Percy screamed, the sound muffled as it had been through the tape, and made another effort to pull back. For an instant their lips came apart a little, and I saw the black, swirling tide that was flowing out of John Coffey and into Percy Wetmore. What wasn’t going into him through his quivering mouth was flowing in by way of his nostrils. Then the hand on the nape of his neck flexed, and Percy was pulled forward onto John’s mouth again; was almost impaled on it.
Percy’s left hand sprang open. His treasured hickory baton fell to the green linoleum. He never picked it up again.
I tried to lunge forward, I guess I did lunge forward, but my movements felt old and creaky to myself. I grabbed for my gun, but the strap was still across the burled-walnut grip, and at first I couldn’t get it out of its holster. Beneath me, I seemed to feel the floor shake as it had in the back bedroom of the Warden’s neat little Cape Cod. That I’m not sure of, but I know that one of the caged lightbulbs overhead broke. Fragments of glass showered down. Harry yelled in surprise.
At last I managed to thumb loose the safety strap over the butt of my .38, but before I could pull it out of its holster, John had thrust Percy away from him and stepped back into his cell. John was grimacing and rubbing his mouth, as if he had tasted something bad.
“What’d he do?” Brutal shouted. “What’d he do, Paul?”
“Whatever he took out of Melly, Percy’s got it now,” I said.
Percy was standing against the bars of Delacroix’s old cell. His eyes were wide and blank—double zeros. I approached him carefully, expecting him to start coughing and choking the way John had after he’d finished with Melinda, but he didn’t. At first he only stood there.
I snapped my fingers in front of his eyes. “Percy! Hey, Percy! Wake up!”
Nothing. Brutal joined me, and reached toward Percy’s empty face with both hands.
“That isn’t going to work,” I said.
Ignoring me, Brutal clapped his hands sharply together twice, right in front of Percy’s nose. And it did work, or appeared to work. His eyelids fluttered and he stared around—dazed, like someone hit over the head struggling back to consciousness. He looked from Brutal to me. All these years later, I’m pretty sure he didn’t see either of us, but I thought he did then; I thought he was coming out of it.
He pushed away from the bars and swayed a little on his feet. Brutal steadied him. “Easy, boy, you all right?” Percy didn’t answer, just stepped past Brutal and turned toward the duty desk. He wasn’t staggering, exactly, but he was listing to port.
Brutal reached out for him. I pushed his hand away. “Leave him alone.” Would I have said the same if I’d known what was going to happen next? I’ve asked myself that question a thousand times since the fall of 1932. There’s never any answer.
Percy made twelve or fourteen paces, then stopped again, head lowered. He was outside of Wild Bill Wharton’s cell by then. Wharton was still making those sousaphone noises. He slept through the whole thing. He slept through his own death, now that I think of it, which made him a lot luckier than most of the men who ended up here. Certainly luckier than he deserved.
Before we knew what was happening, Percy drew his gun, stepped to the bars of Wharton’s cell, and emptied all six shots into the sleeping man. Just bam-bam-bam, bam-bam-bam, as fast as he could pull the trigger. The sound in that enclosed space was deafening; when I told Janice the story the next morning, I could still hardly hear the sound of my own voice for the ringing in my ears.
We ran at him, all four of us. Dean got there first—I don’t know how, as he was behind Brutal and me when Coffey had hold of Percy—but he did. He grabbed Percy’s wrist, prepared to wrestle the gun out of Percy’s hand, but he didn’t have to. Percy just let go, and the gun fell to the floor. His eyes went across us like they were skates and we were ice. There was a low hissing sound and a sharp ammoniac smell as Percy’s bladder let go, then a brrrap sound and a thicker stink as he filled the other side of his pants, as well. His eyes had settled on a far corner of the corridor. They were eyes that never saw anything in this real world of ours again, so far as I know. Back near the beginning of this I wrote that Percy was at Briar Ridge by the time that Brutal found the colored slivers of Mr. Jingles’s spool a couple of months later, and I didn’t lie about that. He never got the office with the fan in the corner, though; never got a bunch of lunatic patients to push around, either. But I imagine he at least got his own private room.
He had connections, after all.
Wharton was lying on his side with his back against the wall of his cell. I couldn’t see much then but a lot of blood soaking into the sheet and splattered across the cement, but the coroner said Percy had shot like Annie Oakley. Remembering Dean’s story of how Percy had thrown his hickory baton at the mouse that time and barely missed, I wasn’t too surprised. This time the range had been shorter and the target not moving. One in the groin, one in the gut, one in the chest, three in the head.
Brutal was coughing and waving at the haze of gunsmoke. I was coughing myself, but hadn’t noticed it until then.
“End of the line,” Brutal said. His voice was calm, but there was no mistaking the glaze of panic in his eyes.
I looked down the hallway and saw John Coffey sitting on the end of his bunk. His hands were clasped between his knees again, but his head was up and he no longer looked a bit sick. He nodded at me slightly, and I surprised myself—as I had on the day I offered him my hand—by returning the nod.
“What are we going to do?” Harry gibbered. “Oh Christ, what are we going to do?”
“Nothing we can do,” Brutal said in that same calm voice. “We’re hung. Aren’t we, Paul?”
My mind had begun to move very fast. I looked at Harry and Dean, who were staring at me like scared kids. I looked at Percy, who was standing there with his hands and jaw dangling. Then I looked at my old friend, Brutus Howell.
“We’re going to be okay,” I said.
Percy at last commenced coughing. He doubled over, hands on his knees, almost retching. His face began to turn red. I opened my mouth, meaning to tell the others to stand back, but I never got a chance. He made a sound that was a cross between a dry-heave and a bullfrog’s croak, opened his mouth, and spewed out a cloud of black, swirling stuff. It was so thick that for a moment we couldn’t see his head. Harry said “Oh God save us” in a weak and watery voice. Then the stuff turned a white so dazzling it was like January sun on fresh snow. A moment later the cloud was gone. Percy straightened slowly up and resumed his vacant gaze down the length of the Green Mile.
“We didn’t see that,” Brutal said. “Did we, Paul?”
“No. I didn’t and you didn’t. Did you see it, Harry?”
“No,” Harry said.
“Dean?”
“See what?” Dean took his glasses off and began to polish them. I thought he would drop them out of his trembling hands, but he managed not to.