didn't see Brad Dolan standing there, half-hidden by the Dumpster, until he reached out and grabbed my wrist.

“Out for a little stroll, Paulie?” he asked.

I jerked back from him, yanking my wrist out of his hand. Some of it was just being startled—anyone will jerk when they're startled—but that wasn't all of it. I'd been thinking about Percy Wetmore, remember, and it's Percy that Brad always reminds me of. Some of it's how Brad always goes around with a paperback stuffed into his pocket (with Percy it was always a men's adventure magazine; with Brad it's books of jokes that are only funny if you're stupid and mean-hearted), some of it's how he acts like he's King Shit of Turd Mountain, but mostly it's that he's sneaky, and he likes to hurt.

He'd just gotten to work, I saw, hadn't even changed into his orderly's whites yet. He was wearing jeans and a cheesy-looking Western-style shirt. In one hand was the remains of a Danish he'd hooked out of the kitchen. He'd been standing under the eave, eating it where he wouldn't get wet. And where he could watch for me, I'm pretty sure of that now. I'm pretty sure of something else, as well: I'll have to watch out for Mr. Brad Dolan. He doesn't like me much. I don't know why, but I never knew why Percy Wetmore didn't like Delacroix, either. And
dislike
is
really too weak a word. Percy hated Del's guts from the very first moment the little Frenchman came onto the Green Mile.

“What's with this poncho you got on, Paulie?” he asked, flicking the collar. “This isn't yours.”

“I got it in the hall outside the kitchen,” I said. I hate it when he calls me Paulie, and I think he knows it, but I was damned if I'd give him the satisfaction of seeing it. “There's a whole row of them. I'm not hurting it any, would you say? Rain's what it's made for, after all.”

“But it wasn't made for
you,
Paulie,” he said, giving it another little flick. “That's the thing. Those slickers're for the employees, not the residents.”

“I still don't see what harm it does.”

He gave me a thin little smile. “It's not about
harm,
it's about the
rules
. What would life be without rules? Paulie, Paulie, Paulie.” He shook his head, as if just looking at me made him feel sorry to be alive. “You probably think an old fart like you doesn't have to mind about the rules anymore, but that's just not true.
Paulie.
”

Smiling at me. Disliking me. Maybe even hating me. And why? I don't know. Sometimes there
is
no why. That's the scary part.

“Well, I'm sorry if I broke the rules,” I said. It came out sounding whiney, a little shrill, and I hated myself for sounding that way, but I'm old, and old people whine easily. Old people
scare
easily.

Brad nodded. “Apology accepted. Now go hang that back up. You got no business out walking in the rain, anyway. Specially not in those woods. What if you were to slip and fall and break your damned hip? Huh? Who do you think'd have to hoss your elderly freight back up the hill?”

“I don't know,” I said. I just wanted to get away from him. The more I listened to him, the more he sounded like Percy. William Wharton, the crazyman who came to the Green Mile in the fall of '32, once grabbed Percy and scared him so bad that Percy squirted in his pants.
You talk about this to anyone,
Percy told the rest of us afterward,
and you'll all be on the breadlines in a week.
Now, these many years later, I could almost hear Brad Dolan saying those same words, in that same tone of voice. It's as if, by writing about those old times, I have unlocked some unspeakable
door that connects the past to the present—Percy Wetmore to Brad Dolan, Janice Edgecombe to Elaine Connelly, Cold Mountain Penitentiary to the Georgia Pines old folks' home. And if that thought doesn't keep me awake tonight, I guess nothing will.

I made as if to go in through the kitchen door and Brad grabbed me by the wrist again. I don't know about the first one, but this time he was doing it on purpose, squeezing to hurt. His eyes shifting back and forth, making sure no one was around in the early-morning wet, no one to see he was abusing one of the old folks he was supposed to be taking care of.

“What do you do down that path?” he asked. “I know you don't go down there and jerk off, those days are long behind you, so what do you do?”

“Nothing,” I said, telling myself to be calm, not to show him how bad he was hurting me and to be calm, to remember he'd only mentioned the path, he didn't know about the shed. “I just walk. To clear my mind.”

“Too late for that, Paulie, your mind's never gonna be clear again.” He squeezed my thin old man's wrist again, grinding the brittle bones, eyes continually shifting from side to side, wanting to make sure he was safe. Brad wasn't afraid of breaking the rules; he was only afraid of being
caught
breaking them. And in that, too, he was like Percy Wetmore, who would never let you forget he was the governor's nephew. “Old as you are, it's a miracle you can remember
who
you are. You're
too
goddam old. Even for a museum like this. You give me the fucking creeps, Paulie.”

“Let go of me,” I said, trying to keep the whine out of my voice. It wasn't just pride, either. I thought if he heard it, it might inflame him, the way the smell of sweat can sometimes inflame a bad-tempered dog—one which would otherwise only growl—to bite. That made me think of a reporter who'd covered John Coffey's trial. The reporter was a terrible man named Hammersmith, and the most terrible thing about him was that he hadn't known he was terrible.

Instead of letting go, Dolan squeezed my wrist again. I groaned. I didn't want to, but I couldn't help it. It hurt all the way down to my ankles.

“What do you do down there, Paulie? Tell me.”

“Nothing!” I said. I wasn't crying, not yet, but I was afraid I'd start soon if he kept bearing down like that. “Nothing, I just walk, I like to walk, let go of me!”

He did, but only long enough so he could grab my other hand. That one was rolled closed. “Open up,” he said. “Let Poppa see.”

I did, and he grunted with disgust. It was nothing but the remains of my second piece of toast. I'd clenched it in my right hand when he started squeezing my left wrist, and there was butter—well, oleo, they don't have real butter here, of course—on my fingers.

