The Green Mile(75)

'You're welcome to sit down with us,' I told my wife.

She shook her head. 'I don't think I want to know what you're up to - I'll worry less if I'm in the dark. I'll have a bite in the parlor. I'm visiting with Miss Jane Austen this week, and she's very good company.'

'Who's Jane Austen?' Harry asked when she had left. 'Your side or Janices's, Paul? A cousin? Is she pretty?'

'She's a writer, you nit,' Brutal told him. 'Been dead practically since Betsy Ross basted the stars on the first flag.'

'Oh.' Harry looked embarrassed. 'I'm not much of a reader. Radio manuals, mostly.'

'What's on your mind, Paul?' Dean asked.

'John Coffey and Mr. Jingles, to start with.' They looked surprised, which I had expected - they'd been thinking I wanted to discuss either Delacroix or Percy. Maybe both. I looked at Dean and Harry 'The thing with Mr. Jingles - what Coffey did - happened pretty fast. I don't know if you got there in time to see how broken up the mouse was or not.'

Dean shook his head. 'I saw the blood on the floor, though.'

I turned to Brutal.

'That son of a bitch Percy crushed it,' he said simply. 'It should have died, but it didn't. Coffey did something to it. Healed it somehow. I know how that sounds, but I saw it with my own eyes.'

I said: 'He healed me, as well, and I didn't just see it, I felt it.' I told them about my urinary infection - how it had come back, how bad it had been (I pointed through the window at the woodpile I'd had to hold onto the morning the pain drove me to my knees), and how it had gone away completely after Coffey touched me. And stayed away.

It didn't take long to tell. When I was done, they sat and thought about it awhile, chewing on their sandwiches as they did. Then Dean said, 'Black things came out of his mouth. Like bugs.'

'That's right,' Harry agreed. 'They were black to start with, anyway. Then they turned white and disappeared.' He looked around, considering. 'It's like I damned near forgot the whole thing until you brought it up, Paul. Ain't that funny?'

'Nothing funny or strange about it,' Brutal said. 'I think that's what people most always do with the stuff they can't make out - just forget it. Doesn't do a person much good to remember stuff that doesn't make any sense. What about it, Paul? Were there bugs when he fixed you?'

'Yes. I think they're the sickness... the pain... the hurt. He takes it in, then lets it out into the open air again.'

'Where it dies,' Harry said.

I shrugged. I didn't know if it died or not, wasn't sure it even mattered.

'Did he suck it out of you?' Brutal asked. 'He looked like he was sucking it right out of the mouse. The hurt. The... you know. The death.'

'No,' I said. 'He just touched me. And I felt it. A kind of jolt, like electricity only not painful. But I wasn't dying, only hurting.'

Brutal nodded. 'The touch and the breath. Just like you hear those backwoods gospel-shouters going on about.'

'Praise Jesus, the Lord is mighty,' I said.

'I dunno if Jesus comes into it,' Brutal said, 'but it seems to me like John Coffey is one mighty man.'

'All right,' Dean said. 'If you say all this happened, I guess I believe it. God works in mysterious ways His wonders to perform. But what's it got to do with us?'

Well, that was the big question, wasn't it? I took in a deep breath and told them what I wanted to do. They listened, dumbfounded. Even Brutal, who liked to read those magazines with the stories about little green men from space, looked dumbfounded. There was a longer silence when I finished this time, and no one chewing any sandwiches.

At last, in a gentle and reasonable voice, Brutus Howell said: 'We'd lose our jobs if we were caught, Paul, and we'd be very goddam lucky if that was all that happened. We'd probably end up over in A Block as guests of the state, making wallets and showering in pairs.'

'Yes,' I said. 'That could happen.'

'I can understand how you feel, a little,' he went on. 'You know Moores better than us - he's your friend as well as the big boss - and I know you think a lot of his wife... '

'She's the sweetest woman you could ever hope to meet,' I said, 'and she means the world to him.'

'But we don't know her the way you and Janice do,' Brutal said. 'Do we, Paul?'

'You'd like her if you did,' I said. 'At least, you'd like her if you'd met her before this thing got its claws into her. She does a lot of community things, she's a good friend, and she's religious. More than that, she's funny. Used to be, anyway. She could tell you things that'd make you laugh until the tears rolled down your cheeks. But none of those things are the reason I want to help save her, if she can be saved. What's happening to her is an offense, goddammit, an offense. To the eyes and the ears and the heart.'

'Very noble, but I doubt like hell if that's what put this bee in your bonnet,' Brutal said. 'I think it's what happened to Del. You want to balance it off somehow.'

And he was right. Of course he was. I knew Melinda Moores better than the others did, but maybe not, in the end, well enough to ask them to risk their jobs for her... and possibly their freedom, as well. Or my own job and freedom, for that matter. I had two children, and the last thing on God's earth that I wanted my wife to have to do was to write them the news that their father was going on trial for... well, what would it be? I didn't know for sure. Aiding and abetting an escape attempt seemed the most likely.