SEPTEMBAR

Kako mesec prolazi i noc punog meseca se ponovo priblizava, preplaseni gradjani Tarker Milsa cekaju na prestanak zega, ali takvog prestanka nema. Drugde, u spoljnom svetu, kvalifikacione utakmice u bejzbolu se jedna po jedna zavrsavaju i sezona Americkog fudbala je pocela; na Kanadskim Stenovitim Planinama, obavestava stari razdragani Vilard Skot ljude Tarker Milsa, stopa snega je pala dvadeset prvog Septembra. Ali u ovom cosku sveta leto jos uvek traje. Temperatura se krece oko osamdeset (Farenhajta prim. prev.) tokom dana; deca, vec tri nedelje kako su ponovo posli u skolu, nisu srecna sto sede i znoje se u dosadnim ucionicama gde se cini da su casovnici namesteni tako da se za svaki sat pomeraju za jedan minut. Muzevi i zene se zestoko svadjaju bez ikakvog razloga; i na O'Nilovoj Benzinskoj Pumpi tamo na Gradskom Putu kod ukljucivanja u obilaznicu, turista pocinje da prigovara Paki O'Nilu zbog cene benzina i Paki udara tipa sa metalnim delom creva. Tipu, koji je iz Nju Dzersija, ce trebati cetiri kopce na gornjoj usni i on odlazi nerazgovetno mrmljajuci kroz zube o parnicama i naknadama.

"Ne znam o cemu on to sere", kaze Paki nabusito te veceri u Baru. "Udario sam ga sa samo pola moje snage, znas? Da sam ga udario iz sve snage ne bi vise imao ta svoja pederska kenjatorska usta. Znas?"

"Svakako", kaze Bili Robertson, zato sto Paki izgleda kao da ce njega udariti ako mu protivureci. "Sta kazes na jos jedno pivo, Paki?"

"Jebeno-naravno", kaze Paki.

Milt Sturmfuler salje svoju zenu u bolnicu zbog malo jaja koje masina za pranje sudova nije skinula sa jednog od tanjira. On pogleda na tu osusenu zutu mrlju na tanjiru na koji je htela da mu sipa rucak, i dobro je odalami. Kao sto bi Paki O'Nil rekao, Milt je udara iz sve snage. "Prokleta nesposobna kurvo", kaze on, stojeci nad Donom Li, koja lezi na kuhinjskom podu, nos joj je slomljen i krvari, njen potiljak takodje krvari. "Moja majka je znala da ocisti sudove, a ona nije ni imala masinu. Sta tebi fali?" Kasnije, Milt ce reci doktoru u Portlandskoj Opstoj Bolnici da je Dona Li pala niz stepenice. Dona Li, mucena i vredjana devet godina u bracnom ratistu, ce ovo potvrditi.

Oko sedam sati te noci punog meseca, vetar pocinje - prvi hladni vetar tog dugog leta. On donosi hordu oblaka sa severa i neko vreme mesec se igra suge sa ovim oblacima, nestajuci iza njih i ponovo se pojavljujuci, pretvarajuci njihove ivice u kovano srebro. Onda oblaci postaju gusci, i mesec nestaje... ali ipak je tu; plime dvadeset milja od Tarker Milsa osecaju njegov zov, a tako ga oseca i Zver.

Oko dva ujutro, zastrasujuce skiktanje se zacuje iz svinjca Elmera Cinemana na Zapadnom Kocijaskom Putu, oko dvanaest milja van grada. Elmer ide da uzme svoju pusku, noseci samo donji deo pidzame i papuce. Njegova zena, koja je bila skoro lepa, kad se Elmer ozenio njome 1947, u njenoj sesnaestoj, moli ga, preklinje, place, trazeci da ostane sa njom, trazeci da ne ide napolje. Elmer je odguruje i uzima svoju pusku iz predsoblja. Njegove svinje ne samo da skice; one vriste. Zvuce kao gomila veoma mladih devojaka kojima na zurku upada manijak. On izlazi, nista ga ne moze zadrzati, kaze joj on... i onda se skameni sa jednom, od rada ocvrslom, rukom na kvaci zadnjih vrata dok se urlajuce trijumfalno zavijanje probija kroz noc. To je glasanje vuka, ali ima necega toliko ljudskog u tom zavijanju da mu ruka spada sa brave i on dozvoljava Alisi Cineman da ga odvuce nazad u dnevnu sobu. On je grli i povlaci je na sofu, i tako oni tu sede kao dvoje preplasene dece.

Sada skiktaji svinja pocinju da se utisavaju i prestaju. Da, prestaju. Jedan po jedan, oni prestaju. Njihovi povici umiru u rezecim, krvavim, grgotavim zvucima. Zver ponovo zavija, njegovo zavijanje srebrno kao mesec. Elmer prilazi prozoru i vidi nesto - ne moze tacno reci sta - kako se tetura u mrak.

Kisa dolazi kasnije, pljusteci po prozorima, dok Elmer i Alisa sede zajedno u krevetu, sa svim svetlima u spavacoj sobi ukljucenim. To je hladna kisa, prva prava jesenja kisa, i sutra prvi nagovestaj boje ce se naci u liscu.

Elmer u svom svinjcu nalazi ono sto je i ocekivao; klanicu. Svih devet njegovih krmaca i oba krmka su mrtva - rastrgnuta i delom pojedena. Leze u blatu, hladna kisa pljusti po njihovim lesinama, njihove izbuljene oci gledaju gore u hladno jesenje nebo.

Elmerov brat, Pit, pozvan da dodje iz Minota, stoji pored Elmera. Oni dugo cute, i onda Elmer kaze ono o cemu je i Pit razmisljao. "Osiguranje ce pokriti deo toga. Ne sve, ali deo. Pretpostavljam da cu pregrmeti ostalo. Bolje moje svinje nego jos neka osoba."

Pi klima glavom. "Bilo je dosta", kaze on, njegov glas sum koji se jedva moze cuti kroz kisu.

"Kako to mislis?"

"Znas kako to mislim. Iduceg punog meseca cetrdesetoro ljudi ce biti napolju... ili sezdeset... ili sto sezdeset. Vreme je da ljudi prestanu da se zamajavaju i pretvaraju da se nista ne dogadja, kada svaka budala moze to da vidi. Pogledaj ovde, Isusa mu!"

Pit pokazuje dole. Oko zaklanih svinja, meka zemlja svinjca je prepuna vrlo velikih tragova. Izgledaju kao tragovi vuka... ali takodje izgledaju uvrnuto ljudski.

"Vidis te jebene tragove?"

"Vidim ih", Elmer popusta.

"Mislis da ih je Pajkova Slatka Besi napravila?"

"Ne. Valjda ne."

"Vukodlak je napravio te tragove", kaze Pit. "Ti to znas, Alisa to zna, vecina ljudi u gradu to zna. Dodjavola, cak i ja to znam, a ja dolazim iz susednog okruga." On gleda u svog brata, lice mu je hladno i strogo, lice Novoengleskog Puritanca iz 1650. I on ponavlja: "Bilo je dosta. Vreme je da se ova stvar okonca."

Elmer dugo razmislja o ovome, dok kisa nastavlja da pada na mantile dvojice ljudi, i onda klima glavom. "Valjda. Ali ne sledeceg punog meseca."

"Hoces da cekas do Novembra?"

Elmer klima glavom. "Gole sume. Bolje traganje, ako dobijemo malo snega."

"A sta iduceg meseca?"

Elmer Cineman gleda svoje zaklane svinje u svinjcu pored ambara. Onda gleda u svog brata, Pita.

"Ljudi bolje da se paze", kaze on.

OKTOBAR

Kada je Marti Kozlou dosao kuci posle skupljanja slatkisa na Noc Vestica sa baterijama u njegovim kolicima skoro sasvim ispraznjenim, odmah je otisao u krevet, gde sad lezi budan dok se polumesec dize na hladnom nebu posutom zvezdama kao sitnim dijamantima. Napolju, na verandi gde mu je zivot spaslo pakovanje Cetvrtojulskih petardi, prohladni vetar kovitla smedje listove u besciljnim spiralama po mermeru. Zvece kao stare kosti. Oktobarski pun mesec je dosao i prosao u Tarker Milsu bez novih ubistava, drugi put da se to desilo. Neki gradjani - Sten Pelki, berberin, i Kal Blodvin, vlasnik Blodvinovih Sevroleta, jedine prodavnice kola u gradu - veruju da je uzas zavrsen; ubica je bio samo u prolazu, ili je bio skitnica koji je ziveo u sumi i sad je otisao negde drugde, bas kao sto su oni i govorili. Drugi, opet, nisu tako sigurni. To su oni koji dugo razmisljaju o cetiri jelena koje su nasli zaklane kod obilaznice na dan posle Oktobarskog punog meseca, i o jedanaest svinja Elmera Cinemana, ubijenih u Septembru za vreme punog meseca. Svadje se vode uz piva u Baru tokom dugih jesenjih veceri.

Ali Marti Kozlou zna.

Ove noci on je otisao da skuplja slatkise sa svojim ocem (njegov otac voli Noc Vestica, voli iskricavu hladnocu, voli da se smeje svojim gromoglasnim smehom Velikog Druskana i govori takve gluposti kao sto su "Hej, hej!" i "Ring-deng-du!" kada bi se vrata otvorila i otkrila poznata lica Tarker Milsa). Marti je isao kao Joda, velika gumena Don Post maska navucena preko glave i veliki ogrtac koji je prekrivao njegove sasusene noge. "Ti uvek dobijas sve sto pozelis", kaze Keti sa trzajem glave kada ugleda masku... ali on zna da ona nije stvarno ljuta na njega (i kao da to dokaze, napravila mu je majstorski oblikovan Jodin stap da mu upotpuni kostim), mozda je tuzna zato sto je sada smatraju prestarom da ide u skupljanje slatkisa. Umesto toga ici ce na zurku sa svojim prijateljima iz skole. Igrace uz ploce Done Samers i skakace za jabukama i posle ce se svetla ugasiti i igrace se fote i mozda ce poljubiti nekog decka, ne zato sto to zeli vec zato sto ce biti zabavno da se sutra smeje tome zajedno sa svojim drugaricama u skoli.

