The Green Mile Read online

  Then Del began, speaking softly but quickly in that Cajun which was as round and soft and sensual as a young woman's breast: "Marie! Je vous salue, Marie, oui, pleine de grace; le Seigneur est avec vous; vous etes benie entre toutes les femmes, et mon cher Jesus, le fruit de vos entrailles, est beni." He was crying again, but I don't think he knew it. "Sainte Marie, O ma mere, Mere de Dieu, priez pour moi, priez pour nous, pauv' pecheurs, maint'ant et a l'heure . . . l'heure de notre mort. L'heure de mon mort." He took a deep, shuddering breath. "Ainsi soit-il."

  Lightning spilled through the room's one window in a brief blue-white glare as Delacroix got to his feet. Everyone jumped and cringed except for Del himself; he still seemed lost in the old prayer. He reached out with one hand, not looking to see where it went. Brutal took it and squeezed it briefly. Delacroix looked at him and smiled a little. "Nous voyons--" he began, then stopped. With a conscious effort, he switched back to English. "We can go now, Boss Howell, Boss Edgecombe. I'm right wit God."

  "That's good," I said, wondering how right with God Del was going to feel twenty minutes from now, when he stood on the other side of the electricity. I hoped his last prayer had been heard, and that Mother Mary was praying for him with all her heart and soul, because Eduard Delacroix, rapist and murderer, right then needed all the praying he could get his hands on. Outside, thunder bashed across the sky again. "Come on, Del. Not far now."

  "Fine, boss, dat fine. Because I ain't ascairt no more." So he said, but I saw in his eyes that--Our Father or no Our Father, Hail Mary or no Hail Mary--he lied. By the time they cross the rest of the green carpet and duck through the little door, almost all of them are scared.

  "Stop at the bottom, Del," I told him in a low voice as he went through, but it was advice I needn't have given him. He stopped at the foot of the stairs, all right, stopped cold, and what did it was the sight of Percy Wetmore standing there on the platform, with the sponge-bucket by one foot and the phone that went to the governor just visible beyond his right hip.

  "Non," Del said in a low, horrified voice. "Non, non, not him!"

  "Walk on," Brutal said. "You just keep your eyes on me and Paul. Forget he's there at all."

  "But--"

  People had turned to look at us, but by moving my body a bit, I could still grip Delacroix's left elbow without being seen. "Steady," I said in a voice only Del--and perhaps Brutal--could hear. "The only thing most of these people will remember about you is how you go out, so give them something good."

  The loudest crack of thunder yet broke overhead at that moment, loud enough to make the storage room's tin roof vibrate. Percy jumped as if someone had goosed him, and Del gave a small, contemptuous snort of laughter. "It get much louder dan dat, he gonna piddle in his pants again," he said, and then squared his shoulders--not that he had much to square. "Come on. Let's get it over."

  We walked to the platform. Delacroix ran a nervous eye over the witnesses--about twenty-five of them this time--as we went, but Brutal, Dean, and I kept our own eyes trained on the chair. All looked in order to me. I raised one thumb and a questioning eyebrow to Percy, who gave a little one-sided grimace, as if to say What do you mean, is everything all right? Of course it is.

  I hoped he was right.

  Brutal and I reached automatically for Delacroix's elbows as he stepped up onto the platform. It's only eight or so inches up from the floor, but you'd be surprised how many of them, even the toughest of tough babies, need help to make that last step up of their lives.

  Del did okay, though. He stood in front of the chair for a moment (resolutely not looking at Percy), then actually spoke to it, as if introducing himself: "C'est moi," he said. Percy reached for him, but Delacroix turned around on his own and sat down. I knelt on what was now his left side, and Brutal knelt on his right. I guarded my crotch and my throat in the manner I have already described, then swung the clamp in so that its open jaws encircled the skinny white flesh just above the Cajun's ankle. Thunder bellowed and I jumped. Sweat ran in my eye, stinging. Mouseville, I kept thinking for some reason. Mouseville, and how it cost a dime to get in. Two cents for the kiddies, who would look at Mr. Jingles through his ivy-glass windows.

