The Green Mile(79)

I started toward the kitchen at once, but slowly - there was no reason to hurry until I was sure Dolan was out of my way. A gaggle of old folks, most still in their robes, came out of the TV room (here it's called the Resource Center; now that's grotesque) to see what was going on. Chuck Howland was among them, I was happy to see.

'Edgecombe!' Kent Avery rasped, hanging onto his walker with one hand and yanking obsessively at the crotch of his pajama pants with the other. 'Real alarm or just another falsie? What do you think?'

'No way of knowing, I guess,' I said.

Just about then three orderlies went trotting past, all headed for the west wing, yelling at the folks clustered around the TV-room door to go outside and wait for the all-clear. The third in line was Brad Dolan. He didn't even look at me as he went past, a fact that pleased me to no end. As I went on down toward the kitchen, it occurred to me that the team of Elaine Connelly and Paul Edgecombe would probably be a match for a dozen Brad Dolans, with half a dozen Percy Wetmores thrown in for good measure.

The cooks in the kitchen were continuing to clear up breakfast, paying no attention to the howling fire. alarm at all.

'Say, Mr. Edgecombe,' George said. 'I believe Brad Dolan been lookin for you. In fact, you just missed him.'

Lucky me, I thought. What I said out loud was that I'd probably see Mr. Dolan later. Then I asked if there was any leftover toast lying around from breakfast.

'Sure,' Norton said, 'but it's stone-cold dead in the market. You runnin late this morning.'

'I am,' I agreed, 'but I'm hungry.'

'Only take a minute to make some fresh and hot,' George said, reaching for the bread.

'Nope, cold will be fine,' I said, and when he handed me a couple of slices (looking mystified - actually both of them looked mystified), I hurried out the door, feeling like the boy I once was, skipping school to go fishing with a jelly fold-over wrapped in waxed paper slipped into the front of my shirt.

Outside the kitchen door I took a quick, reflexive look around for Dolan, saw nothing to alarm me, and hurried across the croquet course and putting green, gnawing on one of my pieces of toast as I went. I slowed a little as I entered the shelter of the woods, and as I walked down the path, I found my mind turning to the day after Eduard Delacroix's terrible execution.

I had spoken to Hal Moores that morning, and he had told me that Melinda's brain tumor had caused her to lapse into bouts of cursing and foul language... what my wife had later labelled (rather tentatively; she wasn't sure it was really the same thing) as Tourette's Syndrome. The quavering in his voice, coupled with the memory of how John Coffey had healed both my urinary infection and the broken back of Delacroix's pet mouse, had finally pushed me over the line that runs between just thinking about a thing and actually doing a thing.

And there was something else. Something that had to do with John Coffey's hands, and my shoe.

So I had called the men I worked with, the men I had trusted my life to over the years - Dean Stanton, Harry Terwilliger, Brutus Howell. They came to lunch at my house on the day after Delacroix's execution, and they at least listened to me when I outlined my plan. Of course, they all knew that Coffey had healed the mouse; Brutal had actually seen it. So when I suggested that another miracle might result if we took John Coffey to Melinda Moores, they didn't outright laugh. It was Dean Stanton who raised the most troubling question: What if John Coffey escaped while we had him out on his field-trip?

'Suppose he killed someone else?' Dean asked. 'I'd hate losing my job, and I'd hate going to jail - I got a wife and kids depending on me to put bread in their mouths - but I don't think I'd hate either of those things near as much as having another little dead girl on my conscience.'

There was silence, then, all of them looking at me, waiting to see how I'd respond. I knew everything would change if I said what was on the tip of my tongue; we had reached a point beyond which retreat would likely become impossible.

Except retreat, for me, at least, was already impossible. I opened my mouth and said

Chapter 22

2

'That won't happen.'

'How in God's name can you be so sure?' Dean asked.

I didn't answer. I didn't know just how to begin. I had known this would come up, of course I had, but I still didn't know how to start telling them what was in my head and heart. Brutal helped.

'You don't think he did it, do you, Paul?' He looked incredulous. 'You think that big lug is innocent.'

'I'm positive he's innocent,' I said.

'How can you be?'

'There are two things,' I said. 'One of them is my shoe.'

'Your shoe?' Brutal exclaimed. 'What has your shoe got to do with whether or not John Coffey killed those two little girls?'

'I took off one of my shoes and gave it to him last night,' I said. 'After the execution, this was, when things had settled back down a little. I pushed it through the bars, and he picked it up in those big hands of his. I told him to tie it. I had to make sure, you see, because all our problem children normally wear is slippers - a man who really wants to commit suicide can do it with shoelaces, if he's dedicated. That's something all of us know.'

They were nodding.

'He put it on his lap and got the ends of the laces crossed over all right, but then he was stuck. He said he was pretty sure someone had showed him how to do it when he was a lad - maybe his father or maybe one of the boyfriends his mother had after the father was gone - but he'd forgot the knack.'