Martijev tata vodi Martija u kamionetu, zato sto kamionet ima ugradjenu rampu koju koristi da uvede i izvede Martija. Marti silazi niz rampu i onda zuji uz i niz ulice u svojim kolicima. Nosi vrecu u krilu i oni obilaze sve kuce u njihovoj ulici i nekoliko njih u predgradju: Kolinsovu, MekInsovu, Mancesterovu, Milikensovu, Istonsovu. U Baru je akvarijum napunjen secernim kokicama. Snikersove cokoladne stangle u parohiji Katolicke crkve, i Cankijeve u Baptistickoj Parohiji. Onda kod Randolfovih, Kuinsovih, Diksonovih i desetina drugih. Marti dolazi kuci sa prepunom vrecom slatkisa... i zastrasujucim, skoro neverovatnim saznanjem.

On zna.

On zna ko je vukodlak.

U jednom trenutku na Martijevom putesestviju, sama Zver, sada bezbedna izmedju svojih meseca divljastva, je ubacila slatkis u njegovu vrecu, nesvesna da je Martijevo lice mrtvacki pobledelo ispod njegove Don Post Joda maske, ili da, ispod rukavica, njegovi prsti stiskaju Joda stap tako snazno da su nokti sasvim pobeleli. Vukodlak se smesi Martiju i potapse njegovu gumenu glavu.

Ali to je vukodlak. Marti zna, i to ne samo zato sto nosi povez preko oka. Tu ima neceg drugog - neke sustinske slicnosti izmedju ovoga ljudskoga lica i iskezenog lica zivotinje koje je Marti video te srebrnaste letnje noci pre skoro cetiri meseca.

Od kada se vratio iz Vermonta u Tarker Mils dan posle Praznika Rada, Marti je bio obazriv, uveren da ce pre ili kasnije videti vukodlaka, i uveren da ce ga poznati kada ga vidi zato sto ce vukodlak biti jednooki covek. Iako su policajci klimali glavom i govorili da ce to proveriti, kada im je rekao da je iskopao jedno od vukodlakovih ociju. Marti je video da mu nisu zaista verovali. Mozda zato sto je samo klinac, ili zato sto nisu bili tamo te Julske noci kada se sukob odigrao. U svakom slucaju nije bilo vazno. On je znao da je to istina.

Tarker Mils je mali grad, ali je dosta prostran, i do veceras Marti nije video jednookog coveka, i nije se usudjivao da postavlja pitanja; njegova majka je vec uplasena da je dogadjaj u Julu ostavio trajne posledice na njemu. On se plasi da ako pokusa neko otvoreno ispitivanje to moze dopreti do nje. Pored toga - Tarker Milsa. Pre ili kasnije videce Zver sa njenim ljudskim licem.

Iduci kuci, gospodin Kozlou (trener Kozlou hiljadama njegovih ucenika, sadasnjih i bivsih) misli da se Marti tako ucutao zato sto su ga ovo vece i sva uzbudjenja ove veceri iscrpli. U stvari, to nije istina. Marti se nikad - sem mozda one noci uz divnu vrecicu prskalica - nije osecao ovako uzbudjen i napet. I njegova glavna pomisao je bila: trebalo mu je skoro sezdeset dana od njegovog povratka kuci da otkrije ko je vukodlak, zato sto on, Marti, je katolik, i ide u Crkvu Svete Marije u predgradju.

Covek sa povezom na oku, covek koji je ubacio Canki stanglu u Martijevu vrecu, nasmejao se i onda ga potapsao po gumenoj glavi, nije katolik. Daleko od toga. Zver je Presvetli Lester Louv, iz Baptisticke Crkve Bozije Milosti.

Izlazi na prag, smesi se, Marti jasno vidi povez uz zutu svetlost lampe koja dopire iza vrata; povez malom misolikom Presvetlom daje skoro gusarski izgled.

"Zao mi je zbog vaseg oka, Presvetli Louve", kaze gospodin Kozlou svojim gromoglasnim glasom Velikog Druskana. "Nadam se da nije nista ozbiljno?"

Osmeh Presvetlog Louva postaje pacenicki. U stvari, kaze on, on je izgubio svoje oko. Dobrocudni tumor; bilo je neophodno damu izvade oko da bi dospeli do tumora. Ali to je bila Gospodova volja, i navikavao se. Ponovo je potapsao Martijevu masku i rekao da neki ljudi koje poznaje nose teze krstove.

I tako Mrti sada lezi u krevetu, slusajuci kako Oktobarski vetar peva napolju, suskajuci zadnjim listovima ove godine, tiho fijucuci kroz ocne duplje izrezbarene na bundevama koje su poredjane uz cupriju Kozlouovih, gledajuci kako polumesec krstari zvezdama-poprskanim nebom. Pitanje je: Sta sad treba da uradi?

Ne zna, ali oseca da ce mu vremenom odgovor doci.

On spava dubokim snom bez snova, dok napolju reka vetra duva nad Tarker Milsom, oduvavajuci Oktobar i dovodeci zvezdani Novembar, jesenji celicni mesec.

NOVEMBAR

Zadimljeni kundak godine, tamni celicni Novembar, je dosao u Tarker Mils. Cudan pohod prolazi Glavnom Ulicom. Presvetli Lester Louv ga posmatra sa vrata Baptisticke Parohije; upravo je izasao da uzme pristiglu postu i u ruci drzi sest cirkularnih i jedno obicno pismo, posmatrajuci kolonu prasnjavih kamiona - Fordova, Cevija i Internesnl Harvestersa - kako, kao zmije, izlaze iz grada.

Sneg dolazi, kazu na vremenskoj prognozi, ali ovo nisu nikakve ptice selice, koje su se uputile u toplije krajeve; ne ides u Floridu ili na Kalifornijsku zlatnu obalu u svojoj lovackoj jakni, svojom puskom na sedistu suvozaca i svojim psima u prikolici. Ovo je cetvrti dan, kako su ljudi, predvodjeni Elmerom Cinemanom i njegovim bratom Pitom, napolju sa puskama, psima i mnogo konzervi piva. To ludilo se uhvatilo, zbog skorasnjeg punog meseca. Sezona lova na ptice je okoncana, i na jelene, takodje. Ali sezona lova na vukodlake jos traje, i vecina ovih ljudi, iza svojih namrgodjenih poredjajte-kocije-u-krug lica se sjajno zabavljaju. Kao sto bi trener Kozlou rekao, Bogomprokleto tacno!

Neki od ljudi, Presvetli Louv zna, se samo zezaju; evo prilike da se ode u sumu, pije pivo, pisa u zbunje, pricaju vicevi o poljacima, zabama i crncugama, puca u seve i gavrane. Oni su prave zivotinje, misli Presvetli Louv, dok mu ruka nesvesno ide ka povezu koji nosi od Jula. Najverovatnije ce neko nekoga upucati. Imali su srece sto se to vec nije desilo.

Poslednji kamion se gubi sa vidika iza Tarker Hila, truba trubi, psi reze i laju u prikolici. Da, neki od ljudi se samo zezaju, ali neki - kao Elmer i Pit Cineman, na primer - su mrtvi ozbiljni.

Ako to stvorenje, covek ili zver ili stagod da je, podje u lov ovoga meseca, psi ce mu uhvatiti miris, cuo je Presvetli Louv kako Elmer govori u berbernici pre manje od dve nedelje. I ako to, ili on, ne izadje, mozda smo spasili jedan zivot. Neciju stoku najmanje.

Da, neki od njih - mozda desetoro, ili dvadesetoro - su ozbiljni. Ali nisu oni stvorili ovaj novi cudni osecaj u zadnjem delu Louvovog mozga - taj osecaj da je uhvacen u zamku.

To su pisma uradila. Pisma, najduze od njih samo dve rece nice dugo, napisana decijom, nesigurnom rukom, sa ponekom greskom u pisanju. On spusta pogled na pismo koje je doslo sa danasnjom postom, adresirana tim istim detinjim rukopisom, adresirana kao sto su i ostala bila: Presvetli Louv, Baptisticka Parohija, Tarker Mils, Mejn 04491.

A sada ovo cudno, osecanje zarobljenosti... on zamislja da se tako lisica mora osecati kada shvati da su je psi nekako doterali u cul-de-sac. Taj uspaniceni trenutak, u kom se lisica okrece, iskezenih zuba, da se bori sa psima kji ce je sigurno rastrgnuti na komadice.

On cvrsto zatvara vrata, i ide u trpezariju gde sat njegovog dede otkucava svecane tikove i svecane tokove; on seda, pazljivo stavlja religiozna cirkularna pisma sa strane na sto koji Gospodja Miler glanca dva puta nedeljno, i otvara svoje novo pismo. Kao i kod ostalih, nema pozdrava. Kao i kod ostalih, nepotpisano je. Napisana na sredini lista, iscepanog iz ucenicke sveske, je ova recenica:

Zasto se ne ubijes?

Presvetli Louv stavlja saku na celo - lagano mu drhti. Sa drugom rukom guzva list papira i stavlja ga u veliku staklenu pepeljaru na sredini stola (Presvetli Louv sve svoje razgovore vodi u trpezariji, i neki od njegovih nezadovoljnih parohijana puse). On uzima kutiju sibica iz svog Subotnje-popodnevnog "kucnog" dzempera i pali poruku, kao sto je spalio i ostale. Gleda je kako gori.

