4
I CLOCKED IN that night—in many ways the strangest night of my entire life—at twenty past six. I thought I could still smell the faint, lingering odor of burned flesh on the air. It had to be an illusion—the doors to the outside, both on the block and in the storage room, had been open most of the day, and the previous two shifts had spent hours scrubbing in there—but that didn’t change what my nose was telling me, and I didn’t think I could have eaten any dinner even if I hadn’t been scared almost to death about the evening which lay ahead.
Brutal came on the block at quarter to seven, Dean at ten ’til. I asked Dean if he would go over to the infirmary and see if they had a heating pad for my back, which I seemed to have strained that early morning, helping to carry Delacroix’s body down into the tunnel. Dean said he’d be happy to. I believe he wanted to tip me a wink, but restrained himself.
Harry clocked on at three minutes to seven.
“The truck?” I asked.
“Where we talked about.”
So far, so good. There followed a little passage of time when we stood by the duty desk, drinking coffee and studiously not mentioning what we were all thinking and hoping: that Percy was late, that maybe Percy wasn’t going to show up at all. Considering the hostile reviews he’d gotten on the way he’d handled the electrocution, that seemed at least possible.
But Percy apparently subscribed to that old axiom about how you should get right back on the horse that had thrown you, because here he came through the door at six minutes past seven, resplendent in his blue uniform, with his sidearm on one hip and his hickory stick in its ridiculous custom-made holster on the other. He punched his time-card, then looked around at us warily (except for Dean, who hadn’t come back from the infirmary yet). “My starter busted,” he said. “I had to crank.”
“Aw,” Harry said, “po’ baby.”
“Should have stayed home and got the cussed thing fixed,” Brutal said blandly. “We wouldn’t want you straining your arm none, would we, boys?”
“Yeah, you’d like that, wouldn’t you?” Percy sneered, but I thought he seemed reassured by the relative mildness of Brutal’s response. That was good. For the next few hours we’d have to walk a line with him—not too hostile, but not too friendly, either. After last night, he’d find anything even approaching warmth suspect. We weren’t going to get him with his guard down, we all knew that, but I thought we could catch him with it a long piece from all the way up if we played things just right. It was important that we move fast, but it was also important—to me, at least—that nobody be hurt. Not even Percy Wetmore.
Dean came back and gave me a little nod.
“Percy,” I said, “I want you to go on in the storeroom and mop down the floor. Stairs to the tunnel, too. Then you can write your report on last night.”
“That should be creative,” Brutal remarked, hooking his thumbs into his belt and looking up at the ceiling.
“You guys are funnier’n a fuck in church,” Percy said, but beyond that he didn’t protest. Didn’t even point out the obvious, which was that the floor in there had already been washed at least twice that day. My guess is that he was glad for the chance to be away from us.
I went over the previous shift report, saw nothing that concerned me, and then took a walk down to Wharton’s cell. He was sitting there on his bunk with his knees drawn up and his arms clasped around his shins, looking at me with a bright, hostile smile.
“Well, if it ain’t the big boss,” he said. “Big as life and twice as ugly. You look happier’n a pig knee-deep in shit, Boss Edgecombe. Wife give your pecker a pull before you left home, did she?”
“How you doing, Kid?” I asked evenly, and at that he brightened for real. He let go of his legs, stood up, and stretched. His smile broadened, and some of the hostility went out of it.
“Well, damn!” he said. “You got my name right for once! What’s the matter with you, Boss Edgecombe? You sick or sumpin?”
No, not sick. I’d been sick, but John Coffey had taken care of that. His hands no longer knew the trick of tying a shoe, if they ever had, but they knew other tricks. Yes indeed they did.
“My friend,” I told him, “if you want to be a Billy the Kid instead of a Wild Bill, it’s all the same to me.”
He puffed visibly, like one of those loathsome fish that live in South American rivers and can sting you almost to death with the spines along their backs and sides. I dealt with a lot of dangerous men during my time on the Mile, but few if any so repellent as William Wharton, who considered himself a great outlaw, but whose jailhouse behavior rarely rose above pissing or spitting through the bars of his cell. So far we hadn’t given him the awed respect he felt was his by right, but on that particular night I wanted him tractable. If that meant lathering on the soft-soap, I would gladly lather it on.
“I got a lot in common with the Kid, and you just better believe it,” Wharton said. “I didn’t get here for stealing candy out of a dimestore.” As proud as a man who’s been conscripted into the Heroes’ Brigade of the French Foreign Legion instead of one whose ass has been slammed into a cell seventy long steps from the electric chair. “Where’s my supper?”
“Come on, Kid, report says you had it at five-fifty. Meatloaf with gravy, mashed, peas. You don’t con me that easy.”
He laughed expansively and sat down on his bunk again. “Put on the radio, then.” He said radio in the way people did back then when they were joking, so it rhymed with the fifties slang word “Daddy-O.” It’s funny how much a person can remember about times when his nerves were tuned so tight they almost sang.
“Maybe later, big boy,” I said. I stepped away from his cell and looked down the corridor. Brutal had strolled down to the far end, where he checked to make sure the restraint-room door was on the single lock instead of the double. I knew it was, because I’d already checked it myself. Later on, we’d want to be able to open that door as quickly as we could. There would be no time spent emptying out the attic-type rickrack that had accumulated in there over the years; we’d taken it out, sorted it, and stored it in other places not long after Wharton joined our happy band. It had seemed to us the room with the soft walls was apt to get a lot of use, at least until “Billy the Kid” strolled the Mile.
John Coffey, who would usually have been lying down at this time, long, thick legs dangling and face to the wall, was sitting on the end of his bunk with his hands clasped, watching Brutal with an alertness—a thereness—that wasn’t typical of him. He wasn’t leaking around the eyes, either.
Brutal tried the door to the restraint room, then came on back up the Mile. He glanced at Coffey as he passed Coffey’s cell, and Coffey said a curious thing: “Sure. I’d like a ride.” As if responding to something Brutal had said.
Brutal’s eyes met mine. He knows, I could almost hear him saying. Somehow he knows.
I shrugged and spread my hands, as if to say Of course he knows.
5
OLD TOOT-TOOT made his last trip of the night down to E Block with his cart at about quarter to nine. We bought enough of his crap to make him smile with avarice.
“Say, you boys seen that mouse?” he asked.
We shook our heads.
“Maybe Pretty Boy has,” Toot said, and gestured with his head in the direction of the storage room, where Percy was either washing the floor, writing his report, or picking his ass.
“What do you care? It’s none of your affair, either way,” Brutal said. “Roll wheels, Toot. You’re stinkin the place up.”