Night Journey

8

THE WOMAN in the back bedroom, propped up against the headboard and staring wall-eyed at the giant who had come into her muddled sight, didn’t look at all like the Melly Moores I had known for twenty years; she didn’t even look like the Melly Moores Janice and I had visited shortly before Delacroix’s execution. The woman propped up in that bed looked like a sick child got up as a Halloween witch. Her livid skin was a hanging dough of wrinkles. It was puckered up around the eye on the right side, as if she were trying to wink. That same side of her mouth turned down; one old yellow eyetooth hung out over her liverish lower lip. Her hair was a wild thin fog around her skull. The room stank of the stuff our bodies dispose of with such decorum when things are running right. The chamberpot by her bed was half full of some vile yellowish goo. We had come too late anyway, I thought, horrified. It had only been a matter of days since she had been recognizable—sick but still herself. Since then, the thing in her head must have moved with horrifying speed to consolidate its position. I didn’t think even John Coffey could help her now.

Her expression when Coffey entered was one of fear and horror—as if something inside her had recognized a doctor that might be able to get at it and pry it loose, after all… to sprinkle salt on it the way you do on a leech to make it let go its grip. Hear me carefully: I’m not saying that Melly Moores was possessed, and I’m aware that, wrought up as I was, all my perceptions of that night might be suspect. But I have never completely discounted the possibility of demonic possession, either. There was something in her eyes, I tell you, something that looked like fear. On that I think you can trust me; it’s an emotion I’ve seen too much of to mistake.

Whatever it was, it was gone in a hurry, replaced by a look of lively, irrational interest. That unspeakable mouth trembled in what might have been a smile.

“Oh, so big!” she cried. She sounded like a little girl just coming down with a bad throat infection. She took her hands—as spongy-white as her face—out from under the counterpane and patted them together. “Pull down your pants! I’ve heard about nigger-cocks my whole life but never seen one!”

Behind me, Moores made a soft groaning sound, full of despair.

John Coffey paid no attention to any of it. After standing still for a moment, as if to observe her from a little distance, he crossed to the bed, which was illuminated by a single bedside lamp. It threw a bright circle of light on the white counterpane drawn up to the lace at the throat of her nightgown. Beyond the bed, in shadow, I saw the chaise longue which belonged in the parlor. An afghan Melly had knitted with her own hands in happier days lay half on the chaise and half on the floor. It was here Hal had been sleeping—dozing, at least—when we pulled in.

As John approached, her expression underwent a third change. Suddenly I saw Melly, whose kindness had meant so much to me over the years, and even more to Janice when the kids had flown from the nest and she had been left feeling so alone and useless and blue. Melly was still interested, but now her interest seemed sane and aware.

“Who are you?” she asked in a clear, reasonable voice. “And why have you so many scars on your hands and arms? Who hurt you so badly?”

“I don’t hardly remember where they all come from, ma’am,” John Coffey said in a humble voice, and sat down beside her on her bed.

Melinda smiled as well as she could—the sneering right side of her mouth trembled, but wouldn’t quite come up. She touched a white scar, curved like a scimitar, on the back of his left hand. “What a blessing that is! Do you understand why?”

“Reckon if you don’t know who hurt you or dog you down, it don’t keep you up nights,” John Coffey said in his almost-Southern voice.

She laughed at that, the sound as pure as silver in the bad-smelling sickroom. Hal was beside me now, breathing rapidly but not trying to interfere. When Melly laughed, his rapid breathing paused for a moment, indrawn, and one of his big hands gripped my shoulder. He gripped it hard enough to leave a bruise—I saw it the next day—but right then I hardly felt it.

“What’s your name?” she asked.

“John Coffey, ma’am.”

“Coffey like the drink.”

“Yes, ma’am, only spelled different.”

She lay back against her pillows, propped up but not quite sitting up, looking at him. He sat beside her, looking back, and the light from the lamp circled them like they were actors on a stage—the hulking black man in the prison overall and the small dying white woman. She stared into John’s eyes with shining fascination.

“Ma’am?”

“Yes, John Coffey?” The words barely breathed, barely slipping to us on the bad-smelling air. I felt the muscles bunching on my arms and legs and back. Somewhere, far away, I could feel the warden clutching my arm, and to the side of my vision I could see Harry and Brutal with their arms around each other, like little kids lost in the night. Something was going to happen. Something big. We each felt it in our own way.

John Coffey bent closer to her. The springs of the bed creaked, the bedclothes rustled, and the coldly smiling moon looked in through an upper pane of the bedroom window. Coffey’s bloodshot eyes searched her upturned haggard face.

“I see it,” he said. Speaking not to her—I don’t think so, anyway—but to himself. “I see it, and I can help. Hold still… hold right still…”

Closer he bent, and closer still. For a moment his huge face stopped less than two inches from hers. He raised one hand off to the side, fingers splayed, as if telling something to wait… just wait… and then he lowered his face again. His broad, smooth lips pressed against hers and forced them open. For a moment I could see one of her eyes, staring up past Coffey, filling with an expression of what seemed to be surprise. Then his smooth bald head moved, and that was gone, too.

