The Green Mile(25)

Dean, Harry Terwilliger, and I walked down to The Chief's cell for the first rehearsal not three minutes after Bill and his troops had escorted Bitterbuck off the block and over to the Arcade. The cell door was open, and Old Toot-Toot sat on The Chief's bunk, his wispy white hair flying.

'There come-stains all over dis sheet,' Toot-Toot remarked. 'He mus' be tryin to get rid of it before you fellas boil it off.' And he cackled.

'Shut up, Toot,' Dean said. 'Let's play this serious.'

'Okay,' Toot-Toot said, immediately composing his face into an expression of thunderous gravity. But his eyes twinkled. Old Toot never looked so alive as when he was playing dead.

I stepped forward. 'Arlen Bitterbuck, as an officer of the court and of the state of blah-blah, I have a warrant for blah-blah, such execution to be carried out at twelve-oh-one on blah-blah, will you step forward?'

Toot got off the bunk. 'I'm steppin forward, I'm steppin forward, I'm steppin forward,' he said.

'Turn around,' Dean said, and when Toot-Toot turned, Dean examined the dandruffy top of his head. The crown of The Chief's head would be shaved tomorrow night, and Dean's check then would be to make sure he didn't need a touch-up. Stubble could impede conduction, make things harder. Everything we were doing today was about making things easier.

'All right, Arlen, let's go,' I said to Toot-Toot, and away we went.

'I'm walkin down the corridor, I'm walkin down the corridor, I'm walkin down the corridor,' Toot said. I flanked him on the left, Dean on the right. Harry was directly behind him. At the head of the corridor we turned right, away from life as it was lived in the exercise yard and toward death as it was died in the storage room. We went into my office, and Toot dropped to his knees without having to be asked. He knew the script, all right, probably better than any of us. God knew he'd been there longer than any of us.

'I'm prayin, I'm prayin, I'm prayin,' Toot-Toot said, holding his gnarled hands up. They looked like that famous engraving, you probably know the one I mean. 'The Lord is my shepherd, so on 'n so forth.'

'Who's Bitterbuck got?' Harry asked. 'We're not going to have some Cherokee medicine man in here shaking his dick, are we?'

'Actually - '

'Still prayin, still prayin, still gettin right with Jesus,' Toot overrode me.

'Shut up, you old gink,' Dean said.

'I'm prayin!'

'Then pray to yourself.'

'What's keepin you guys?' Brutal hollered in from the storage room. That had also been emptied for our use. We were in the killing zone again, all right; it was a thing you could almost smell.

'Hold your friggin water!' Harry yelled back. 'Don't be so goddam impatient!'

'Prayin,' Toot said, grinning his unpleasant sunken grin. 'Prayin for patience, just a little goddam patience.'

'Actually, Bitterbuck's a Christian - he says,' I told them, 'and he's perfectly happy with the Baptist guy who came for Tillman Clark. Schuster, his name is. I like him, too. He's fast, and he doesn't get them all worked up. On your feet, Toot. You prayed enough for one day.'

'Walkin,' Toot said. 'Walkin again, walkin again, yes sir, walkin on the Green Mile.'

Short as he was, he still had to duck a little to get through the door on the far side of the office. The rest of us had to duck even more. This was a vulnerable time with a real prisoner, and when I looked across to the platform where Old Sparky stood and saw Brutal with his gun drawn, I nodded with satisfaction. Just right.

Toot-Toot went down the steps and stopped. The folding wooden chairs, about forty of them, were already in place. Bitterbuck would cross to the platform on an angle that would keep him safely away from the seated spectators, and half a dozen guards would be added for insurance. Bill Dodge would be in charge of those. We had never had a witness menaced by a condemned prisoner in spite of what was, admittedly, a raw set-up, and that was how I meant to keep it.

'Ready, boys?' Toot asked when we were back in our original formation at the foot of the stairs leading down from my office. I nodded, and we walked to the platform. What we looked like more than anything, I often thought, was a color-guard that had forgotten its flag.

'What am I supposed to do?' Percy called from behind the wire mesh between the storage room and the switch room.

'Watch and learn,' I called back.

'And keep yer hands off yer wiener,' Harry muttered. Toot-Toot heard him, though, and cackled.

We escorted him up onto the platform and Toot turned around on his own - the old vet in action. 'Sittin down,' he said, 'sittin down. sittin down, takin a seat in Old Sparky's lap.'

I dropped to my right knee before his right leg. Dean dropped to his left knee before his left leg. It was at this point we ourselves would be most vulnerable to physical attack, should the condemned man go berserk... which, every now and then, they did. We both turned the cocked knee slightly inward, to protect the crotch area. We dropped our chins to protect our throats. And, of course, we moved to secure the ankles and neutralize the danger as fast as we could. The Chief would be wearing slippers when he took his final promenade, but 'it could have been worse' isn't much comfort to a man with a ruptured larynx. Or writhing on the floor with his balls swelling up to the size of Mason jars, for that matter, while forty or so spectators - many of them gentlemen of the press - sit in those Grange-hall chairs, watching the whole thing.