The Green Mile

by Stephen King

  But the death of Eduard Delacroix had been the ugliest, foulest thing I had ever seen in my life--not just my working life but my whole, entire life--and I had been a party to it. We had all been a party to it, because we had allowed Percy Wetmore to stay even after we knew he was horribly unfit to work in a place like E Block. We had played the game. Even Warden Moores had been a party to it. "His nuts are going to cook whether Wetmore's on the team or not," he had said, and maybe that was well enough, considering what the little Frenchman had done, but in the end Percy had done a lot more than cook Del's nuts; he had blown the little man's eyeballs right out of their sockets and set his damned face on fire. And why? Because Del was a murderer half a dozen times over? No. Because Percy had wet his pants and the little Cajun had had the temerity to laugh at him. We'd been part of a monstrous act, and Percy was going to get away with it. Off to Briar Ridge he would go, happy as a clam at high tide, and there he would have a whole asylum filled with lunatics to practice his cruelties upon. There was nothing we could do about that, but perhaps it was not too late to wash some of the muck off our own hands.

  "In my church they call it atonement instead of balancing," I said, "but I guess it comes to the same thing."

  "Do you really think Coffey could save her?" Dean asked in a soft, awed voice. "Just . . . what? . . . suck that brain tumor out of her head? Like it was a . . . a peach-pit?"

  "I think he could. It's not for sure, of course, but after what he did to me . . . and to Mr. Jingles . . ."

  "That mouse was seriously busted up, all right," Brutal said.

  "But would he do it?" Harry mused. "Would he?"

  "If he can, he will," I said.

  "Why? Coffey doesn't even know her!"

  "Because it's what he does. It's what God made him for."

  Brutal made a show of looking around, reminding us all that someone was missing. "What about Percy? You think he's just gonna let this go down?" he asked, and so I told them what I had in mind for Percy. By the time I finished, Harry and Dean were looking at me in amazement, and a reluctant grin of admiration had dawned on Brutal's face.

  "Pretty audacious, Brother Paul!" he said. "Fair takes my breath away!"

  "But wouldn't it be the bee's knees!" Dean almost whispered, then laughed aloud and clapped his hands like a child. "I mean, voh-dohdee-oh-doh and twenty-three-skidoo!" You want to remember that Dean had a special interest in the part of my plan that involved Percy--Percy could have gotten Dean killed, after all, freezing up the way he had.

  "Yeah, but what about after?" Harry said. He sounded gloomy, but his eyes gave him away; they were sparkling, the eyes of a man who wants to be convinced. "What then?"

  "They say dead men tell no tales," Brutal rumbled, and I took a quick look at him to make sure he was joking.

  "I think he'll keep his mouth shut," I said.

  "Really?" Dean looked skeptical. He took off his glasses and began to polish them. "Convince me."

  "First, he won't know what really happened--he's going to judge us by himself and think it was just a prank. Second--and more important--he'll be afraid to say anything. That's what I'm really counting on. We tell him that if he starts writing letters and making phone calls, we start writing letters and making phone calls."

  "About the execution," Harry said.

  "And about the way he froze when Wharton attacked Dean," Brutal said. "I think people finding out about that is what Percy Wetmore's really afraid of." He nodded slowly and thoughtfully. "It could work. But Paul . . . wouldn't it make more sense to bring Mrs. Moores to Coffey than Coffey to Mrs. Moores? We could take care of Percy pretty much the way you laid it out, then bring her in through the tunnel instead of taking Coffey out that way."

  I shook my head. "Never happen. Not in a million years."

  "Because of Warden Moores?"

  "That's right. He's so hardheaded he makes old Doubting Thomas look like Joan of Arc. If we bring Coffey to his house, I think we can surprise him into at least letting Coffey make the try. Otherwise . . ."

  "What were you thinking about using for a vehicle?" Brutal asked.

  "My first thought was the stagecoach," I said, "but we'd never get it out of the yard without being noticed, and everyone within a twenty-mile radius knows what it looks like, anyway. I guess maybe we can use my Ford."

