Melly put her arms around John and hugged him. Coffey stood there for a moment, letting himself be hugged, and then he raised one hand and stroked the top of her head. This he did with infinite gentleness. His face was still gray. I thought he looked dreadfully sick.
She stood away from him, her face turned up to his. "Thank you."
"Right welcome, ma'am."
She turned to Hal and walked back to him. He put his arms around her.
"Paul--" It was Harry. He held his right wrist out to me and tapped the face of his watch. It was pressing on to three o'clock. Light would start showing by four-thirty. If we wanted to get Coffey back to Cold Mountain before that happened, we would have to go soon. And I wanted to get him back. Partly because the longer this went on the worse our chances of getting away with it became, yes, of course. But I also wanted John in a place where I could legitimately call a doctor for him, if the need arose. Looking at him, I thought it might.
The Mooreses were sitting on the edge of the bed, arms around each other. I thought of asking Hal out into the living room for a private word, then realized I could ask until the cows came home and he wouldn't budge from where he was right then. He might be able to take his eyes off her--for a few seconds, at least--by the time the sun came up, but not now.
"Hal," I said. "We have to go now."
He nodded, not looking at me. He was studying the color in his wife's cheeks, the natural unstrained curve of his wife's lips, the new black in his wife's hair.
I tapped him on the shoulder, hard enough to get his attention for a moment, at least.
"Hal, we never came here."
"What--?"
"We never came here," I said. "Later on we'll talk, but for now that's all you need to know. We were never here."
"Yes, all right . . ." He forced himself to focus on me for a moment, with what was clearly an effort. "You got him out. Can you get him back in?"
"I think so. Maybe. But we need to go."
"How did you know he could do this?" Then he shook his head, as if realizing for himself that this wasn't the time. "Paul . . . thank you."
"Don't thank me," I said. "Thank John."
He looked at John Coffey, then put out one hand--just as I had done on the day Harry and Percy escorted John onto the block. "Thank you. Thank you so much."
John looked at the hand. Brutal threw a none-too-subtle elbow into his side. John started, then took the hand and gave it a shake. Up, down, back to center, release. "Welcome," he said in a hoarse voice. It sounded to me like Melly's when she had clapped her hands and told John to pull down his pants. "Welcome," he said to the man who would, in the ordinary course of things, grasp a pen with that hand and then sign John Coffey's execution order with it.
Harry tapped the face of his watch, more urgently this time.
"Brute?" I said. "Ready?"
"Hello, Brutus," Melinda said in a cheerful voice, as if noticing him for the first time. "It's good to see you. Would you gentlemen like tea? Would you, Hal? I could make it." She got up again. "I've been ill, but I feel fine now. Better than I have in years."
"Thank you, Missus Moores, but we have to go," Brutal said. "It's past John's bedtime." He smiled to show it was a joke, but the look he gave John was as anxious as I felt.
"Well . . . if you're sure . . ."
"Yes, ma'am. Come on, John Coffey." He tugged John's arm to get him going, and John went.
"Just a minute!" Melinda shook free of Hal's hand and ran as lightly as a girl to where John stood. She put her arms around him and gave him another hug. Then she reached around to the nape of her neck and pulled a fine-link chain out of her bodice. At the end of it was a silver medallion. She held it out to John, who looked at it uncomprehendingly.
"It's St. Christopher," she said. "I want you to have it, Mr. Coffey, and wear it. He'll keep you safe. Please wear it. For me."
John looked at me, troubled, and I looked at Hal, who first spread his hands and then nodded.
"Take it, John," I said. "It's a present."
John took it, slipped the chain around his bull-neck, and dropped the St. Christopher medallion into the front of his shirt. He had completely stopped coughing now, but I thought he looked grayer and sicker than ever.
"Thank you, ma'am," he said.
"No," she replied. "Thank you. Thank you, John Coffey."
9
I RODE UP in the cab with Harry going back, and was damned glad to be there. The heater was broken, but we were out of the open air, at least. We had gone about ten miles when Harry spotted a little turnout and veered the truck into it.
