by Stephen King
Elaine shuddered.
"Anyway, I got thinking about all that and couldn't sleep, so I came down here. I turned on AMC, thinking you might come down and we'd have us a little date--"
She laughed and kissed my forehead just above the eyebrow. It used to make me prickle all over when Janice did that, and it still made me prickle all over when Elaine did it early this morning. I guess some things don't ever change.
"--and what came on was this old black-and-white gangster movie from the forties. Kiss of Death, it's called."
I could feel myself wanting to start shaking again and tried to suppress it.
"Richard Widmark's in it," I said. "It was his first big part, I think. I never went to see it with Jan--we gave the cops and robbers a miss, usually--but I remember reading somewhere that Widmark gave one hell of a performance as the punk. He sure did. He's pale . . . doesn't seem to walk so much as go gliding around . . . he's always calling people 'squirt' . . . talking about squealers . . . how much he hates the squealers . . ."
I was starting to shiver again in spite of my best efforts. I just couldn't help it.
"Blond hair," I whispered. "Lank blond hair. I watched until the part where he pushed this old woman in a wheelchair down a flight of stairs, then I turned it off."
"He reminded you of Wharton?"
"He was Wharton," I said. "To the life."
"Paul--" she began, and stopped. She looked at the blank screen of the TV (the cable box on top of it was still on, the red numerals still showing 10, the number of the AMC channel), then back at me.
"What?" I asked. "What, Elaine?" Thinking, She's going to tell me I ought to quit writing about it. That I ought to tear up the pages I've written so far and just quit on it.
What she said was "Don't let this stop you."
I gawped at her.
"Close your mouth, Paul--you'll catch a fly."
"Sorry. It's just that . . . well . . ."
"You thought I was going to tell you just the opposite, didn't you?"
"Yes."
She took my hands in hers (gently, so gently--her long and beautiful fingers, her bunched and ugly knuckles) and leaned forward, fixing my blue eyes with her hazel ones, the left slightly dimmed by the mist of a coalescing cataract. "I may be too old and brittle to live," she said, "but I'm not too old to think. What's a few sleepless nights at our age? What's seeing a ghost on the TV, for that matter? Are you going to tell me it's the only one you've ever seen?"
I thought about Warden Moores, and Harry Terwilliger, and Brutus Howell; I thought about my mother, and about Jan, my wife, who died in Alabama. I knew about ghosts, all right.
"No," I said. "It wasn't the first ghost I've ever seen. But Elaine--it was a shock. Because it was him."
She kissed me again, then stood up, wincing as she did so and pressing the heels of her hands to the tops of her hips, as if she were afraid they might actually explode out through her skin if she wasn't very careful.
"I think I've changed my mind about the television," she said. "I've got an extra pill that I've been keeping for a rainy day . . . or night. I think I'll take it and go back to bed. Maybe you should do the same."
"Yes," I said. "I suppose I should." For one wild moment I thought of suggesting that we go back to bed together, and then I saw the dull pain in her eyes and thought better of it. Because she might have said yes, and she would only have said that for me. Not so good.
We left the TV room (I won't dignify it with that other name, not even to be ironic) side by side, me matching my steps to hers, which were slow and painfully careful. The building was quiet except for someone moaning in the grip of a bad dream behind some closed door.
"Will you be able to sleep, do you think?" she asked.
"Yes, I think so," I said, but of course I wasn't able to; I lay in my bed until sunup, thinking about Kiss of Death. I'd see Richard Widmark, giggling madly, tying the old lady into her wheelchair and then pushing her down the stairs--"This is what we do to squealers," he told her--and then his face would merge into the face of William Wharton as he'd looked on the day when he came to E Block and the Green Mile--Wharton giggling like Widmark, Wharton screaming, Ain't this a party, now? Is it, or what? I didn't bother with breakfast, not after that; I just came down here to the solarium and began to write.
Ghosts? Sure.
I know all about ghosts.
2
"Whoooee, boys!" Wharton laughed. "Ain't this a party, now? Is it, or what?"