  "Guess again," Dean said, popping his specs back onto his nose. "You couldn't get John Coffey into your car if you stripped him naked, covered him with lard, and used a shoehorn. You're so used to looking at him that you've forgotten how big he is."

  I had no reply to that. Most of my attention that morning had been focused on the problem of Percy--and the lesser but not inconsiderable problem of Wild Bill Wharton. Now I realized that transportation wasn't going to be as simple as I had hoped.

  Harry Terwilliger picked up the remains of his second sandwich, looked at it for a second, then put it down again. "If we was to actually do this crazy thing," he said, "I guess we could use my pickup truck. Sit him in the back of that. Wouldn't be nobody much on the roads at that hour. We're talking about well after midnight, ain't we?"

  "Yes," I said.

  "You guys're forgetting one thing," Dean said. "I know Coffey's been pretty quiet ever since he came on the block, doesn't do much but lay there on his bunk and leak from the eyes, but he's a murderer. Also, he's huge. If he decided he wanted to escape out of the back of Harry's truck, the only way we could stop him would be to shoot him dead. And a guy like that would take a lot of killing, even with a .45. Suppose we weren't able to put him down? And suppose he killed someone else? I'd hate losing my job, and I'd hate going to jail--I got a wife and kids depending on me to put bread in their mouths--but I don't think I'd hate either of those things near as much as having another dead little girl on my conscience."

  "That won't happen," I said.

  "How in God's name can you be so sure of that?"

  I didn't answer. I didn't know just how to begin. I had known this would come up, of course I did, but I still didn't know how to start telling them what I knew. Brutal helped me.

  "You don't think he did it, do you, Paul?" He looked incredulous. "You think that big lug is innocent."

  "I'm positive he's innocent," I said.

  "How in the name of Jesus can you be?"

  "There are two things," I said. "One of them is my shoe." I leaned forward over the table and began talking.

  PART FIVE

  NIGHT

  JOURNEY

  1

  MR. H. G. WELLS once wrote a story about a man who invented a time machine, and I have discovered that, in the writing of these memoirs, I have created my own time machine. Unlike Wells's, it can only travel into the past--back to 1932, as a matter of fact, when I was the bull-goose screw in E Block of Cold Mountain State Penitentiary--but it's eerily efficient, for all that. Still, this time machine reminds me of the old Ford I had in those days: you could be sure that it would start eventually, but you never knew if a turn of the key would be enough to fire the motor, or if you were going to have to get out and crank until your arm practically fell off.

  I've had a lot of easy starts since I started telling the story of John Coffey, but yesterday I had to crank. I think it was because I'd gotten to Delacroix's execution, and part of my mind didn't want to have to relive that. It was a bad death, a terrible death, and it happened the way it did because of Percy Wetmore, a young man who loved to comb his hair but couldn't stand to be laughed at--not even by a half-bald little Frenchman who was never going to see another Christmas.

  As with most dirty jobs, however, the hardest part is just getting started. It doesn't matter to an engine whether you use the key or have to crank; once you get it going, it'll usually run just as sweet either way. That's how it worked for me yesterday. At first the words came in little bursts of phrasing, then in whole sentences, then in a torrent. Writing is a special and rather terrifying form of remembrance, I've discovered--there is a totality to it that seems
almost like rape. Perhaps I only feel that way because I've become a very old man (a thing that happened behind my own back, I sometimes feel), but I don't think so. I believe that the combination of pencil and memory creates a kind of practical magic, and magic is dangerous. As a man who knew John Coffey and saw what he could do--to mice and to men--I feel very qualified to say that.

  Magic is dangerous.

  In any case, I wrote all day yesterday, the words simply flooding out of me, the sunroom of this glorified old folks' home gone, replaced by the storage room at the end of the Green Mile where so many of my problem children took their last sit-me-downs, and the bottom of the stairs which led to the tunnel under the road. That was where Dean and Harry and Brutal and I confronted Percy Wetmore over Eduard Delacroix's smoking body and made Percy renew his promise to put in for transfer to the Briar Ridge state mental facility.

