Coffey's Hands

5

WILD BILL WHARTON took his first trip down to the restraint room the very next day. He spent the morning and afternoon being as quiet and good as Mary’s little lamb, a state we soon discovered was not natural to him, and meant trouble. Then, around seven-thirty that evening, Harry felt something warm splash on the cuffs of uniform pants he had put on clean just that day. It was piss. William Wharton was standing at his cell, showing his darkening teeth in a wide grin, and pissing all over Harry Terwilliger’s pants and shoes.

“The dirty sonofabitch must have been saving it up all day,” Harry said later, still disgusted and outraged.

Well, that was it. It was time to show William Wharton who ran the show on E Block. Harry got Brutal and me, and I alerted Dean and Percy, who were also on. We had three prisoners by then, remember, and were into what we called full coverage, with my group on from seven in the evening to three in the morning—when trouble was most apt to break out—and two other crews covering the rest of the day. Those other crews consisted mostly of floaters, with Bill Dodge usually in charge. It wasn’t a bad way to run things, all and all, and I felt that, once I could shift Percy over to days, life would be even better. I never got around to that, however. I sometimes wonder if it would have changed things, if I had.

Anyway, there was a big watermain in the storage room, on the side away from Old Sparky, and Dean and Percy hooked up a length of canvas firehose to it. Then they stood by the valve that would open it, if needed.

Brutal and I hurried down to Wharton’s cell, where Wharton still stood, still grinning and still with his tool hanging out of his pants. I had liberated the straitjacket from the restraint room and tossed it on a shelf in my office last thing before going home the night before, thinking we might be needing it for our new problem child. Now I had it in one hand, my index finger hooked under one of the canvas straps. Harry came behind us, hauling the nozzle of the firehose, which ran back through my office, down the storage-room steps, and to the drum where Dean and Percy were paying it out as fast as they could.

“Hey, d’jall like that?” Wild Bill asked. He was laughing like a kid at a carnival, laughing so hard he could barely talk; big tears went rolling down his cheeks. “You come on s’fast I guess you must’ve. I’m currently cookin some turds to go with it. Nice soft ones. I’ll have them out to y’all tomorrow—”

He saw that I was unlocking his cell door and his eyes narrowed. He saw that Brutal was holding his revolver in one hand and his nightstick in the other, and they narrowed even more.

“You can come in here on your legs, but you’ll go out on your backs, Billy the Kid is goan guarantee you that,” he told us. His eyes shifted back to me. “And if you think you’re gonna put that nut-coat on me, you got another think coming, old hoss.”

“You’re not the one who says go or jump back around here,” I told him. “You should know that, but I guess you’re too dumb to pick it up without a little teaching.”

I finished unlocking the door and ran it back on its track. Wharton retreated to the bunk, his cock still hanging out of his pants, put his hands out to me, palms up, then beckoned with his fingers. “Come on, you ugly motherfucker,” he said. “They be schoolin, all right, but this old boy’s well set up to be the teacher.” He shifted his gaze and his dark-toothed grin to Brutal. “Come on, big fella, you first. This time you cain’t sneak up behind me. Put down that gun—you ain’t gonna shoot it anyway, not you—and we’ll go man-to-man. See who’s the better fel—”

Brutal stepped into the cell, but not toward Wharton. He moved to the left once he was through the door, and Wharton’s narrow eyes widened as he saw the firehose pointed at him.

“No, you don’t,” he said. “Oh no, you d—”

“Dean!” I yelled. “Turn it on! All the way!”

Wharton jumped forward, and Brutal hit him a good smart lick—the kind of lick I’m sure Percy dreamed of—across his forehead, laying his baton right over Wharton’s eyebrows. Wharton, who seemed to think we’d never seen trouble until we’d seen him, went to his knees, his eyes open but blind. Then the water came, Harry staggering back a step under its power and then holding steady, the nozzle firm in his hands, pointed like a gun. The stream caught Wild Bill Wharton square in the middle of his chest, spun him halfway around, and drove him back under his bunk. Down the hall, Delacroix was jumping from foot to foot, cackling shrilly, and cursing at John Coffey, demanding that Coffey tell him what was going on, who was winning, and how dat gran’ fou new boy like dat Chinee water treatment. John said nothing, just stood there quietly in his too-short pants and his prison slippers. I only had one quick glance at him, but that was enough to observe his same old expression, both sad and serene. It was as if he’d seen the whole thing before, not just once or twice but a thousand times.

“Kill the water!” Brutal shouted back over his shoulder, then raced forward into the cell. He sank his hands into the semi-conscious Wharton’s armpits and dragged him out from under his bunk. Wharton was coughing and making a glub-glub sound. Blood was dribbling into his dazed eyes from above his brows, where Brutal’s stick had popped the skin open in a line.

