The Green Mile(84)

The time stretched out after Toot was gone, the clock seeming to crawl. We had the radio for an hour and a half, Wharton braying laughter at Fred Allen and Allen's Alley, even though I doubt like hell he understood many of the jokes. John Coffey sat on the end of his bunk, hands clasped, eyes rarely leaving whoever was at the duty desk. I have seen men waiting that way in bus stations for their buses to be called.

Percy came in from the storage room around quarter to eleven and handed me a report which had been laboriously written in pencil. Eraser-crumbs lay over the sheet of paper in gritty smears. He saw me run my thumb over one of these, and said hastily: 'That's just a first pass, like. I'm going to copy it over. What do you think?'

What I thought was that it was the most outrageous goddam whitewash I'd read in all my born days. What I told him was that it was fine, and he went away, satisfied.

Dean and Harry played cribbage, talking too loud, squabbling over the count too often, and looking at the crawling hands of the clock every five seconds or so. On at least one of their games that night, they appeared to go around the board three times instead of twice. There was so much tension in the air that I felt I could almost have carved it like clay, and the only people who didn't seem to feel it were Percy and Wild Bill.

Then it got to be ten of twelve, I could stand it no longer and gave Dean a little nod. He went into my office with a bottle of R.C. Cola bought off Toot's cart, and came back out a minute or two later. The cola was now in a tin cup, which a prisoner can't break and then slash with.

I took it and glanced around. Harry, Dean, and Brutal were all watching me. So, for that matter, was John Coffey. Not Percy, though. Percy had returned to the storage room, where he probably felt more at ease on this particular night. I gave the tin cup a quick sniff and got no odor except for the R.C., which had an odd but pleasant cinnamon smell back in those days.

I took it down to Wharton's cell. He was lying on his bunk. He wasn't masturbating - yet, anyway - but had raised quite a boner inside his shorts and was giving it a good healthy twang every now and again, like a dopey bass-fiddler hammering an extra-thick E-string.

'Kid,' I said.

'Don't bother me,' he said.

'Okay,' I agreed. 'I brought you a pop for behaving like a human being all night - damn near a record for you - but I'll just drink it myself.'

I made as if to do just that, raising the tin cup (battered all up and down the sides from many angry bangings on many sets of cell bars) to my lips. Wharton was off the bunk in a flash, which didn't surprise me. It wasn't a high-risk bluff; most deep cons - lifers, ra**sts, and the men slated for Old Sparky - are pigs for their sweets, and this one was no exception.

'Gimme that, you clunk,' Wharton said. He spoke as if he were the foreman and I was just another lowly peon. 'Give it to the Kid.'

I held it just outside the bars, letting him be the one to reach through. Doing it the other way around is a recipe for disaster, as any long-time prison screw will tell you. That was the kind of stuff we thought of without even knowing we were thinking of it - the way we knew not to let the cons call us by our first names, the way we knew that the sound of rapidly jingling keys meant trouble on the block, because it was the sound of a prison guard running and prison guards never run unless there's trouble in the valley. Stuff Percy Wetmore was never going to get wise to.

Tonight, however, Wharton had no interest in grabbing or choking. He snatched the tin cup, downed the pop in three long swallows, then voiced a resounding belch. 'Excellent!' he said.

I held my hand out. 'Cup.'

He held it for a moment, teasing with his eyes. 'Suppose I keep it?'

I shrugged. 'We'll come in and take it back. You'll go down to the little room. And you will have drunk your last R.C. Unless they serve it down in hell, that is.'

His smile faded. 'I don't like jokes about hell, screwtip.' He thrust the cup out through the bars. 'Here. Take it.'

I took it. From behind me, Percy said: 'Why in God's name did you want to give a lugoon like him a soda-pop?'

Because it was loaded with enough infirmary dope to put him on his back for forty-eight hours, and he never tasted a thing, I thought.

'With Paul,' Brutal said, 'the quality of mercy is not strained; it droppeth like the gentle rain from heaven.'

'Huh?' Percy asked, frowning.

'Means he's a soft touch. Always has been, always will be. Want to play a game of Crazy Eights, Percy?'

Percy snorted. 'Except for Go Fish and Old Maid, that's the stupidest card-game ever made.'

'That's why I thought you might like a few hands,' Brutal said, smiling sweetly.

'Everybody's a wisenheimer,' Percy said, and sulked off into my office. I didn't care much for the little rat parking his ass behind my desk, but I kept my mouth shut.

The clock crawled. Twelve-twenty; twelve-thirty. At twelve-forty, John Coffey got up off his bunk and stood at his cell door, hands grasping the bars loosely. Brutal and I walked down to Wharton's cell and looked in. He lay there on his bunk, smiling up at the ceiling. His eyes were open, but they looked like big glass balls. One hand lay on his chest; the other dangled limply off the side of his bunk, knuckles brushing the floor.

'Gosh,' Brutal said, 'from Billy the Kid to Willie the Weeper in less than an hour. I wonder how many of those morphine pills Dean put in that tonic.'