  There are always fresh flowers in the sunroom, but by noon yesterday all I could smell was the noxious aroma of the dead man's cooked flesh. The sound of the power mower on the lawn down below had been replaced by the hollow plink of dripping water as it seeped slowly through the tunnel's curved roof. The trip was on. I had travelled back to 1932, in soul and mind, if not body.

  I skipped lunch, wrote until four o'clock or so, and when I finally put my pencil down, my hand was aching. I walked slowly down to the end of the second-floor corridor. There's a window there that looks out on the employee parking lot. Brad Dolan, the orderly who reminds me of Percy--and the one who is altogether too curious about where I go and what I do on my walks--drives an old Chevrolet with a bumper sticker that says I HAVE SEEN GOD AND HIS NAME IS NEWT. It was gone; Brad's shift was over and he'd taken himself off to whatever garden spot he calls home. I envision an Airstream trailer with Hustler gatefolds Scotch-taped to the walls and Dixie Beer cans in the corners.

  I went out through the kitchen, where dinner preparations were getting started. "What you got in that bag, Mr. Edgecombe?" Norton asked me.

  "It's an empty bottle," I said. "I've discovered the Fountain of Youth down there in the woods. I pop down every afternoon about this time and draw a little. I drink it at bedtime. Good stuff, I can tell you."

  "May be keepin you young," said George, the other cook, "but it ain't doin shit for your looks."

  We all had a laugh at that, and I went out. I found myself looking around for Dolan even though his car was gone, called myself a chump for letting him get so far under my skin, and crossed the croquet course. Beyond it is a scraggy little putting green that looks ever so much nicer in the Georgia Pines brochures, and beyond that is a path that winds into the little copse of woods east of the nursing home. There are a couple of old sheds along this path, neither of them used for anything these days. At the second, which stands close to the high stone wall between the Georgia Pines grounds and Georgia Highway 47, I went in and stayed for a little while.

  I ate a good dinner that night, watched a little TV, and went to bed early. On many nights I'll wake up and creep back down to the TV room, where I watch old movies on the American Movie Channel. Not last night, though; last night I slept like a stone, and with none of the dreams that have so haunted me since I started my adventures in literature. All that writing must have worn me out; I'm not as young as I used to be, you know.

  When I woke and saw that the patch of sun which usually lies on the floor at six in the morning had made it all the way up to the foot of my bed, I hit the deck in a hurry, so alarmed I hardly noticed the arthritic flare of pain in my hips and knees and ankles. I dressed as fast as I could, then hurried down the hall to the window that overlooks the employees' parking lot, hoping the slot where Dolan parks his old Chevrolet would still be empty. Sometimes he's as much as half an hour late--

  No such luck. The car was there, gleaming rustily in the morning sun. Because Mr. Brad Dolan has something to arrive on time for these days, doesn't he? Yes. Old Paulie Edgecombe goes somewhere in the early mornings, old Paulie Edgecombe is up to something, and Mr. Brad Dolan intends to find out what it is. What do you do down there, Paulie? Tell me. He would likely be watching for me already. It would be smart to stay right where I was . . . except I couldn't.

  "Paul?"

  I turned around so fast I almost fell down. It was my friend Elaine Connelly. Her eyes widened and she put out her hands, as if to catch me. Lucky for her I caught my balance; Elaine's arthritis is terrible, and I probably would have broken her in two like a dry stick if I'd fallen into her arms. Romance doesn't die when you pass into the strange country that lies beyond eighty, but you can forget the Gone with the Wind crap.

  "I'm sorry," she said. "I didn't mean to startle you."

  "That's all right," I said, and gave her a feeble smile. "It's a better wake-up than a faceful of cold water. I should hire you to do it every morning."

  "You were looking for his car, weren't you? Dolan's car."

  There was no sense kidding her about it, so I nodded. "I wish I could be sure he's over in the west wing. I'd like to slip out for a little while, but I don't want him to see me."

  She smiled--a ghost of the teasing imp's smile she must have had as a girl. "Nosy bastard, isn't he?"

  "Yes."

  "He's not in the west wing, either. I've already been down to breakfast, sleepyhead, and I can tell you where he is, because I peeked. He's in the kitchen."