There was a soft whistling sound as he inhaled the air which lay deep within her lungs. That was all for a second or two, and then the floor moved under us and the whole house moved around us. It wasn’t my imagination; they all felt it, they all remarked on it later. It was a kind of rippling thump. There was a crash as something very heavy fell over in the parlor—the grandfather clock, it turned out to be. Hal Moores tried to have it repaired, but it never kept time for more than fifteen minutes at a stretch again.

Closer by there was a crack followed by a tinkle as the pane of glass through which the moon had been peeking broke. A picture on the wall—a clipper ship cruising one of the seven seas—fell off its hook and crashed to the floor; the glass over its front shattered.

I smelled something hot and saw smoke rising from the bottom of the white counterpane which covered her. A portion was turning black, down by the jittering lump that was her right foot. Feeling like a man in a dream, I shook free of Moores’s hand and stepped to the night-table. There was a glass of water there, surrounded by three or four bottles of pills which had fallen over during the shake. I picked up the water and dumped it on the place that was smoking. There was a hiss.

John Coffey went on kissing her in that deep and intimate way, inhaling and inhaling, one hand still held out, the other on the bed, propping up his immense weight. The fingers were splayed; the hand looked to me like a brown starfish.

Suddenly, her back arched. One of her own hands flailed out in the air, the fingers clenching and unclenching in a series of spasms. Her feet drummed against the bed. Then something screamed. Again, that’s not just me; the other men heard it, as well. To Brutal it sounded like a wolf or coyote with its leg caught in a trap. To me it sounded like an eagle, the way you’d sometimes hear them on still mornings back then, cruising down through the misty cuts with their wings stiffly spread.

Outside, the wind gusted hard enough to give the house a second shake—and that was strange, you know, because until then there had been no wind to speak of at all.

John Coffey pulled away from her, and I saw that her face had smoothed out. The right side of her mouth no longer drooped. Her eyes had regained their normal shape, and she looked ten years younger. He regarded her raptly for a moment or two, and then he began to cough. He turned his head so as not to cough in her face, lost his balance (which wasn’t hard; big as he was, he’d been sitting with his butt halfway off the side of the bed to start with), and went down onto the floor. There was enough of him to give the house a third shake. He landed on his knees and hung his head over, coughing like a man in the last stages of TB.

I thought, Now the bugs. He’s going to cough them out, and what a lot there’ll be this time.

But he didn’t. He only went on coughing in deep retching barks, hardly finding time between fits to snatch in the next breath of air. His dark, chocolatey skin was graying out. Alarmed, Brutal went to him, dropped to one knee beside him, and put an arm across his broad, spasming back. As if Brutal’s moving had broken a spell, Moores went to his wife’s bed and sat where Coffey had sat. He hardly seemed to register the coughing, choking giant’s presence at all. Although Coffey was kneeling at his very feet, Moores had eyes only for his wife, who was gazing at him with amazement. Looking at her was like looking at a dirty mirror which has been wiped clean.

“John!” Brutal shouted. “Sick it up! Sick it up like you done before!”

John went on barking those choked coughs. His eyes were wet, not with tears but with strain. Spit flew from his mouth in a fine spray, but nothing else came out.

Brutal whammed him on the back a couple of times, then looked around at me. “He’s choking! Whatever he sucked out of her, he’s choking on it!”

I started forward. Before I got two steps, John knee-walked away from me and into the corner of the room, still coughing harshly and dragging for each breath. He laid his forehead against the wallpaper—wild red roses overspreading a garden wall—and made a gruesome deep hacking sound, as if he were trying to vomit up the lining of his own throat. That’ll bring the bugs if anything can, I remember thinking, but there was no sign of them. All the same, his coughing fit seemed to ease a little.

“I’m all right, boss,” he said, still leaning with his forehead against the wild roses. His eyes remained closed. I’m not sure how he knew I was there, but he clearly did. “Honest I am. See to the lady.”

I looked at him doubtfully, then turned to the bed. Hal was stroking Melly’s brow, and I saw an amazing thing above it: some of her hair—not very much, but some—had gone back to black.

“What’s happened?” she asked him. As I watched, color began to blush into her cheeks. It was as if she had stolen a couple of roses right out of the wallpaper. “How did I get here? We were going to the hospital up in Indianola, weren’t we? A doctor was going to shoot X-rays into my head and take pictures of my brain.”

“Shhh,” Hal said. “Shhh, dearie, none of that matters now.”

“But I don’t understand!” she nearly wailed. “We stopped at a roadside stand… you bought me a dime packet of posies… and then… I’m here. It’s dark! Have you had your supper, Hal? Why am I in the guest room? Did I have the X-ray?” Her eyes moved across Harry almost without seeing him—that was shock, I imagine—and fixed on me. “Paul? Did I have the X-ray?”

“Yes,” I said. “It was clear.”

“They didn’t find a tumor?”

“No,” I said. “They say the headaches will likely stop now.”

Beside her, Hal burst into tears.