Still screaming and laughing, Wharton went back to choking Dean with his chain. Why not? Wharton knew what Dean and Harry and my friend Brutus Howell knew--they could only fry a man once.
"Hit him!" Harry Terwilliger screamed. He had grappled with Wharton, tried to stop things before they got fairly started, but Wharton had thrown him off and now Harry was trying to find his feet. "Percy, hit him!"
But Percy only stood there, hickory baton in hand, eyes as wide as soup-plates. He loved that damned baton of his, and you would have said this was the chance to use it he'd been pining for ever since he came to Cold Mountain Penitentiary . . . but now that it had come, he was too scared to use the opportunity. This wasn't some terrified little Frenchman like Delacroix or a black giant who hardly seemed to know he was in his own body, like John Coffey; this was a whirling devil.
I came out of Wharton's cell, dropping my clipboard and pulling my .38. For the second time that day I had forgotten the infection that was heating up my middle. I didn't doubt the story the others told of Wharton's blank face and dull eyes when they recounted it later, but that wasn't the Wharton I saw. What I saw was the face of an animal--not an intelligent animal, but one filled with cunning . . . and meanness . . . and joy. Yes. He was doing what he had been made to do. The place and the circumstances didn't matter. The other thing I saw was Dean Stanton's red, swelling face. He was dying in front of my eyes. Wharton saw the gun in my hand and turned Dean toward it, so that I'd almost certainly have to hit one to hit the other. From over Dean's shoulder, one blazing blue eye dared me to shoot. Wharton's other eye was hidden by Dean's hair. Behind them I saw Percy standing irresolute, with his baton half-raised. And then, filling the open doorway to the prison yard, a miracle in the flesh: Brutus Howell. They had finished moving the last of the infirmary equipment, and he had come over to see who wanted coffee.
He acted without a moment's hesitation--shoved Percy aside and into the wall with tooth-rattling force, pulled his own baton out of its loop, and brought it crashing down on the back of Wharton's head with all the force in his massive right arm. There was a dull whock! sound--an almost hollow sound, as if there were no brain at all under Wharton's skull--and the chain finally loosened around Dean's neck. Wharton went down like a sack of meal and Dean crawled away, hacking harshly and holding one hand to his throat, his eyes bulging.
I knelt by him and he shook his head violently. "Okay," he rasped. "Take care . . . him!" He motioned at Wharton. "Lock! Cell!"
I didn't think he'd need a cell, as hard as Brutal had hit him; I thought he'd need a coffin. No such luck, though. Wharton was conked out, but a long way from dead. He lay sprawled on his side, one arm thrown out so that the tips of his fingers touched the linoleum of the Green Mile, his eyes shut, his breathing slow but regular. There was even a peaceful little smile on his face, as if he'd gone to sleep listening to his favorite lullaby. A tiny red rill of blood was seeping out of his hair and staining the collar of his new prison shirt. That was all.
"Percy," I said. "Help me!"
Percy didn't move, only stood against the wall, staring with wide, stunned eyes. I don't think he knew exactly where he was.
"Percy, goddammit, grab hold of him!"
He got moving, then, and Harry helped him. Together the three of us hauled the unconscious Mr. Wharton into his cell while Brutal helped Dean to his feet and held him as gently as any mother while Dean bent over and hacked air back into his lungs.
Our new problem child didn't wa
ke up for almost three hours, but when he did, he showed absolutely no ill effects from Brutal's savage hit. He came to the way he moved--fast. At one moment he was lying on his bunk, dead to the world. At the next he was standing at the bars--he was silent as a cat--and staring out at me as I sat at the duty desk, writing a report on the incident. When I finally sensed someone looking at me and glanced up, there he was, his grin displaying a set of blackening, dying teeth with several gaps among them already. It gave me a jump to see him there like that. I tried not to show it, but I think he knew. "Hey, flunky," he said. "Next time it'll be you. And I won't miss."
"Hello, Wharton," I said, as evenly as I could. "Under the circumstances, I guess I can skip the speech and the Welcome Wagon, don't you think?"