  The clamp was balky, wouldn't shut. I could hear Del breathing in great dry pulls of air, lungs that would be charred bags less than four minutes from now laboring to keep up with his fear-driven heart. The fact that he had killed half a dozen people seemed at that moment the least important thing about him. I'm not trying to say anything about right and wrong here, but only to tell how it was.

  Dean knelt next to me and whispered, "What's wrong, Paul?"

  "I can't--" I began, and then the clamp closed with an audible snapping sound. It must have also pinched a fold of Delacroix's skin in its jaws, because he flinched and made a little hissing noise. "Sorry," I said.

  "It okay, boss," Del said. "It only gonna hurt for a minute."

  Brutal's side had the clamp with the electrode in it, which always took a little longer, and so we stood up, all three of us, at almost exactly the same time. Dean reached for the wrist-clamp on Del's left, and Percy went to the one on his right. I was ready to move forward if Percy should need help, but he did better with his wrist-clamp than I'd done with my ankle-clamp. I could see Del trembling all over now, as if a low current were already passing through him. I could smell his sweat, too. It was sour and strong and reminded me of weak pickle juice.

  Dean nodded to Percy. Percy turned back over his shoulder--I could see a place just under the angle of his jaw where he'd cut himself shaving that day--and said in a low, firm voice: "Roll on one!"

  There was a hum, sort of like the sound an old refrigerator makes when it kicks on, and the hanging lights in the storage room brightened. There were a few low gasps and murmurs from the audience. Del jerked in the chair, his hands gripping the ends of the oak arms hard enough to turn the knuckles white. His eyes rolled rapidly from side to side in their sockets, and his dry breathing quickened even more. He was almost panting now.

  "Steady," Brutal murmured. "Steady, Del, you're doing just fine. Hang on, you're doing just fine."

  Hey you guys! I thought. Come and see what Mr. Jingles can do! And overhead, the thunder banged again.

  Percy stepped grandly around to the front of the electric chair. This was his big moment, he was at center stage, all eyes were on him. All, that was, but for one set. Delacroix saw who it was and looked down at his lap instead. I would have bet you a dollar to a doughnut that Percy would flub his lines when he actually had to say them for an audience, but he reeled them off without a hitch, in an eerily calm voice.

  "Eduard Delacroix, you have been condemned to die in the electric chair, sentence passed by a jury of your peers and imposed by a judge of good standing in this state, God save the people of this state. Do you have anything to say before sentence is carried out?"

  Del tried to speak and at first nothing came out but a terrified whisper full of air and vowel-sounds. The shadow of a contemptuous smile touched the corners of Percy's lips, and I could have cheerfully shot him right there. Then Del licked his lips and tried again.

  "I sorry for what I do," he said. "I give anything to turn back the clock, but no one can. So now--" Thunder exploded like an airburst mortar shell above us. Del jumped as much as the clamps would allow, eyes starting wildly out of his wet face. "So now I pay the price. God forgive me." He licked his lips again, and looked at Brutal. "Don't forget your promise about Mr. Jingles," he said in a lower voice that was meant just for us.

  "We won't, don't worry," I said, and patted Delacroix's clay-cold hand. "He's going to Mouseville--"

  "The hell he is," Percy said, speaking from the corner of his mouth like a yardwise con as he hooked the restraining belt across Delacroix's chest. "There's no such place. It's a fairy-tale these guys made up to keep you quiet. Just thought you should know, faggot."

  A stricken light in Del's eyes told me that part of him had known . . . but would have kept the knowle
dge from the rest of him, if allowed. I looked at Percy, dumbfounded and furious, and he looked back at me levelly, as if to ask what I meant to do about it. And he had me, of course. There was nothing I could do about it, not in front of the witnesses, not with Delacroix now sitting on the furthest edge of life. There was nothing to do now but go on with it, finish it.

