Kitabı oku: «Зеленая миля / The Green Mile», sayfa 6

8

Late that winter, long after these events were over, Brutal came to me one night when it was just the two of us, E Block temporarily empty and all the other guards temporarily reassigned. Percy had gone on to Briar Ridge.

“Come here,” Brutal said in a funny, squeezed voice that made me look around at him sharply. I had just come in out of a cold and sleety night, and had been brushing off the shoulders of my coat prior to hanging it up.

“Is something wrong?” I asked.

“No,” he said, “but I found out where Mr. Jingles was staying. When he first came, I mean, before Delacroix took him over. Do you want to see?”

Of course I did. I followed him down the Green Mile to the restraint room. All the stuff we kept stored there was out in the hall; Brutal had apparently taken advantage of the lull in customer traffic to do some cleaning up. The door was open, and I saw our mop-bucket inside. The floor, that same sick lime shade as the Green Mile itself, was drying in streaks. Standing in the middle of the floor was a stepladder, the one that was usually kept in the storage room, which also happened to serve as the final stop for the state’s condemned. There was a shelf jutting out from the back of the ladder near the top, the sort of thing a workman would use to hold his toolkit or a painter the bucket he was working out of. There was a flashlight on it. Brutal handed it to me.

“Get on up there. You’re shorter than me, so you’ll have to go pretty near all the way, but I’ll hold your legs!”

“I’m ticklish down there,” I said, starting up. “Especially my knees!”

“I’ll mind that!”

“Good,” I said, “because a broken hip’s too high a price to pay in order to discover the origins of a single mouse.”

“Huh?”

“Never mind.” My head was up by the caged light in the center of the ceiling by then, and I could feel the ladder wiggling a little under my weight. Outside, I could hear the winter wind moaning. “Just hold onto me.”

“I got you, don’t worry.” He gripped my calves firmly, and I went up one more step. Now the top of my head was less than a foot from the ceiling, and I could see the cobwebs a few enterprising spiders had spun in the crotches where the roof beams came together. I shone the light around but didn’t see anything worth the risk of being up here.

“No,” Brutal said. “You’re looking too far away, Paul. Look to your left, where those two beams come together. You see them? One’s a little discolored!”

“I see.”

“Shine the light on the join!”

I did, and saw what he wanted me to see almost right away. The beams had been pegged together with dowels, half a dozen of them, and one was gone, leaving a black, circular hole the size of a quarter. I looked at it, then looked doubtfully back over my shoulder at Brutal. “It was a small mouse,” I said, “but that small? Man, I don’t think so.”

“But that’s where he went,” Brutal said. “I’m just as sure as houses.”

“I don’t see how you can be.”

“Lean closer—don’t worry I got you—and take a whiff.”

I did as he asked, groping with my left hand for one of the other beams, and feeling a little better when I had hold of it. The wind outside gusted again; air puffed out of that hole and into my face. I could smell the keen breath of a winter night in the border South… and something else, as well.

The smell of peppermint.

Don’t let nothing happen to Mr. Jingles, I could hear Delacroix saying in a voice that wouldn’t stay steady I could hear that, and I could feel the warmth of Mr. Jingles as the Frenchman handed it to me, just a mouse, smarter than most of the species, no doubt, but still just a mouse for a’ that and a’ that. Don’t let that bad ‘un hurt my mouse, he’d said, and I had promised, as I always promised them at the end when walking the Green Mile was no longer a myth or a hypothesis but something they really had to do. Mail this letter to my brother, who I haven’t seen for twenty years? I promise. Say fifteen Hail Marys for my soul? I promise. Let me die under my spirit-name and see that it goes on my tombstone? I promise. It was the way you got them to go and be good about it, the way you saw them into the chair sitting at the end of the Green Mile with their sanity intact. I couldn’t keep all of those promises, of course, but I kept the one I made to Delacroix. As for the Frenchman himself, there had been hell to pay. The bad ‘un had hurt Delacroix, hurt him plenty. Oh, I know what he did, all right, but no one deserved what happened to Eduard Delacroix when he fell into Old Sparky’s savage embrace.

A smell of peppermint.

And something else. Something back inside that hole.

I took a pen out of my breast pocket with my right hand, still holding onto the beam with my left, not worried anymore about Brutal inadvertently tickling my sensitive knees. I unscrewed the pen’s cap onehanded, then poked the nib in and teased something out. It was a tiny splinter of wood which had been tinted a bright yellow, and I heard Delacroix’s voice again, so clearly this time that his ghost might have been lurking in that room with us—the one where William Wharton spent so much of his time.