We had the straitjacket business down to a science, did Brutus Howell and me; we’d practiced it like a couple of vaudeville hoofers working up a new dance routine. Every now and then, that practice paid off. Now, for instance. Brutal sat Wharton up and held out his arms toward me the way a kid might hold out the arms of a Raggedy Andy doll. Awareness was just starting to seep back into Wharton’s eyes, the knowledge that if he didn’t start fighting right away, it was going to be too late, but the lines were still down between his brain and his muscles, and before he could repair them, I had rammed the sleeves of the coat up his arms and Brutal was doing the buckles up the back. While he took care of that, I grabbed the cuff-straps, pulled Wharton’s arms around his sides, and linked his wrists together with another canvas strap. He ended up looking like he was hugging himself.

“Goddam you, big dummy, how dey doin widdim?” Delacroix screamed. I heard Mr. Jingles squeaking, as if he wanted to know, too.

Percy arrived, his shirt wet and sticking to him from his struggles with the watermain, his face glowing with excitement. Dean came along behind him, wearing a bracelet of purplish bruises around his throat and looking a lot less thrilled.

“Come on, now, Wild Bill,” I said, and yanked Wharton to his feet. “Little walky-walky.”

“Don’t you call me that!” Wharton screamed shrilly, and I think that for the first time we were seeing real feelings, and not just a clever animal’s camouflage spots. “Wild Bill Hickok wasn’t no range-rider! He never fought him no bear with a Bowie knife, either! He was just another bushwhackin John Law! Dumb sonofabitch sat with his back to the door and got kilt by a drunk!”

“Oh my suds and body, a history lesson!” Brutal exclaimed, and shoved Wharton out of his cell. “A feller just never knows what he’s going to get when he clocks in here, only that it’s apt to be nice. But with so many nice people like you around, I guess that kind of stands to reason, don’t it? And you know what? Pretty soon you’ll be history yourself, Wild Bill. Meantime, you get on down the hall. We got a room for you. Kind of a cooling-off room.”

Wharton gave a furious, inarticulate scream and threw himself at Brutal, even though he was snugly buckled into the coat now, and his arms were wrapped around behind him. Percy made to draw his baton—the Wetmore Solution for all of life’s problems—and Dean put a hand on his wrist. Percy gave him a puzzled, half-indignant look, as if to say that after what Wharton had done to Dean, Dean should be the last person in the world to want to hold him back.

Brutal pushed Wharton backward. I caught him and pushed him to Harry. And Harry propelled him on down the Green Mile, past the gleeful Delacroix and the impassive Coffey. Wharton ran to keep from falling on his face, spitting curses the whole way. Spitting them the way a welder’s torch spits sparks. We banged him into the last cell on the right while Dean, Harry, and Percy (who for once wasn’t complaining about being unfairly overworked) yanked all of the crap out of the restraint room. While they did that, I had a brief conversation with Wharton.

“You think you’re tough,” I said, “and maybe you are, sonny, but in here tough don’t matter. Your stampeding days are over. If you take it easy on us, we’ll take it easy on you. If you make it hard, you’ll die in the end just the same, only we’ll sharpen you like a pencil before you go.”

“You’re gonna be so happy to see the end of me,” Wharton said in a hoarse voice. He was struggling against the straitjacket even though he must have known it would do no good, and his face was as red as a tomato. “And until I’m gone, I’ll make your lives miserable.” He bared his teeth at me like an angry baboon.

“If that’s all you want, to make our lives miserable, you can quit now, because you’ve already succeeded,” Brutal said. “But as far as your time on the Mile goes, Wharton, we don’t care if you spend all of it in the room with the soft walls. And you can wear that damned nut-coat until your arms gangrene from lack of circulation and fall right off.” He paused. “No one much comes down here, you know. And if you think anyone gives much of a shit what happens to you, one way or another, you best reconsider. To the world in general, you’re already one dead outlaw.”

Wharton was studying Brutal carefully, and the choler was fading out of his face. “Lemme out of it,” he said in a placatory voice—a voice too sane and too reasonable to trust. “I’ll be good. Honest Injun.”

Harry appeared in the cell doorway. The end of the corridor looked like a rummage sale, but we’d set things to rights with good speed once we got started. We had before; we knew the drill. “All ready,” Harry said.

Brutal grabbed the bulge in the canvas where Wharton’s right elbow was and yanked him to his feet. “Come on, Wild Billy. And look on the good side. You’re gonna have at least twenty-four hours to remind yourself never to sit with your back to the door, and to never hold onto no aces and eights.”