"What is it?" I asked. "Is it a bearing?" To my mind, the problem could have been that or anything; every component of the Farmall's engine and transmission sounded on the verge of going cataclysmically wrong or giving up the ghost entirely.
"Nope," Harry said, sounding apologetic. "I got to take a leak, is all. My back teeth are floatin."
It turned out that we all did, except for John. When Brutal asked if he wouldn't like to step down and help us water the bushes, he just shook his head without looking up. He was leaning against the back of the cab and wearing one of the Army blankets over his shoulders like a serape. I couldn't get any kind of read on his complexion, but I could hear his breathing--dry and raspy, like wind blowing through straw. I didn't like it.
I walked into a clump of willows, unbuttoned, and let go. I was still close enough to my urinary infection so that the body's amnesia had not taken full hold, and I could be grateful simply to be able to pee without needing to scream. I stood there, emptying out and looking up at the moon; I was hardly aware of Brutal standing next to me and doing the same thing until he said in a low voice, "He'll never sit in Old Sparky."
I looked around at him, surprised and a little frightened by the low certainty in his tone. "What do you mean?"
"I mean he swallered that stuff instead of spitting out like he done before for a reason. It might take a week--he's awful big and strong--but I bet it's quicker. One of us'll do a check-tour and there he'll be, lying dead as stone on his bunk."
I'd thought I was done peeing, but at that a little shiver twisted up my back and a little more squirted out. As I rebuttoned my fly, I thought that what Brutal was saying made perfect sense. And I hoped, all in all, that he was right. John Coffey didn't deserve to die at all, if I was right in my reasoning about the Detterick girls, but if he did die, I didn't want it to be by my hand. I wasn't sure I could lift my hand to do it, if it came to that.
"Come on," Harry murmured out of the dark. "It's gettin late. Let's get this done."
As we walked back to the truck, I realized we had left John entirely alone--stupidity on the Percy Wetmore level. I thought that he would be gone; that he'd spat out the bugs as soon as he saw he was unguarded, and had then just lit out for the territories, like Huck and Jim on the Big Muddy. All we would find was the blanket he had been wearing around his shoulders.
But he was there, still sitting with his back against the cab and his forearms propped on his knees. He looked up at the sound of our approach and tried to give us a smile. It hung there for a moment on his haggard face and then slipped off.
"How you doing, Big John?" Brutal asked, climbing into the back of the truck again and retrieving his own blanket.
"Fine, boss," John said listlessly. "I's fine."
Brutal patted his knee. "We'll be back soon. And when we get squared away, you know what? I'm going to see you get a great big cup of hot coffee. Sugar and cream, too."
You bet, I thought, going around to the passenger side of the cab and climbing in. If we don't get arrested and thrown in jail ourselves first.
But I'd been living with that idea ever since we'd thrown Percy into the restraint room, and it didn't worry me enough to keep me awake. I dozed off and dreamed of Calvary Hill. Thunder in the west and a smell that might have been juniper berries. Brutal and Harry and Dean and I were standing around in robes and tin hats like in a Cecil B.
DeMille movie. We were Centurions, I guess. There were three crosses, Percy Wetmore and Eduard Delacroix flanking John Coffey. I looked down at my hand and saw I was holding a bloody hammer.
We got to get him down from there, Paul! Brutal screamed. We got to get him down!
Except we couldn't, they'd taken away the stepladder. I started to tell Brutal this, and then an extra-hard jounce of the truck woke me up. We were backing into the place where Harry had hidden the truck earlier on a day that already seemed to stretch back to the beginning of time.
The two of us got out and went around to the back. Brutal hopped down all right, but John Coffey's knees buckled and he almost fell. It took all three of us to catch him, and he was no more than set solid on his feet again before he went off into another of those coughing fits, this one the worst yet. He bent over, the coughing sounds muffled by the heels of his palms, which he held pressed against his mouth.
