“but he knowed it was the Lord’s itch and let it be.” Praise Jesus, The Lord Is Mighty.
Roy Delfines’s story was only one of many; I grew up in a tradition of miracles and healings. I grew up believing in gris-gris, as well (only, up in the hills we said it to rhyme with kiss-kiss): stump-water for warts, moss under your pillow to ease the heartache of lost love, and, of course, what we used to call haints – but I did not believe John Coffey was a gris-gris man. I had looked into his eyes. More important,’ I had felt his touch. Being touched by him was like being touched by some strange and wonderful doctor.
I helped it, didn’t I?
That kept chiming in my head, like a snatch of song you can’t get rid of, or words you’d speak to set a spell.
I helped it, didn’t I?
Except he hadn’t. God had. John Coffey’s use of “I” could be chalked up to ignorance rather than pride, but I knew – believed, at least – what I had learned about healing in those churches of Praise Jesus, The Lord Is Mighty, piney-woods amen corners much beloved by my twenty-two-year-old mother and my aunts: that healing is never about the healed or the healer, but about God’s will. For one to rejoice at the sick made well is normal, quite the expected thing, but the person healed has an obligation to then ask why – to meditate on God’s will, and the extraordinary lengths to which God has gone to realize His will.
What did God want of me, in this case? What did He want badly enough to put healing power in the hands of a child-murderer? To be on the block, instead of at home, sick as a dog, shivering in bed with the stink of sulfa running out of my pores? Perhaps; I was maybe supposed to be here instead of home in case Wild Bill Wharton decided to kick up more dickens, or to make sure Percy Wetmore didn’t get up to some foolish and potentially destructive piece of fuckery All right, then. So be it. I would keep my eyes open – and my mouth shut, especially about miracle cures.
No one was apt to question my looking and sounding better; I’d been telling the world I was getting better, and until that very day I’d honestly believed it. I had even told Warden Moores that I was on the mend. Delacroix had seen something, but I thought he would keep his mouth shut, too (probably afraid John Coffey would throw a spell on him if he didn’t). As for Coffey himself, he’d probably already forgotten it. He was nothing but a conduit, after all, and there isn’t a culvert in the world that remembers the water that flowed through it once the rain has stopped. So I resolved to keep my mouth completely shut on the subject, with never an idea of how soon I’d be telling the story, or who I’d be telling it to.
But I was curious about my big boy, and there’s no sense not admitting it. After what had happened to me there in his cell, I was more curious than ever.
4.
Before leaving that night, I arranged with Brutal to cover for me the next day, should I come in a little late, and when I got up the following morning, I set out for Tefton, down in Trapingus County.
“I’m not sure I like you worrying so much about this fellow Coffey,” my wife said, handing me the lunch she’d put up for me-Janice never believed in roadside hamburger stands; she used to say there was a bellyache waiting in every one. “It’s not like you, Paul.”
“I’m not worried about him,” I said. “I’m curious, that’s all.”
“In my experience, one leads to the other,” Janice said tartly, then gave me a good, hearty kiss on the mouth. “You look better, at least, I’ll say that. For awhile there, you had me nervous. Waterworks all cured up?”
“All cured up,” I said, and off I went, singing songs like “Come, Josephine, in My Flying Machine” and