She sat forward and kissed his temple. Then her eyes moved to the corner. “Who is that Negro man? Why is he in the corner?”

I turned and saw John trying to get up on his feet. Brutal helped him and John made it with a final lunge. He stood facing the wall, though, like a child who has been bad. He was still coughing in spasms, but these seemed to be weakening now.

“John,” I said. “Turn around, big boy, and see this lady.”

He slowly turned. His face was still the color of ashes, and he looked ten years older, like a once powerful man at last losing a long battle with consumption. His eyes were cast down on his prison slippers, and he looked as if he wished for a hat to wring.

“Who are you?” she asked again. “What’s your name?”

“John Coffey, ma’am,” he said, to which she immediately replied, “But not spelled like the drink.”

Hal started beside her. She felt it, and patted his hand reassuringly without taking her eyes from the black man.

“I dreamed of you,” she said in a soft, wondering voice. “I dreamed you were wandering in the dark, and so was I. We found each other.”

John Coffey said nothing.

“We found each other in the dark,” she said. “Stand up, Hal, you’re pinning me in here.”

He got up and watched with disbelief as she turned back the counterpane. “Melly, you can’t—”

“Don’t be silly,” she said, and swung her legs out. “Of course I can.” She smoothed her nightgown, stretched, then got to her feet.

“My God,” Hal whispered. “My dear God in heaven, look at her.”

She went to John Coffey. Brutal stood away from her, an awed expression on his face. She limped with the first step, did no more than favor her right leg a bit with the second, and then even that was gone. I remembered Brutal handing the colored spool to Delacroix and saying, “Toss it—I want to see how he runs.” Mr. Jingles had limped then, but on the next night, the night Del walked the Mile, he had been fine.

Melly put her arms around John and hugged him. Coffey stood there for a moment, letting himself be hugged, and then he raised one hand and stroked the top of her head. This he did with infinite gentleness. His face was still gray. I thought he looked dreadfully sick.

She stood away from him, her face turned up to his. “Thank you.”

“Right welcome, ma’am.”

She turned to Hal and walked back to him. He put his arms around her.

“Paul—” It was Harry. He held his right wrist out to me and tapped the face of his watch. It was pressing on to three o’clock. Light would start showing by four-thirty. If we wanted to get Coffey back to Cold Mountain before that happened, we would have to go soon. And I wanted to get him back. Partly because the longer this went on the worse our chances of getting away with it became, yes, of course. But I also wanted John in a place where I could legitimately call a doctor for him, if the need arose. Looking at him, I thought it might.

The Mooreses were sitting on the edge of the bed, arms around each other. I thought of asking Hal out into the living room for a private word, then realized I could ask until the cows came home and he wouldn’t budge from where he was right then. He might be able to take his eyes off her—for a few seconds, at least—by the time the sun came up, but not now.

“Hal,” I said. “We have to go now.”

He nodded, not looking at me. He was studying the color in his wife’s cheeks, the natural unstrained curve of his wife’s lips, the new black in his wife’s hair.

I tapped him on the shoulder, hard enough to get his attention for a moment, at least.

“Hal, we never came here.”

“What—?”

“We never came here,” I said. “Later on we’ll talk, but for now that’s all you need to know. We were never here.”

“Yes, all right…” He forced himself to focus on me for a moment, with what was clearly an effort. “You got him out. Can you get him back in?”

“I think so. Maybe. But we need to go.”

“How did you know he could do this?” Then he shook his head, as if realizing for himself that this wasn’t the time. “Paul… thank you.”

“Don’t thank me,” I said. “Thank John.”

He looked at John Coffey, then put out one hand—just as I had done on the day Harry and Percy escorted John onto the block. “Thank you. Thank you so much.”

John looked at the hand. Brutal threw a none-too-subtle elbow into his side. John started, then took the hand and gave it a shake. Up, down, back to center, release. “Welcome,” he said in a hoarse voice. It sounded to me like Melly’s when she had clapped her hands and told John to pull down his pants. “Welcome,” he said to the man who would, in the ordinary course of things, grasp a pen with that hand and then sign John Coffey’s execution order with it.

Harry tapped the face of his watch, more urgently this time.

“Brute?” I said. “Ready?”

“Hello, Brutus,” Melinda said in a cheerful voice, as if noticing him for the first time. “It’s good to see you. Would you gentlemen like tea? Would you, Hal? I could make it.” She got up again. “I’ve been ill, but I feel fine now. Better than I have in years.”

“Thank you, Missus Moores, but we have to go,” Brutal said. “It’s past John’s bedtime.” He smiled to show it was a joke, but the look he gave John was as anxious as I felt.

“Well… if you’re sure…”

“Yes, ma’am. Come on, John Coffey.” He tugged John’s arm to get him going, and John went.

“Just a minute!” Melinda shook free of Hal’s hand and ran as lightly as a girl to where John stood. She put her arms around him and gave him another hug. Then she reached around to the nape of her neck and pulled a fine-link chain out of her bodice. At the end of it was a silver medallion. She held it out to John, who looked at it uncomprehendingly.

“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 bull-neck, 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.”