The Green Mile(34)

Mr. Jingles was sitting beside Delacroix on the bunk when we got down there, holding one of those pink candies in his paws and munching contentedly away at it. Delacroix was simply overcome with delight - he was like a classical pianist watching his five-year-old son play his first halting exercises. But don't get me wrong; it was funny, a real hoot. The candy was half the size of Mr. Jingles, and his whitefurred belly was already distended from it.

'Take it away from him, Eddie,' Brutal said, half-laughing and half-horrified. 'Christ almighty Jesus, he'll eat till he busts. I can smell that peppermint from here. How many have you let him have?'

'This his second,' Delacroix said, looking a little nervously at Mr. Jingles's belly. 'You really think he... you know... bus' his guts?'

'Might,' Brutal said.

That was enough authority for Delacroix. He reached for the half-eaten pink mint. I expected the mouse to nip him, but Mr. Jingles gave over that mint - what remained of it, anyway - as meek as could be. I looked at Brutal, and Brutal gave his head a little shake as if to say no, he didn't understand it, either. Then Mr. Jingles plopped down into his box and lay there on his side in an exhausted way that made all three of us laugh. After that, we got used to seeing the mouse sitting beside Delacroix, holding a mint and munching away on it just as neatly as an old lady at an afternoon tea-party, both of them surrounded by what I later smelled in that hole in the beam - the half-bitter, half-sweet smell of peppermint candy.

There's one more thing to tell you about Mr. Jingles before moving on to the arrival of William Wharton, which was when the cyclone really touched down on E Block. A week or so after the incident of the peppermint candies - around the time when we'd pretty much decided Delacroix wasn't going to feed his pet to death, in other words - the Frenchman called me down to his cell. I was on my own for the time being, Brutal over at the commissary for something, and according to the regs, I was not supposed to approach a prisoner in such circumstances. But since I probably could have shot-putted Delacroix twenty yards one-handed on a good day, I decided to break the rule and see what he wanted.

'Watch this, Boss Edgecombe,' he said. 'You gonna see what Mr. Jingles can do!' He reached behind the cigar box and brought up a small wooden spool.

'Where'd you get that?' I asked him, although I supposed I knew. There was really only one person he could have gotten it from.

'Old Toot-Toot,' he said. 'Watch this.'

I was already watching, and could see Mr. Jingles in his box, standing up with his small front paws propped on the edge, his black eyes fixed on the spool Delacroix was holding between the thumb and first finger of his right hand. I felt a funny little chill go up my back. I had never seen a mere mouse attend to something with such sharpness - with such intelligence. I don't really believe that Mr. Jingles was a supernatural visitation, and if I have given you that idea, I'm sorry, but I have never doubted that he was a genius of his kind.

Delacroix bent over and rolled the threadless spool across the floor of his cell. It went easily, like a pair of wheels connected by an axle. The mouse was out of his box in a flash and across the floor after it, like a dog chasing after a stick. I exclaimed with surprise, and Delacroix grinned.

The spool hit the wall and rebounded. Mr. Jingles went around it and pushed it back to the bunk, switching from one end of the spool to the other whenever it looked like it was going to veer off-course. He pushed the spool until it hit Delacroix's foot. Then he looked up at him for a moment, as if to make sure Delacroix had no more immediate tasks for him (a few arithmetic problems to solve, perhaps, or some Latin to parse). Apparently satisfied on this score, Mr. Jingles went back to the cigar box and settled down in it again.

'You taught him that,' I said.

'Yessir, Boss Edgecombe,' Delacroix said, his smile only slightly dissembling. 'He fetch it every time. Smart as hell, ain't he?'

'And the spool?' I asked. 'How did you know to fetch that for him, Eddie?'

'He whisper in my ear that he want it,' Delacroix said serenely. 'Same as he whisper his name.'

Delacroix showed all the other guys his mouse's trick... all except Percy. To Delacroix, it didn't matter that Percy had suggested the cigar box and procured the cotton with which to line it. Delacroix was like some dogs: kick them once and they never trust you again, no matter how nice you are to them.

I can hear Delacroix now, yelling, Hey, you guys! Come and see what Mr. Jingles can do! And them going down in a bluesuit cluster - Brutal, Harry, Dean, even Bill Dodge. All of them had been properly amazed, too, the same as I had been.

Three or four days after Mr. Jingles started doing the trick with the spool, Harry Terwilliger rummaged through the arts and crafts stuff we kept in the restraint room, found the Crayolas, and brought them to Delacroix with a smile that was almost embarrassed. 'I thought you might like to make that spool different colors,' he said. 'Then your little pal'd be like a circus mouse, or something.'

'A circus mouse!' Delacroix said, looking completely, rapturously happy. I suppose he was completely happy, maybe for the first time in his whole miserable life. 'That just what he is, too! A circus mouse! When I get outta here, he gonna make me rich, like inna circus! You see if he don't.'

Percy Wetmore would no doubt have pointed out to Delacroix that when he left Cold Mountain, he'd be riding in an ambulance that didn't need to run its light or siren, but Harry knew better. He just told Delacroix to make the spool as colorful as he could as quick as he could, because he'd have to take the crayons back after dinner.