Hey, you guys! the voice said this time—the laughing, amazed voice of a man who has forgotten, at least for a little while, where he is and what awaits him. Come and see what Mr. Jingles can do!

“Christ,” I whispered. I felt as if the wind had been knocked out of me.

“You found another one, didn’t you?” Brutal asked. “I found three or four.”

I came down and shone the light on his big, outstretched palm. Several splinters of wood were scattered there, like jackstraws for elves. Two were yellow, like the one I had found. One was green and one was red. They hadn’t been painted but colored, with wax Crayola crayons.

“Oh, boy,” I said in a low, shaky voice. “Oh, hey. It’s pieces of that spool, isn’t it? But why? Why up there?”

“When I was a kid I wasn’t big like I am now,” Brutal said. “I got most of my growth between fifteen and seventeen. Until then I was a shrimp. And when I went off to school the first time, I felt as small as… why, as small as a mouse, I guess you’d say. I was scared to death. So you know what I did?”

I shook my head. Outside, the wind gusted again. In the angles formed by the beams, cobwebs shook in feathery drafts, like rotted lace. Never had I been in a place that felt so nakedly haunted, and it was right then, as we stood there looking down at the splintered remains of the spool which had caused so much trouble, that my head began to know what my heart had understood ever since John Coffey had walked the Green Mile: I couldn’t do this job much longer. Depression, or no Depression, I couldn’t watch many more men walk through my office to their deaths. Even one more might be too many.

“I asked my mother for one of her hankies,” Brutal said. “So when I felt weepy and small, I could sneak it out and smell her perfume and not feel so bad.”

“You think—what?—that mouse chewed off some of that colored spool to remember Delacroix by? That a mouse—”

He looked up. I thought for a moment I saw tears in his eyes, but I guess I was probably wrong about that. “I ain’t saying nothing, Paul. But I found them up there, and I smelled peppermint, same as you—you know you did. And I can’t do this no more. I won’t do this no more. Seeing one more man in that chair’d just about kill me. I’m going to put in for a transfer to Boys’ Correctional on Monday. If I get it before the next one, that’s fine. If I don’t, I’ll resign and go back to farming.”

“What did you ever farm, besides rocks?”

“It don’t matter.”

“I know it doesn’t,” I said. “I think I’ll put in with you.”

He looked at me close, making sure I wasn’t just having some sport with him, then nodded as if it was a settled thing. The wind gusted again, strong enough this time to make the beams creak and settle, and we both looked around uneasily at the padded walls. I think for a moment we could hear William Wharton²⁹—not Billy the Kid, not him, he had been “Wild Bill” to us from his first day on the block—screaming and laughing, telling us we were going to be damned glad to be rid of him, telling us we would never forget him. About those things he was right.

As for what Brutal and I agreed on that night in the restraint room, it turned out just that way. It was almost as if we had taken a solemn oath on those tiny bits of colored, wood. Neither of us ever took part in another execution. John Coffey was the last.

Part Two
The Mouse on the Mile

1

The nursing home where I am crossing my last bunch of t’s and dotting my last mess of i’s is called Georgia Pines. It’s about sixty miles from Atlanta and about two hundred light-years from life as most people—people under the age of eighty, let’s say—live it. You who are reading this want to be careful that there isn’t a place like it waiting in your future. It’s not a cruel place, not for the most part; there’s cable TV, the food’s good (although there’s damned little a man can chew), but in its way, it’s as much of a killing bottle as E Block at Cold Mountain ever was.

There’s even a fellow here who reminds me a little of Percy Wetmore, who got his job on the Green Mile because he was related to the governor of the state. I doubt if this fellow is related to anyone important, even though he acts that way. Brad Dolan³⁰, his name is. He’s always combing his hair, like Percy was, and he’s always got something to read stuffed into his back pocket. With Percy it was magazines like Argosy and Men’s Adventure; with Brad it’s these little paperbacks called Gross jokes and Sick jokes. He’s always asking people why the Frenchman crossed the road or how many Polacks it takes to screw in a lightbulb or how many pallbearers there are at a Harlem funeral. Like Percy, Brad is a dimwit who thinks nothing is funny unless it’s mean.