Louvovo saznanje o onome sta je, je doslo u dve faze: Posle njegovog kosmara u Maju, kosmara u kome su se svi na Nedeljnoj propovedi Starog Doma pretvorili u vukodlake, i posle uzasnog otkrica rastrgnutog tela Klajda Korlisa, poceo je da shvata da nesto... pa, nije u redu sa njim. Nije znao kako drugacije to da kaze. Nije u redu. Ali on takodje zna da se ponekog jutra, obicno tokom punog meseca, probudio osecajuci se neverovatno dobro, neverovatno zdravo, neverovatno snazno. Ovo osecanje opada sa mesecom, i onda ponovo raste iduceg meseca.

Posle sna i Korlisove smrti, bio je prisiljen da obrati paznju i na druge stvari, koje je do tada ignorisao. Blatnjava i iscepana odesa. Ogrebotine i modrice kojih se ne seca (ali kako nikad nisu bolele, kao sto to rade obicne ogrebotine i modrice, bilo ih je lako zanemariti, ili jednostavno... zaboraviti). Cak je zanemarivao i tragove krvi koje bi nekad nasao na rukama... i usnama.

Onda, 5. Jula, druga faza. Jednostavno receno: probudio se slep na jedno oko. Kao i sa posekotinama i ogrebotinama nije bilo bola; samo nagorela, raznesena duplja na mestu gde mu je bilo levo oko. U tom trenutku, vise nije mogao da porice: on je vukodlak; on je Zver.

U zadnja tri dana osecao je poznate stvari: neiscrpnu energiju, nestrpljenje koje je skoro radosno, osecaj napetosti u njegovom telu. Ono ponovo dolazi - promena je skoro nastupila. Nocas ce se mesec uzdici, pun, i lovci ce biti napolju sa svojim psima. Pa, nema veze. On je pametniji, nego sto to oni misle. Oni govore o coveku-vuku, ali razmisljaju o njemu samo kao o vuku, ne kao o coveku. Mogu se voziti u svojim kamionima, i on se moze voziti u svom malom Volareu sedan. I ovog popodneva odvesce se sve do Portlanda, misli on, i odsesce u nekom motelu u predgradju. I ako do promene dodje nece biti lovaca, nece biti pasa. Oni ga ne plase.

Zasto se ne ubijes?

Prva poruka je dosla rano ovoga meseca. Jednostavno je glasila:

Ja znam ko si ti.

Druga je glasila:

Ako si ti Boziji covek, idi iz grada. Idi negde gde ces ubijati zivotinje, a ne ljude.

Treca je glasila:

Okoncaj to.

To je bilo sve; samo Okoncaj to. I sada

Zasto se ne ubijes?

Zato sto ne zelim to, misli Presvetli Louv zlovoljno. Ja ovo - stagod da je - nisam trazio. Nije me ujeo vuk, niti me je proklela ciganka. To se jednostavno... desilo. Jednog dana, proslog Novembra, ubrao sam neko cvece da stavim u vaze u crkvenoj kapeli. Tamo kod onog lepog malog groblja na Suncanom Bregu. Nikad ranije nisam video takvo cvece... i uvenuli su pre no sto sam mogao da se vratim u grad. Svi do jednog su pocrneli. Mozda je tada to pocelo da se desava. Nema nekog razloga da to mislim... ali verujem u to. I necu se ubiti. Oni su zivotinje, ne ja.

Ko pise poruke?

Ne zna. Napad na Martija Kozloua nije bio u nedeljnom listu Tarker Milsa, a on se ponosi time sto ne slusa glasine. Takodje, kao sto Marti nije znao za Louva do Noci Vestica zato sto se njihovi verski krugovi ne doticu, Presvetli Louv ne zna za Martija. I on se ne seca sta radi dok je preobrazen u zver; samo taj pijani osecaj dobrog raspolozenja kada se ciklus zavrsi, i napetosti pre iduceg.

Ja sam Boziji covek, misli on, ustajuci i pocinjuci da hoda, sve brze i brze u tihoj trpezariji gde dedin sat otkucava svecane tikove i svecane tokove. Ja sam Boziji covek i ja se necu ubiti. Ja ovde radim dobro, a ako ponekad radim zlo, pa, ljudi su i pre mene radili zlo; zlo takodje sluzi Njegovoj volji, tako nas uci knjiga o Jovu; ako sam proklet sa Neba, onda ce me Bog uzeti kad On to hoce. Sve stvari sluze volju Boga... a ko je on? Da li da se raspitujem? Ko je bio napadnut 4. Jula? Kako sam (je) izgubio svoje oko? Mozda bi trebao biti ucutkan... ali ne ovog meseca. Neka prvo vrate svoje pse natrag u stenare. Da...

On pocinje da hoda sve brze i brze, povijenih ledja, nesvestan da njegova brada, obicno retka (brije je tek svaki treci dan... za vreme prave meseceve mene, naravno), je sada iskocila gusta, ostra i zamrsena, i da je njegovo jedno smedje oko dobilo nijansu lesnika koja se malo po malo produbljuje ka smaragdno zelenoj, kakva ce postati kasnije te noci. On se grbi dok hoda, i poceo je da prica sam sa sobom... ali reci su dublje i dublje, sve vise i vise nalik rezanju.

Konacno, dok se sivo Novembarsko popodne pretvara u rano vece boje kovacevog nakovnja, on ulece u kuhinju, grabi kljuceve Volarea sa kuke pored vrata, i skoro trci ka kolima. On vozi brzo ka Portlandu, smeseci se, i ne usporava kada prvi sneg pocne da se kovitla pred njegopvim farovima, igraci sa celicnog neba. On oseca mesec negde iznad oblaka; oseca njegovu moc; grudi mu se sire, napinjuci savove njegove bele kosulje.

Na radiju nalazi rok-en-rol stanicu i oseca se jednostavno... sjajno!

I ono sto se desava kasnije te noci moze biti pravda Bozija, ili sala onih drevnih bogova koje su ljudi obozavali iz bezbednosti kamenih krugova tokom mesecom obasjanih noci - smesno je, svakako, veoma smesno, zato sto je Louv isao cak do Portlanda da postane Zver, a covek koga na kraju rastrze te snezne Novembarske noci je Milt Sturmfuler, covek koji je ceo zivot ziveo u Tarker Milsu... i mozda naposletku ima Boga, zato sto ako postoji prvoklasno djubre u Tarker Milsu, to je Milt Sturmfuler. Dosao je ove noci, kao sto je i ranije dolazio, govoreci svojoj prebijenoj zeni Doni Li da ima posla, ali njegov posao je B-devojka Rita Tenison koja mu je dala ozbiljan slucaj herpesa, koji je on vec preneo Doni Li, koja nije ni pogledala drugog muskarca, svih ovih godina.

Presvetli Louv je odseo u motelu zvanom Driftvud blizu Portland-Vestbruk puta, i ovo je isti motel koji su Milt Sturmfuler i Rita Tenison odabrali, ove Novembarske noci, za svoj posao.

Milt izlazi napolje u deset i petnaest da uzme bocu burbona koju je ostavio u kolima, i on u stvari cestita samom sebi sto je daleko od Tarker Milsa na noc punog meseca kada Zver skace na njega sa krova snegom-prekrivenog Peterbiltovog deseto-tockasa i otkida mu glavu jednim ogromnim zamahom. Poslednji zvuk koji Milt Sturmfuler cuje u zivotu je vukodlakov urlik trijumfa; njegova glava se dokotrlja ispod Peterbilta, izbuljenih ociju, krv mu prska iz vrata, i boca burbona mu ispada iz drhtece ruke dok Zver zaranja svoju njusku u njegov vrat i pocInje da se hrani.

I sledeceg dana, ponovo u Baptistickoj Parohiji u Tarker Milsu i osecajuci se jednostavno... sjajno, ce citati clanak o ubistvu u novinama i pomislice bogobojazljivo: On nije bio dobar covek. Sve stvari sluze Gospoda.

I posle ovoga, pomislice: Ko je taj decak koji salje poruke? Ko je to bio u Julu? Vreme je da se to otkrije. Vreme je da se slusaju glasine. Presvetli Lester Louv namesta svoj povez, okrece sledecu stranicu novina i misli: Sve stvari sluze Boga, ako je to Bozija volja, naci cu ga. I ucutkati. Zauvek.

DECEMBAR

Petnaest minuta je do ponoci Novogodisnje Noci. U Tarker Milsu, kao i drugde na svetu, godina se blizi svom kraju, i u Tarker Milsu, kao i drugde na svetu, godina je donela promene.

