The Mouse on the Mile Read online

  They never caught whoever did for him. By then I was out of the corrections line of work, but Harry Terwilliger wrote and told me. "He got commuted mostly because he was white," Harry wrote, "but he got it in the end, just the same. I just think of it as a long stay of execution that finally ran out."

  There was a quiet time for us in E Block, once The Pres was gone. Harry and Dean were temporarily reassigned, and it was just me, Brutal, and Percy on the Green Mile for a little bit. Which actually meant just me and Brutal, because Percy kept pretty much to himself. I tell you, that young man was a genius at finding things not to do. And every so often (but only when Percy wasn't around), the other guys would show up to have what Harry liked to call "a good gab." On many of these occasions the mouse would also show up. We'd feed him and he'd sit there eating, just as solemn as Solomon, watching us with his bright little oilspot eyes.

  That was a good few weeks, calm and easy even with Percy's more than occasional carping. But all good things come to an end, and on a rainy Monday in late July — have I told you how rainy and dank that summer was? — I found myself sitting on the bunk of an open cell and waiting for Eduard Delacroix.

  He came with an unexpected bang. The door leading into the exercise yard slammed open, letting in a

  flood of light, there was a confused rattle of chains, a frightened voice babbling away in a mixture of English and Cajun French (a patois the cons at Cold Mountain used to call da bayou), and Brutal hollering, 'Hey! Quit it! For Chrissakes! Quit it, Percy!'

  I had been half-dozing on what was to become Delacroix's bunk, but I was up in a hurry, my heart slugging away hard in my chest. Noise of that kind on E Block almost never happened until Percy came; he brought it along with him like a bad smell.

  'Come on, you fuckin French-fried faggot!' Percy yelled, ignoring Brutal completely. And here he came, dragging a guy not much bigger than a bowling pin by one arm. In his other hand, Percy had his baton. His teeth were bared in a strained grimace, and his face was bright red. Yet he did not look entirely unhappy. Delacroix was trying to keep up with him, but he had the legirons on, and no matter how fast he shuffled his feet, Percy pulled him along faster. I sprang out of the cell just in time to catch him as he fell, and that was how Del and I were introduced.

  Percy rounded on him, baton raised, and I held him back with one arm. Brutal came puffing up to us, looking as shocked and nonplussed by all this as I felt.

  'Don't let him hit me no mo, m'sieu,' Delacroix babbled. 'S'il vous plaît, s'il vous plaît!'

  'Let me at im, let me at im!' Percy cried, lunging forward. He began to hit at Delacroix's shoulders with his baton. Delacroix held his arms up, screaming, and the stick went whap-whap-whap against the sleeves of his blue prison shirt. I saw him that night with the shirt off, and that boy had bruises from Christmas to Easter. Seeing them made me feel bad. He was a murderer, and nobody's darling, but that's not the way we did things on E Block. Not until Percy came, anyhow.

  'Whoa! Whoa!' I roared. 'Quit that! What's it all about, anyway?' I was trying to get my body in between Delacroix's and Percy's, but it wasn't working very well. Percy's club continued to flail away, now on one side of me and now on the other. Sooner or later he was going to bring one down on me instead of on his intended target, and then there was going to be a brawl right here in this corridor, no matter who his relations were. I wouldn't be able to help myself, and Brutal was apt to join in. In some ways, you know, I wish we'd done it. It might have changed some of the things that happened later on.

  'Fucking faggot! I'll teach you to keep your hands off me, you lousy bum-puncher!'

  Whap! Whap! Whap! And now Delacroix was bleeding from one ear and screaming. I gave up trying to shield him, grabbed him by one shoulder, and hurled him into his cell, where he went sprawling on the bunk. Percy darted around me and gave him a final hard whap on the butt — one to go on, you could say. Then Brutal grabbed him — Percy — I mean — by the shoulders and hauled him across the corridor.

  I grabbed the cell door and ran it shut on its tracks. Then I turned to Percy, my shock and bewilderment at war with pure fury. Percy had been around about several months at that point, long enough for all of us to decide we didn't like him very much, but that was the first time I fully understood how out of control he was.