  Percy took the mask from its hook and rolled it down over Del's face, snugging it tight under the little man's undershot chin so as to stretch the hole in the top. Taking the sponge from the bucket and putting it in the cap was the next, and it was here that Percy diverged from the routine for the first time: instead of just bending over and fishing the sponge out, he took the steel cap from the back of the chair, and bent over with it in his hands. Instead of bringing the sponge to the cap, in other words--which would have been the natural way to do it--he brought the cap to the sponge. I should have realized something was wrong, but I was too upset. It was the only execution I ever took part in where I felt totally out of control. As for Brutal, he never looked at Percy at all, not as Percy bent over the bucket (moving so as to partially block what he was doing from our view), not as he straightened up and turned to Del with the cap in his hands and the brown circle of sponge already inside it. Brutal was looking at the cloth which had replaced Del's face, watching the way the black silk mask drew in, outlining the circle of Del's open mouth, and then puffed out again with his breath. There were big beads of perspiration on Brutal's forehead, and at his temples, just below the hairline. I had never seen him sweat at an execution before. Behind him, Dean looked distracted and ill, as if he was fighting not to lose his supper. We all understood that something was wrong, I know that now. We just couldn't tell what it was. No one knew--not then--about the questions Percy had been asking Jack Van Hay. There were a lot of them, but I suspect most were just camouflage. What Percy wanted to know about--the only thing Percy wanted to know about, I believe--was the sponge. The purpose of the sponge. Why it was soaked in brine . . . and what would happen if it was not soaked in brine.

  What would happen if the sponge was dry.

  Percy jammed the cap down on Del's head. The little man jumped and moaned again, this time louder. Some of the witnesses stirred uneasily on their folding chairs. Dean took a half-step forward, meaning to help with the chin-strap, and Percy motioned him curtly to step back. Dean did, hunching a little and wincing as another blast of thunder shook the storage shed. This time it was followed by the first spatters of rain across the roof. They sounded hard, like someone flinging handfuls of goobers onto a washboard.

  You've heard people say "My blood ran cold" about things, haven't you? Sure. All of us have, but the only time in all my years that I actually felt it happen to me was on that new and thunderstruck morning in October of 1932, at about ten seconds past midnight. It wasn't the look of poison triumph on Percy Wetmore's face as he stepped away from the capped, clamped, and hooded figure sitting there in Old Sparky; it was what I should have seen and didn't. There was no water running down Del's cheeks from out of the cap. That was when I finally got it.

  "Edward Delacroix," Percy was saying, "electricity shall now be passed through your body until you are dead, according to state law."

  I looked over at Brutal in an agony that made my urinary infection seem like a bumped finger. The sponge is dry! I mouthed at him, but he only shook his head, not understanding, and looked back at the mask over the Frenchman's face, where the man's last few breaths were pulling the black silk in and then blousing it out again.

  I reached for Percy's elbow and he stepped away from me, giving me a flat look as he did so. It was only a momentary glance, but it told me everything. Later he would tell his lies and his half-truths, and most would be believed by the people who mattered, but I knew a different story. Percy was a good student when he was doing something he cared about, we'd found that out at the rehearsals, and he had listened carefully when Jack Van Hay explained how the brine-soaked sponge conducted the juice, channelling it, turning the charge into a kind of electric bullet to the brain. Oh yes, Percy knew exactly what he was doing. I think I believed him later when he said he didn't know how far it would go, but that doesn't even count in the good-intentions column, does it? I don't think so. Yet, short of screaming in front of the assistant warden and all the witnesses for Jack Van Hay not to pull the switch, there was nothing I could do. Given another five seconds, I think I might have screamed just that, but Percy didn't give me another five seconds.

  "May God have mercy on your soul," he told the panting, terrified figure in the electric chair, then looked past him at the mesh-covered rectangle where Harry and Jack were standing, Jack with his hand on the switch marked MABEL'S HAIR DRIER. The doctor was standing to the right of that window, eyes fixed on the black bag between his feet, as silent and self-effacing as ever. "Roll on two!"

  At first it was the same as always--the humming that was a little louder than the original cycle-up, but not much, and the mindless forward surge of Del's body as his muscles spasmed.

  Then things started going wrong.

  The humming lost its steadiness and began to waver. It was joined by a crackling sound, like cellophane being crinkled. I could smell something horrible that I didn't identify as a mixture of burning hair and organic sponge until I saw blue tendrils of smoke curling out from beneath the edges of the cap. More smoke was streaming out of the hole in the top of the cap that the wire came in through; it looked like smoke coming out of the hole in an Indian's teepee.