  I looked at her, dismayed. I had known Dolan was curious, but not how curious.

  "Can you put your morning walk off?" Elaine asked.

  I thought about it. "I could, I suppose, but . . ."

  "You shouldn't."

  "No. I shouldn't."

  Now, I thought, she'll ask me where I go, what I have to do down in those woods that's so damned important.

  But she didn't. Instead she gave me that imp's smile again. It looked strange and absolutely wonderful on her too-gaunt, pain-haunted face. "Do you know Mr. Howland?" she asked.

  "Sure," I said, although I didn't see him much; he was in the west wing, which at Georgia Pines was almost like a neighboring country. "Why?"

  "Do you know what's special about him?"

  I shook my head.

  "Mr. Howland," Elaine said, smiling more widely than ever, "is one of only five residents left at Georgia Pines who have permission to smoke. That's because he was a resident before the rules changed."

  A grandfather clause, I thought. And what place was more fitted for one than an old-age home?

  She reached into the pocket of her blue-and-white-striped dress and pulled two items partway out: a cigarette and a book of matches. "Thief of green, thief of red," she sang in a lilting, funny voice. "Little Ellie's going to wet the bed."

  "Elaine, what--"

  "Walk an old girl downstairs," she said, putting the cigarette and matches back into her pocket and taking my arm in one of her gnarled hands. We began to walk back down the hall. As we did, I decided to give up and put myself in her hands. She was old and brittle, but not stupid.

  As we went down, walking with the glassy care of the relics we have now become, Elaine said: "Wait at the foot. I'm going over to the west wing, to the hall toilet there. You know the one I mean, don't you?"

  "Yes," I said. "The one just outside the spa. But why?"

  "I haven't had a cigarette in over fifteen years," she said, "but I feel like one this morning. I don't know how many puffs it'll take to set off the smoke detector in there, but I intend to find out."

  I looked at her with dawning admiration, thinking how much she reminded me of my wife--Jan might have done exactly the same thing. Elaine looked back at me, smiling her saucy imp's smile. I cupped my hand around the back of her lovely long neck, drew her face to mine, and kissed her mouth lightly. "I love you, Ellie," I said.

  "Oooh, such big talk," she said, but I could tell she was pleased.

  "What about Chuck Howland?" I asked. "Is he going to get in trouble?"

  "No, because he's in the TV room, watching Good Morning America with about
two dozen other folks. And I'm going to make myself scarce as soon as the smoke detector turns on the west-wing fire alarm."

  "Don't you fall down and hurt yourself, woman. I'd never forgive myself if--"

  "Oh, stop your fussing," she said, and this time she kissed me. Love among the ruins. It probably sounds funny to some of you and grotesque to the rest of you, but I'll tell you something, my friend: weird love's better than no love at all.

  I watched her walk away, moving slowly and stiffly (but she will only use a cane on wet days, and only then if the pain is terrible; it's one of her vanities), and waited. Five minutes went by, then ten, and just as I was deciding she had either lost her courage or discovered that the battery of the smoke detector in the toilet was dead, the fire alarm went off in the west wing with a loud, buzzing burr.

  I started toward the kitchen at once, but slowly--there was no reason to hurry until I was sure Dolan was out of my way. A gaggle of old folks, most still in their robes, came out of the TV room (here it's called the Resource Center; now that's grotesque) to see what was going on. Chuck Howland was among them, I was happy to see.

  "Edgecombe!" Kent Avery rasped, hanging onto his walker with one hand and yanking obsessively at the crotch of his pajama pants with the other. "Real alarm or just another falsie? What do you think?"

  "No way of knowing, I guess," I said.

  Just about then three orderlies went trotting past, all headed for the west wing, yelling at the folks clustered around the TV-room door to go outside and wait for the all-clear. The third in line was Brad Dolan. He didn't even look at me as he went past, a fact that pleased me to no end. As I went on down toward the kitchen, it occurred to me that the team of Elaine Connelly and Paul Edgecombe would probably be a match for a dozen Brad Dolans, with half a dozen Percy Wetmores thrown in for good measure.