  He stood watching me, not entirely without fear — he was a coward at heart, I never had any doubt of that — but still confident that his connections would protect him. In that he was correct. I suspect there are people who wouldn't understand why that was, even after all I've said, but they would be people who only know the phrase Great Depression from the history books. If you were there, it was a lot more than a phrase in a book, and if you had a steady job, brother, you'd do almost anything to keep it.

  The color was fading out of Percy's face a little by then, but his cheeks were still flushed, and his hair, which was usually swept back and gleaming with brilliantine, had tumbled over his forehead.

  'What in the Christ was that all about?' I asked. 'I have never — I have never! — had a prisoner beaten onto my block before!'

  'Little fag bastard tried to cop my joint when I pulled him out of the van,' Percy said. 'He had it coming, and I'd do it again.'

  I looked at him, too flabbergasted for words. I couldn't imagine the most predatory homosexual on God's green earth doing what Percy had just described. Preparing to move into a crossbar apartment on the Green Mile did not, as a rule, put even the most deviant of prisoners in a sexy mood.

  I looked back at Delacroix, cowering on his bunk with his arms still up to protect his face. There were cuffs on his wrists and a chain running between his ankles. Then I turned to Percy 'Get out of here,' I said. 'I'll want to talk to you later.'

  'Is this going to be in your report?' he demanded truculently. 'Because if it is, I can make a report of my own, you know.'

  I didn't want to make a report; I only wanted him out of my sight. I told him so.

  'The matter's closed,' I finished. I saw Brutal looking at me disapprovingly, but ignored it. 'Go on, get out of here. Go over to Admin and tell them you're supposed to read letters and help in the package room.'

  'Sure.' He had his composure back, or the crack-headed arrogance that served him as composure. He brushed his hair back from his forehead with his hands — soft and white and small, the hands of a girl in her early teens, you would have thought — and then approached the cell. Delacroix saw him, and he cringed back even farther on his bunk, gibbering in a mixture of English and stewpot French.

  'I ain't done with you, Pierre,' he said, then jumped as one of Brutal's huge hands fell on his shoulder.

  'Yes you are,' Brutal said. 'Now go on. Get in the breeze.'

  'You don't scare me, you know,' Percy said. 'Not a bit.' His eyes shifted to me. 'Either of you.' But we did. You could see that in his eyes as clear as day, and it made him even more dangerous. A guy like Percy doesn't even know himself what he means to do from minute to minute and second to second.

  What he did right then was turn away from us and go walking up the corridor in long, arrogant strides. He had shown the world what happened when scrawny, half-bald little Frenchmen tried to cop his joint, by God, and he was leaving the field a victor.

  I went through my set speech, all about how we had the radio — Make Believe Ballroom and Our Gal Sunday, and how we'd treat him jake if he did the same for us. That little homily was not what you'd call one of my great successes. He cried all the way through it, sitting huddled up at the foot of his bunk, as far from me as he could get without actually fading into the corner. He cringed every time I moved, and I don't think he heard one word in six. Probably just as well. I don't think that particular homily made a whole lot of sense, anyway.

  Fifteen minutes later I was back at the desk, where a shaken-looking Brutus Howell was sitting and licking the tip of the pencil we kept with the visitors' book. 'Will you stop that before you poison yourself, for God's sake?' I asked.

/>   'Christ almighty Jesus,' he said, putting the pencil down. 'I never want to have another hooraw like that with a prisoner coming on the block.'

  'My Daddy always used to say things come in threes,' I said.

  'Well, I hope your Daddy was full of shit on that subject,' Brutal said, but of course he wasn't. There was a squall when John Coffey came in, and a fullblown storm when "Wild Bill" joined us — it's funny, but things really do seem to come in threes. The story of our introduction to Wild Bill, how he came onto the Mile trying to commit murder, is something I'll get to shortly; fair warning.

  'What's this about Delacroix copping his joint?' I asked.

  Brutal snorted. 'He was ankle-chained and ole Percy was just pulling him too fast, that's all. He stumbled and started to fall as he got out of the stagecoach. He put his hands out same as anyone would when they start to fall, and one of them brushed the front of Percy's pants. It was a complete accident.'

  'Did Percy know that, do you think?' I asked. 'Was he maybe using it as an excuse just because he felt like whaling on Delacroix a little bit? Showing him who bosses the shooting match around here?'

