The Green Mile(93)

'I want to help,' John Coffey said. Moores looked up at him, eyes fascinated, mouth hanging open. When Coffey plucked the Buntline Special from his hand and passed it to me, I don't think Hal even knew it was gone. I carefully lowered the hammer. Later, when I checked the cylinder, I would find it had been empty all along. Sometimes I wonder if Hal knew that. Meanwhile, John was still murmuring. 'I came to help her. Just to help. That's all I want.'

'Hal!' she cried from the back bedroom. Her voice sounded a little stronger now, but it also sounded afraid, as if the thing which had so confused and unmanned us had now retreated to her. 'Make them go away, whoever they are! We don't need no sales men in the middle of the night! No Electrolux! No Hoover! No French knickers with come in the crotch! Get them out! Tell them to take a flying f**k at a rolling d... d... ' Something broke - it could have been a waterglass - and then she began to sob.

'Just to help,' John Coffey said in a voice so low it was hardly more than a whisper. He ignored the woman's sobbing and profanity equally. 'Just to help, boss, that's all.'

'You can't,' Moores said. 'No one can.' It was a tone I'd heard before, and after a moment I realized it was how I'd sounded myself when I'd gone into Coffey's cell the night he cured my urinary infection. Hypnotized. You mind your business and I'll mind mine was what I'd told Delacroix... except it had been Coffey who'd been minding my business, just as he was minding Hal Moores's now.

'We think he can,' Brutal said. 'And we didn't risk our jobs - plus a stretch in the can ourselves, maybe - just to get here and turn around and go back without giving it the old college try.'

Only I had been ready to do just that three minutes before. Brutal, too.

John Coffey took the play out of our hands. He pushed into the entry and past Moores, who raised a single strengthless hand to stop him (it trailed across Coffey's hip and fell off; I'm sure the big man never even felt it), and then shuffled down the hall toward the living room, the kitchen beyond it, and the back bedroom beyond that where that shrill unrecognizable voice raised itself again: 'You stay out of here! Whoever you are, just stay out! I'm not dressed, my tits are out and my bitchbox is taking the breeze!'

John paid no attention, just went stolidly along, head bent so he wouldn't smash any of the light fixtures, his round brown skull gleaming, his hands swinging at his sides. After a moment we followed him, me first, Brutal and Hal side by side, and Harry bringing up the rear. I understood one thing perfectly well: it was all out of our hands now, and in John's.

Chapter 25

8

The woman in the back bedroom, propped up against the headboard and staring wall-eyed at the giant who had come into her muddled sight, didn't look at all like the Melly Moores I had known for twenty years; she didn't even look like the Melly Moores Janice and I had visited shortly before Delacroix's execution. The woman propped up in that bed looked like a sick child got up as a Halloween witch. Her livid skin was a hanging dough of wrinkles. It was puckered up around the eye on the right side, as if she were trying to wink. That same side of her mouth turned down, one old yellow eyetooth hung out over her liverish lower lip. Her hair was a wild thin fog around her skull. The room stank of the stuff our bodies dispose of with such decorum when things are running right. The chamberpot by her bed was half full of some vile yellowish goo. We had come too late anyway, I thought, horrified. It had only been a matter of days since she had been recognizable - sick but still herself Since then, the thing in her head must have moved with horrifying speed to consolidate its position. I didn't think even John Coffey could help her now.

Her expression when Coffey entered was one of fear and horror - as if something inside her had recognized a doctor that might be able to get at it and pry it loose, after all... to sprinkle salt on it the way you do on a leech to make it let go its grip. Hear me carefully: I'm not saying that Melly Moores was possessed, and I'm aware that, wrought up as I was, all my perceptions of that night must be suspect. But I have never completely discounted the possibility of demonic possession, either. There was something in her eyes, I tell you, something that looked like fear. On that I think you can trust me; it's an emotion I've seen too much of to mistake.

Whatever it was, it was gone in a hurry, replaced by a look of lively, irrational interest. That unspeakable mouth trembled in what might have been a smile.

'Oh, so big!' she cried. She sounded like a little girl just coming down with a bad throat infection. She took her hands - as spongy-white as her face - out from under the counterpane and patted them together. 'Pull down your pants! I've heard about nigger-cocks my whole life but never seen one!'

Behind me, Moores made a soft groaning sound, full of despair.

John Coffey paid no attention to any of it. After standing still for a moment, as if to observe her from a little distance, he crossed to the bed, which was illuminated by a single bedside lamp. It threw a bright circle of light on the white counterpane drawn up to the lace at the throat of her nightgown. Beyond the bed, in shadow, I saw the chaise longue which belonged in the parlor. An afghan Melly had knitted with her own hands in happier days lay half on the chaise and half on the floor. It was here Hal had been sleeping - dozing, at least - when we pulled in.

As John approached, her expression underwent a third change. Suddenly I saw Melly, whose kindness had meant so much to me over the years, and even more to Janice when the kids had flown from the nest and she had been left feeling so alone and useless and blue. Melly was still interested, but now her interest seemed sane and aware.