The Green Mile Read online

  He saw that I was unlocking his cell door and his eyes narrowed. He saw that Brutal was holding his revolver in one hand and his nightstick in the other, and they narrowed even more.

  "You can come in here on your legs, but you'll go out on your backs, Billy the Kid is goan guarantee you that," he told us. His eyes shifted back to me. "And if you think you're gonna put that nut-coat on me, you got another think coming, old hoss."

  "You're not the one who says go or jump back around here," I told him. "You should know that, but I guess you're too dumb to pick it up without a little teaching."

  I finished unlocking the door and ran it back on its track. Wharton retreated to the bunk, his cock still hanging out of his pants, put his hands out to me, palms up, then beckoned with his fingers. "Come on, you ugly motherfucker," he said. "They be schoolin, all right, but this old boy's well set up to be the teacher." He shifted his gaze and his dark-toothed grin to Brutal. "Come on, big fella, you first. This time you cain't sneak up behind me. Put down that gun--you ain't gonna shoot it anyway, not you--and we'll go man-to-man. See who's the better fel--"

  Brutal stepped into the cell, but not toward Wharton. He moved to the left once he was through the door, and Wharton's narrow eyes widened as he saw the firehose pointed at him.

  "No, you don't," he said. "Oh no, you d--"

  "Dean!" I yelled. "Turn it on! All the way!"

  Wharton jumped forward, and Brutal hit him a good smart lick--the kind of lick I'm sure Percy dreamed of--across his forehead, laying his baton right over Wharton's eyebrows. Wharton, who seemed to think we'd never seen trouble until we'd seen him, went to his knees, his eyes open but blind. Then the water came, Harry staggering back a step under its power and then holding steady, the nozzle firm in his hands, pointed like a gun. The stream caught Wild Bill Wharton square in the middle of his chest, spun him halfway around, and drove him back under his bunk. Down the hall, Delacroix was jumping from foot to foot, cackling shrilly, and cursing at John Coffey, demanding that Coffey tell him what was going on, who was winning, and how dat gran' fou new boy like dat Chinee water treatment. John said nothing, just stood there quietly in his too-short pants and his prison slippers. I only had one quick glance at him, but that was enough to observe his same old expression, both sad and serene. It was as if he'd seen the whole thing before, not just once or twice but a thousand times.

  "Kill the water!" Brutal shouted back over his shoulder, then raced forward into the cell. He sank his hands into the semi-conscious Wharton's armpits and dragged him out from under his bunk. Wharton was coughing and making a glub-glub sound. Blood was dribbling into his dazed eyes from above his brows, where Brutal's stick had popped the skin open in a line.

  We had the straitjacket business down to a science, did Brutus Howell and me; we'd practiced it like a couple of vaudeville hoofers working up a new dance routine. Every now and then, that practice paid off. Now, for instance. Brutal sat Wharton up and held out his arms toward me the way a kid might hold out the arms of a Raggedy Andy doll. Awareness was just starting to seep back into Wharton's eyes, the knowledge that if he didn't start fighting right away, it was going to be too late, but the lines were still down between his brain and his muscles, and before he could repair them, I had rammed the sleeves of the coat up his arms and Brutal was doing the buckles up the back. While he took care of that, I grabbed the cuff-straps, pulled Wharton's arms around his sides, and linked his wrists together with another canvas strap. He ended up looking like he was hugging himself.

  "Goddam you, big dummy, how dey doin widdim?" Delacroix screamed. I heard Mr. Jingles squeaking, as if he wanted to know, too.

  Percy arrived, his shirt wet and sticking to him from his struggles with the watermain, his face glowing with excitement. Dean came along behind him, wearing a bracelet of purplish bruises around his throat and looking a lot less thrilled.

  "Come on, now, Wild Bill," I said, and yanked Wharton to his feet. "Little walky-walky."

  "Don't you call me that!" Wharton screamed shrilly, and I think that for the first time we were seeing real feelings, and not just a clever animal's camouflage spots. "Wild Bill Hickok wasn't no range-rider! He never fought him no bear with a Bowie knife, either! He was just another bushwhackin John Law! Dumb sonofabitch sat with his back to the door and got kilt by a drunk!"

