Del winced at the sound of my keys clashing against metal, but held steady, continuing to stroke Mr.
Jingles’s head, as I turned the locks and ran the door open.
“Hi dere, Boss Edgecombe,” he said. “Hi dere, boys. Say hi, Mr. Jingles.” But Mr. Jingles only continued to look raptly up at the balding little man’s face, as if wondering at the source of his tears. The colored spool had been neatly laid aside in the Corona box – laid aside for the last time, I thought, and felt a pang.
“Eduard Delacroix, as an officer of the court…”
“Boss Edgecombe?”
I thought about just running on with the set speech, then thought again. “What is it, Del?”
He held the mouse out to me. “Here. Don’t let nothing happen to Mr. Jingles.”
“Del, I don’t think he’ll come to me. He’s not – ”
“Mais oui, he say he will. He say he know all about you, Boss Edgecombe, and you gonna take him down to dat place in Florida where the mousies do their tricks. He say he trust you.” He held his hand out farther, and I’ll be damned if the mouse didn’t step off his palm and onto my shoulder. It was so light I couldn’t even feel it through my uniform coat, but I sensed it, like a small heat. “And boss? Don’t let that bad ‘un near him again. Don’t let that bad ‘un hurt my mouse.”
“No, Del. I won’t.” The question was, what was I supposed to do with him right then? I couldn’t very well march Delacroix past the witnesses with a mouse perched on my shoulder.
“I’ll take him, boss,” a voice rumbled from behind me. It was John Coffey’s voice, and it was eerie the way it came right then, as though he had read my mind. “Just for now. If Del don’t mind.”
Del nodded, relieved. “Yeah, you take im, John, ’til dis foolishment done – bien! And den after …” His gaze shifted back to Brutal and me. “You gonna take him down to Florida. To dat Mouseville Place.”
“Yeah, most likely Paul and I will do it together,” Brutal said, watching with a troubled and unquiet eye as Mr. Jingles stepped off my shoulder and into Coffey’s huge outstretched palm. Mr. Jingles did this with no protest or attempt to run; indeed, he scampered as readily up John Coffey’s arm as he had stepped onto my shoulder. “We’ll take some of our vacation time. Won’t we, Paul?”
I nodded. Del nodded, too, eyes bright, just a trace of a smile on his lips. “People pay a dime apiece to see him. Two cents for the kiddies. Ain’t dat right, Boss,Howell?”
“That’s right, Del.”
“You a good man, Boss Howell,” Del said. “You, too, Boss Edgecombe. You yell at me sometimes, oui, but not ‘less you have to. You all good men except for dat Percy. I wish I coulda met you someplace else.
Mauvais temps, mauvaise chance.”
“I got something to say to you, Del,- I told him. “They’re just the words I have to say to everyone before we walk. No big deal, but it’s part of my job. Okay?”
“Oui, monsieur,” he said, and looked at Mr. Jingles, perched on John Coffey’s broad shoulder, for the last time. “Au revoir, mon ami,” he said, beginning to cry harder. “le t’aime, mon petit.” He blew the mouse a kiss. It should have been funny, that blown kiss, or maybe just grotesque, but it wasn’t. I met Dean’s eye for a moment, then had to look away. Dean stared down the corridor toward the restraint room and smiled strangely I believe he was on the verge of tears. As for me, I said what I had to say, beginning with the part about how I was an officer of the court, and when I was done, Delacroix stepped out of his cell for the last time.
“Hold on a second longer, hoss,” Brutal said, and checked the crown of Del’s head, where the cap would go. He nodded at me, then clapped Del on the shoulder. “Right with Eversharp. We’re on our way.”
So Eduard Delacroix took his last walk on the Green Mile with little streams of mingled sweat and tears running down his cheeks and big thunder rolling in the sky overhead. Brutal walked on the condemned man’s left, I was on his right, Dean was to the rear.