“Christ, I think we’re gonna – ” Brutal began, but I cut him off with a sharp elbow to the ribs.
“Don’t say it,” I said. “Don’t even think it, until he’s safe back in his cell.”
“And there’s Percy to think about,” Harry said. Our voices had a flat, echoey quality in the brick tunnel.
“The evening ain’t over as long as we got him to contend with.-”
As it turned out, our evening was far from over.
The Green Mile
Part Six:
Coffey on the Mile
1.
I sat in the Georgia Pines sunroom, my father’s fountain pen in my hand, and time was lost to me as I recalled the night Harry and Brutal and I took John Coffey off the Mile and to Melinda Moores, in an effort to save her life. I wrote about the drugging of William Wharton, who fancied himself the second coming of Billy the Kid; I wrote of how we stuck Percy in the straitjacket and jugged him in the restraint room at the end of the Green Mile; I wrote about our strange night journey – both terrifying and exhilarating – and the miracle that befell at the end of it. We saw John Coffey drag a woman back, not just from the edge of her grave, but from what seemed to us to be the very bottom of it.
I wrote and was very faintly aware of the Georgia Pines version of life going on around me. Old folks went down to supper, then trooped off to the Resource Center (yes, you are permitted a chuckle) for their evening dose of network sitcoms. I seem to remember my friend Elaine bringing me a sandwich, and thanking her, and eating it, but I couldn’t tell you what time of the evening she brought it, or what was in it. Most of me was back in 1932, when our sandwiches were usually bought off old Toot-Toot’s rolling gospel snack-wagon, cold pork a nickel, corned beef a dime.
I remember the place quieting down as the relics who live here made ready for another night of thin and troubled sleep; I heard Mickey – maybe not the best orderly in the place, but certainly the kindest –
singing “Red River Valley” in his good tenor as he went around dispensing the evening meds: “From this valley they say you are going … We will miss your bright eyes and sweet smile …” The song made me think of Melinda again, and what she had said to John after the miracle had happened. I dreamed of you.
I dreamed you were wandering in the dark, and so was I. We found each other.
Georgia Pines grew quiet, midnight came and passed, and still I wrote. I got to Harry reminding us that, even though we had gotten John back to the prison without being discovered, we still had Percy waiting for us. “The evening ain’t over as long as we got him to contend with” is more or less what Harry said.
That’s where my long day of driving my father’s pen at last caught up with me. I put it down – just for a few seconds, I thought, so I could flex some life back into the fingers – and then I put my forehead down on my arm and closed my eyes to rest them. When I opened them again and raised my head, morning sun glared in at me through the windows. I looked at my watch and saw it was past eight. I had slept, head on arms like an old drunk, for what must have been six hours. I got up, wincing, trying to stretch some life into my back. I thought about going down to the kitchen, getting some toast, and going for my morning walk, then looked down at the sheafs of scribbled pages scattered across the desk. All at once I decided to put off the walk for awhile. I had a chore, yes, but it could keep, and I didn’t feel like playing hide-and-seek with Brad Dolan that morning.
Instead of walking, I’d finish my story. Sometimes it’s better to push on through, no matter how much your mind and body may protest. Sometimes it’s the only way to get through. And what I remember most