  "Oh my suds and body, a history lesson!" Brutal exclaimed, and shoved Wharton out of his cell. "A feller just never knows what he's going to get when he clocks in here, only that it's apt to be nice. But with so many nice people like you around, I guess that kind of stands to reason, don't it? And you know what? Pretty soon you'll be history yourself, Wild Bill. Meantime, you get on down the hall. We got a room for you. Kind of a cooling-off room."

  Wharton gave a furious, inarticulate scream and threw himself at Brutal, even though he was snugly buckled into the coat now, and his arms were wrapped around behind him. Percy made to draw his baton--the Wetmore Solution for all of life's problems--and Dean put a hand on his wrist. Percy gave him a puzzled, half-indignant look, as if to say that after what Wharton had done to Dean, Dean should be the last person in the world to want to hold him back.

  Brutal pushed Wharton backward. I caught him and pushed him to Harry. And Harry propelled him on down the Green Mile, past the gleeful Delacroix and the impassive Coffey. Wharton ran to keep from falling on his face, spitting curses the whole way. Spitting them the way a welder's torch spits sparks. We banged him into the last cell on the right while Dean, Harry, and Percy (who for once wasn't complaining about being unfairly overworked) yanked all of the crap out of the restraint room. While they did that, I had a brief conversation with Wharton.

  "You think you're tough," I said, "and maybe you are, sonny, but in here tough don't matter. Your stampeding days are over. If you take it easy on us, we'll take it easy on you. If you make it hard, you'll die in the end just the same, only we'll sharpen you like a pencil before you go."

  "You're gonna be so happy to see the end of me," Wharton said in a hoarse voice. He was struggling against the straitjacket even though he must have known it would do no good, and his face was as red as a tomato. "And until I'm gone, I'll make your lives miserable." He bared his teeth at me like an angry baboon.

  "If that's all you want, to make our lives miserable, you can quit now, because you've already succeeded," Brutal said. "But as far as your time on the Mile goes, Wharton, we don't care if you spend all of it in the room with the soft walls. And you can wear that damned nut-coat until your arms gangrene from lack of circulation and fall right off." He paused. "No one much comes down here, you know. And if you think anyone gives much of a shit what happens to you, one way or another, you best reconsider. To the world in general, you're already one dead outlaw."

  Wharton was studying Brutal carefully, and the choler was fading out of his face. "Lemme out of it," he said in a placatory voice--a voice too sane and too reasonable to trust. "I'll be good. Honest Injun."

  Harry appeared in the cell doorway. The end of the corridor looked like a rummage sale, but we'd set things to rights with good speed once we got started. We had before; we knew the drill. "All ready," Harry said.

  Brutal grabbed the bulge in the canvas where Wharton's right elbow was and yanked him to his feet. "Come on, Wild Billy. And look on the good side. You're gonna have at least twenty-four hours to remind yourself never to sit with your back to the door, and to never hold onto no aces and eights."

  "Lemme out of it," Wharton said. He looked from Brutal to Harry to me, the red creeping back into his face. "I'll be good--I tell you I've learned my lesson. I . . . I . . . ummmmmahhhhhhh--"

  He suddenly collapsed, half of him in the cell, half of him on the played-out lino of the Green Mile, kicking his feet and bucking his body.

  "Holy Christ, he's pitchin a fit," Percy whispered.

  "Sure, and my sister's the Whore of Babylon," Brutal said. "She dances the hootchie-kootchie for Moses on Saturday nights in a long white vei
l." He bent down and hooked a hand into one of Wharton's armpits. I got the other one. Wharton threshed between us like a hooked fish. Carrying his jerking body, listening to him grunt from one end and fart from the other was one of my life's less pleasant experiences.

  I looked up and met John Coffey's eyes for a second. They were bloodshot, and his dark cheeks were wet. He had been crying again. I thought of Hammersmith making that biting gesture with his hand and shivered a little. Then I turned my attention back to Wharton.

  We threw him into the restraint room like he was cargo, and watched him lie on the floor, bucking hard in the straitjacket next to the drain we had once checked for the mouse which had started its E Block life as Steamboat Willy.

  "I don't much care if he swallows his tongue or something and dies," Dean said in his hoarse and raspy voice, "but think of the paperwork, boys! It'd never end."