Milt Sturmfuler je mrtav i njegova zena Dona Li, konacno oslobodjena svojih okova, se odselila iz grada. Otisla u Boston, kazu neki; otisla u Los Andjeles, kazu drugi. Jedna druga zena je pokusala da vodi Knjizaru Na Uglu i nije u tome uspela, ali Berbernica, Pijacna Korpa i Bar, hvala na pitanju, dobro stoje. Klajd Korlis je mrtav, ali njegova dva nizasta-dobra brata su jos zivi i zdravi, i prodaju svoje markice-za-hranu kod A&P-a dva grada dalje - nemaju dovoljno zivaca da to rade ovde u Milsu. Baka Hegju, koja je pravila najbolje pite u Tarker Milsu, umrla je od srcanog udara, Vili Herington, devedeset-dve, se okliznuo na ledu ispred svoje male kucice na Ulici Bol krajem Novembra i slomio kuk, ali biblioteka je dobila pozamasnu sumu u testamentu bogatog vikendasa, i iduce godine pocece radovi na decjem krilu biblioteke, o kojem se godinama pricalo na sednicama. Oliju Parkeru gradonacelniku grada, u Oktobru je neprestano curila krv iz nosa, dijagnoza je glasila akutna hipertenzija. Dobro je da ti nije eksplodirao mozak, progundjao je doktor, skidajuci povez za merenje krvnog pritiska, i rekao Oliju da skine cetrdeset funti. Za divno cudo, Oli do Bozica gubi dvadeset tih funti. On izgleda i oseca se kao novi covek. "I ponasa se kao novi covek", kaze njegova zena svojoj bliskoj prijateljici Deli Barni, sa sladostrasnim malim osmehom. Bredi Kinkejd, koga je ubila Zver dok je pustao zmaja, je jos uvek mrtav. I Marti Kozlou, koji je ranije sedeo odmah iza Bredija u skoli, je jos uvek bogalj.

Stvari se menjaju, stvari se ne menjaju, i, u Tarker Milsu, godina odlazi kako je i dosla - napolju urlajuca mecava zavija, a i Zver je tamo. Negde.

U dnevnoj sobi Kozlouovih, gledajuci Divlje Novogodisnje Vece Dika Klarka, sede Marti Kozlou i njegov Ujka Al. Ujka Al je na kaucu. Marti sedi u svojim kolicima ispred televizora. U Martijevom krilu je pistolj, .38 Kolt Vudsman. Dva metka su u pistolju, i oba su od cistog srebra. Ujka Al je nagovorio svog prijatelja iz Hempdena, Meka MekKacena, da ih napravi u kalupu za metke. Taj Mek MekKacen, posle malo negodovanja je otopio Martijevu srebrnu kasiku za cipele sa let-lampom, i odmerio kolicinu baruta potrebnu da metak radi, a da po ispaljivanju ne odleti u tri lepe. "Ne garantujem da ce da rade", taj MekKacen je rekao Ujka Alu, "ali verovatno hoce. Sta hoces da ubijas, Ale? Vukodlake ili vampire?"

"Po jednog od oboje", kaze Ujka Al, uzvracajuci osmeh. "Zato su mi trebala dva. Neka avet se tu takodje smucala, ali joj je otac umro u Severnoj Dakoti i morala je da uhvati avion za Fargo." Malo se nasmeju oko toga i onda Al kaze: "Za mog necaka su. Poludeo je za tim cudovistima iz filmova, i mislio sam da bi za njega bili interesantan Bozicni poklon."

"Pa, ako opali jedan u prazno, donesi mi ga u radnju", kaze mu Mek. "Voleo bih da vidim sta se desilo."

U stvari, Ujka Al ne zna sta da misli. Nije video Martija, niti bio u Milsu od 3. Jula; kao sto je i predvideo, njegova sestra, Martijeva majka je besna na njega zbog vatrometa. Mogao je poginuti, ti glupi dupeglavce! Sta, za ime Bozije, si mislio da uradis? vice mu ona kroz telefonsku zicu.

Izgleda da su mu petarde spasle zi- pocinje Al, ali u svom uhu zacuje reski zvuk prekinute veze. Njegova sestra je tvrdoglava; kad nesto ne zeli da cuje, nece to da cuje.

Onda, pocetkom ovog meseca, dosao je poziv od Martija. "Moram da te vidim, Ujka Ale", rekao je Marti. "Ti si jedini sa kojim mogu da razgovaram."

"Posvadjan sam sa mamom, decko", odgovorio je Al.

"Vazno je", rekao je Marti. "Molim te. Molim te."

I tako je dosao i hrabro se suocio sa sestrinim ledenim, hladnim cutanjem, i hladnog, vedrog Decembarskog dana, Al je poveo Martija na voznju u svojim sportskim kolima, pazljivo ga postavljajuci na suvozacevo sediste. Samo tog dana nije bilo jurnjave i divljeg smeha; Ujka Al je samo slusao dok je Marti pricao. Slusao je sa rastucom nestrpljivoscu, kako je prica odmicala.

Marti je poceo ponovo pricajuci Alu o noci sa divnom vrecom prskalica, i kako je razneo levo oko stvorenja sa Crna Macka petardom. Onda mu je ispricao o Noci Vestica, i Presvetlom Louvu. Onda je ispricao Ujka Alu kako je poceo da salje anonimne poruke Presvetlom Louvu... anonimne, sve sem zadnje dve, posle ubistva Milta Sturmfulera u Portlandu. Ove je potpisao bas kao sto su ga ucili u skoli: Iskreno vas, Martin Kozlou.

"Nisi trebao da saljes coveku poruke, anonimne ili ne!" rece Ujka Al ostro. "Isuse, Marti! Da li si ikad pomislio da mozda gresis?"

"Naravno", rece Marti. "Zato sam se potpisao na zadnje dve. Neces li me pitati sta se dogodilo? Neces li me pitati da li je zvao moga oca i rekao mu da mu saljem poruke u kojima ga pitam zasto se ne ubije i kazem mu da smo ga skoro uhvatili?"

"Nije to uradio, zar ne?" upita Al, vec znajuci odgovor.

"Ne", rece Marti tiho. "Nije pricao sa mojim tatom, nije pricao sa mojom mamom, i nije pricao sa mnom."

"Marti, moze biti stotinu razloga zb-"

"Ne. Ima samo jedan. On je vukodlak, on je Zver, to je on, i on ceka pun mesec. Kao Presvetli Louv, ne moze nista uraditi. Ali kao vukodlak, moze uraditi mnogo toga. Moze me ucutkati."

I Marti je govorio tako zastrasujuce jasno da je Al bio skoro uveren. "I sta hoces od mene?" upita Al.

Marti mu je rekao. Zeleo je dva srebrna metka, i pistolj sa kojim ce da ih ispali, i zeleo je da Ujka Al dodje za Novogodisnju Noc, noc punog meseca.

"Necu uraditi takvu stvar", rece Ujka Al. "Marti, ti si dobar decko, ali postajes caknut. Mislim da imas dobar slucaj Groznice Kolica. Ako ponovo razmislis o tome, uvideces i sam."

"Mozda", rece Marti. "Ali pomisli kako ces se osecati kada te pozovu 1. Januara i kazu ti da lezim mrtav u krevetu, izvakan na komadice? Zelis li to na svojoj savesti, Ujka Ale?"

Al stade da govori, i onda zatvori usta sa skljocajem. Skrenuo je na stazu ka garazi, slusajuci kako prednji tockovi Mercedesa krcksaju u svezem snegu. Prebacio je u rikverc i posao natrag. Borio se u Vijetnamu i tamo osvojio par ordena; uspesno je izbegao duge veze sa nekoliko pohotnih mladih dama; i sada se osecao uhvacen i zarobljen od strane svog desetogodisnjeg necaka. Svog obogaljenog desetogodisnjeg necaka. Naravno da nije zeleo tajvu stvar na svojoj savesti - cak ni mogucnost da se takva stvar desi. I Marti je to znao. Kao sto je znao i da ako Ujka Al smatra da postoji jedna sansa u hiljadu da je on u pravu-

Cetiri dana kasnije, 10. Decembra, nazvao je Ujka Al. "Sjajne vesti!" razglasavao je Marti svojoj porodici, ulazeci kolicima u dnevnu sobu. "Ujka Al dolazi za Novu Godinu!"

"Sasvim sigurno ne dolazi", kaze njegova majka svojim najhladnijim i najstrozijim tonom.

Marti se nije dao pokolebati. "Jao, izvini - vec sam ga pozvao", rece. "Obecao je da ce doneti prskajuci prasak za kamin."

Martijeva majka je do kraja dana mrko gledala Martija svaki put kad bi pogledala u njegovom pravcu ili on u njenom... ali nije nazvala svog brata da mu kaze da ne dodje, i to je bilo najvaznije.

Te veceri, za vecerom, Keti mu je siktavo prosaptala u uvo: "Ti uvek dobijes ono sta zelis! Samo zato sto si bogalj!"

Smeseci se, Marti joj je odgovorio sapatom: "I ja tebe volim, seso."

"Ti malo strasilo!"

Okrenula se na drugu stranu.

I evo ga, Novogodisnje Vece. Martijeva majka je bila sigurna da se Al nece pojaviti, jer je oluja postajala sve snaznija, vetar je urlao, naricao i ispred sebe terao sneg. Iskreno receno, Marti je i sam imao nekoliko losih trenutaka... ali Ujka Al je stigao oko osam, ne u svom sportskom Mercedesu, vec u pozajmljenim kolima.

Do jedanaest i trideset, svi su otisli u krevet sem njih dvojice, sto se uklapalo u Martijev plan. I iako Ujka Al jos gundja o celoj stvari, doneo je ne jedan vec dva pistolja sakrivena ispod svog CPO kaputa. Onaj sa dva srebrna metka bez reci je dao Martiju, posto je cela porodica otisla na spavanje (kao da naglasi svoje nezadovoljstvo, kad je isla u krevet, Martijeva majka je zalupila vrata spavace sobe koju deli sa Martijevim ocem - jako ih zalupila). Drugi je napunjen uobicajenijom olovnom municijom... Al razmislja da ako ludak provali ovde nocas (a kako vreme prolazi i nista se ne desava, sve vise sumnja u to), Magnum .45 ce ga zaustaviti.

Sada, na televiziji, sve cesce prikazuju veliku osvetljenu loptu na vrhu Zgrade Alajd Kemikal-a na Tajms Skveru. Poslednji minuti godine isticu. Gomila vristi. U uglu nasuprot televizora, bozicno drvce Kozlouovih jos stoji, suseci se, postajuci pomalo smedje, izgleda zalosno rascupano.

