The Green Mile (50 page)

That's how it is,
I thought.
Every day. All over the world. That darkness. All over the world.

“I'm going to take a turn over to Admin instead. Got a few things to check over there.”

“If you say so.”

I went to the door and opened it, then looked back. “You've got it right,” I said: “r-e-c-e-i-v-e;
i
before
e
, except after
c
. Most of the time, anyway; I guess there's exceptions to all the rules.”

I went out, not needing to look back at him to know he was staring with his mouth open.

I kept moving for the rest of that shift, unable to sit down for more than five minutes at a stretch before jumping up again. I went over to Admin, and then I tromped back and forth across the empty exercise yard until the guards in the towers must have thought I was crazy. But by the time my shift was over, I was starting to calm down again, and that rustle of thoughts in my head—like a stirring of leaves, it was—had pretty much quieted down.

Still, halfway home that morning, it came back strong. The way my urinary infection had. I had to park my Ford by the side of the road, get out, and sprint nearly half a mile, head down, arms pumping, breath tearing in and out of my throat as warm as something that you've carried in your armpit. Then, at last, I began to feel really normal. I trotted halfway back to where the Ford was parked and walked the rest of the way, my breath steaming in the chilly air. When I got home, I told Janice that John Coffey had said he was ready, that he wanted to go. She nodded, looking relieved. Was she really? I couldn't say. Six hours before, even three, I would have known, but by then I didn't. And that was good. John had kept saying that he was tired, and now I could understand why. It would have tired anyone out, what he had. Would have made anyone long for rest and for quiet.

When Janice asked me why I looked so flushed and smelled so sweaty, I told her I had stopped the car on my way home and gone running for awhile, running hard. I told her that much—as I may have said (there's too many pages here now for me to want to look back through and make sure), lying wasn't much a part of our marriage—but I didn't tell her why.

And she didn't ask.

T
HERE WERE NO THUNDERSTORMS
on the night it came John Coffey's turn to walk the Green Mile. It was seasonably cold for those parts at that time of year, in the thirties, I'd guess, and a million stars spilled across used-up, picked-out fields where frost glittered on fenceposts and glowed like diamonds on the dry skeletons of July's corn.

Brutus Howell was out front for this one—he would do the capping and tell Van Hay to roll when it was time. Bill Dodge was in with Van Hay. And, at around eleven-twenty on the night of November 20th, Dean and Harry and I went down to our one occupied cell, where John Coffey sat on the end of his bunk with his hands clasped between his knees and a tiny dab of meatloaf gravy on the collar of his blue shirt. He looked out through the bars at us, a lot calmer than we felt, it seemed. My hands were cold and my temples were throbbing. It was one thing to know he was willing—it made it at least possible for us to do our job—but it was another to know we were going to electrocute him for someone else's crime.

I had last seen Hal Moores around seven that evening. He was in his office, buttoning up his overcoat. His face was pale, his hands shaking so badly that he was making quite some production of those buttons. I almost wanted to knock his fingers aside and do the coat up myself, like you would with a little kid. The irony was that Melinda had looked better when Jan and I went to see her the previous weekend than Hal had looked earlier on John Coffey's execution evening.

“I won't be staying for this one,” he had said. “Curtis will be there, and I know Coffey will be in good hands with you and Brutus.”

“Yes, sir, we'll do our best,” I said. “Is there any word on Percy?” Is he coming back around? is what I meant, of course. Is he even now sitting in a room somewhere and telling someone—some doctor, most likely—about how we zipped him into the nut-coat and threw him into the restraint room like any other problem child . . . any other lugoon, in Percy's language? And if he is, are they believing him?

But according to Hal, Percy was just the same. Not talking, and not, so far as anyone could tell, in the world at all. He was still at Indianola—“being evaluated,” Hal had said, looking mystified at the phrase—but if there was no improvement, he would be moving along soon.

“How's Coffey holding up?” Hal had asked then. He had finally managed to do up the last button of his coat.

I nodded. “He'll be fine, Warden.”