“Lemme out of it,” Wharton said. He looked from Brutal to Harry to me, the red creeping back into his face. “I’ll be good—I tell you I’ve learned my lesson. I… I… ummmmmahhhhhhh—”

He suddenly collapsed, half of him in the cell, half of him on the played-out lino of the Green Mile, kicking his feet and bucking his body.

“Holy Christ, he’s pitchin a fit,” Percy whispered.

“Sure, and my sister’s the Whore of Babylon,” Brutal said. “She dances the hootchie-kootchie for Moses on Saturday nights in a long white veil.” He bent down and hooked a hand into one of Wharton’s armpits. I got the other one. Wharton threshed between us like a hooked fish. Carrying his jerking body, listening to him grunt from one end and fart from the other was one of my life’s less pleasant experiences.

I looked up and met John Coffey’s eyes for a second. They were bloodshot, and his dark cheeks were wet. He had been crying again. I thought of Hammersmith making that biting gesture with his hand and shivered a little. Then I turned my attention back to Wharton.

We threw him into the restraint room like he was cargo, and watched him lie on the floor, bucking hard in the straitjacket next to the drain we had once checked for the mouse which had started its E Block life as Steamboat Willy.

“I don’t much care if he swallows his tongue or something and dies,” Dean said in his hoarse and raspy voice, “but think of the paperwork, boys! It’d never end.”

“Never mind the paperwork, think of the hearing,” Harry said gloomily. “We’d lose our damned jobs. End up picking peas down Mississippi. You know what Mississippi is, don’t you? It’s the Indian word for asshole.”

“He ain’t gonna die, and he ain’t gonna swallow his tongue, either,” Brutal said. “When we open this door tomorrow, he’s gonna be just fine. Take my word for it.”

That’s the way it was, too. The man we took back to his cell the next night at nine was quiet, pallid, and seemingly chastened. He walked with his head down, made no effort to attack anyone when the straitjacket came off, and only stared listlessly at me when I told him it would go just the same the next time, and he just had to ask himself how much time he wanted to spend pissing in his pants and eating baby-food a spoonful at a time.

“I’ll be good, boss, I learnt my lesson,” he whispered in a humble little voice as we put him back in his cell. Brutal looked at me and winked.

Late the next day, William Wharton, who was Billy the Kid to himself and never that bushwhacking John Law Wild Bill Hickok, bought a Moon Pie from Old Toot-Toot. Wharton had been expressly forbidden any such commerce, but the afternoon crew was composed of floaters, as I think I have said, and the deal went down. Toot himself undoubtedly knew better, but to him the snack-wagon was always a case of a nickel is a nickel, a dime is a dime, I’d sing another chorus but I don’t have the time.

That night, when Brutal ran his check-round, Wharton was standing at the door of his cell. He waited until Brutal looked up at him, then slammed the heels of his hands into his bulging cheeks and shot a thick and amazingly long stream of chocolate sludge into Brutal’s face. He had crammed the entire Moon Pie into his trap, held it there until it liquefied, and then used it like chewing tobacco.

Wharton fell back on his bunk wearing a chocolate goatee, kicking his legs and screaming with laughter and pointing to Brutal, who was wearing a lot more than a goatee. “Li’l Black Sambo, yassuh, boss, yassuh, howdoo you do?” Wharton held his belly and howled. “Gosh, if it had only been ka-ka! I wish it had been! If I’d had me some of that—”

“You are ka-ka,” Brutal growled, “and I hope you got your bags packed, because you’re going back down to your favorite toilet.”

Once again Wharton was bundled into the straitjacket, and once again we stowed him in the room with the soft walls. Two days, this time. Sometimes we could hear him raving in there, sometimes we could hear him promising that he’d be good, that he’d come to his senses and be good, and sometimes we could hear him screaming that he needed a doctor, that he was dying. Mostly, though, he was silent. And he was silent when we took him out again, too, walking back to his cell with his head down and his eyes dull, not responding when Harry said, “Remember, it’s up to you.” He would be all right for a while, and then he’d try something else. There was nothing he did that hadn’t been tried before (well, except for the thing with the Moon Pie, maybe; even Brutal admitted that was pretty original), but his sheer persistence was scary. I was afraid that sooner or later someone’s attention might lapse and there would be hell to pay. And the situation might continue for quite awhile, because somewhere he had a lawyer who was beating the bushes, telling folks how wrong it would be to kill this fellow upon whose brow the dew of youth had not yet dried… and who was, incidentally, as white as old Jeff Davis. There was no sense complaining about it, because keeping Wharton out of the chair was his lawyer’s job. Keeping him safely jugged was ours. And in the end, Old Sparky would almost certainly have him, lawyer or no lawyer.