His grin faltered just a little. It wasn't the sort of response he had expected, and probably wasn't the one I would have given under other circumstances. But something had happened while Wharton was unconscious. It is, I suppose, one of the major things I have trudged through all these pages to tell you about. Now let's just see if you believe it.
3
EXCEPT FOR SHOUTING once at Delacroix, Percy kept his mouth shut once the excitement was over. This was probably the result of shock rather than any effort at tact--Percy Wetmore knew as much about tact as I do about the native tribes of darkest Africa, in my opinion--but it was a damned good thing, just the same. If he'd started in whining about how Brutal had pushed him into the wall or wondering why no one had told him that nasty men like Wild Billy Wharton sometimes turned up on E Block, I think we would have killed him. Then we could have toured the Green Mile in a whole new way. That's sort of a funny idea, when you consider it. I missed my chance to make like James Cagney in White Heat.
Anyway, when we were sure that Dean was going to keep breathing and that he wasn't going to pass out on the spot, Harry and Brutal escorted him over to the infirmary. Delacroix, who had been absolutely silent during the scuffle (he had been in prison lots of times, that one, and knew when it was prudent to keep his yap shut and when it was relatively safe to open it again), began bawling loudly down the corridor as Harry and Brutal helped Dean out. Delacroix wanted to know what had happened. You would have thought his constitutional rights had been violated.
"Shut up, you little queer!" Percy yelled back, so furious that the veins stood out on the sides of his neck. I put a hand on his arm and felt it quivering beneath his shirt. Some of this was residual fright, of course (every now and then I had to remind myself that part of Percy's problem was that he was only twenty-one, not much older than Wharton), but I think most of it was rage. He hated Delacroix. I don't know just why, but he did.
"Go see if Warden Moores is still here," I told Percy. "If he is, give him a complete verbal report on what happened. Tell him he'll have my written report on his desk tomorrow, if I can manage it."
Percy swelled visibly at this responsibility; for a horrible moment or two, I actually thought he might salute. "Yes, sir. I will."
"Begin by telling him that the situation in E Block is normal. It's not a story, and the warden won't appreciate you dragging it out to heighten the suspense."
"I won't."
"Okay. Off you go."
He started for the door, then turned back. The one thing you could count on with him was contrariness. I desperately wanted him gone, my groin was on fire, and now he didn't seem to want to go.
"Are you all right, Paul?" he asked. "Running a fever, maybe? Got a touch of the grippe? Cause there's sweat all over your face."
"I might have a touch of something, but mostly I'm fine," I said. "Go on, Percy, tell the warden."
He nodded and left--thank Christ for small favors. As soon as the door was closed, I lunged into my office. Leaving the duty desk unmanned was against regulations, but I was beyond caring about that. It was bad--like it had been that morning.
I managed to get into the little toilet cubicle behind the desk and to get my business out of my pants before the urine started to gush, but it was a near thing. I had to put a hand over my mouth to stifle a scream as I began to flow, and grabbed blindly for the lip of the washstand with the other. It wasn't like my house, where I could fall to my knees and piss a puddle beside the woodpile; if I went to my knees here, the urine would go all over the floor.
I managed to keep my feet and not to scream, but it was a close thing on both counts. It felt like my urine had been filled with tiny slivers of broken glass. The smell coming up from the toilet bowl was swampy and unpleasant, and I could see white stuff--pus, I guess--floating on the surface of the water.
I took the towel off the rack and wiped my face with it. I was sweating, all right; it was pouring off me. I looked into the metal mirror and saw the flushed face of a man running a high fever looking back at me. Hundred and three? Hundred and four? Better not to know, maybe. I put the towel back on its bar, flushed the toilet, and walked slowly back across my office to the cellblock door. I was afraid Bill Dodge or someone else might have come in and seen three prisoners with no attendants, but the place was empty. Wharton still lay unconscious on his bunk, Delacroix had fallen silent, and John Coffey had never made a single noise at all, I suddenly realized. Not a peep. Which was worrisome.
