The Green Mile(19)

'Christ,' I whispered. I felt as if the wind had been knocked out of me.

'You found another one, didn't you?' Brutal asked. 'I found three or four.'

I came down and shone the light on his big, outstretched palm. Several splinters of wood were scattered there, like jackstraws for elves. Two were yellow, like the one I had found. One was green and one was red. They hadn't been painted but colored, with wax Crayola crayons.

'Oh, boy,' I said in a low, shaky voice. 'Oh, hey. It's pieces of that spool, isn't it? But why? Why up there?'

'When I was a kid I wasn't big like I am now,' Brutal said. 'I got most of my growth between fifteen and seventeen. Until then I was a shrimp. And when I went off to school the first time, I felt as small as... why, as small as a mouse, I guess you'd say. I was scared to death. So you know what I did?'

I shook my head. Outside, the wind gusted again. In the angles formed by the beams, cobwebs shook in feathery drafts, like rotted lace. Never had I been in a place that felt so nakedly haunted, and it was right then, as we stood there looking down at the splintered remains of the spool which had caused so much trouble, that my head began to know what my heart had understood ever since John Coffey had walked the Green Mile: I couldn't do this job much longer. Depression, or no Depression, I couldn't watch many more men walk through my office to their deaths. Even one more might be too many.

'I asked my mother for one of her hankies,' Brutal said. 'So when I felt weepy and small, I could sneak it out and smell her perfume and not feel so bad.'

'You think - what? - that mouse chewed off some of that colored spool to remember Delacroix by? That a mouse - '

He looked up. I thought for a moment I saw tears in his eyes, but I guess I was probably wrong about that. 'I ain't saying nothing, Paul. But I found them up there, and I smelled peppermint, same as you - you know you did. And I can't do this no more. I won't do this no more. Seeing one more man in that chair'd just about kill me. I'm going to put in for a transfer to Boys' Correctional on Monday. If I get it before the next one, that's fine. If I don't, I'll resign and go back to farming.'

'What did you ever farm, besides rocks?'

'It don't matter.'

'I know it doesn't,' I said. 'I think I'll put in with you.'

He looked at me close, making sure I wasn't just having some sport with him, then nodded as if it was a settled thing. The wind gusted again, strong enough this time to make the beams creak and settle, and we both looked around uneasily at the padded walls. I think for a moment we could hear William Wharton - not Billy the Kid, not him, he had been "Wild Bill" to us from his first day on the block - screaming and laughing, telling us we were going to be damned glad to be rid of him, telling us we would never forget him. About those things he was right.

As for what Brutal and I agreed on that night in the restraint room, it turned out just that way It was almost as if we had taken a solemn oath on those tiny bits of colored, wood. Neither of us ever took part in another execution. John Coffey was the last.

Part Two.The Mouse On the Mile

Chapter 5

1

The nursing home where I am crossing my last bunch of t's and dotting my last mess of i's is called Georgia Pines. It's about sixty miles from Atlanta and about two hundred light-years from life as most people - people under the age of eighty, let's say - live it. You who are reading this want to be careful that there isn't a place like it waiting in your future. It's not a cruel place, not for the most part; there's cable TV, the food's good (although there's damned little a man can chew), but in its way, it's as much of a killing bottle as E Block at Cold Mountain ever was.

There's even a fellow here who reminds me a little of Percy Wetmore, who got his job on the Green Mile because he was related to the governor of the state. I doubt if this fellow is related to anyone important, even though he acts that way. Brad Dolan, his name is. He's always combing his hair, like Percy was, and he's always got something to read stuffed into his back pocket. With Percy it was magazines like Argosy and Men's Adventure; with Brad it's these little paperbacks called Gross Jokes and Sick Jokes. He's always asking people why the Frenchman crossed the road or how many Polacks it takes to screw in a lightbulb or how many pallbearers there are at a Harlem funeral. Like Percy, Brad is a dimwit who thinks nothing is funny unless it's mean.

Something Brad said the other day struck me as actually smart, but I don't give him a lot of credit for it; even a stopped clock is right twice a day, the proverb has it. "You're just lucky you don't have that Alzheimer's disease, Paulie," was what he said. I hate him calling me that, Paulie, but he goes on doing it, anyway; I've given up asking him to quit. There are other sayings - not quite proverbs - that apply to Brad Dolan: "You can lead a horse to water but you can't make him drink" is one; "You can dress him up but you can't take him out" is another. In his thickheadedness he is also like Percy.

When he made his comment about Alzheimer's, he was mopping the floor of the solarium, where I had been going over the pages I have already written. There's a great lot of them, and I think there's apt to be a great lot more before I am through. 'That Alzheimer's, do you know what it really is?'

'No,' I said, - but I'm sure you'll tell me, Brad.'