The Green Mile(6)

'Your name is John Coffey.'

'Yes, sir, boss, like the drink only not spelled the same way.'

'So you can spell, can you? Read and write?'

'Just my name, boss,' said he, serenely.

I sighed, then gave him a short version of my set speech. I'd already decided he wasn't going to be any trouble. In that I was both right and wrong.

'My name is Paul Edgecombe,' I said. 'I'm the E Block super - the head screw. You want something from me, ask for me by name. If I'm not here, ask this other, man - his name is Harry Terwilliger. Or you ask for Mr. Stanton or Mr. Howell. Do you understand that?'

Coffey nodded.

'Just don't expect to get what you want unless we decide it's what you need - this isn't a hotel. Still with me?'

He nodded again.

'This is a quiet place, big boy - not like the rest of the prison. It's just you and Delacroix over there. You won't work; mostly you'll just sit. Give you a chance to think things over.' Too much time for most of them, but I didn't say that. 'Sometimes we play the radio, if all's in order. You like the radio?'

He nodded, but doubtfully, as if he wasn't sure what the radio was. I later found out that was true, in a way; Coffey knew things when he encountered them again, but in between he forgot. He knew the characters on Our Gal Sunday, but had only the haziest memory of what they'd been up to the last time.

'If you behave, you'll eat on time, you'll never see the solitary cell down at the far end, or have to wear one of those canvas coats that buttons up the back. You'll have two hours in the yard afternoons from four until six, except on Saturdays when the rest of the prison population has their flag football games. You'll have your visitors on Sunday afternoons, if you have someone who wants to visit you. Do you, Coffey?'

He shook his head. 'Got none, boss,' he said.

'Well, your lawyer, then.'

'I believe I've seen the back end of him,' he said. 'He was give to me on loan. Don't believe he could find his way up here in the mountains.'

I looked at him closely to see if he might be trying a little joke, but he didn't seem to be. And I really hadn't expected any different. Appeals weren't for the likes of John Coffey, not back then; they had their day in court and then the world forgot them until they saw a squib in the paper saying a certain fellow had taken a little electricity along about midnight. But a man with a wife, children, or friends to look forward to on Sunday afternoons was easier to control, if control looked to be a problem. Here it didn't, and that was good. Because he was so damned big.

I shifted a little on the bunk, then decided I might feel a little more comfortable in my nether parts if I stood up, and so I did. He backed away from me respectfully, and clasped his hands in front of him.

'Your time here can be easy or hard, big boy, it all depends on you. I'm here to say you might as well make it easy on all of us, because it comes to the same in the end. We'll treat you as right as you deserve. Do you have any questions?'

'Do you leave a light on after bedtime?' he asked right away, as if he had only been waiting for the chance.

I blinked at him. I had been asked a lot of strange questions by newcomers to E Block - once about the size of my wife's tits - but never that one.

Coffey was smiling a trifle uneasily, as if he knew we would think him foolish but couldn't help himself. 'Because I get a little scared in the dark sometimes,' he said. 'If it's a strange place.'

I looked at him - the pure size of him - and felt strangely touched. They did touch you, you know; you didn't see them at their worst, hammering out their horrors like demons at a forge.

'Yes, it's pretty bright in here all night long,' I said. 'Half the lights along the Mile burn from nine until five every morning.' Then I realized he wouldn't have any idea of what I was talking about - he didn't know the Green Mile from Mississippi mud - and so I pointed. 'In the corridor.'

He nodded, relieved. I'm not sure he knew what a corridor was, either, but he could see the 200-watt bulbs in their wire cages.

I did something I'd never done to a prisoner before, then - I offered him my hand. Even now I don't know why. Him asking about the lights, maybe. It made Harry Terwilliger blink, I can tell you that. Coffey took my hand with surprising gentleness, my hand all but disappearing into his, and that was all of it. I had another moth in my killing bottle. We were done.

I stepped out of the cell. Harry pulled the door shut on its track and ran both locks. Coffey stood where he was a moment or two longer, as if he didn't know what to do next, and then he sat down on his bunk, clasped his giant's hands between his knees, and lowered his head like a man who grieves or prays. He said something then in his strange, almost Southern voice. I heard it with perfect clarity, and although I didn't know much about what he'd done then - you don't need to know about what a man's done in order to feed him and groom him until it's time for him to pay off what he owes - it still gave me a chill.

'I couldn't help-it, boss,' he said. 'I tried to take it back, but it was too late.'

Chapter 2

3

'You're going to have you some trouble with Percy,' Harry said as we walked back up the hall and into my office. Dean Stanton, sort of my third in command - we didn't actually have such things, a situation Percy Wetmore would have fixed up in a flash - was sitting behind my desk, updating the files, a job I never seemed to get around to. He barely looked up as we came in, just gave his little glasses a shove with the ball of his thumb and dived back into his paperwork.