The Green Mile(104)

Before we knew what was happening, Percy drew his gun, stepped to the bars of Wharton's cell, and emptied all six shots into the sleeping man' just bam-bam-bam, bam-bam-bam, as fast as he could pull the trigger. The sound in that enclosed space was deafening; when I told Janice the story the next morning, I could still hardly hear the sound of my own voice for the ringing in my ears.

We ran at him, all four of us. Dean got there first - I don't know how, as he was behind Brutal and me when Coffey had hold of Percy - but he did. He grabbed Percy's wrist, prepared to wrestle the gun out of Percy's hand, but he didn't have to. Percy just let go, and the gun fell to the floor. His eyes went across us like they were skates and we were ice. There was a low hissing sound and a sharp ammoniac smell as Percy's bladder let go, then a brrrap sound and a thicker stink as he filled the other side of his pants, as well. His eyes had settled on a far corner of the corridor. They were eyes that never saw anything in this real world of ours again, so far as I know. Back near the beginning of this I wrote that Percy was at Briar Ridge by the time that Brutal found the colored slivers of Mr. Jingles's spool a couple of months later, and I didn't lie about that. He never got the office with the fan in the comer, though; never got a bunch of lunatic patients to push around, either. But I imagine he at least got his own private room.

He had connections, after all.

Wharton was lying on his side with his back against the wall of his cell. I couldn't see much then but a lot of blood soaking into the sheet and splattered across the cement, but the coroner said Percy had shot like Annie Oakley. Remembering Dean's story of how Percy had thrown his hickory baton at the mouse that time and barely missed, I wasn't too surprised. This time the range had been shorter and the target not moving. One in the groin, one in the gut, one in the chest, three in the head.

Brutal was coughing and waving at the haze of gunsmoke. I was coughing myself, but hadn't noticed it until then.

'End of the line,' Brutal said. His voice was calm, but there was no mistaking the glaze of panic in his eyes.

I looked down the hallway and saw John Coffey sitting on the end of his bunk. His hands were clasped between his knees again, but his head was up and he no longer looked a bit sick. He nodded at me slightly, and I surprised myself - as I had on the day I offered him my hand - by returning the nod.

'What are we going to do?' Harry gibbered. 'Oh Christ, what are we going to do?'

'Nothing we can do,' Brutal said in that same calm voice. 'We're hung. Aren't we, Paul?'

My mind had begun to move very fast. I looked at Harry and Dean, who were staring at me like scared kids. I looked at Percy, who was standing there with his hands and jaw dangling. Then I looked at my old friend, Brutus Howell.

'We're going to be okay,' I said.

Percy at last commenced coughing. He doubled over, hands on his knees, almost retching. His face began to turn red. I opened my mouth, meaning to tell the others to stand back, but I never got a chance. He made a sound that was a cross between a dry heave and a bullfrog's croak, opened his mouth, and spewed out a cloud of black, swirling stuff. It was so thick that for a moment we couldn't see his head. Harry said 'Oh God save us' in a weak and watery voice. Then the stuff turned a white so dazzling it was like January sun on fresh snow. A moment later the cloud was gone. Percy straightened slowly up and resumed his vacant gaze down the length of the Green Mile.

'We didn't see that,' Brutal said. 'Did we, Paul?'

'No. I didn't and you didn't. Did you see it, Harry?'

'No,' Harry said.

'Dean?'

'See what?' Dean took his glasses off and began to polish them. I thought he would drop them out of his trembling hands, but he managed not to.

'See what, that's good. That's just the ticket. Now listen to your scoutmaster, boys, and get it right the first time, because time is short. It's a simple story. Let's not complicate it.'

Chapter 29

3

I told all this to Jan at around eleven o'clock that morning - the next morning, I almost wrote, but of course it was the same day. The longest one of my whole life, without a doubt. I told it pretty much as I have here, finishing with how William Wharton had ended up lying dead on his bunk, riddled with lead from Percy's sidearm.

No, that's not right. What I actually finished with was the stuff that came out of Percy, the bugs or the whatever-it-was. That was a hard thing to tell, even to your wife, but I told it.

As I talked, she brought me black coffee by the half-cup - at first my hands were shaking too badly to pick up a whole one without spilling it. By the time I finished, the shaking had eased some, and I felt that I could even take some food - an egg, maybe, or some soup.

'The thing that saved us was that we didn't really have to lie, any of us.'

'Just leave a few things out,' she said, and nodded. 'Little things, mostly, like how you took a condemned murderer out of prison, and how he cured a dying woman, and how he drove that Percy Wetmore crazy by - what? - spitting a pureed brain tumor down his throat?'

'I don't know, Jan,' I said. 'I only know that if you keep talking like that, you'll end up either eating that soup yourself, or feeding it to the dog.'

'I'm sorry. But I'm right, aren't I?'

'Yeah,' I said. Except we got away with the - ' The what? You couldn't call it an escape, and furlough wasn't right, either. ' - the field trip. Not even Percy can tell them about that, if he ever comes back.'