The Green Mile Read Online Free PDF Page B

head-shake: down, up, back to center. His strange eyes looked at me. There was a kind of peace in them, but not a kind I was sure I could trust. I crooked a finger to Harry, who came in and unlocked the chains. He showed no fear now, even when he knelt between Coffey’s treetrunk legs to unlock the ankle irons, and that eased me some. It was Percy who had made Harry nervous, and I trusted Harry’s instincts. I trusted the instincts of all my day-to-day E Block men, except for Percy.
    I have a little set speech I make to men new on the block, but I hesitated with Coffey, because he seemed so abnormal, and not just in his size.
    When Harry stood back (Coffey had remained motionless during the entire unlocking ceremony, as placid as a Percheron), I looked up at my new charge, tapping on the clipboard with my thumb, and said: “Can you talk, big boy?”
    â€œYes, sir, boss, I can talk,” he said. His voice was a deep and quiet rumble. It made me think of a freshly tuned tractor engine. He had no real Southern drawl—he said I, not Ah —but there was a kind of Southern construction to his speech that I noticed later. As if he was from the South, but not of it. He didn’t sound illiterate, but he didn’t sound educated. In his speech as in so many other things, he was a mystery. Mostly it was his eyes that troubled me—a kind of peaceful absence in them, as if he were floating far, far away.
    â€œYour name is John Coffey.”
    â€œYes, sir, boss, like the drink, only not spelled the same way.”
    â€œSo you can spell, can you? Read and write?”
    â€œJust my name, boss,” said he, serenely.
    I sighed, then gave him a short version of my set speech. I’d already decided he wasn’t going to be any trouble. In that I was both right and wrong.
    â€œMy name is Paul Edgecombe,” I said. “I’m the E Block super—the head screw. You want something from me, ask for me by name. If I’m not here, ask this other man—his name is Harry Terwilliger. Or you ask for Mr. Stanton or Mr. Howell. Do you understand that?”
    Coffey nodded.
    â€œJust don’t expect to get what you want unless we decide it’s what you need—this isn’t a hotel. Still with me?”
    He nodded again.
    â€œThis is a quiet place, big boy—not like the rest of the prison. It’s just you and Delacroix over there. You won’t work; mostly you’ll just sit. Give you a chance to think things over.” Too much time for most of them, but I didn’t say that. “Sometimes we play the radio, if all’s in order. You like the radio?”
    He nodded, but doubtfully, as if he wasn’t sure what the radio was. I later found out that was true, in a way; Coffey knew things when he encountered them again, but in between he forgot. He knew the characters on Our Gal Sunday, but had only the haziest memory of what they’d been up to the last time.
    â€œIf you behave, you’ll eat on time, you’ll never see the solitary cell down at the far end, or have to wear one of those canvas coats that buttons up the back. You’ll have two hours in the yard afternoons from four until six, except on Saturdays when the rest of the prison population has their flag football games. You’ll have your visitors on Sunday afternoons, if you have someone who wants to visit you. Do you, Coffey?”
    He shook his head. “Got none, boss,” he said.
    â€œWell, your lawyer, then.”
    â€œI believe I’ve seen the back end of him,” he said. “He was give to me on loan. Don’t believe he could find his way up here in the mountains.”
    I looked at him closely to see if he might be trying a little joke, but he didn’t seem to be. And I really hadn’t expected any different. Appeals weren’t for the likes of John Coffey, not back then; they had their day in court and then the world forgot them until they saw a