"Marti, nista-", pocinje Ujka Al, i onda se veliki prozor u dnevnoj sobi razbija u bljesku stakla, pustajuci unutra zavijajuci crni vetar, kovitlajuce oblake snega... i Zver.

Al je za trenutak sledjen, potpuno sledjen uzasom i nevericom. Velika je, ova Zver, mozda sedam stopa visoka, iako je pogrbljena tako da joj se prednje ruke-sape skoro vuku po podu. Njegovo jedno zeleno oko (bas kao sto je Marti rekao, misli on skamenjeno, sve, bas kao sto je Marti rekao)gleda okolo sa strasnom, divljom inteligencijom... i zaustavlja se na Martiju, koji sedi u svojim kolicima. On se baca na decaka, zaglusujuci urlik trijumfa izlazi iz njegovih grudi i prolazi pokraj ogromnih zuto-belih zuba.

Smireno, sa skoro nepromenjenim izrazom lica, Marti dize .38 pistolj. On izgleda veoma mali u svojim kolicima, noge su mu nalik na cackalice unutar mekog izbledelog dzinsa, krznene papuce su mu na nogama koje su mu bile krute i neosetne celog zivota. I, neverovatno, kroz besno arlaukanje vukodlaka, kroz urlanje vetra, kroz kakofoniju svojih sopstvenih preplasenih misli kako ovo moze biti svet stvarnih ljudi i stvarnih stvari, kroz sve ovo Al moze cuti svog necaka kako kaze: "Jadni stari Presvetli Louv, pokusacu da te izbavim."

I kako se vukodlak baca, njegova senka mrlja na tepihu, njegove ruke sa kandzama ispruzene, Marti okida oroz. Zbog manje kolicine baruta, pistolj pravi skoro apsurdno beznacajan prasak. Zvuci kao Dejzijeva vazdusna puska.

Ali vukodlakov urlik besa prelazi u jos visu oktavu, postajuci sada ludacko cviljenje od bola. On udara o zid i njegovo rame probija rupu sve do druge strane. Kurijer-Ivsova slika mu pada na glavu, klizi niz debelo krzno na ledjima i razbija se dok se vukodlak okrece. Krv tece niz divljacku, kosmatu masku njegovoga lica, i njegovo zeleno oko izgleda pometeno i zbunjeno. Pocinje da se tetura ka Martiju, rezeci, njegove kandze-ruke se otvaraju i skupljaju, njegove skljocajuce celjusti pustaju isprekidane oblacice krvave pare. Marti drzi pistolj u obe ruke, kao sto malo dete drzi svoju solju. On ceka, ceka... i kako vukodlak ponovo skace, on opali. Cudesno, drugo oko zveri se gasi kao sveca na oluji! On ponovo vristi i posrce, sada slep, ka prozoru. Mecava se poigrava zavesama i obmotava mu ih oko glave - Al primecuje cvetove krvi koji pocinju da se rascvetavaju na beloj tkanini - dok se, na televiziji, velika svetleca lopta spusta niz jarbol.

Vukodlak pada na kolena dok Martijev tata, rasirenih ociju i u svetlo zutoj pidzami, ulece u sobu. Magnum .45 je jos uvek u Alovom krilu. Nije ga ni podigao.

Sada se Zver srusi... jednom zadrhti... i umre.

Gospodin Kolzou bulji u telo, otvorenih usta.

Marti se okrece Ujka Alu, sa pistoljem koji se jos pusi u rukama. Lice mu izgleda umorno... ali smireno.

"Srecna Nova Godina, Ujka Ale", kaze on, "mrtva je. Zver je mrtva." I onda pocinje da place.

Na podu ispod slojeva najboljih zavesa gospodje Kozlou, vukodlak je poceo da se menja. Dlaka koja je pokrivala njegovo lice i telo izgleda kao da se nekako uvlaci. Usne, povucene u grimasi bola i gneva, se opustaju i pokrivaju sve manje zube. Kandze se cudesno pretvaraju u nokte... nokte koji su skoro pateticno izgrizeni.

Presvetli Lester Louv lezi tamo, obavijen krvavom zavesom, sneg pada oko njega bez ikakvog reda.

Ujka Al prilazi Martiju i tesi ga dok Martijev tata zapanjeno blene u golo telo na podu i dok Martijeva majka stiskajuci okovratnik svog mantila, tiho ulazi u sobu. Al grli Martija cvrsto, cvrsto, cvrsto.

"Bio si dobar, mali", sapuce on. "Volim te."

Napolju, vetar zavija i urla po sneznom nebu, i u Tarker Milsu prvi minut nove godine postaje istorija.


POGOVOR
Svaki predani posmatrac meseca ce znati da sam, bez obzira na godinu, dao sebi velike slobode sa mesecevim ciklusom - obicno da iskoristim dane (Valentinovo, 4. Juli itd.) koji "obelezavaju" odredjene mesece u nasim umovima. One citaoce koji smatraju da sam to uradio iz neznanja uveravam da nisam... ali iskusenju jednostavno nisam mogao da odolim.


                                                 Stiven King           
                                                Avgust 4, 1983 

The Green Mile

Stephen King

The Green Mile
Introduction
Foreword: A Letter
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Author's Afterword

The Green Mile
by Stephen King

Introduction

   I go through cycles of insomnia—a fact that won't surprise people who've read the novel chronicling the adventures of Ralph Roberts—and so I try to keep a story handy for those nights when sleep won't come. I tell these to myself as I lie in the dark, writing them in my mind just as I would on a typewriter or a word processor, often going back and changing words, adding thoughts, deleting clauses, making up the dialogue. Each night I start over at the beginning, getting a little further before I drop off. By the fifth or sixth night I've usually got whole chunks of prose memorized. This probably sounds a little nuts, but it's soothing... and as a time-passer, it beats the shit out of counting sheep.
   These stories eventually wear out, just as a book will after it's been read over and over again. ("Throw it out and buy a new one, Stephen," my mother would sometimes say, turning an irritable eye on a well-loved comic book or paperback. "That one's read to rags.") Then it's time to look for a new one, and during my bouts of sleeplessness, I hope a new one will come soon, because sleepless hours are long hours.
   In 1992 or '93, I was working on a bedtime story called "What Tricks Your Eye." It was about a man on death row—a huge black man—who develops an interest in sleight-of-hand as the date of his execution draws near. The story was to be told in the first person, by an old trusty who wheeled a cart of books through the cell blocks, and who also sold cigarettes, novelties, and little notions like hair tonic and airplanes made out of waxed paper. At the end of the story, just before his execution, I wanted the huge prisoner, Luke Coffey, to make himself disappear.
   It was a good idea, but the story wouldn't work for me. I tried it a hundred different ways, it seemed, and it still wouldn't work for me. I gave the narrator a pet mouse that rode on his trolley, thinking that might help matters, but it didn't. The best part of it was the opening: "This happened in 1932, when the state pen was still in Evans Notch... and the electric chair, of course—what the inmates called Old Sparky." That worked, it seemed to me; nothing else about it did. Eventually I discarded Luke Coffey and his disappearing coins in favor of a tale about a planet where people for some reason turned into cannibals when it rained... and I still like that one, so hands off, y'hear?
   Then, about a year and a half later, the death-row idea recurred to me, only this time with a different slant—suppose, I thought, the big guy was a healer of some sort instead of an aspiring magician, a simpleton condemned for murders that he not only did not commit but had tried to reverse?
   That story was too good to play with at bedtime, I decided, although I did begin it in the dark, resurrecting the opening paragraph almost word for word, and working out the first chapter in my mind before beginning to write. The narrator became a death-house guard instead of a trusty, Luke Coffey became John Coffey (with a tip of the chapeau to William Faulkner, whose Christ-figure is Joe Christmas), and the mouse became... well, Mr. Jingles.
   It was a good story, I knew that from the first, but it was a tremendously hard story to write. Other things were going on in my life that seemed easier—the teleplay for The Shining miniseries was one—and I was holding onto The Green Mile by my fingernails. I felt as if I were creating a world almost from scratch, as I knew almost nothing about life on death row in the border South during the Depression. Research can remedy that, of course, but I thought that research might kill the fragile sense of wonder I had found in my story—some part of me knew from the first that what I wanted was not reality but myth. So I pressed on, stacking words and hoping for a kindling, an epiphany, any sort of garden-variety miracle.
   The miracle came in a fax from Ralph Vicinanza, my foreign rights agent, who had been talking with a British publisher about the serial-novel form Charles Dickens had employed a century ago. Ralph asked—in the dismissive way of one who doesn't expect the idea to come to anything—if I might be interested in trying my hand at the form. Man, I leaped at it. I understood at once that if I agreed to such a project, I would have to finish The Green Mile. So, feeling like a Roman soldier setting fire to the bridge across the Rubicon, I called Ralph and asked him to make the deal. He did, and the rest you know. John Coffey, Paul Edgecombe, Brutal Howell, Percy Wetmore... they took over and made the story happen. It was most severely cool.
   The Green Mile had a kind of magical acceptance which I never expected; I thought, in fact, that it might well be a commercial disaster. The feedback from the readers was wonderful, and this time even most of the critics went along for the ride. I think I owe a lot of the book's popular acceptance to my wife's perceptive suggestions, and a lot of its commercial success to the hard work done on its behalf by the people at Dutton Signet.
   The experience itself, however, was mine alone. I wrote like a madman, trying to keep up with the crazy publishing schedule and at the same time trying to craft the book so that each part would have its own mini-climax, hoping that everything would fit, and knowing I'd be hung if it didn't. I wondered a time or two if Charles Dickens had felt the same way, just sort of hoping the questions raised in the plot would answer themselves, and I suppose he did. Fortunately for him, God handed out a little more to old Charles in the talent department.
   I remember thinking a time or two that I must be littering the ground behind me with the most outrageous anachronisms, but there turned out to be remarkably few. Even the little "hot comic" featuring Popeye and Olive Oyl turned out to be dead on the money: following the publication of Part 6, someone sent me an offprint of just such a comic, published around 1927. In one memorable panel, Wimpy is putting the boots to Olive and eating a hamburger at the same time. Gosh, there's nothing like the human imagination, is there?
   Following The Green Mile's successful publication, there were a lot of discussions about how—or if—it should be issued as a complete novel. The part-by-part publication was a sore point with me and some readers as well, because the price was very high for a paperback; about nineteen dollars for all six installments (considerably less if bought at a discount store). For that reason a boxed set never seemed like the ideal solution. This volume, a trade paperback available at a more sane price, seemed to be the ideal solution. So here it is, mostly as it was published (I did change the moment where Percy Wetmore, bound in a straitjacket, raises one hand to wipe the sweat from his face).
   At some point I'd like to revise it completely, turn it into the novel it can't quite be in this format, and issue it again. Until that time comes, this will have to do. I'm glad so many readers enjoyed it. And you know, it turned out to be a pretty good bedtime story, after all.
   Stephen King
   Bangor, Maine
   February6,1997