“Go on inside and wash your damned hands,” he said, stepping back and taking another bite of his Danish. “Jesus Christ.”

I went up the steps. My legs were shaking, my heart pounding like an engine with leaky valves and shaky old pistons. As I grasped the knob that would let me into the kitchen—and safety—Dolan said: “If you tell anyone I squeezed your po' old wrist, Paulie, I'll tell them you're having delusions. Onset of senile dementia, likely. And you know they'll believe me. If there are bruises, they'll think you made them yourself.”

Yes. Those things were true. And once again, it could have been Percy Wetmore saying them, a Percy that had somehow stayed young and mean while I'd grown old and brittle.

“I'm not going to say anything to anyone,” I muttered. “Got nothing to say.”

“That's right, you old sweetie.” His voice light and mocking, the voice of a lugoon (to use Percy's word) who thought he was going to be young forever. “And I'm going to find out what you're up to. I'm going to make it my business. You hear?”

I heard, all right, but wouldn't give him the satisfaction of saying so. I went in, passed through the kitchen (I could now smell eggs and sausage cooking, but no longer wanted any), and hung the poncho back up on its hook. Then I went upstairs to my room—resting at every step, giving my heart time to slow—and gathered my writing materials together.

I went down to the solarium and was just sitting at the little table by
the windows when my friend Elaine poked her head in. She looked tired, and, I thought, unwell. She'd combed her hair out but was still in her robe. We old sweeties don't stand much on ceremony; for the most part, we can't afford to.

“I won't disturb you,” she said, “I see you're getting set to write—”

“Don't be silly,” I said. “I've got more time than Carter's got liver pills. Come on in.”

She did, but stood by the door. “It's just that I couldn't sleep—again—and happened to be looking out my window a little earlier . . . and . . .”

“And you saw Mr. Dolan and me having our pleasant little chat,” I said. I hoped seeing was all she'd done; that her window had been closed and she hadn't heard me whining to be let go.

“It didn't look pleasant and it didn't look friendly,” she said. “Paul, that Mr. Dolan's been asking around about you. He asked
me
about you—last week, this was. I didn't think much about it then, just that he's got himself a nasty long nose for other people's business, but now I wonder.”

“Asking about me?” I hoped I didn't sound as uneasy as I felt. “Asking what?”

“Where you go walking, for one thing. And
why
you go walking.”

I tried to laugh. “There's a man who doesn't believe in exercise, that much is clear.”

“He thinks you've got a secret.” She paused. “So do I.”

I opened my mouth—to say what, I don't know—but Elaine raised one of her gnarled but oddly beautiful hands before I could get a single word out. “If you do, I don't want to know what it is, Paul. Your business is your business. I was raised to think that way, but not everyone was. Be careful. That's all I want to tell you. And now I'll let you alone to do your work.”

She turned to go, but before she could get out the door, I called her name. She turned back, eyes questioning.

“When I finish what I'm writing—” I began, then shook my head a little. That was wrong. “
If
I finish what I'm writing, would you read it?”

She seemed to consider, then gave me the sort of smile a man could
easily fall in love with, even a man as old as me. “That would be my honor.”

“You'd better wait until you read it before you talk about honor,” I said, and it was Delacroix's death I was thinking of.

“I'll read it, though,” she said. “Every word. I promise. But you have to finish writing it, first.”

She left me to it, but it was a long time before I wrote anything. I sat staring out the windows for almost an hour, tapping my pen against the side of the table, watching the gray day brighten a little at a time, thinking about Brad Dolan, who calls me Paulie and never tires of jokes about chinks and slopes and spicks and micks, thinking about what Elaine Connelly had said.
He thinks you've got a secret. So do I.

And maybe I do. Yes, maybe I do. And of course Brad Dolan wants it. Not because he thinks it's important (and it's not, I guess, except to me), but because he doesn't think very old men like myself should have secrets. No taking the ponchos off the hook outside the kitchen; no secrets, either. No getting the idea that the likes of us are still human. And why shouldn't we be allowed such an idea? He doesn't know. And in that, too, he is like Percy.

So my thoughts, like a river that takes an oxbow turn, finally led back to where they had been when Brad Dolan reached out from beneath the kitchen eave and grabbed my wrist: to Percy, mean-spirited Percy Wetmore, and how he had taken his revenge on the man who had laughed at him. Delacroix had been throwing the colored spool he had—the one Mr. Jingles would fetch—and it bounced out of the cell and into the corridor. That was all it took; Percy saw his chance.

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

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

Percy turned toward him, smiling. Toward me and Brutal, as well. “There,” he said. “I knew I'd get him, sooner or later. Just a matter of time, really.” He turned and walked back up the Green Mile, leaving Mr. Jingles lying on the linoleum, his spreading blood red over green.

Dean got up from the duty desk, hitting the side of it with his knee and knocking the cribbage board to the floor. The pegs spilled out of their holes and rolled in all directions. Neither Dean nor Harry, who had been just about to go out, paid the slightest attention to the overturn of the game. “What'd you do this time?” Dean shouted at Percy. “What the hell'd you do this time, you stoopnagel?”

Percy didn't answer. He strode past the desk without saying a word, patting his hair with his fingers. He went through my office and into the storage shed. William Wharton answered for him. “Boss Dean? I think what he did was teach a certain french-fry it ain't smart to laugh at
him,” he said, and then began to laugh himself. It was a good laugh, a
country
laugh, cheery and deep. There were people I met during that period of my life (very scary people, for the most part) who only sounded normal when they laughed. Wild Bill Wharton was one of those.