  "Never mind the paperwork, think of the hearing," Harry said gloomily. "We'd lose our damned jobs. End up picking peas down Mississippi. You know what Mississippi is, don't you? It's the Indian word for asshole."

  "He ain't gonna die, and he ain't gonna swallow his tongue, either," Brutal said. "When we open this door tomorrow, he's gonna be just fine. Take my word for it."

  That's the way it was, too. The man we took back to his cell the next night at nine was quiet, pallid, and seemingly chastened. He walked with his head down, made no effort to attack anyone when the straitjacket came off, and only stared listlessly at me when I told him it would go just the same the next time, and he just had to ask himself how much time he wanted to spend pissing in his pants and eating baby-food a spoonful at a time.

  "I'll be good, boss, I learnt my lesson," he whispered in a humble little voice as we put him back in his cell. Brutal looked at me and winked.

  Late the next day, William Wharton, who was Billy the Kid to himself and never that bushwhacking John Law Wild Bill Hickok, bought a Moon Pie from Old Toot-Toot. Wharton had been expressly forbidden any such commerce, but the afternoon crew was composed of floaters, as I think I have said, and the deal went down. Toot himself undoubtedly knew better, but to him the snack-wagon was always a case of a nickel is a nickel, a dime is a dime, I'd sing another chorus but I don't have the time.

  That night, when Brutal ran his check-round, Wharton was standing at the door of his cell. He waited until Brutal looked up at him, then slammed the heels of his hands into his bulging cheeks and shot a thick and amazingly long stream of chocolate sludge into Brutal's face. He had crammed the entire Moon Pie into his trap, held it there until it liquefied, and then used it like chewing tobacco.

  Wharton fell back on his bunk wearing a chocolate goatee, kicking his legs and screaming with laughter and pointing to Brutal, who was wearing a lot more than a goatee. "Li'l Black Sambo, yassuh, boss, yassuh, howdoo you do?" Wharton held his belly and howled. "Gosh, if it had only been ka-ka! I wish it had been! If I'd had me some of that--"

  "You are ka-ka," Brutal growled, "and I hope you got your bags packed, because you're going back down to your favorite toilet."

  Once again Wharton was bundled into the straitjacket, and once again we stowed him in the room with the soft walls. Two days, this time. Sometimes we could hear him raving in there, sometimes we could hear him promising that he'd be good, that he'd come to his senses and be good, and sometimes we could hear him screaming that he needed a doctor, that he was dying. Mostly, though, he was silent. And he was silent when we took him out again, too, walking back to his cell with his head down and his eyes dull, not responding when Harry said, "Remember, it's up to you." He would be all right for a while, and then he'd try something else. There was nothing he did that hadn't been tried before (well, except for the thing with the Moon Pie, maybe; even Brutal admitted that was pretty original), but his sheer persistence was scary. I was afraid that sooner or later someone's attention might lapse and there would be hell to pay. And the situation might continue for quite awhile, because somewhere he had a lawyer who was beating the bushes, telling folks how wrong it would be to kill this fellow upon whose brow the dew of youth had not yet dried . . . and who was, incidentally, as white as old Jeff Davis. There was no sense complaining about it, because keeping Wharton out of the chair was his lawyer's job. Keeping him safely jugged was ours. And in the end, Old Sparky would almost certainly have him, lawyer or no lawyer.

  6

  THAT WAS THE WEEK Melinda Moores, the warden's wife, came home from Indianola. The doctors were done with her; they had their interesting, newfangled X-ray photographs of the tumor in her head; they had documented the weakness in her hand and the paralyzing pains that racked her almost constantly by then, and were done with her. They gave her husband a bunch of pills with morphine in them and sent Melinda home to die. Hal Moores had some sick-leave piled up--not a lot, they didn't give you a lot in those days, but he took what he had so he could help her do what she had to do.

  My wife and I went to see her three days or so after she came home. I called ahead and Hal said yes, that would be fine, Melinda was having a pretty good day and would enjoy seeing us.

  "I hate calls like this," I said to Janice as we drove to the little house where the Mooreses had spent most of their marriage.

  "So does everyone, honey," she said, and patted my hand. "We'll bear up under it, and so will she."

