Whatever it was, it was gone in a hurry, replaced by a look of lively, irrational interest. That unspeakable mouth trembled in what might have been a smile.
“Oh, so big!” she cried. She sounded like a little girl just coming down with a bad throat infection. She took her hands -as spongy-white as her face – out from under the counterpane and patted them together.
“Pull down your pants! I’ve heard about nigger-cocks my whole life but never seen one!”
Behind me, Moores made a soft groaning sound, full of despair.
John Coffey paid no attention to any of it. After standing still for a moment, as if to observe her from a little distance, he crossed to the bed, which was illuminated by a single bedside lamp. It threw a bright circle of light on the white counterpane drawn up to the lace at the throat of her nightgown. Beyond the bed, in shadow, I saw the chaise longue which belonged in the parlor. An afghan Melly had knitted with her own hands in happier days lay half on the chaise and half on the floor. It was here Hal had been sleeping – dozing, at least – when we pulled in.
As John approached, her expression underwent a third change. Suddenly I saw Melly, whose kindness had meant so much to me over the years, and even more to Janice when the kids had flown from the nest and she had been left feeling so alone and useless and blue. Melly was still interested, but now her interest seemed sane and aware.
“Who are you?” she asked in a clear, reasonable voice. “And why have you so many scars on your hands and arms? Who hurt you so badly?”
“I don’t hardly remember where they all come from, ma’am,” John Coffey said in a humble voice, and sat down beside her on her bed.
Melinda smiled as well as she could – the sneering right side of her mouth trembled, but wouldn’t quite come up. She touched a white scar, curved like a scimitar, on the back of his left hand. “What a blessing that is! Do you understand why?”
“Reckon if you don’t know who hurt you or dog you down, it don’t keep you up nights,” John Coffey said in his almost-Southern voice.
She laughed at that, the sound as pure as silver in the bad-smelling sickroom. Hal was beside me now, breathing rapidly but not trying to interfere. When Melly laughed, his rapid breathing paused for a moment, indrawn, and one of his big hands gripped my shoulder. He gripped it hard enough to leave a bruise – I saw it the next day – but right then I hardly felt it.
“What’s your name?” she asked.
“John Coffey, ma’am.”
“Coffey like the drink.”
“Yes, ma’am, only spelled different.”
She lay back against her pillows, propped up but not quite sitting up, looking at him. He sat beside her, looking back, and the light from the lamp circled them like they were actors on a stage – the hulking black man in the prison overall and the small dying white woman. She stared into John’s eyes with shining fascination.
“Ma’am?”
“Yes, John Coffey?” The words barely breathed, barely slipping to us on the bad-smelling, air. I felt the muscles bunching on my arms and legs and back. Somewhere, far away, I could feel the warden clutching my arm, and to the side of my vision I could see Harry and Brutal with their arms around each other, like little kids lost in the night. Something was going to happen. Something big. We each felt it in our own way.
John Coffey bent closer to her. The springs of the bed creaked, the bedclothes rustled, and the coldly smiling moon looked in through an upper pane of the bedroom window. Coffey’s bloodshot eyes searched her upturned haggard face.
“O, I see it,” he said. Speaking not to her – I don’t think so, anyway – but to himself. “I see it, and I can help. Hold still … hold right still .. .”
Closer he bent, and closer still. For a moment his huge face stopped less than two inches from hers. He raised one hand off to the side, fingers splayed, as if telling something to wait … just wait … and then he lowered his face again. His broad, smooth lips pressed against hers and forced them open. For a moment I could see one of her eyes, staring up past Coffey, filling with an expression of what seemed to be surprise. Then his smooth bald head moved, and that was gone, too.