Delacroix gathered him up, laughing and crying at the same time, covering the mouse with shameless, smacking kisses. Dean and Harry and Brutal watched with silent wonder. Then Brutal stepped forward and handed the colored spool through the bars. Delacroix didn’t see it at first; he was too taken up with Mr. Jingles. He was like a father whose son has been saved from drowning. Brutal tapped him on the shoulder with the spool. Delacroix looked, saw it, took it, and went back to Mr. Jingles again, stroking his fur and devouring him with his eyes, needing to constantly refresh his perception that yes, the mouse was all right, the mouse was whole and fine and all right.
“Toss it,” Brutal said. “I want to see how he runs.”
“He all right, Boss Howell, he all right, praise God—”
“Toss it,” Brutal repeated. “Mind me, Del.”
Delacroix bent, clearly reluctant, clearly not wanting to let Mr. Jingles out of his hands again, at least not yet. Then, very gently, he tossed the spool. It rolled across the cell, past the Corona cigar box, and to the wall. Mr. Jingles was after it, but not quite with the speed he had shown previously. He appeared to be limping just a bit on his left rear leg, and that was what struck me the hardest—it was, I suppose, what made it real. That little limp.
He got to the spool, though, got to it just fine and nosed it back to Delacroix with all his old enthusiasm. I turned to John Coffey, who was standing at his cell door and smiling. It was a tired smile, and not what I’d call really happy, but the sharp urgency I’d seen in his face as he begged for the mouse to be given to him was gone, and so was the look of pain and fear, as if he were choking. It was our John Coffey again, with his not-quite-there face and strange, far-looking eyes.
“You helped it,” I said. “Didn’t you, big boy?”
“That’s right,” Coffey said. The smile widened a little, and for a moment or two it was happy. “I helped it. I helped Del’s mouse. I helped…” He trailed off, unable to remember the name.
“Mr. Jingles,” Dean said. He was looking at John with careful, wondering eyes, as if he expected Coffey to burst into flames or maybe begin to float in his cell.
“That’s right,” Coffey said. “Mr. Jingles. He’s a circus mouse. Goan live in ivy-glass.”
“You bet your bobcat,” Harry said, joining us in looking at John Coffey. Behind us, Delacroix lay down on his bunk with Mr. Jingles on his chest. Del was crooning to him, singing him some French song that sounded like a lullaby.
Coffey looked up the Green Mile toward the duty desk and the door which led into my office and the storage room beyond. “Boss Percy’s bad,” he said. “Boss Percy’s mean. He stepped on Del’s mouse. He stepped on Mr. Jingles.”
And then, before we could say anything else to him—if we could have thought of anything to say—John Coffey went back to his bunk, lay down, and rolled on his side to face the wall.
3
PERCY WAS STANDING with his back to us when Brutal and I came into the storage room about twenty minutes later. He had found a can of paste furniture polish on a shelf above the hamper where we put our dirty uniforms (and, sometimes, our civilian clothes; the prison laundry didn’t care what it washed), and was polishing the oak arms and legs of the electric chair. This probably sounds bizarre to you, perhaps even macabre, but to Brutal and me, it seemed the most normal thing Percy had done all night. Old Sparky would be meeting his public tomorrow, and Percy would at least appear to be in charge.
“Percy,” I said quietly.
He turned, the little tune he’d been humming dying in his throat, and looked at us. I didn’t see the fear I’d expected, at least not at first. I realized that Percy looked older, somehow. And, I thought, John Coffey was right. He looked mean. Meanness is like an addicting drug—no one on earth is more qualified to say that than me—and I thought that, after a certain amount of experimentation, Percy had gotten hooked on it. He liked what he had done to Delacroix’s mouse. What he liked even more was Delacroix’s dismayed screams.
“Don’t start in on me,” he said in a tone of voice that was almost pleasant. “I mean, hey, it was just a mouse. It never belonged here in the first place, as you boys well know.”
“The mouse is fine,” I said. My heart was thumping hard in my chest but I made my voice come out mild, almost disinterested. “Just fine. Running and squeaking and chasing its spool again. You’re no better at mouse-killing than you are at most of the other things you do around here.”
He was looking at me, amazed and disbelieving. “You expect me to believe that? The goddam thing crunched! I heard it! So you can just—”
“Shut up.”
He stared at me, his eyes wide. “What? What did you say to me?”
I took a step closer to him. I could feel a vein throbbing in the middle of my forehead. I couldn’t remember the last time I’d felt so angry. “Aren’t you glad Mr. Jingles is okay? After all the talks we’ve had about how our job is to keep the prisoners calm, especially when it gets near the end for them, I thought you’d be glad. Relieved. With Del having to take the walk tomorrow, and all.”
Percy looked from me to Brutal, his studied calmness dissolving into uncertainty. “What the hell game do you boys think you’re playing?” he asked.
“None of this is a game, my friend,” Brutal said. “You thinking it is… well, that’s just one of the reasons you can’t be trusted. You want to know the absolute truth? I think you’re a pretty sad case.”
“You want to watch it,” Percy said. Now there was a rawness in his voice. Fear creeping back in, after all—fear of what we might want with him, fear of what we might be up to. I was glad to hear it. It would make him easier to deal with. “I know people. Important people.”
“So you say, but you’re such a dreamer,” Brutal said. He sounded as if he was on the verge of laughter.
Percy dropped the polishing rag onto the seat of the chair with the clamps attached to the arms and legs. “I killed that mouse,” he said in a voice that was not quite steady.
“Go on and check for yourself,” I said. “It’s a free country.”
“I will,” he said. “I will.”
He stalked past us, mouth set, small hands (Wharton was right, they were pretty) fiddling with his comb. He went up the steps and ducked through into my office. Brutal and I stood by Old Sparky, waiting for him to come back and not talking. I don’t know about Brutal, but I couldn’t think of a thing to say. I didn’t even know how to think about what we had just seen.
Three minutes passed. Brutal picked up Percy’s rag and began to polish the thick back-slats of the electric chair. He had time to finish one and start another before Percy came back. He stumbled and almost fell coming down the steps from the office to the storage-room floor, and when he crossed to us he came at an uneven strut. His face was shocked and unbelieving.
“You switched them,” he said in a shrill, accusatory voice. “You switched mice somehow, you bastards. You’re playing with me, and you’re going to be goddam sorry if you don’t stop! I’ll see you on the goddam breadlines if you don’t stop! Who do you think you are?”
He quit, panting for breath, his hands clenched.
“I’ll tell you who we are,” I said. “We’re the people you work with, Percy… but not for very much longer.” I reached out and clamped my hands on his shoulders. Not real hard; but it was a clamp, all right. Yes it was.