  Brutal nodded slowly. 'Yeah. I think that was probably it.'

  'We have to watch him, then,' I said, and ran my hands, through my hair. As if the job wasn't hard enough. 'God, I hate this. I hate him.'

  'Me, too. And you want to know something else, Paul? I don't understand him. He's got connections, I understand that, all right, but why would he use them to get a job on the Green fucking Mile? Anywhere in the state pen, for that matter? Why not as a page in the state senate, or the guy who makes the lieutenant governor's appointments? Surely his people could've gotten him something better if he'd asked them, so why here?'

  I shook my head. I didn't know. There were a lot of things I didn't know then. I suppose I was naive.

  8

  After that, things went back to normal again . . . for awhile, at least. Down in the county seat, the state was preparing to bring John Coffey to trial, and Trapingus County Sheriff Homer Cribus was pooh-poohing the idea that a lynch-mob might hurry justice along a little bit. None of that mattered to us; on E Block, no one paid much attention to the news. Life on the Green Mile was, in a way, like life in a soundproof room. From time to time you heard mutterings that were probably explosions in the outside world, but that was about all. They wouldn't hurry with John Coffey; they'd want to make damned sure of him.

  On a couple of occasions Percy got to ragging Delacroix, and the second time I pulled him aside and told him to come up to my office. It wasn't my first interview with Percy on the subject of his behavior, and it wouldn't be the last, but it was prompted by what, was probably the clearest understanding of what he was. He had the heart of a cruel boy who goes to the zoo not so he can study the animals but so he can throw stones at them in their cages.

  'You stay away from him, now, you hear?' I said. 'Unless I give you a specific order, just stay the hell away from him.'

  Percy combed his hair back, then patted at it with his sweet little hands. That boy just loved touching his hair. 'I wasn't doing nothing to him,' he said. 'Only asking how it felt to know you had burned up some babies, is all.' Percy gave me a round-eyed, innocent stare.

  'You quit with it, or there'll be a report,' I said.

  He laughed. 'Make any report you want,' he said. 'Then I'll turn around and make my own. Just like I told you when he came in. We'll see who comes off the best.'

  I leaned forward, hands folded on my desk, and spoke in a tone I hoped would sound like a friend being confidential. 'Brutus Howell doesn't like you much,' I said. 'And when Brutal doesn't like someone, he's been known to make his own report. He isn't much shakes with a pen, and he can't quit from licking that pencil, so he's apt to report with his fists. If you know what I mean.'

  Percy's complacent little smile faltered. 'What are you trying to say'

  'I'm not trying to say anything. I have said it. And if you tell any of your . . .friends . . . about this discussion, I'll say you made the whole thing up.' I looked at him all wide-eyed and earnest. 'Besides, I'm trying to be your friend, Percy. A word to the wise is sufficient, they say. And why would you want to get into it with Delacroix in the first place? He's not worth it.'

  And for awhile that worked. There was peace. A couple of times I was even able to send Percy with Dean or Harry when Delacroix's time to shower had rolled around. We had the radio at night, Delacroix began to relax a little into the scant routine of E Block, and there was peace.

  Then, one night, I heard him laughing.

  Harry Terwilliger was on the desk, and soon he was laughing, too. I got up and went on down to Delacroix's cell to see what he possibly had to laugh about.

  'Look, Cap'n' he said when he saw me. 'I done tame me a mouse!'

  It was Steamboat Willy. He was in Delacroix's cell. More: he was sitting on Delacroix's shoulder and looking calmly out through the bars at us with his little oildrop eyes. His tail was curled around his paws, and he looked completely at peace. As for Delacroix — friend, you wouldn't have known it was the same man who'd sat cringing and shuddering at the foot of his bunk not a week before. He looked like my daughter used to on Christmas morning, when she came down the stairs and saw the presents.

  'Watch dis!' Delacroix said. The mouse was sitting on his right shoulder. Delacroix stretched out his left arm. The mouse scampered up to the top of Delacroix's head, using the man's hair (which was thick enough in back, at least) to climb up. Then he scampered down the other side, Delacroix giggling as his tail tickled the side of his neck. The mouse ran all the way down his arm to his wrist, then turned, scampered back up to Delacroix's left shoulder, and curled his tail around his feet again.