Something Brad said the other day struck me as actually smart, but I don’t give him a lot of credit for it; even a stopped clock is right twice a day, the proverb has it. “You’re just lucky you don’t have that Alzheimer’s disease, Paulie,” was what he said. I hate him calling me that, Paulie, but he goes on doing it, anyway; I’ve given up asking him to quit. There are other sayings—not quite proverbs—that apply to Brad Dolan: “You can lead a horse to water but you can’t make him drink” is one; “You can dress him up but you can’t take him out” is another. In his thickheadedness he is also like Percy.

When he made his comment about Alzheimer’s, he was mopping the floor of the solarium, where I had been going over the pages I have already written. There’s a great lot of them, and I think there’s apt to be a great lot more before I am through. “That Alzheimer’s, do you know what it really is?”

“No,” I said, “but I’m sure you’ll tell me, Brad.”

“It’s AIDS for old people,” he said, and then burst out laughing, hucka-hucka-hucka-huck!, just like he does over those idiotic jokes of his.

I didn’t laugh, though, because what he said struck a nerve somewhere. Not that I have Alzheimer’s; although there’s plenty of it on view here at beautiful Georgia Pines, I myself just suffer the standard old guy memory problems. Those problems seem to have more to do with when than what. Looking over what I have written so far, it occurs to me that I remember everything that happened back in ‘32; it’s the order of events that sometimes gets confused in my head. Yet, if I’m careful, I think I can keep even that sorted out. More or less.

John Coffey came to E Block and the Green Mile in October of that year, condemned for the murder of the nine-year-old Detterick twins. That’s my major landmark, and if I keep it in view, I should do just fine. William “Wild Bill” Wharton came after Coffey; Delacroix came before. So did the mouse, the one Brutus Howel—Brutal, to his friends—called Steamboat Willy and Delacroix ended up calling Mr. Jingles.

Whatever you called him, the mouse came first, even before Del—it was still summer when he showed up, and we had two other prisoners on the Green Mile: The Chief, Arlen Bitterbuck; and The Pres, Arthur Flanders.

That mouse. That goddam mouse. Delacroix loved it, but Percy Wetmore sure didn’t.

Percy hated it from the first.

2

The mouse came back just about three days after Percy had chased it down the Green Mile that first time. Dean Stanton and Bill Dodge were talking politics, which meant in those days, they were talking Roosevelt and Hoover—Herbert, not J. Edgar. They were eating Ritz crackers from a box Dean had purchased from old Toot-Toot an hour or so before. Percy was standing in the office doorway, practicing quick draws with the baton he loved so much, as he listened. He’d pull it out of that ridiculous handtooled holster he’d gotten somewhere, then twirl it (or try to; most times he would have dropped it if not for the rawhide loop he kept on his wrist), then re-holster it. I was off that night, but got the full report from Dean the following evening.

The mouse came up the Green Mile just as it had before, hopping along, then stopping and seeming to check the empty cells. After a bit of that it would hop on, undiscouraged, as if it had known all along it would be a long search, and it was up to that.

The President was awake this time, standing at his cell door. That guy was a piece of work, managing to look natty even in his prison blues. We knew just by the way he looked that he wasn’t made for Old Sparky, and we were right—less than a week after Percy’s second run at that mouse, The Pres’s sentence was commuted to life and he joined the general population.

“Say!” he called. ‘‘There’s a mouse in here! What kind of a joint are you guys running, anyway?” He was kind of laughing, but Dean said he also sounded kind of outraged, as if even a murder rap hadn’t been quite enough to knock the Kiwanis out of his soul. He had been the regional head of an outfit called Mid-South Realty Associates, and had thought himself smart enough to be able to get away with pushing his half-senile father out a third-story window and collect on a double-indemnity whole-life policy. On that he had been wrong, but maybe not by much.

“Shut up, you lugoon,” Percy said, but that was pretty much automatic. He had his eye on the mouse. He had re-holstered his baton and taken out one of his magazines, but now he tossed the magazine on the duty desk and pulled the baton out of its holster again. He began tapping it casually against the knuckles of his left hand.

“Son of a bitch,” Bill Dodge said. “I’ve never seen a mouse in here before.”

“Aw, he’s sort of cute,” Dean said. “And not afraid at all.”

“How do you know?”

“He was in the other night. Percy saw him, too. Brutal calls him Steamboat Willy.”

Percy kind of sneered at that, but for the time being said nothing. He was tapping the baton faster now on the back of his hand.

“Watch this,” Dean said. “He came all the way up to the desk before. I want to see if he’ll do it again.”

