The Green Mile(81)

'The coonies got mixed up, didn't they?' Brutal asked. A strange, sickened little smile was playing around the corners of his mouth. 'They ain't built to be trackers, strictly speaking, and they got mixed up on what their job was.'

'Yes.'

'I don't get it,' Dean said.

'The coonies forgot whatever it was Bobo ran under their noses to get them started,' Brutal said. 'By the time they came out on the riverbank, the coonies were tracking the killer, not the girls. That wasn't a problem as long as the killer and the girls were together, but... '

The light was dawning in Dean's eyes. Harry had already gotten it.

'When you think about it,' I said, 'you wonder how anybody, even a jury wanting to pin the crime on a wandering black fellow, could have believed John Coffey was their man for even a minute. Just the idea of keeping the dog quiet with food until he could snap its neck would have been beyond Coffey.

'He was never any closer to the Detterick farm than the south bank of the Trapingus, that's what I think. Six or more miles away. He was just mooning along, maybe meaning to go down to the railroad tracks and catch a freight to somewhere else - when they come off the trestle, they're going slow enough to hop - when he heard a commotion to the north.'

'The killer?' Brutal asked.

'The killer. He might have raped them already, or maybe the rape was what Coffey heard. In any case, that bloody patch in the grass was where the killer finished the business; dashed their heads together, dropped them, and then hightailed it.'

'Hightailed it northwest,' Brutal said. 'The direction the coon-dogs wanted to go.'

'Right. John Coffey comes through a stand of alders that grows a little way southeast of the spot where the girls were left, probably curious about all the noise, and he finds their bodies. One of them might still have been alive; I suppose it's possible both of them were, although not for much longer. John Coffey wouldn't have known if they were dead, that's for sure. All he knows is that he's got a healing power in his hands, and he tried to use it on Cora and Kathe Detterick. When it didn't work, he broke down, crying and hysterical. Which is how they found him.'

'Why didn't he stay there, where he found them?' Brutal asked. 'Why take them south along the riverbank? Any idea?'

'I bet he did stay put, at first,' I said. 'At the trial, they kept talking about a big trampled area, all the grass squashed flat. And John Coffey's a big man.'

'John Coffey's a f**king giant,' Harry said, pitching his voice very low so my wife wouldn't hear him cuss if she happened to be listening.

'Maybe he panicked when he saw that what he was doing wasn't working. Or maybe he got the idea that the killer was still there, in the woods upstream, watching him. Coffey's big, you know, but not real brave. Harry, remember him asking if we left a light on in the block after bedtime?'

'Yeah. I remember thinking how funny that was, what with the size of him.' Harry looked shaken and thoughtful.

'Well, if he didn't kill the little girls, who did?' Dean asked.

I shook my head. 'Someone else. Someone white would be my best guess. The prosecutor made a big deal about how it would have taken a strong man to kill a dog as big as the one the Dettericks kept, but - '

'That's crap,' Brutus rumbled. 'A strong twelve year-old girl could break a big dog's neck, if she took the dog by surprise and knew where to grab. If Coffey didn't do it, it could have been damned near anyone... any man, that is. We'll probably never know.'

I said, 'Unless he does it again.'

'We wouldn't know even then, if he did it down Texas or over in California,' Harry said.

Brutal leaned back, screwed his fists into his eyes like a tired child, then dropped them into his lap again. 'This is a nightmare,' he said. 'We've got a man who may be innocent - who probably is innocent - and he's going to walk the Green Mile just as sure as God made tall trees and little fishes. What are we supposed to do about it? If we start in with that healing-fingers shit, everyone is going to laugh their asses off, and he'll end up in the Fry-O-Lator just the same.'

'Let's worry about that later,' I said, because I didn't have the slightest idea how to answer him. 'The question right now is what we do - or don't do - about Melly. I'd say step back and take a few days to think it over, but I believe every day we wait raises the chances that he won't be able to help her.'

'Remember him holding his hands out for the mouse?' Brutal asked. ''Give im to me while there's still time,' he said. While there's still time.'

'I remember.'

Brutal considered, then nodded. 'I'm in. I feel bad about Del, too, but mostly I think I just want to see what happens when he touches her. Probably nothing will, but maybe... '

'I doubt like hell we even get the big dummy off the block,' Harry said, then sighed and nodded. 'But who gives a shit? Count me in.'

'Me, too,' Dean said. 'Who stays on the block, Paul? Do we draw straws for it?'

'No, sir,' I said. 'No straws. You stay.'

'Just like that? The hell you say!' Dean replied, hurt and angry. He whipped off his spectacles and began to polish them furiously on his shirt. 'What kind of a bum deal is that?'