  'I'll be damned,' Harry said.

  'I train him to do that,' Delacroix said proudly. I thought, In a pig's ass you did, but kept my mouth shut. 'His name is Mr. Jingles.'

  'Nah,' Harry said goodnaturedly. 'It's Steamboat Willy, like in the pitcher-show. Boss Howell named him.'

  'It's Mr. Jingles,' Delacroix said. On any other subject he would have told you that shit was Shinola, if you wanted him to, but on the subject of the mouse's name he was perfectly adamant. 'He whisper it in my ear. Cap'n, can I have a box for him? Can I have a box for my mous,' so he can sleep in here wit me?' His voice began to fall into wheedling tones I had heard a thousand times before. 'I put him under my bunk and he never be a scrid of trouble, not one.'

  'Your English gets a hell of a lot better when you want something,' I said, stalling for time.

  'Oh-oh,' Harry murmured, nudging me. 'Here comes trouble.'

  But Percy didn't look like trouble to me, not that night. He wasn't running his hands through his hair or fiddling with that baton of his, and the top button of his uniform shirt was actually undone. It was the first time I'd seen him that way, and it was amazing, what a change a little thing like that could make. Mostly, though, what struck me was the expression on his face. There was a calmness there. Not serenity — I don't think Percy Wetmore had a serene bone in his body — but the look of a man who has discovered he can wait for the things he wants. It was quite a change from the young man I'd had to threaten with Brutus Howell's fists only a few days before.

  Delacroix didn't see the change, though; he cringed against the wall of his cell, drawing his knees up to his chest. His eyes seemed to grow until they were taking up half his face. The mouse scampered up on his bald pate and sat there. I don't know if he remembered that he also had reason to distrust Percy, but it certainly looked as if he did. Probably it was just smelling the little Frenchman's fear, and reacting off that.

  'Well, well,' Percy said. 'Looks like you found yourself a friend, Eddie.'

  Delacroix tried to reply — some hollow defiance about what would happen to Percy if Percy hurt his new pal would have been my guess — but nothing came out. His lower lip trembled a little, but that was all. On top of his head, Mr. Jingles wasn't trembling. He sat perfectly still w
ith his back feet in Delacroix's hair and his front ones splayed on Delacroix's bald looking at Percy, seeming to size him up. The way you'd size up an old enemy.

  Percy looked at me. 'Isn't that the same one I chased? The one that lives in the restraint room?'

  I nodded. I had an idea Percy hadn't seen the newly named Mr. Jingles since that last chase, and he showed no signs of wanting to chase it now.

  'Yes, that's the one,' I said. 'Only Delacroix there says his name is Mr. Jingles, not Steamboat Willy. Says the mouse whispered it in his ear.'

  'Is that so,' Percy said. 'Wonders never cease, do they?' I half-expected him to pull out his baton and start tapping it against the bars, just to show Delacroix who was boss, but he only stood there with his hands on his hips, looking in.

  And for no reason I could have told you in words, I said: 'Delacroix there was just asking for a box, Percy. He thinks that mouse will sleep in it, I guess. That he can keep it for a pet.' I loaded my voice with skepticism, and sensed more than saw Harry looking at me in surprise. 'What do you think about that?'

  'I think it'll probably shit up his nose some night while he's sleeping and then run away,' Percy said evenly, 'but I guess that's the French boy's lookout. I seen a pretty nice cigar box on Toot-Toot's cart the other night. I don't know if he'd give it away, though. Probably want a nickel for it, maybe even a dime.'

  Now I did risk a glance at Harry, and saw his mouth hanging open. This wasn't quite like the change in Ebenezer Scrooge on Christmas morning, after the ghosts had had their way with him, but it was damned close.

  Percy leaned closer to Delacroix, putting his face between the bars. Delacroix shrank back even farther. I swear to God that he would have melted into that wall if he'd been able.

  'You got a nickel or maybe as much as a dime to pay for a cigar box, you lugoon?' he asked.

  'I got four pennies,' Delacroix said. 'I give them for a box, if it a good one, s'il est bon.'