Foreword: A Letter

   October 27, 1995


   Dear Constant Reader,
   Life is a capricious business. The story which begins in this little book exists in this form because of a chance remark made by a realtor I have never met. This happened a year ago, on Long Island. Ralph Vicinanza, a long-time friend and business associate of mine (what he does mostly is to sell foreign publishing rights for books and stories), had just rented a house there. The realtor remarked that the house "looked like something out of a story by Charles Dickens."
   The remark was still on Ralph's mind when he welcomed his first houseguest, British publisher Malcolm Edwards. He repeated it to Edwards, and they began chatting about Dickens. Edwards mentioned that Dickens had published many of his novels in installments, either folded into magazines or by themselves as chapbooks, (I don't know the origin of this word, meaning a smaller-than-average book, but have always loved its air of intimacy and friendliness). Some of the novels, Edwards added, were actually written and revised in the shadow of publication; Charles Dickens was one novelist apparently not afraid of a deadline.
   Dickens's serialized novels were immensely popular; so popular, in fact, that one of them precipitated a tragedy in Baltimore. A large group of Dickens fans crowded onto a waterfront dock, anticipating the arrival of an English ship with copies of the final installment of The Old Curiosity Shop on board. According to the story, several would-be readers were jostled into the water and drowned.
   I don't think either Malcolm or Ralph wanted anyone drowned, but they were curious as to what would happen if serial publication were tried again today. Neither was immediately aware that it has happened (there really is nothing new under the sun) on at least two occasions. Tom Wolfe published the first draft of his novel Bonfire of the Vanities serially in Rolling Stone magazine, and Michael McDowell (The Amulet, Gilded Needles, The Elementals, and the screenplay Beetlejuice) published a novel called Blackwater in paperback installments. That novel—a horror story about a Southern family with the unpleasant familial trait of turning into alligators—was not McDowell's best, but enjoyed good success for Avon Books, all the same.
   The two men further speculated about what might happen if a writer of popular fiction were to try issuing a novel in chapbook editions today—little paperbacks that might sell for a pound or two in Britain, or perhaps three dollars in America (where most paperbacks now sell for $6.99 or $7.99). Someone like Stephen King might make an interesting go of such an experiment, Malcolm said, and from there the conversation moved on to other topics.
   Ralph more or less forgot the idea, but it recurred to him in the fall of 1995, following his return from the Frankfurt Book Fair, a kind of international trade show where every day is a showdown for foreign agents like Ralph. He broached the serialization/chapbook idea to me along with a number of other matters, most of which were automatic turndowns.
   The chapbook idea was not an automatic turndown, though; unlike the interview in the Japanese Playboy or the all-expenses-paid tour of the Baltic Republics, it struck a bright spark in my imagination. I don't think that I am a modern Dickens—if such a person exists, it is probably John Irving or Salman Rushdie—but I have always loved stories told in episodes. It is a format I first encountered in The Saturday Evening Post, and I liked it because the end of each episode made the reader an almost equal participant with the writer—you had a whole week to try to figure out the next twist of the snake. Also, one read and experienced these stories more intensely, it seemed to me, because they were rationed. You couldn't gulp, even if you wanted to (and if the story was good, you did).
   Best of all, in my house we often read them aloud—my brother, David, one night, myself the next, my mother taking a turn on the third, then back to my brother again. It was a rare chance to enjoy a written work as we enjoyed the movies we went to and the TV programs (Rawhide, Bonanza. Route 66) that we watched together; they were a family event. It wasn't until years later that I discovered Dickens's novels had been enjoyed by families of his day in much the same fashion, only their fireside agonizings over the fate of Pip and Oliver and David Copperfield went on for years instead of a couple of months (even the longest of the Post serials rarely ran much more than eight installments).
   There was one other thing that I liked about the idea, an appeal that I suspect only the writer of suspense tales and spooky stories can fully appreciate: in a story which is published m installments, the writer gains an ascendancy over the reader which he or she cannot otherwise enjoy: simply put. Constant Reader, you cannot flip ahead and see how matters turn out.
   I still remember walking into our living room once when I was twelve or so and seeing my mother in her favorite rocker, peeking at the end of an Agatha Christie paperback while her finger held her actual place around page 50. I was appalled, and told her so (I was twelve, remember, an age at which boys first dimly begin to realize that they know everything), suggesting that reading the end of a mystery novel before you actually get there was on a par with eating the white stuff out of the middle of Oreo cookies and then throwing the cookies themselves away. She laughed her wonderful unembarrassed laugh and said perhaps that was so, but sometimes she just couldn't resist the temptation. Giving in to temptation was a concept I could understand; I had plenty of my own, even at twelve. But here, at last, is an amusing cure for that temptation. Until the final episode arrives in bookstores, no one is going to know how The Green Mile turns out... and that may include me.
   Although there was no way he could have known it, Ralph Vicinanza, mentioned the idea of a novel in installments at what was, for me, the perfect psychological moment. I had been playing with a story idea on a subject I had always suspected I would get around to sooner or later: the electric chair. "Old Sparky" has fascinated me ever since my first James Cagney movie, and the first Death Row tales I ever read (in a book called Twenty Thousand Years in Sing Sing, written by Warden Lewis E. Lawes) fired the darker side of my imagination. What, I wondered, would it be like to walk those last forty yards to the electric chair, knowing you were going to die there? Mat, for that matter, would it be like to be the man who had to strap the condemned in... or pull the switch? What would such a job take out of you? Even creepier, what might it add?
   I had tried these basic ideas, always tentatively, on a number of different frameworks over the last twenty or thirty years. I had written one successful novella set in prison (Rita Hayworth and Shawshank Redemption), and had sort of come to the conclusion that that was probably it for me, when this take on the idea came along. There were lots of things I liked about it, but nothing more than the narrator's essentially decent voice; low-key, honest, perhaps a little wide-eyed, he is a Stephen King narrator if ever there was one. So I got to work, but in a tentative, stop-and-start way. Most of the second chapter was written during a rain delay at Fenway Park!
   When Ralph called, I had filled a notebook with scribbled pages of The Green Mile, and realized I was building a novel when I should have been spending my time clearing my desk for revisions on a book already written (Desperation—you'll see it soon, Constant Reader). At the point I had come to on Mile, there are usually just two choices: put it away (probably never to be picked up again) or cast everything else aside and chase.
   Ralph suggested a possible third alternative, a story that could be written the same way it would be read—in installments. And I liked the high-wire aspect of it, too: fall down on the job, fail to carry through, and all at once about a million readers are howling for your blood. No one knows this any better than me, unless it's my secretary, Juliann Eugley; we get dozens of angry letters each week, demanding the next book in the Dark Tower cycle (patience, followers of Roland; another year or so and your wait will end, I promise). One of these contained a Polaroid of a teddy-bear in chains, with a message cut out of newspaper headlines and magazine covers: RELEASE THE NEXT DARK TOWER BOOK AT ONCE OR THE BEAR DIES, it said. I put it up in my office to remind myself both of my responsibility and of how wonderful it is to have people actually care—a little—about the creatures of one's imagination.
   In any case, I've decided to publish The Green Mile in a series of small paperbacks, in the nineteenth-century manner, and I hope you'll write and tell me (a) if you liked the story, and (b) if you liked the seldom used but rather amusing delivery system. It has certainly energized the writing of the story, although at this moment (a rainy evening in October of 1995) it is still far from done, even in rough draft, and the outcome remains in some doubt. That is part of the excitement of the whole thing, though—at this point I'm driving through thick fog with the pedal all the way to the metal.
   Most of all, I want to say that if you have even half as much fun reading this as I did writing it, we'll both be well off. Enjoy... and why not read this aloud, with a friend? If nothing else, it will shorten the time until the next installment appears on your newsstand or in your local bookstore.
   In the meantime, take care, and be good to one another.
   Stephen King

