Brad nodded. “Apology accepted. Now go hang that back up. You got no business out walking in the rain, anyway. Specially not in those woods. What if you were to slip and fall and break your damned hip? Huh? Who do you think’d have to hoss your elderly freight back up the hill?”
“I don’t know,” I said. I just wanted to get away from him. The more I listened to him, the more he sounded like Percy. William Wharton, the crazyman who came to the Green Mile in the fall of ’32, once grabbed Percy and scared him so bad that Percy squirted in his pants. You talk about this to anyone, Percy told the rest of us afterward, and you’ll all be on the breadlines in a week. Now, these many years later, I could almost hear Brad Dolan saying those same words, in that same tone of voice. It’s as if, by writing about those old times, I have unlocked some unspeakable door that connects the past to the present—Percy Wetmore to Brad Dolan, Janice Edgecombe to Elaine Connelly, Cold Mountain Penitentiary to the Georgia Pines old folks’ home. And if that thought doesn’t keep me awake tonight, I guess nothing will.
I made as if to go in through the kitchen door and Brad grabbed me by the wrist again. I don’t know about the first one, but this time he was doing it on purpose, squeezing to hurt. His eyes shifting back and forth, making sure no one was around in the early-morning wet, no one to see he was abusing one of the old folks he was supposed to be taking care of.
“What do you do down that path?” he asked. “I know you don’t go down there and jerk off, those days are long behind you, so what do you do?”
“Nothing,” I said, telling myself to be calm, not to show him how bad he was hurting me and to be calm, to remember he’d only mentioned the path, he didn’t know about the shed. “I just walk. To clear my mind.”
“Too late for that, Paulie, your mind’s never gonna be clear again.” He squeezed my thin old man’s wrist again, grinding the brittle bones, eyes continually shifting from side to side, wanting to make sure he was safe. Brad wasn’t afraid of breaking the rules; he was only afraid of being caught breaking them. And in that, too, he was like Percy Wetmore, who would never let you forget he was the governor’s nephew. “Old as you are, it’s a miracle you can remember who you are. You’re too goddam old. Even for a museum like this. You give me the fucking creeps, Paulie.”
“Let go of me,” I said, trying to keep the whine out of my voice. It wasn’t just pride, either. I thought if he heard it, it might inflame him, the way the smell of sweat can sometimes inflame a bad-tempered dog—one which would otherwise only growl—to bite. That made me think of a reporter who’d covered John Coffey’s trial. The reporter was a terrible man named Hammersmith, and the most terrible thing about him was that he hadn’t known he was terrible.
Instead of letting go, Dolan squeezed my wrist again. I groaned. I didn’t want to, but I couldn’t help it. It hurt all the way down to my ankles.
“What do you do down there, Paulie? Tell me.”
“Nothing!” I said. I wasn’t crying, not yet, but I was afraid I’d start soon if he kept bearing down like that. “Nothing, I just walk, I like to walk, let go of me!”
He did, but only long enough so he could grab my other hand. That one was rolled closed. “Open up,” he said. “Let Poppa see.”
I did, and he grunted with disgust. It was nothing but the remains of my second piece of toast. I’d clenched it in my right hand when he started squeezing my left wrist, and there was butter—well, oleo, they don’t have real butter here, of course—on my fingers.
“Go on inside and wash your damned hands,” he said, stepping back and taking another bite of his Danish. “Jesus Christ.”
I went up the steps. My legs were shaking, my heart pounding like an engine with leaky valves and shaky old pistons. As I grasped the knob that would let me into the kitchen—and safety—Dolan said: “If you tell anyone I squeezed your po’ old wrist, Paulie, I’ll tell them you’re having delusions. Onset of senile dementia, likely. And you know they’ll believe me. If there are bruises, they’ll think you made them yourself.”
Yes. Those things were true. And once again, it could have been Percy Wetmore saying them, a Percy that had somehow stayed young and mean while I’d grown old and brittle.
“I’m not going to say anything to anyone,” I muttered. “Got nothing to say.”
“That’s right, you old sweetie.” His voice light and mocking, the voice of a lugoon (to use Percy’s word) who thought he was going to be young forever. “And I’m going to find out what you’re up to. I’m going to make it my business. You hear?”
I heard, all right, but wouldn’t give him the satisfaction of saying so. I went in, passed through the kitchen (I could now smell eggs and sausage cooking, but no longer wanted any), and hung the poncho back up on its hook. Then I went upstairs to my room—resting at every step, giving my heart time to slow—and gathered my writing materials together.
I went down to the solarium and was just sitting at the little table by the windows when my friend Elaine poked her head in. She looked tired, and, I thought, unwell. She’d combed her hair out but was still in her robe. We old sweeties don’t stand much on ceremony; for the most part, we can’t afford to.
“I won’t disturb you,” she said, “I see you’re getting set to write—”
“Don’t be silly,” I said. “I’ve got more time than Carter’s got liver pills. Come on in.”
She did, but stood by the door. “It’s just that I couldn’t sleep—again—and happened to be looking out my window a little earlier… and…”
“And you saw Mr. Dolan and me having our pleasant little chat,” I said. I hoped seeing was all she’d done; that her window had been closed and she hadn’t heard me whining to be let go.
“It didn’t look pleasant and it didn’t look friendly,” she said. “Paul, that Mr. Dolan’s been asking around about you. He asked me about you—last week, this was. I didn’t think much about it then, just that he’s got himself a nasty long nose for other people’s business, but now I wonder.”
“Asking about me?” I hoped I didn’t sound as uneasy as I felt. “Asking what?”
“Where you go walking, for one thing. And why you go walking.”
I tried to laugh. “There’s a man who doesn’t believe in exercise, that much is clear.”
“He thinks you’ve got a secret.” She paused. “So do I.”
I opened my mouth—to say what, I don’t know—but Elaine raised one of her gnarled but oddly beautiful hands before I could get a single word out. “If you do, I don’t want to know what it is, Paul. Your business is your business. I was raised to think that way, but not everyone was. Be careful. That’s all I want to tell you. And now I’ll let you alone to do your work.”
She turned to go, but before she could get out the door, I called her name. She turned back, eyes questioning.
“When I finish what I’m writing—” I began, then shook my head a little. That was wrong. “If I finish what I’m writing, would you read it?”
She seemed to consider, then gave me the sort of smile a man could easily fall in love with, even a man as old as me. “That would be my honor.”
“You’d better wait until you read it before you talk about honor,” I said, and it was Delacroix’s death I was thinking of.
“I’ll read it, though,” she said. “Every word. I promise. But you have to finish writing it, first.”
She left me to it, but it was a long time before I wrote anything. I sat staring out the windows for almost an hour, tapping my pen against the side of the table, watching the gray day brighten a little at a time, thinking about Brad Dolan, who calls me Paulie and never tires of jokes about chinks and slopes and spicks and micks, thinking about what Elaine Connelly had said. He thinks you’ve got a secret. So do I.