The Green Mile(14)

'Yeah, but you see she does it,' I said. 'Don't wait. If it turns out to be something they can see with an X-ray, it may turn out to be something they can fix.'

'Yes,' he agreed, and then, for just a moment - the only one during that part of our interview, as I recall - our eyes met and locked. There was the sort of nakedly perfect understanding between us that needs no words. It could be a stroke, yes. It could also be a cancer growing in her brain, and if it was that, the chances that the doctors at Indianola could do anything about it were slim going on none. This was '32, remember, when even something as relatively simple as a urinary infection was either sulfa and stink or suffer and wait.

'I thank you for your concern, Paul. Now let's talk about Percy Wetmore.'

I groaned and covered my eyes.

'I had a call from the state capital this morning,' the warden said evenly. 'It was quite an angry call, as I'm sure you can imagine. Paul, the governor is so married he's almost not there, if you take my meaning. And his wife has a brother who has one child. That child is Percy Wetmore. Percy called his dad last night, and Percy's dad called Percy's aunt. Do I have to trace the rest of this out for you?'

'No,' I said. 'Percy squealed. Just like the schoolroom sissy telling teacher he saw Jack and Jill smooching in the cloakroom.'

'Yep,' Moores agreed, 'that's about the size of it.'

'You know what happened between Percy and Delacroix when Delacroix came in?' I asked. 'Percy and his damned hickory billy-club?'

'Yes, but - '

'And you know how he runs it along the bars sometimes, just for the pure hell of it. He's mean, and he's stupid, and I don't know how much longer I can take him. That's the truth.'

We'd known each other five years. That can be a long time for men who get on well, especially when part of the job is trading life for death. What I'm saying is that he understood what I meant. Not that I would quit; not with the Depression walking around outside the prison walls like a dangerous criminal, one that couldn't be caged as our charges were. Better men than me were out on the roads or riding the rods. I was lucky and knew it - children grown and the mortgage, that two-hundred-pound block of marble, had been off my chest for the last two years. But a man's got to eat, and his wife has to eat, too. Also, we were used to sending our daughter and son-in-law twenty bucks whenever we could afford it (and sometimes when we couldn't, if Jane's letters sounded particularly desperate). He was an out-of-work high-school teacher, and if that didn't qualify for desperate back in those days, then the word had no meaning. So no, you didn't walk off a steady paycheck job like mine... not in cold blood, that was. But my blood wasn't cold that fall. The temperatures outside were unseasonable, and the infection crawling around inside me had turned the thermostat up even more. And when a man's in that kind of situation, why, sometimes his fist flies out pretty much of its own accord. And if you slug a connected man like Percy Wetmore once, you might as well just go right on slugging, because there's no going back.

'Stick with it,' Moores said quietly. 'That's what I called you in here to say. I have it on good authority - the person who called me this morning, in fact - that Percy has an application in at Briar, and that his application will be accepted.'

'Briar,' I said. That was Briar Ridge, one of two state-run hospitals. 'What's this kid doing? Touring state facilities?'

'It's an administration job. Better pay, and papers to push instead of hospital beds in the heat of the day.' He gave me a slanted grin. 'You know, Paul, you might be shed of him already if you hadn't put him in the switch-room with Van Hay when The Chief walked.'

For a moment what he said seemed so peculiar I didn't have a clue what he was getting at. Maybe I didn't want to have a clue.

'Where else would I put him?' I asked. 'Christ, he hardly knows what he's doing on the block! To make him part of the active execution team - ' I didn't finish. Couldn't finish. The potential for screw-ups seemed endless.

'Nevertheless, you'd do well to put him out for Delacroix. If you want to get rid of him, that is.'

I looked at him with my jaw hung. At last I was able to get it up where it belonged so I could talk. 'What are you saying? That he wants to experience one right up close where he can smell the guy's nuts cooking?'

Moores shrugged. His eyes, so soft when he had been speaking about his wife, now looked flinty. 'Delacroix's nuts are going to cook whether Wetmore's on the team or not,' he said. 'Correct?'

'Yes, but he could screw up. In fact, Hal, he's almost bound to screw up. And in front of thirty or so witnesses... reporters all the way up from Louisiana... '

'You and Brutus Howell will make sure he doesn't,' Moores said. 'And if he does anyway, it goes on his record, and it'll still be there long after his statehouse connections are gone. You understand?'

I did. It made me feel sick and scared, but I did.

'He may want to stay for Coffey, but if we're lucky, he'll get all he needs from Delacroix. You just make sure you put him out for that one.'

I had planned to stick Percy in the switch-room again, then down in the tunnel, riding shotgun on the gurney that would take Delacroix to the meatwagon parked across the road from the prison, but I tossed all those plans back over my shoulder without so much as a second look. I nodded. I had the sense to know it was a gamble I was taking, but I didn't care. If it would get rid of Percy Wetmore, I'd tweak the devil's nose. He could take part in his execution, clamp on the cap, and then look through the grille and tell Van Hay to roll on two; he could watch the little Frenchman ride the lightning that he, Percy Wetmore, had let out of the bottle. Let him have his nasty little thrill, if that's what state-sanctioned murder was to him. Let him go on to Briar Ridge, where he would have his own office and a fan to cool it. And if his uncle by marriage was voted out of office in the next election and he had to find out what work was like in the tough old sunbaked world where not all the bad guys were locked behind bars and sometimes you got your own head whipped, so much the better.