The Green Mile(61)

'Give im to me.'

I looked up, puzzled by that deep voice, at first not sure who it belonged to. I saw John Coffey. Like Delacroix, he had put his arms through the bars of his cell door, but unlike Del, he wasn't waving them around. He simply held them out as far as he could, the hands at the ends of them open. It was a purposeful pose, an almost urgent pose. And his voice, had the same quality, which was why, I suppose, I didn't recognize it as belonging to Coffey at first. He seemed a different man from the lost, weepy soul that had occupied this cell for the last few weeks.

'Give im to me, Mr. Edgecombe! While there's still time!'

Then I remembered what he'd done for me, and understood. I supposed it couldn't hurt, but I didn't think it would do much good, either. When I picked the mouse up, I winced at the feel - there were so many splintered bones poking at various spots on Mr. Jingles's hide that it was like picking up a fur-covered pincushion. This was no urinary infection. Still -

'What are you doing?' Brutal asked as I put Mr. Jingles in Coffey's huge right hand. 'What the hell?'

Coffey pulled the mouse back through the bars. He lay limp on Coffey's palm, tail hanging over the arc between Coffey's thumb and first finger, the tip twitching weakly in midair. Then Coffey covered his right hand with his left, creating a kind of cup in which the mouse lay. We could no longer see Mr. Jingles himself, only the tail, hanging down and twitching at the tip like a dying pendulum. Coffey lifted his hands toward his face, spreading the fingers of the right as he did so, creating spaces like those between prison bars. The tail of the mouse now hung from the side of his hands that was facing us.

Brutal stepped next to me, still holding the colored spool between his fingers. 'What's he think he's doing?'

'Shh,' I said.

Delacroix had stopped screaming. 'Please, John,' he whispered. 'Oh Johnny, help him, please help him, oh s'il vous pla t.'

Dean and Harry joined us, Harry with our old deck of Airplane cards still in one hand. 'What's going on?' Dean asked, but I only shook my head. I was feeling hypnotized again, damned if I wasn't.

Coffey put his mouth between two of his fingers and inhaled sharply. For a moment everything hung suspended. Then he raised his head away from his hands and I saw the face of a man who looked desperately sick, or in terrible pain. His eyes were sharp and blazing; his upper teeth bit at his full lower lip; his dark face had faded to an unpleasant color that looked like ash stirred into mud. He made a choked sound way back in his throat.

'Dear Jesus Lord and Savior,' Brutal whispered. His eyes appeared to be in danger of dropping right out of his face.

'What?' Harry almost barked. 'What?'

'The tail! Don't you see it? The tail!'

Mr. Jingles's tail was no longer a dying pendulum; it was snapping briskly from side to side, like the tail of a cat in a bird-catching mood. And then, from inside Coffey's cupped hands, came a perfectly familiar squeak.

Coffey made that choking, gagging sound again, then turned his head to one side like a man that has coughed up a wad of phlegm and means to spit it out. Instead, he exhaled a cloud of black insects - I think they were insects, and the others said the same, but to this day I am not sure - from his mouth and nose. They boiled around him in a dark cloud that temporarily obscured his features.

'Christ, what're those?' Dean asked in a shrill, scared voice.

'It's all right,' I heard myself say. 'Don't panic, it's all right, in a few seconds they'll be gone.'

As when Coffey had cured my urinary infection for me, the 'bugs' turned white and then disappeared.

'Holy shit,' Harry whispered.

'Paul?' Brutal asked in an unsteady voice. 'Paul?'

Coffey looked okay again - like a fellow who has successfully coughed up a wad of meat that has been choking him. He bent down, put his cupped hands on the floor, peeked through his fingers, then opened them. Mr. Jingles, absolutely all right - not a single twist to his backbone, not a single lump poking at his hide - ran out. He paused for a moment at the door of Coffey's cell, then ran across the Green Mile to Delacroix's cell. As he went, I noticed there were still beads of blood in his whiskers.

Delacroix gathered him up, laughing and crying at the same time, covering the mouse with shameless, smacking kisses. Dean and Harry and Brutal watched with silent wonder. Then Brutal stepped forward and handed the colored spool through the bars. Delacroix didn't see it at first; he was too taken up with Mr. Jingles. He was like a father whose son has been saved from drowning. Brutal tapped him on the shoulder with the spool. Delacroix looked, saw it, took it, and went back to Mr. Jingles again, stroking his fur and devouring him with his eyes, needing to constantly refresh his perception that yes, the mouse was all right, the mouse was whole and fine and all right.

'Toss it,' Brutal said. 'I want to see how he runs.'

'He all right, Boss Howell, he all right, praise God - !'

'Toss it,' Brutal repeated. 'Mind me, Del.'

Delacroix bent, clearly reluctant, clearly not wanting to let Mr. Jingles out of his hands again, at least not yet. Then, very gently, he tossed the spool. It rolled across the cell, past the Corona cigar box, and to the wall. Mr. Jingles was after it, but not quite with the speed he had shown previously. He appeared to be limping just a bit on his left rear leg, and that was what struck me the hardest - it was, I suppose, what made it real. That little limp.