He'd nodded back, then gone to the door, looking old and ill. “How can so much good and so much evil live together in the same man? How could the man who cured my wife be the same man who killed those little girls? Do you understand that?”

I had told him I didn't, the ways of God were mysterious, there was good and evil in all of us, ours not to reason why, hotcha, hotcha, rowdee-dow. Most of what I told him were things I'd learned in the church of Praise Jesus, The Lord Is Mighty, Hal nodding the whole time and looking sort of exalted. He could afford to nod, couldn't he? Yes. And look exalted, too. There was a deep sadness on his face—he was shaken, all right; I never doubted it—but there were no tears this time, because he had a wife to go home to, his companion to go home to, and she was fine. Thanks to John Coffey, she was well and fine and the man who had signed John's death warrant could leave and go to her. He didn't have to watch what came next. He would be able to sleep that night in his wife's warmth while John Coffey lay on a slab in the basement of County Hospital, growing cool as the friendless, speechless hours moved toward dawn. And I hated Hal for those things. Just a little, and I'd get over it, but it was hate, all right. The genuine article.

Now I stepped into the cell, followed by Dean and Harry, both of them pale and downcast. “Are you ready, John?” I asked.

He nodded. “Yes, boss. Guess so.”

“All right, then. I got a piece to say before we go out.”

“You say what you need to, boss.”

“John Coffey, as an officer of the court . . .”

I said it right to the end, and when I'd finished, Harry Terwilliger stepped up beside me and held out his hand. John looked surprised for a moment, then smiled and shook it. Dean, looking paler than ever, offered his next. “You deserve better than this, Johnny,” he said hoarsely. “I'm sorry.”

“I be all right,” John said. “This the hard part; I be all right in a little while.” He got up, and the St. Christopher's medal Melly had given him swung free of his shirt.

“John, I ought to have that,” I said. “I can put it back on you after the . . . after, if you want, but I should take it for now.” It was silver, and if it was lying against his skin when Jack Van Hay switched on the juice, it might fuse itself into his skin. Even if it didn't do that, it was apt to electroplate, leaving a kind of charred photograph of itself on the skin of his chest. I had seen it before. I'd seen most everything during my years on the Mile. More than was good for me. I knew that now.

He slipped the chain over his head and put it in my hand. I put the medallion in my pocket and told him to step on out of the cell. There was no need to check his head and make sure the contact would be firm and the induction good; it was as smooth as the palm of my hand.

“You know, I fell asleep this afternoon and had a dream, boss,” he said. “I dreamed about Del's mouse.”

“Did you, John?” I flanked him on the left. Harry took the right. Dean fell in behind, and then we were walking the Green Mile. For me, it was the last time I ever walked it with a prisoner.

“Yep,” he said. “I dreamed he got down to that place Boss Howell talked about, that Mouseville place. I dreamed there was kids, and how they laughed at his tricks! My!” He laughed himself at the thought of it, then grew serious again. “I dreamed those two little blonde-headed girls were there. They 'us laughin, too. I put my arms around em and
there 'us no blood comin out they hair and they 'us fine. We all watch Mr. Jingles roll that spool, and how we did laugh. Fit to bus', we was.”

“Is that so?” I was thinking I couldn't go through with it, just could not, there was no way. I was going to cry or scream or maybe my heart would burst with sorrow and that would be an end to it.

We went into my office. John looked around for a moment or two, then dropped to his knees without having to be asked. Behind him, Harry was looking at me with haunted eyes. Dean was as white as paper.

I got down on my knees with John and thought there was a funny turnaround brewing here: after all the prisoners I'd had to help up so they could finish the journey, this time I was the one who was apt to need a hand. That's the way it felt, anyway.

“What should we pray for, boss?” John asked.

“Strength,” I said without even thinking. I closed my eyes and said, “Lord God of Hosts, please help us finish what we've started, and please welcome this man, John Coffey—like the drink but not spelled the same—into heaven and give him peace. Please help us to see him off the way he deserves and let nothing go wrong. Amen.” I opened my eyes and looked at Dean and Harry. Both of them looked a little better. Probably it was having a few moments to catch their breath. I doubt it was my praying.