Part One.
The Two Dead Girls

1

   This happened in 1932, when the state penitentiary was still at Cold Mountain. And the electric chair was there, too, of course.
   The inmates made jokes about the chair, the way people always make jokes about things that frighten them but can't be gotten away from. They called it Old Sparky, or the Big Juicy. They made cracks about the power bill, and how Warden Moores would cook his Thanksgiving dinner that fall, with his wife, Melinda, too sick to cook.
   But for the ones who actually had to sit down in that chair, the humor went out of the situation in a hurry. I presided over seventy-eight executions during my time at Cold Mountain (that's one figure I've never been confused about; I'll remember it on my deathbed), and I think that, for most of those men, the truth of what was happening to them finally hit all the way home when their ankles were being clamped to the stout oak of "Old Sparky's" legs. The realization came then (you would see it rising in their eyes, a kind of cold dismay) that their own legs had finished their careers. The blood still ran in them, the muscles were still strong, but they were finished, all the same; they were never going to walk another country mile or dance with a girl at a barn-raising. Old Sparky's clients came to a knowledge of their deaths from the ankles up. There was a black silk bag that went over their heads after they had finished their rambling and mostly disjointed last remarks. It was supposed to be for them, but I always thought: it was really for us, to keep us from seeing the awful tide of dismay in their eyes as they realized they were going to die with their knees bent.
   There was no death row at Cold Mountain, only E Block, set apart from the other four and about a quarter their size, brick instead of wood, with a horrible bare metal roof that glared in the summer sun like a delirious eyeball. Six cells inside, three on each side of a wide center aisle, each almost twice as big as the cells in the other four blocks. Singles, too. Great accommodations for a prison (especially in the thirties), but the inmates would have traded for cells in any of the other four. Believe me, they would have traded.
   There was never a time during my years as block superintendent when all six cells were occupied at one time—thank God for small favors. Four was the most, mixed black and white (at Cold Mountain, there was no segregation among the walking dead), and that was a little piece of hell. One was a woman, Beverly McCall. She was black as the ace of spades and as beautiful as the sin you never had nerve enough to commit. She put up with six years of her husband beating her, but wouldn't put up with his creeping around for a single day. On the evening after she found out he was cheating, she stood waiting for the unfortunate Lester McCall, known to his pals (and, presumably, to his extremely short-term mistress) as Cutter, at the top of the stairs leading to the apartment over his barber shop. She waited until he got his overcoat half off, then dropped his cheating guts onto his two-tone shoes. Used one of Cutter's own razors to do it. Two nights before she was due to sit in Old Sparky, she called me to her cell and said she had been visited by her African spirit-father in a dream. He told her to discard her slave-name and to die under her free name, Matuomi. That was her request, that her death warrant should be read under the name of Beverly Matuomi. I guess her spirit-father didn't give her any first name, or one she could make out, anyhow. I said yes, okay, fine. One thing those years serving as the bull-goose screw taught me was never to refuse the condemned unless I absolutely had to. In the case of Beverly Matuomi, it made no difference anyway. The governor called the next day around three in the afternoon, commuting her sentence to life in the Grassy Valley Penal Facility for Women—all penal and no penis, we used to say back then. I was glad to see Bev's round ass going left instead of right when she got to the duty desk, let me tell you.
   Thirty-five years or so later—had to be at least thirty-five—I saw that name on the obituary page of the paper, under a picture of a skinny-faced black lady with a cloud of white hair and glasses with rhinestones at the corners. It was Beverly. She'd spent the last ten years of her life a free woman, the obituary said, and had rescued the small-town library of Raines Falls pretty much single-handed. She had also taught Sunday school and had been much loved in that little backwater. LIBRARIAN DIES OF HEART FAILURE, the headline said, and below that, in smaller type, almost as an afterthought: Served Over Two Decades in Prison for Murder. Only the eyes, wide and blazing behind the glasses with the rhinestones at the corners, were the same. They were the eyes of a woman who even at seventy-whatever would not hesitate to pluck a safety razor from its blue jar of disinfectant, if the urge seemed pressing. You know murderers, even if they finish up as old lady librarians in dozey little towns. At least you do if you've spent as much time minding murderers as I did. There was only one time I ever had a question about the nature of my job. That, I reckon, is why I'm writing this.
   The wide corridor up the center of E Block was floored with linoleum the color of tired old limes, and so what was called the Last Mile at other prisons was called the Green Mile at Cold Mountain. It ran, I guess, sixty long paces from south to north, bottom to top. At the bottom was the restraint room. At the top end was a T-junction. A left turn meant life—if you called what went on in the sunbaked exercise yard life, and many did; many lived it for years, with no apparent ill effects. Thieves and arsonists and sex criminals, all talking their talk and walking their walk and making their little deals.
   A right turn, though—that was different. First you went into my office (where the carpet was also green, a thing I kept meaning to change and not getting around to), and crossed in front of my desk, which was flanked by the American flag on the left and the state flag on the right. On the far side were two doors. One led into the small W.C. that I and the Block E guards (sometimes even Warden Moores) used; the other opened on a kind of storage shed. This was where you ended up when you walked the Green Mile.
   It was a small door—I had to duck my head when I went through, and John Coffey actually had to sit and scoot. You came out on a little landing, then went down three cement steps to a board floor. It was a miserable room without heat and with a metal roof, just like the one on the block to which it was an adjunct. It was cold enough in there to see your breath during the winter, and stifling in the summer. At the execution of Elmer Manfred—in July or August of '30, that one was, I believe—we had nine witnesses pass out.
   On the left side of the storage shed—again—there was life. Tools (all locked down in frames criss-crossed with chains, as if they were carbine rifles instead of spades and pickaxes), dry goods, sacks of seeds for spring planting in the prison gardens, boxes of toilet paper, pallets cross-loaded with blanks for the prison plate-shop... even bags of lime for marking out the baseball diamond and the football gridiron—the cons played in what was known as The Pasture, and fall afternoons were greatly looked forward to at Cold Mountain.
   On the right—once again—death. Old Sparky his ownself, sitting up on a plank platform at the southeast corner of the store room, stout oak legs, broad oak arms that had absorbed the terrorized sweat of scores of men in the last few minutes of their lives, and the metal cap, usually hung jauntily on the back of the chair, like some robot kid's beanie in a Buck Rogers comic-strip. A cord ran from it and through a gasket-circled hole in the cinderblock wall behind the chair. Off to one side was a galvanized tin bucket. If you looked inside it, you would see a circle of sponge, cut just right to fit the metal cap. Before executions, it was soaked in brine to better conduct the charge of direct-current electricity that ran through the wire, through the sponge, and into the condemned man's brain.