  Delacroix began to jitter and twist in the chair, his mask-covered face snapping from side to side as if in some vehement refusal. His legs began to piston up and down in short strokes that were hampered by the clamps on his ankles. Thunder banged overhead, and now the rain began to pour down harder.

  I looked at Dean Stanton; he stared wildly back. There was a muffled pop from under the cap, like a pine knot exploding in a hot fire, and now I could see smoke coming through the mask, as well, seeping out in little curls.

  I lunged toward the mesh between us and the switch room, but before I could open my mouth, Brutus Howell seized my elbow. His grip was hard enough to make the nerves in there tingle. He was as white as tallow but not in a panic--not even close to being in a panic. "Don't you tell Jack to stop," he said in a low voice. "Whatever you do, don't tell him that. It's too late to stop."

  At first, when Del began to scream, the witnesses didn't hear him. The rain on the tin roof had swelled to a roar, and the thunder was damned near continuous. But those of us on the platform heard him, all right--choked howls of pain from beneath the smoking mask, sounds an animal caught and mangled in a hay-baler might make.

  The hum from the cap was ragged and wild now, broken by bursts of what sounded like radio static. Delacroix began to slam back and forth in the chair like a kid doing a tantrum. The platform shook, and he hit the leather restraining belt almost hard enough to pop it. The current was also twisting him from side to side, and I heard the crunching snap as his right shoulder either broke or dislocated. It went with a sound like someone hitting a wooden crate with a sledgehammer. The crotch of his pants, no more than a blur because of the short pistoning strokes of his legs, darkened. Then he began to squeal, horrible sounds, high-pitched and ratlike, that were audible even over the rushing downpour.

  "What the hell's happening to him?" someone cried.

  "Are those clamps going to hold?"

  "Christ, the smell! Phew!"

  Then, one of the two women: "Is this normal?"

  Delacroix snapped forward, dropped back, snapped forward, fell back. Percy was staring at him with slack-jawed horror. He had expected something, sure, but not this.

  The mask burst into flame on Delacroix's face. The smell of cooking hair and sponge was now joined by the smell of cooking flesh. Brutal grabbed the bucket the sponge had been in--it was empty now, of course--and charged for the extra-deep janitor's sink in the corner.

  "Shouldn't I kill the juice, P
aul?" Van Hay called through the mesh. He sounded completely rattled. "Shouldn't I--"

  "No!" I shouted back. Brutal had understood it first, but I hadn't been far behind: we had to finish it. Whatever else we might do in all the rest of our lives was secondary to that one thing: we had to finish with Delacroix. "Roll, for Christ's sake! Roll, roll, roll!"

  I turned to Brutal, hardly aware of the people talking behind us now, some on their feet, a couple screaming. "Quit that!" I yelled at Brutal. "No water! No water! Are you nuts?"

  Brutal turned toward me, a kind of dazed understanding on his face. Throw water on a man who was getting the juice. Oh yes. That would be very smart. He looked around, saw the chemical fire extinguisher hanging on the wall, and got that instead. Good boy.

  The mask had peeled away from Delacroix's face enough to reveal features that had gone blacker than John Coffey's. His eyes, now nothing but misshapen globs of white, filmy jelly, had been blown out of their sockets and lay on his cheeks. His eyelashes were gone, and as I looked, the lids themselves caught fire and began to burn. Smoke puffed from the open V of his shirt. And still the humming of the electricity went on and on, filling my head, vibrating in there. I think it's the sound mad people must hear, that or something like it.

  Dean started forward, thinking in some dazed way that he could beat the fire out of Del's shirt with his hands, and I yanked him away almost hard enough to pull him off his feet. Touching Delacroix at that point would have been like Brer Rabbit punching into the Tar-Baby. An electrified Tar-Baby, in this case.

  I still didn't turn around to see what was going on behind us, but it sounded like pandemonium, chairs falling over, people bellowing, a woman crying "Stop it, stop it, oh can't you see he's had enough?" at the top of her lungs. Curtis Anderson grabbed my shoulder and asked what was happening, for Christ's sake, what was happening, and why didn't I order Jack to shut down?

  "Because I can't," I said. "We've gone too far to turn back, can't you see that? It'll be over in a few more seconds, anyway."