I went down the Mile and glanced into Coffey's cell, half-expecting to discover he'd committed suicide in one of the two common Death Row ways--either hanging himself with his pants, or gnawing into his wrists. No such thing, it turned out. Coffey merely sat on the end of his bunk with his hands in his lap, the largest man I'd ever seen in my life, looking at me with his strange, wet eyes.
"Cap'n?" he said.
"What's up, big boy?"
"I need to see you."
"Ain't you looking right at me, John Coffey?"
He said nothing to this, only went on studying me with his strange, leaky gaze. I sighed.
"In a second, big boy."
I looked over at Delacroix, who was standing at the bars of his cell. Mr. Jingles, his pet mouse (Delacroix would tell you he'd trained Mr. Jingles to do tricks, but us folks who worked on the Green Mile were pretty much unanimous in the opinion that Mr. Jingles had trained himself), was jumping restlessly back and forth from one of Del's outstretched hands to the other, like an acrobat doing leaps from platforms high above the center ring. His eyes were huge, his ears laid back against his sleek brown skull. I hadn't any doubt that the mouse was reacting to Delacroix's nerves. As I watched, he ran down Delacroix's pantsleg and across the cell to where the brightly colored spool lay against one wall. He pushed the spool back to Delacroix's foot and then looked up at him eagerly, but the little Cajun took no notice of his friend, at least for the time being.
"What happen, boss?" Delacroix asked. "Who been hurt?"
"Everything's jake," I said. "Our new boy came in like a lion, but now he's passed out like a lamb. All's well that ends well."
"It ain't over yet," Delacroix said, looking up the Mile toward the cell where Wharton was jugged. "L'homme mauvais, c'est vrai!"
"Well," I said, "don't let it get you down, Del. Nobody's going to make you play skiprope with him out in the yard."
There was a creaking sound from behind me as Coffey got off his bunk. "Boss Edgecombe!" he said again. This time he sounded urgent. "I need to talk to you!"
I turned to him, thinking, all right, no problem, talking was my business. All the time trying not to shiver, because the fever had turned cold, as they sometimes will. Except for my groin, which still felt as if it had been slit open, filled with hot coals, and then sewed back up again.
"So talk, John Coffey," I said, trying to keep my voice light and calm. For the first time since he'd come onto E Block, Coffey looked as though he was really here, really among us. The almost ceaseless trickle of tears from the corners of his eyes had ceased, at least for the time being, and I knew he was seeing what he was looking at--Mr. Paul Edgecombe, E Block's bull-goose screw, and not some place he wished he could return to, and take back the terrible thing h
e'd done.
"No," he said. "You got to come in here."
"Now, you know I can't do that," I said, still trying for the light tone, "at least not right this minute. I'm on my own here for the time being, and you outweigh me by just about a ton and a half. We've had us one hooraw this afternoon, and that's enough. So we'll just have us a chat through the bars, if it's all the same to you, and--"
"Please!" He was holding the bars so tightly that his knuckles were pale and his fingernails were white. His face was long with distress, those strange eyes sharp with some need I could not understand. I remember thinking that maybe I could've understood it if I hadn't been so sick, and knowing that would have given me a way of helping him through the rest of it. When you know what a man needs, you know the man, more often than not. "Please, Boss Edgecombe! You have to come in!"
That's the nuttiest thing I ever heard, I thought, and then realized something even nuttier: I was going to do it. I had my keys off my belt and I was hunting through them for the ones that opened John Coffey's cell. He could have picked me up and broken me over his knee like kindling on a day when I was well and feeling fine, and this wasn't that day. All the same, I was going to do it. On my own, and less than half an hour after a graphic demonstration of where stupidity and laxness could get you when you were dealing with condemned murderers, I was going to open this black giant's cell, go in, and sit with him. If I was discovered, I might well lose my job even if he didn't do anything crazy, but I was going to do it, just the same.
Stop, I said to myself, you just stop now, Paul. But I didn't. I used one key on the top lock, another on the bottom lock, and then I slid the door back on its track.
"You know, boss, that maybe not such a good idear," Delacroix said in a voice so nervous and prissy it would probably have made me laugh under other circumstances.