When his coughing eased, we covered the front of the Farmall with the pine boughs again and walked back the way we had come. The worst part of that whole surreal furlough was--for me, at least--the last two hundred yards, with us scurrying back south along the shoulder of the highway. I could see (or thought I could) the first faint lightening of the sky in the east, and felt sure some early farmer, out to harvest his pumpkins or dig his last few rows of yams, would come along and see us. And even if that didn't happen, we would hear someone (in my imagination it sounded like Curtis Anderson) shout "Hold it right there!" as I used the Aladdin key to unlock the enclosure around the bulkhead leading to the tunnel. Then two dozen carbine-toting guards would step out of the woods and our little adventure would be over.
By the time we actually got to the enclosure, my heart was whamming so hard that I could see little white dots exploding in front of my eyes with each pulse it made. My hands felt cold and numb and faraway, and for the longest time I couldn't get the key to go into the lock.
"Oh Christ, headlights!" Harry moaned.
I looked up and saw brightening fans of light on the road. My keyring almost fell out of my hand; I managed to clutch it at the last second.
"Give them to me," Brutal said. "I'll do it."
"No, I've got it," I said. The key at last slipped into its slot and turned. A moment later we were in. We crouched behind the bulkhead and watched as a Sunshine Bread truck went pottering past the prison. Beside me I could hear John Coffey's tortured breathing. He sounded like an engine which has almost run out of oil. He had held the bulkhead door up effortlessly for us on our way out, but we didn't even ask him to help this time; it would have been out of the question. Brutal and I got the door up, and Harry led John down the steps. The big man tottered as he went, but he got down. Brutal and I followed him as fast as we could, then lowered the bulkhead behind us and locked it again.
"Christ, I think we're gonna--" Brutal began, but I cut him off with a sharp elbow to the ribs.
"Don't say it," I said. "Don't even think it, until he's safe back in his cell."
"And there's Percy to think about," Harry said. Our voices had a flat, echoey quality in the brick tunnel. "The evening ain't over as long as we got him to contend with."
As it turned out, our evening was far from over.
PART SIX
COFFEY
ON THE MILE
1
I SAT IN THE GEORGIA PINES SUNROOM, my father's fountain pen in my hand, and time was lost to me as I recalled the night Harry and Brutal and I took John Coffey off the Mile and to Melinda Moores, in an effort to save her life. I wrote about the drugging of William Wharton, who fancied himself the second coming of Billy the Kid; I wrote of how we stuck Percy in the straitjacket and jugged him in the restraint room at the end of the Green Mile; I wrote about our strange night journey--both terrifying and exhilarating--and the miracle that befell at the end of it. We saw John Coffey drag a woman back, not just from the edge of her grave, but from what seemed to us to be the very bottom of it.
I wrote and was very faintly aware of the Georgia Pines version of life going on around me. Old folks went down to supper, then trooped off to the Resource Center (yes, you are permitted a chuckle) for their evening dose of network sitcoms. I seem to remember my friend Elaine bringing me a sandwich, and thanking her, and eating it, but I couldn't tell you what time of the evening she brought it, or what was in it. Most of me was back in 1932, when our sandwiches were usually bought off old Toot-Toot's rolling gospel snack-wagon, cold pork a nickel, corned beef a dime.
I remember the place quieting down as the relics who live here made ready for another night of thin and troubled sleep; I heard Mickey--maybe not the best orderly in the place, but certainly the kindest--singing "Red River Valley" in his good tenor as he went around dispensing the evening meds: "From this valley they say you are going . . . We will miss your bright eyes and sweet smile . . ." The song made me think of Melinda again, and what she had said to John after the miracle had happened. I dreamed of you. I dreamed you were wandering in the dark, and so was I. We found each other.
Georgia Pines grew quiet, midnight came and passed, and still I wrote. I got to Harry reminding us that, even though we had gotten John back to the prison without being discovered, we still had Percy waiting for us. "The evening ain't over as long as we got him to contend with" is more or less what Harry said.
