The Green Mile(114)

'Paul, is that infection of yours coming back?' he asked. 'You look all flushed.'

'No, I think I'm okay,' I said. I wasn't, but I felt sure by then that John was right and I was going to be. I could feel that tingle starting to subside.

'All the same, it might not hurt you to go on in your office there and lie down a bit.'

Lying down was the last thing I felt like right then - the idea seemed so ridiculous that I almost laughed. What I felt like doing was maybe building myself a little house, then shingling it, and plowing a garden in back, and planting it. All before suppertime.

That's how it is, I thought. Every day. All over the world. That darkness. All over the world.

'I'm going to take a turn over to Admin instead. Got a few things to check over there.'

'If you say so.'

I went to the door and opened it, then looked back. 'You've got it right,' I said: 'r-e-c-e-i-v-e; i before e, except after c. Most of the time, anyway; I guess there's exceptions to all the rules - '

I went out, not needing to look back at him to know he was staring with his mouth open.

I kept moving for the rest of that shift, unable to sit down for more than five minutes at a stretch before jumping up again. I went over to Admin, and then I tromped back and forth across the empty exercise yard until the guards in the towers must have thought I was crazy. But by the time my shift was over, I was starting to calm down again, and that rustle of thoughts in my head - like a stirring of leaves, it was - had pretty much quieted down.

Still, halfway home that morning, it came back strong. The way my urinary infection had. I had to park my Ford by the side of the road, get out, and sprint nearly half a mile, head down, arms pumping, breath tearing in and out of my throat as warm as something that you've carried in your armpit. Then, at last, I began to feel really normal. I trotted halfway back to where the Ford was parked and walked the rest of the way, my breath steaming in the chilly air. When I got home, I told Janice that John Coffey had said he was ready, that he wanted to go. She nodded, looking relieved. Was she really? I couldn't say. Six hours before, even three, I would have known, but by then I didn't. And that was good. John had kept saying that he was tired, and now I could understand why. It would have tired anyone out, what he had. Would have made anyone long for rest and for quiet.

When Janice asked me why I looked so flushed and smelled so sweaty, I told her I had stopped the car on my way home and gone running for awhile, running hard. I told her that much - as I may have said (there's too many pages here now for me to want to look back through and make sure), lying wasn't much a part of our marriage - but I didn't tell her why.

And she didn't ask.

Chapter 32

9

There were no thunderstorms on the night it came John Coffey's turn to walk the Green Mile. It was seasonably cold for those parts at that time of year, in the thirties, I'd guess, and a million stars spilled across used-up, picked-out fields where frost glittered on fenceposts and glowed like diamonds on the dry skeletons of July's corn.

Brutus Howell was out front for this one - he would do the capping and tell Van Hay to roll when it was time. Bill Dodge was in with Van Hay. And at around eleven-twenty on the night of November 20th, Dean and Harry and I went down to our one occupied cell, where John Coffey sat on the end of his bunk with his hands clasped between his knees and a tiny dab of meatloaf gravy on the collar of his blue shirt. He looked out through the bars at us, a lot calmer than we felt, it seemed. My hands were cold and my temples were throbbing. It was one thing to know he was willing - it made it at least possible for us to do our job - but it was another to know we were going to electrocute him for someone else's crime.

I had last seen Hal Moores around seven that evening. He was in his office, buttoning up his overcoat. His face was pale, his hands shaking so badly that he was making quite some production of those buttons. I almost wanted to knock his fingers aside and do the coat up myself, like you would with a little kid. The irony was that Melinda had looked better when Jan and I went to see her the previous weekend than Hal had looked earlier on John Coffey's execution evening.

'I won't be staying for this one,' he had said. 'Curtis will be there, and I know Coffey will be in good hands with you and Brutus.'

'Yes, sir, we'll do our best,' I said. 'Is there any word on Percy?' Is he coming back around? is what I meant, of course. Is he even now sitting in a room somewhere and telling someone - some doctor, most likely - about how we zipped him into the nut-coat and threw him into the restraint room like any other problem child... any other lugoon, in Percy's language? And if he is, are they believing him?

But according to Hal, Percy was just the same. Not talking, and not, so far as anyone could tell, in the world at all. He was still at Indianola - "being evaluated," Hal had said, looking mystified at the phrase - but if there was no improvement, he would be moving along soon.

'How's Coffey holding up?' Hal had asked then. He had finally managed to do up the last button of his coat.

I nodded. 'He'll be fine, Warden.'

He'd nodded back, then gone to the door, looking old and ill. 'How can so much good and so much evil live together in the same man? How could the man who cured my wife be the same man who killed those little girls? Do you understand that?'

I had told him I didn't, the ways of God were mysterious, there was good and evil in all of us, ours not to reason why, hotcha, hotcha, row-dee-dow. Most of what I told him were things I'd learned in the church of Praise Jesus, The Lord Is Mighty, Hal nodding the whole time and looking sort of exalted. He could afford to nod, couldn't he? Yes. And look exalted, too. There was a deep sadness on his face - he was shaken, all right; I never doubted it - but there were no tears this time, because he had a wife to go home to, his companion to go home to, and she was fine. Thanks to John Coffey, she was well and fine and the man who had signed John 's death warrant could leave and go to her. He didn't have to watch what came next. He would be able to sleep that night in his wife's warmth while John Coffey lay on a slab in the basement of County Hospital, growing cool as the friendless, speechless hours moved toward dawn. And I hated Hal for those things. Just a little, and I'd get over it, but it was hate, all right. The genuine article.