I started to get up, and John caught my arm. He gave me a look that was both timid and hopeful. “I 'member a prayer someone taught me when I 'us little,” he said. “At least I think I do. Can I say it?”

“You go right on and do her,” Dean said. “Lots of time yet, John.”

John closed his eyes and frowned with concentration. I expected now-I-lay-me-down-to-sleep, or maybe a garbled version of the Lord's prayer, but I got neither; I had never heard what he came out with before, and have never heard it again, not that either the sentiments or expressions were particularly unusual. Holding his hands up in front of his closed eyes, John Coffey said: “Baby Jesus, meek and mild, pray for me, an orphan child. Be my strength, be my friend, be with me until the end. Amen.” He opened his eyes, started to get up, then looked at me closely.

I wiped my arm across my eyes. As I listened to him, I had been thinking about Del; he had wanted to pray one more at the end, too.
Holy Mary, mother of God, pray for us sinners now, and at the hour of our death.
“Sorry, John.”

“Don't be,” he said. He squeezed my arm and smiled. And then, as I'd thought he might have to do, he helped me to my feet.

T
HERE WEREN'T MANY WITNESSES
—maybe fourteen in all, half the number that had been in the storage room for the Delacroix execution. Homer Cribus was there, overflowing his chair as per usual, but I didn't see Deputy McGee. Like Warden Moores, he had apparently decided to give this one a miss.

Sitting in the front row was an elderly couple I didn't recognize at first, even though I had seen their pictures in a good many newspaper articles by that day in the third week of November. Then, as we neared the platform where Old Sparky waited, the woman spat, “Die slow, you son of a bitch!” and I realized they were the Dettericks, Klaus and Marjorie. I hadn't recognized them because you don't often see elderly people who haven't yet climbed out of their thirties.

John hunched his shoulders at the sound of the woman's voice and Sheriff Cribus's grunt of approval. Hank Bitterman, who had the guard-post near the front of the meager group of spectators, never took his eyes off Klaus Detterick. That was per my orders, but Detterick never made a move in John's direction that night. Detterick seemed to be on some other planet.

Brutal, standing beside Old Sparky, gave me a small finger-tilt as we stepped up onto the platform. He holstered his sidearm and took John's wrist, escorting him toward the electric chair as gently as a boy leading his date out onto the floor for their first dance as a couple.

“Everything all right, John?” he asked in a low voice.

“Yes, boss, but . . .” His eyes were moving from side to side in their
sockets, and for the first time he looked and sounded scared. “But they's a lot of folks here hate me. A
lot
. I can feel it. Hurts. Bores in like bee-stings an'
hurts
.”

“Feel how we feel, then,” Brutal said in that same low voice. “
We
don't hate you—can you feel that?”

“Yes, boss.” But his voice was trembling worse now, and his eyes had begun to leak their slow tears again.

“Kill him twice, you boys!”
Marjorie Detterick suddenly screamed. Her ragged, strident voice was like a slap. John cringed against me and moaned.
“You go on and kill that raping baby-killer twice, that'd be just fine!”
Klaus, still looking like a man dreaming awake, pulled her against his shoulder. She began to sob.

I saw with dismay that Harry Terwilliger was crying, too. So far none of the spectators had seen his tears—his back was to them—but he was crying, all right. Still, what could we do? Besides push on with it, I mean?

Brutal and I turned John around. Brutal pressed on one of the big man's shoulders and John sat. He gripped Sparky's wide oak arms, his eyes moving from side to side, his tongue darting out to wet first one corner of his mouth, then the other.

Harry and I dropped to our knees. The day before, we'd had one of the shop-trusties weld temporary flexible extensions to the chair's ankle clamps, because John Coffey's ankles were nigh on the size of an ordinary fellow's calves. Still, I had a nightmarish moment when I thought they were still going to come up small, and we'd have to take him back to his cell while Sam Broderick, who was head of the shop guys in those days, was found and tinkered some more. I gave a final, extra-hard shove with the heels of my hands and the clamp on my side closed. John's leg jerked and he gasped. I had pinched him.