That's where my long day of driving my father's pen at last caught up with me. I put it down--just for a few seconds, I thought, so I could flex some life back into the fingers--and then I put my forehead down on my arm and closed my eyes to rest them. When I opened them again and raised my head, morning sun glared in at me through the windows. I looked at my watch and saw it was past eight. I had slept, head on arms like an old drunk, for what must have been six hours. I got up, wincing, trying to stretch some life into my back. I thought about going down to the kitchen, getting some toast, and going for my morning walk, then looked down at the sheafs of scribbled pages scattered across the desk. All at once I decided to put off the walk for awhile. I had a chore, yes, but it could keep, and I didn't feel like playing hide-and-seek with Brad Dolan that morning.
Instead of walking, I'd finish my story. Sometimes it's better to push on through, no matter how much your mind and body may protest. Sometimes it's the only way to get through. And what I remember most about that morning is how desperately I wanted to get free of John Coffey's persistent ghost.
"Okay," I said. "One more mile. But first . . ."
I walked down to the toilet at the end of the second-floor hall. As I stood inside there, urinating, I happened to glance up at the smoke detector on the ceiling. That made me think of Elaine, and how she had distracted Dolan so I could go for my walk and do my little chore the day before. I finished peeing with a grin on my face.
I walked back to the sunroom, feeling better (and a lot comfier in my nether regions). Someone--Elaine, I have no doubt--had set down a pot of tea beside my pages. I drank greedily, first one cup, then another, before I even sat down. Then I resumed my place, uncapped the fountain pen, and once more began to write.
I was just slipping fully into my story when a shadow fell on me. I looked up and felt a sinking in my stomach. It was Dolan, standing between me and the windows. He was grinning.
"Missed you going on your morning walk, Paulie," he said, "so I thought I'd come and see what you were up to. Make sure you weren't, you know, sick."
"You're all heart and a mile wide," I said. My voice sounded all right--so far, anyway--but my heart was pounding hard. I was afraid of him, and I don't think that realization was entirely new. He reminded me of Percy Wetmore, and I'd never been afraid of him . . . but when I knew Percy, I had been young.
Brad's smile widened, but became no less unpleasant.
"Folks tellin me you been in here all night, Paulie, just writing your little report. Now, that's just no good. Old farts like you need their beauty rest."
"Percy--" I began, then saw a frown crease his grin and realized my mista
ke. I took a deep breath and began again. "Brad, what have you got against me?"
He looked puzzled for a moment, maybe a bit unsettled. Then the grin returned. "Old-timer," he said, "could be I just don't like your face. What you writin, anyway? Last will n testicles?"
He came forward, craning. I slapped my hand over the page I'd been working on. The rest of them I began to rake together with my free hand, crumpling some in my hurry to get them under my arm and under cover.
"Now," he said, as if speaking to a baby, "that ain't going to work, you old sweetheart. If Brad wants to look, Brad is going to look. And you can take that to the everfucking bank."
His hand, young and hideously strong, closed over my wrist, and squeezed. Pain sank into my hand like teeth, and I groaned.
"Let go," I managed.
"When you let me see," he replied, and he was no longer smiling. His face was cheerful, though; the kind of good cheer you only see on the faces of folks who enjoy being mean. "Let me see, Paulie. I want to know what you're writing." My hand began to move away from the top page. From our trip with John back through the tunnel under the road. "I want to see if it has anything to do with where you--"
"Let that man alone."
The voice was like a harsh whipcrack on a dry, hot day . . . and the way Brad Dolan jumped, you would have thought his ass had been the target. He let go of my hand, which thumped back down on my paperwork, and we both looked toward the door.
Elaine Connelly was standing there, looking fresh and stronger than she had in days. She wore jeans that showed off her slim hips and long legs; there was a blue ribbon in her hair. She had a tray in her arthritic hands--juice, a scrambled egg, toast, more tea. And her eyes were blazing.
"What do you think you're doing?" Brad asked. "He can't eat up here."
"He can, and he's going to," she said in that same dry tone of command. I had never heard it before, but I welcomed it now. I looked for fear in her eyes and saw not a speck--only rage. "And what you're going to do is get out of here before you go beyond the cockroach level of nuisance to that of slightly larger vermin--Rattus Americanus, let us say."