It did, skirting wide of The Pres on its way, as if it didn’t like the way our resident parricide smelled. It checked two of the empty cells, even ran up onto one of the bare, unmattressed cots for a sniff, then came back to the Green Mile. And Percy standing there the whole time, tapping and tapping, not talking for a change, wanting to make it sorry for coming back. Wanting to teach it a lesson.

“Good thing you guys don’t have to put him in Sparky,” Bill said, interested in spite of himself. “You’d have a hell of a time getting the clamps and the cap on.”

Percy said nothing still, but he very slowly gripped the baton between his fingers, the way a man would hold a good cigar.

The mouse stopped where it had before, no more than three feet from the duty desk, looking up at Dean like a prisoner before the bar. It glanced up at Bill for a moment, then switched its attention back to Dean. Percy it hardly seemed to notice at all.

“He’s a brave little barstid, I got to give him that,” Bill said. He raised his voice a little. “Hey! Hey! Steamboat Willy!”

The mouse flinched a little and fluttered its ears, but it didn’t run, or even show any signs of wanting to.

“Now watch this,” Dean said, remembering how Brutal had fed it some of his corned-beef sandwich. “I don’t know if he’ll do it again, but—”

He broke off a piece of Ritz cracker and dropped it in front of the mouse. It just looked with its sharp black eyes at the orangey fragment for a second or two, its filament-fine whiskers twitching as it sniffed. Then it reached out, took the cracker in its paws, sat up, and began to eat.

“Well. I’ll be shucked and boiled!” Bill exclaimed. “Eats as neat as a parson on parish house Saturday night!”

“Looks more like a nigger eating watermelon to me,” Percy remarked, but neither guard paid him any mind. Neither did The Chief or The Pres, for that matter. The mouse finished the cracker but continued to sit, seemingly balanced on the talented coil of its tail, looking up at the giants in blue.

“Lemme try,” Bill said. He broke off another piece of cracker, leaned over the front of the desk, and dropped it carefully. The mouse sniffed but did not touch.

“Huh,” Bill said. “Must be full.”

“Nah,” Dean said, “he knows you’re a floater, that’s all.”

“Floater, am I? I like that! I’m here almost as much as Harry Terwilliger! Maybe more!”

“Simmer down, old-timer, simmer down,” Dean said, grinning. “But watch and see if I’m not right.” He bombed another piece of cracker over the side. Sure enough, the mouse picked that one up and began to eat again, still ignoring Bill Dodge’s contribution completely. But before it had done more than take a preliminary nibble or two, Percy threw his baton at it, launching it like a spear.

The mouse was a small target, and give the devil his due—it was a wickedly good shot, and might have taken “Willy’s” head clean off, if its reflexes hadn’t been as sharp as shards of broken glass. It ducked—yes, just as a human being would have—and dropped the chunk of cracker. The heavy hickory baton passed over its head and spine close enough so its fur ruffled (that’s what Dean said, anyway, and so I pass it on, although I’m not sure I really believe it), then hit the green linoleum and bounced against the bars of an empty cell. The mouse didn’t wait to see if it was a mistake; apparently remembering a pressing engagement elsewhere, it turned and was off down the corridor toward the restraint room in a flash.

Percy roared with frustration—he knew how close he had come—and chased after it again. Bill Dodge grabbed at his arm, probably out of simple instinct, but Percy pulled away from him. Still, Dean said, it was probably that grab which saved Steamboat Willy’s life, and it was still a near thing. Percy wanted not just to kill the mouse but to squash it, so he ran in big, comical leaps, like a deer, stamping down with his heavy black workshoes. The mouse barely avoided Percy’s last two jumps, first zigging and then zagging. It went under the door with a final flick of its long pink tail, and so long, stranger—it was gone.

“Fuck!” Percy said, and slammed the flat of his hand against the door. Then he began to sort through his keys, meaning to go into the restraint room and continue the chase.

Dean came down the corridor after him, deliberately walking slow in order to get his emotions under control. Part of him wanted to laugh at Percy, he told me, but part of him wanted to grab the man, whirl him around, pin him against the restraint-room door, and whale the living daylights out of him. Most of it, of course, was just being startled; our job on E Block was to keep rumpus to a minimum, and rumpus was practically Percy Wetmore’s middle name. Working with him was sort of like trying to defuse a bomb with somebody standing behind you and every now and then clashing a pair of cymbals together. In a word, upsetting. Dean said he could see that upset in Arlen Bitterbucks eyes… even in The President’s eyes, although that gentleman was usually as cool as the storied cucumber.