“It’s St. Christopher,” she said. “I want you to have it, Mr. Coffey, and wear it. He’ll keep you safe.
Please wear it. For me.”
John looked at me, troubled, and I looked at Hal, who first spread his hands and then nodded.
“Take it, John,” I said. “It’s a present.”
John took it, slipped the chain around his bullneck, and dropped the St. Christopher medallion into the front of his shirt. He had completely stopped coughing now, but I thought he looked grayer and sicker than ever.
“Thank you, ma’am,” he said.
“No,” she replied. “Thank you. Thank you, John Coffey.”
9.
I rode up in the cab with Harry going back, and was damned glad to be there. The heater was broken, but we were out of the open air, at least. We had gone about ten miles when Harry spotted a little turnout and veered the truck into it.
“What is it?” I asked. “Is it a bearing?” To my mind, the problem could have been that or anything; every component of the Farmall’s engine and transmission sounded on the verge of going cataclysmically wrong or giving up the ghost entirely.
“Nope,” Harry said, sounding apologetic. “I got to take a leak, is all. My back teeth are floatin.”
It turned out that we all did, except for John. When Brutal asked if he wouldn’t like to step down and help us water the bushes, he just shook his head without looking up. He was leaning against the back of the cab and wearing one of the Army blankets over his shoulders like a serape. I couldn’t get any kind of read on his complexion, but I could hear his breathing – dry and raspy, like wind blowing through straw. I didn’t like it.
I walked into a clump of willows, unbuttoned, and let go. I was still dose enough to my urinary infection so that the body’s amnesia had not taken full hold, and I could be grateful simply to be able to pee
without needing to scream. I stood there, emptying out and looking up at the moon, I was hardly aware of Brutal standing next to me and doing the same thing until he said in a low voice, “Hell never sit in Old Sparky.”
I looked around at him, surprised and a little frightened by the low certainty in his tone. “What do you mean?”
“I mean he swallered that stuff instead of spitting out like he done before for a reason. It might take a week-he’s awful big and strong – but I bet it’s quicker. One of us’ll do a check-tour and there he’ll be, lying dead as stone on his bunk.”
I’d thought I was done peeing, but at that a little shiver twisted up my back and a little more squirted out.
As I rebuttoned my fly, I thought that what Brutal was saying made perfect sense. And I hoped, all in all, that he was right. John Coffey didn’t deserve to die at all, if I was right in my reasoning about the Detterick girls, but if he did die, I didn’t want it to be by my hand. I wasn’t sure I could lift my hand to do it, if it came to that.
“Come on,” Harry murmured out of the dark. “It’s gettin late. Let’s get this done.”
As we walked back to the truck, I realized we had left John entirely alone – stupidity on the Percy Wetmore level. I thought that he would be gone; that he’d spat out the bugs as soon as he saw he was unguarded, and had then just lit out for the territories, like Huck and Jim on the Big Muddy. All we would find was the blanket he had been wearing around his shoulders.
But he was there, still sitting with his back against the cab and his forearms propped on his knees. He looked up at the sound of our approach and tried to give us a smile. It hung there for a moment on his haggard face and then slipped off.
“How you doing, Big John?” Brutal asked, climbing into the back of the truck again and retrieving his own blanket.