The Green Mile(87)

We backed away from him. He stood in the middle of the room, under the caged light, wearing the straitjacket, breathing through flared nostrils, and making muffled mmmph! mmmph! sounds from behind the tape. All in all, he looked as crazy as any other prisoner we'd ever jugged in that room.

'The quieter you are, the sooner you get out,' I said. 'Try to remember that, Percy.'

'And if you get lonely, think about Olive Oyl,' Harry advised. 'Uck-uck-uck-uck.'

Then we went out. I closed the door and Brutal locked it. Dean was standing a little way up the Mile, just outside of Coffey's cell. He had already put the master key in the top lock. The four of us looked a each other, no one saying anything. There was no need to. We had started the machinery; all we could do now was hope that it ran the course we had laid out instead of jumping the tracks somewhere along the line.

'You still want to go for that ride, John?' Brutal asked,

'Yes, sir,' Coffey said. 'I reckon.'

'Good,' Dean said. He turned the first lock, removed the key, and seated it in the second.

'Do we need to chain you up, John?' I asked.

Coffey appeared to think about this. 'Can if you want to,' he said at last. 'Don't need to.'

I nodded at Brutal, who opened the cell door, then turned to Harry, who was more or less pointing Percy's.45 at Coffey as Coffey emerged from his cell.

'Give those to Dean,' I said.

Harry blinked like someone awakening from a momentary doze, saw Percy's gun and stick still in his hands, and passed them over to Dean. Coffey, meanwhile, hulked in the corridor with his bald skull almost brushing one of the caged overhead lights. Standing there with his hands in front of him and his shoulders sloped forward to either side of his barrel chest, he made me think again, as I had the first time I saw him, of a huge captured bear.

'Lock Percy's toys in the duty desk until we get back,' I said.

'If we get back,' Harry added.

'I will,' Dean said to me, taking no notice of Harry.

'And if someone shows up - probably no one will, but if someone does - what do you say?'

'That Coffey got upset around midnight,' Dean said. He looked as studious as a college student taking a big exam. 'We had to give him the jacket and but him in the restraint room. If there's noise, who ever hears it'll just think it's him.' He raised his chin to John Coffey.

'And what about us?' Brutal asked.

'Paul's over in Admin, pulling Del's file and going over the witnesses,' Dean said. 'It's especially important this time, because the execution was such a balls-up. He said he'd probably be there the rest of the shift. You and Harry and Percy are over in the laundry, washing your clothes.'

Well, that was what folks said, anyway. There was a crap-game in the laundry supply room some nights; on others it was blackjack or poker or acey-deucey. Whatever it was, the guards who participated were said to be washing their clothes. There was usually moonshine at these get-togethers, and on occasion a joystick would go around the circle. It's been the same in prisons since prisons were invented, I suppose. When you spend your life taking care of mudmen, you can't help getting a little dirty yourself. In any case, we weren't likely to be checked up on. "Clothes washing" was treated with great discretion at Cold Mountain.

'Right with Eversharp,' I said, turning Coffey around and putting him in motion. 'And if it all falls down, Dean, you. don't know nothing about nothing.'

'That's easy to say, but - '

At that moment, a skinny arm shot out from between the bars of Wharton's cell and grabbed Coffey's slab of a bicep. We all gasped. Wharton should have been dead to the world, all but comatose, yet here he stood, swaying back and forth on his feet like a hard-tagged fighter, grinning blearily.

Coffey's reaction was remarkable. He didn't pull away, but he also gasped, pulling air in over his teeth like someone who has touched something cold and unpleasant. His eyes widened, and for a moment he looked as if he and dumb had never even met, let alone got up together every morning and lain down together every night. He had looked alive - there - when he had wanted me to come into his cell so he could touch me. Help me, in Coffeyspeak. He had looked that way again when he'd been holding his hands out for the mouse. Now, for the third time, his face had lit up, as if a spotlight had suddenly been turned on inside his brain. Except it was different this time. It was colder this time, and for the first time I wondered what might happen if John Coffey were suddenly to run amok. We had our guns, we could shoot him, but actually taking him down might not be easy to do.

I saw similar thoughts on Brutal's face, but Wharton just went on grinning his stoned, loose-lipped grin - 'Where do you think you're going?' he asked. It came out something like Wherra fink yerr gone?

Coffey stood still, looking first at Wharton, then at Wharton's hand, then back into Wharton's face. I could not read that expression. I mean I could see the intelligence in it, but I couldn't read it. As for Wharton, I wasn't worried about him at all. He wouldn't remember any of this later; he was like a drunk walking in a blackout.

'You're a bad man,' Coffey whispered, and I couldn't tell what I heard in his voice - pain or anger or fear. Maybe all three. Coffey looked down at the hand on his arm again, the way you might look at a bug which could give you a really nasty bite, had it a mind.