I sat there, feeling the nothing in my groin where a forest fire had been blazing not ten minutes before. I helped it, didn’t I? John Coffey had said, and that was true, as far as my body went. My peace of mind was a different story, though. That he hadn’t helped at all.
My eyes fell on the stack of forms under the tin ashtray we kept on the corner of the desk. BLOCK
REPORT was printed at the top, and about halfway down was a blank space headed Report All Unusual Occurrences. I would use that space in tonight’s report, telling the story of William Wharton’s colorful and action-packed arrival. But suppose I also told what had happened to me in John Coffey’s cell? I saw myself picking up the pencil – the one whose tip Brutal was always licking – and writing a single word in big capital letters: MIRACLE.
That should have been funny, but instead of smiling, all at once I felt sure that I was going to cry I put my hands to my face, palms against my mouth to stifle the sobs – I didn’t want to scare Del again just when he was starting to get settled down – but no sobs came. No tears, either. After a few moments I lowered my hands back to the desk and folded them. I didn’t know what I was feeling, and the only clear thought in my head was a wish that no one should come back onto the block until I was a little more in control of myself. I was afraid of what they might see in my face.
I drew a Block Report form toward me. I would wait until I had settled down a bit more to write about how my latest problem child had almost strangled Dean Stanton, but I could fill out the rest of the boilerplate foolishness in the meantime. I thought my handwriting might look funny – trembly – but it came out about the same as always.
About five minutes after I started, I put the pencil down and went into the W.C. adjacent to my office to take a leak. I didn’t need to go very bad, but I could manage enough to test what had happened to me, I thought. As I stood there, waiting for my water to flow, I became sure that it would hurt just the way it
had that morning, as if I were passing tiny shards of broken glass; what he’d done to me would turn out to be only hypnosis, after all, and that might be a relief in spite of the pain.
Except there was no pain, and what went into the bowl was clear, with no sign of pus. I buttoned my fly, pulled the chain that flushed the commode, went back to the duty desk, and sat down again.
I knew what had happened; I suppose I knew even when I was trying to tell myself I’d been hypnotized.
I’d experienced a healing, an authentic Praise Jesus, The Lord Is Mighty. As a boy who’d grown up going to whatever Baptist or Pentecostal church my mother and her sisters happened to be in favor of during any given month, I had heard plenty of Praise Jesus, The Lord Is Mighty miracle stories. I didn’t believe all of them, but there were plenty of people I did believe. One of these was a man named Roy Delfines, who lived with his family about two miles down the road from us when I was six or so. Delfines had chopped his son’s little finger off with a hatchet, an accident which had occurred when the boy unexpectedly moved his hand on a log he’d been holding on the backyard chopping block for his dad.
Roy Delfines said he had practically worn out the carpet with his knees that fall and winter, and in the spring the boy’s finger had grown back. Even the nail had grown back. I believed Roy Delfines when he testified at Thursday-night rejoicing. There was a naked, uncomplicated honesty in what he said as he stood there talking with his hands jammed deep into the pockets of his biballs that was impossible not to believe. “It itch him some when thet finger started coming, kep him awake nights,” Roy Delfines said,