  "I hope so."

  We found Melinda in the sitting room, planted in a bright slant of unseasonably warm October sun, and my first shocked thought was that she had lost ninety pounds. She hadn't, of course--if she'd lost that much weight, she hardly would have been there at all--but that was my brain's initial reaction to what my eyes were reporting. Her face had fallen away to show the shape of the underlying skull, and her skin was as white as parchment. There were dark circles under her eyes. And it was the first time I ever saw her in her rocker when she didn't have a lapful of sewing or afghan squares or rags for braiding into a rug. She was just sitting there. Like a person in a train-station.

  "Melinda," my wife said warmly. I think she was as shocked as I was--more, perhaps--but she hid it splendidly, as some women seem able to do. She went to Melinda, dropped on one knee beside the rocking chair in which the warden's wife sat, and took one of her hands. As she did, my eye happened on the blue hearthrug by the fireplace. It occurred to me that it should have been the shade of tired old limes, because now this room was just another version of the Green Mile.

  "I brought you some tea," Jan said, "the kind I put up myself. It's a nice sleepy tea. I've left it in the kitchen."

  "Thank you so much, darlin," Melinda said. Her voice sounded old and rusty.

  "How you feeling, dear?" my wife asked.

  "Better," Melinda said in her rusty, grating voice. "Not so's I want to go out to a barn dance, but at least there's no pain today. They give me some pills for the headaches. Sometimes they even work."

  "That's good, isn't it?"

  "But I can't grip so well. Something's happened . . . to my hand." She raised it, looked at it as if she had never seen it before, then lowered it back into her lap. "Something's happened . . . all over me." She began to cry in a soundless way that made me think of John Coffey. It started to chime in my head again, that thing he'd said: I helped it, didn't I? I helped it, didn't I? Like a rhyme you can't get rid of.

  Hal came in then. He collared me, and you can believe me when I say I was glad to be collared. We went into the kitchen, and he poured me half a shot of white whiskey, hot stuff fresh out of some countryman's still. We clinked our glasses together and drank. The shine went down like coal-oil, but the bloom in the belly was heaven. Still, when Moores tipped the mason jar at me, wordlessly asking if I wanted the other half, I shook my head and waved it off. Wild Bill Wharton was out of restraints--for the time being, anyway--and it wouldn't be safe to go near where he was with a booze-clouded head. Not even with bars between us.

  "I don't know how long I can take this, Paul," he said in a low voice. "There's a girl who come
s in mornings to help me with her, but the doctors say she may lose control of her bowels, and . . . and . . ." He stopped, his throat working, trying hard not to cry in front of me again.

  "Go with it as best you can," I said. I reached out across the table and briefly squeezed his palsied, liverspotted hand. "Do that day by day and give the rest over to God. There's nothing else you can do, is there?"

  "I guess not. But it's hard, Paul. I pray you never have to find out how hard."

  He made an effort to collect himself.

  "Now tell me the news. How are you doing with William Wharton? And how are you making out with Percy Wetmore?"

  We talked shop for a while, and got through the visit. After, all the way home, with my wife sitting silent, for the most part--wet-eyed and thoughtful--in the passenger seat beside me, Coffey's words ran around in my head like Mr. Jingles running around in Delacroix's cell: I helped it, didn't I?

  "It's terrible," my wife said dully at one point. "And there's nothing anyone can do to help her."

  I nodded agreement and thought, I helped it, didn't I? But that was crazy, and I tried as best I could to put it out of my mind.

  As we turned into our dooryard, she finally spoke a second time--not about her old friend Melinda, but about my urinary infection. She wanted to know if it was really gone. Really gone, I told her.

  "That's fine, then," she said, and kissed me over the eyebrow, in that shivery place of mine. "Maybe we ought to, you know, get up to a little something. If you have the time and the inclination, that is."

  Having plenty of the latter and just enough of the former, I took her by the hand and led her into the back bedroom and took her clothes off as she stroked the part of me that swelled and throbbed but didn't hurt anymore. And as I moved in her sweetness, slipping through it in that slow way she liked--that we both liked--I thought of John Coffey, saying he'd helped it, he'd helped it, hadn't he? Like a snatch of song that won't leave your mind until it's damned good and ready.