2

   1932 was the year of John Coffey. The details would be in the papers, still there for anyone who cared enough to look them out—someone with more energy than one very old man whittling away the end of his life in a Georgia nursing home. That was a hot fall, I remember that; very hot, indeed. October almost like August, and the warden's wife, Melinda, up in the hospital at Indianola for a spell. It was the fall I had the worst urinary infection of my life, not bad enough to put me in the hospital myself, but almost bad enough for me to wish I was dead every time I took a leak. It was the fall of Delacroix, the little half-bald Frenchman with the mouse, the one that came in the summer and did that cute trick with the spool. Mostly, though, it was the fall that John Coffey came to E Block, sentenced to death for the rape-murder of the Detterick twins.
   There were four or five guards on the block each shift, but a lot of them were floaters. Dean Stanton, Harry Terwilliger, and Brutus Howell (the men called him "Brutal," but it was a joke, he wouldn't hurt a fly unless he had to, in spite of his size) are all dead now, and so is Percy Wetmore, who really was brutal... not to mention stupid. Percy had no business on E Block, where an ugly nature was useless and sometimes dangerous, but he was related to the governor by marriage, and so he stayed.
   It was Percy Wetmore who ushered Coffey onto the block, with the supposedly traditional cry of 'Dead man walking! Dead man walking here!'
   It was still as hot as the hinges of hell, October or not. The door to the exercise yard opened, letting in a flood of brilliant light and the biggest man I've ever seen, except for some of the basketball fellows they have on the TV down in the 'Resource Room' of this home for wayward droolers I've finished up in. He wore chains on his arms and across his water-barrel of a chest; he wore legirons on his ankles and shuffled a chain between them that sounded like cascading coins as it ran along the lime—colored corridor between the cells. Percy Wetmore was on one side of him, skinny little Harry Terwilliger was on the other, and they looked like children walking along with a captured bear. Even Brutus Howell looked like a kid next to Coffey, and Brutal was over six feet tall and broad as well, a football tackle who had gone on to play at LSU until he flunked out and came back home to the ridges.
   John Coffey was black, like most of the men who came to stay for awhile in E Block before dying in Old Sparky's lap, and he stood six feet, eight inches tall. He wasn't all willowy like the TV basketball fellows, though—he was broad in the shoulders and deep through the chest, laced over with muscle in every direction. They'd put him in the biggest denims they could find in Stores, and still the cuffs of the pants rode halfway up on his bunched and scarred calves. The shirt was open to below his chest, and the sleeves stopped somewhere on his forearms. He was holding his cap in one huge hand, which was just as well; perched on his bald mahogany ball of a head, it would have looked like the kind of cap an organgrinder's monkey wears, only blue instead of red. He looked like he could have snapped the chains that held him as easily as you might snap the ribbons on a Christmas present, but when you looked in his face, you knew he wasn't going to do anything like that. It wasn't dull-although that was what Percy thought, it wasn't long before Percy was calling him the ijit—but lost. He kept looking around as if to make out where he was. Maybe even who he was. My first thought was that he looked like a black Samson... only after Delilah had shaved him smooth as her faithless little hand and taken all the fun out of him.
   'Dead man walking!' Percy trumpeted, hauling on that bear of a man's wristcuff, as if he really believed he could move him if Coffey decided he didn't want to move anymore on his own. Harry didn't say anything, but he looked embarrassed. 'Dead man—'
   'That'll be enough of that,' I said. I was in what was going to be Coffey's cell, sitting on his bunk. I'd known he was coming, of course, was there to welcome him and take charge of him, but had no idea of the man's pure size until I saw him. Percy gave me a look that said we all knew I was an asshole (except for the big dummy, of course, who only knew how to rape and murder little girls), but he didn't say anything.
   The three of them stopped outside the cell door, which was standing open on its track. I nodded to Harry, who said: 'Are you sure you want to be in there with him, boss?' I didn't often hear Harry Terwilliger sound nervous—he'd been right there by my side during the riots of six or seven years before and had never wavered, even when the rumors that some of them had guns began to circulate—but he sounded nervous then.
   'Am I going to have any trouble with you, big boy?' I asked, sitting there on the bunk and trying not to look or sound as miserable as I felt—that urinary infection I mentioned earlier wasn't as bad as it eventually got, but it was no day at the beach, let me tell you.
   Coffey shook his head slowly—once to the left, once to the right, then back to dead center. Once his eyes found me, they never left me.
   Harry had a clipboard with Coffey's forms on it in one hand. 'Give it to him,' I said to Harry 'Put it in his hand.'
   Harry did. The big mutt took it like a sleepwalker.
   'Now bring it to me, big boy,' I said, and Coffey did, his chains jingling and rattling. He had to duck his head just to enter the cell.
   I looked up and down mostly to register his height as a fact and not an optical illusion. It was real: six feet, eight inches. His weight was given as two-eighty, but I think that was only an estimate; he had to have been three hundred and twenty, maybe as much as three hundred and fifty pounds. Under the space for scars and identifying marks, one word had been blocked out in the laborious printing of Magnusson, the old trusty in Registration: Numerous.
   I looked up. Coffey had shuffled a bit to one side and I could see Harry standing across the corridor in front of Delacroix's cell—he was our only other prisoner in E Block when Coffey came in. Del was a slight, balding man with the worried face of an accountant who knows his embezzlement will soon be discovered. His tame mouse was sitting on his shoulder.
   Percy Wetmore was leaning in the doorway of the cell which had just become John Coffey's. He had taken his hickory baton out of the custom-made holster he carried it in, and was tapping it against one palm the way a man does when he has a toy he wants to use. And all at once I couldn't stand to have him there. Maybe it was the unseasonable heat, maybe it was the urinary infection heating up my groin and making the itch of my flannel underwear all but unbearable, maybe it was knowing that the state had sent me a black man next door to an idiot to execute, and Percy clearly wanted to hand-tool him a little first. Probably it was all those things. Whatever it was, I stopped caring about his political connections for a little while.
   'Percy.' I said. 'They're moving house over in the infirmary.'
   'Bill Dodge is in charge of that detail—'
   'I know he is,' I said. 'Go and help him.'
   'That isn't my job,' Percy said. 'This big lugoon is my job.' 'Lugoon' was Percy's joke name for the big ones—a combination of lug and goon. He resented the big ones. He wasn't skinny, like Harry Terwilliger, but he was short. A banty-rooster sort of guy, the kind that likes to pick fights, especially when the odds are all their way. And vain about his hair. Could hardly keep his hands off it.
   'Then your job is done,' I said. 'Get over to the infirmary.'
   His lower lip pooched out. Bill Dodge and his men were moving boxes and stacks of sheets, even the beds; the whole infirmary was going to a new frame building over on the west side of the prison. Hot work, heavy lifting. Percy Wetmore wanted no part of either.
   'They got all the men they need,' he said.
   'Then get over there and straw-boss,' I said, raising my voice. I saw Harry wince and paid no attention. If the governor ordered Warden Moores to fire me for ruffling the wrong set of feathers, who was Hal Moores going to put in my place? Percy? It was a joke. 'I really don't care what you do, Percy, as long as you get out of here for awhile.'
   For a moment I thought he was going to stick and there'd be real trouble, with Coffey standing there the whole time like the world's biggest stopped clock. Then Percy rammed his billy back into its hand-tooled holster-foolish damned vanitorious thing—and went stalking up the corridor. I don't remember which guard was sitting at the duty desk that day—one of the floaters, I guess—but Percy must not have liked the way he looked, because he growled, 'You wipe that smirk off your shitepoke face or I'll wipe it off for you' as he went by. There was a rattle of keys, a momentary blast of hot sunlight from the exercise yard, and then Percy Wetmore was gone, at least for the time being. Delacroix's mouse ran back and forth from one of the little Frenchman's shoulders to the other, his filament whiskers twitching.
   'Be still, Mr. Jingles,' Delacroix said, and the mouse stopped on his left shoulder just as if he had understood. 'Just be so still and so quiet.' In Delacroix's lilting Cajun accent, quiet came out sounding exotic and foreign—kwaht.
   'You go lie down, Del,' I said curtly. 'Take you a rest. This is none of your business, either.'
   He did as I said. He had raped a young girl and killed her, and had then dropped her body behind the apartment house where she lived, doused it with coal-oil, and then set it on fire, hoping in some muddled way to dispose of the evidence of his crime. The fire had spread to the building itself, had engulfed it, and six more people had died, two of them children. It was the only crime he had in him, and now he was just a mild-mannered man with a worried face, a bald pate, and long hair straggling over the back of his shirt-collar. He would sit down with Old Sparky in a little while, and Old Sparky would make an end to him... but whatever it was that had done that awful thing was already gone, and now he lay on his bunk, letting his little companion run squeaking over his hands. In a way, that was the worst; Old Sparky never burned what was inside them, and the drugs they inject them with today don't put it to sleep. It vacates, jumps to someone else, and leaves us to kill husks that aren't really alive anyway.
   I turned my attention to the giant.
   'If I let Harry take those chains off you, are you going to be nice?'
   He nodded. It was like his 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?'
   'Yes, 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.
   'Your name is John Coffey.'
   'Yes, sir, boss, like the drink only not spelled the same way.'
   'So you can spell, can you? Read and write?'
   'Just 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.
   'My 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.
   'Just 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.
   'This 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.
   'If 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.
   'Well, your lawyer, then.'
   'I 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 squib in the paper saying a certain fellow had taken a little electricity along about midnight. But a man with a wife, children, or friends to look forward to on Sunday afternoons was easier to control, if control looked to be a problem. Here it didn't, and that was good. Because he was so damned big.
   I shifted a little on the bunk, then decided I might feel a little more comfortable in my nether parts if I stood up, and so I did. He backed away from me respectfully, and clasped his hands in front of him.
   'Your time here can be easy or hard, big boy, it all depends on you. I'm here to say you might as well make it easy on all of us, because it comes to the same in the end. We'll treat you as right as you deserve. Do you have any questions?'
   'Do you leave a light on after bedtime?' he asked right away, as if he had only been waiting for the chance.
   I blinked at him. I had been asked a lot of strange questions by newcomers to E Block—once about the size of my wife's tits—but never that one.
   Coffey was smiling a trifle uneasily, as if he knew we would think him foolish but couldn't help himself. 'Because I get a little scared in the dark sometimes,' he said. 'If it's a strange place.'
   I looked at him—the pure size of him—and felt strangely touched. They did touch you, you know; you didn't see them at their worst, hammering out their horrors like demons at a forge.
   'Yes, it's pretty bright in here all night long,' I said. 'Half the lights along the Mile burn from nine until five every morning.' Then I realized he wouldn't have any idea of what I was talking about—he didn't know the Green Mile from Mississippi mud—and so I pointed. 'In the corridor.'
   He nodded, relieved. I'm not sure he knew what a corridor was, either, but he could see the 200-watt bulbs in their wire cages.
   I did something I'd never done to a prisoner before, then—I offered him my hand. Even now I don't know why. Him asking about the lights, maybe. It made Harry Terwilliger blink, I can tell you that. Coffey took my hand with surprising gentleness, my hand all but disappearing into his, and that was all of it. I had another moth in my killing bottle. We were done.
   I stepped out of the cell. Harry pulled the door shut on its track and ran both locks. Coffey stood where he was a moment or two longer, as if he didn't know what to do next, and then he sat down on his bunk, clasped his giant's hands between his knees, and lowered his head like a man who grieves or prays. He said something then in his strange, almost Southern voice. I heard it with perfect clarity, and although I didn't know much about what he'd done then—you don't need to know about what a man's done in order to feed him and groom him until it's time for him to pay off what he owes—it still gave me a chill.
   'I couldn't help-it, boss,' he said. 'I tried to take it back, but it was too late.'

3

   'You're going to have you some trouble with Percy,' Harry said as we walked back up the hall and into my office. Dean Stanton, sort of my third in command—we didn't actually have such things, a situation Percy Wetmore would have fixed up in a flash—was sitting behind my desk, updating the files, a job I never seemed to get around to. He barely looked up as we came in, just gave his little glasses a shove with the ball of his thumb and dived back into his paperwork.
   'I been having trouble with that peckerwood since the day he came here,' I said, gingerly, pulling my pants away from my crotch and wincing. 'Did you hear what he was shouting when he brought that big galoot down?'
   'Couldn't very well not,' Harry said. 'I was there, you know.'
   'I was in the john and heard it just fine,' Dean said. He drew a sheet of paper to him, held it up into the light so I could see there was a coffee-ring as well as typing on it, and then tossed it into the waste basket. 'Dead man walking.' Must have read that in one of those magazines he likes so much.'
   And he probably had. Percy Wetmore was a great reader of Argosy and Stag and Men's Adventure. There was a prison tale in every issue, it seemed, and Percy read them avidly, like a man doing research. It was like he was trying to find out how to act, and thought the information was in those magazines. He'd come just after we did Anthony Ray, the hatchet-killer—and he hadn't actually participated in an execution yet, although he'd witnessed one from the switch-room.
   'He knows people,' Harry said. 'He's connected. You'll have to answer for sending him off the block, and you'll have to answer even harder for expecting him to do some real work.'
   'I don't expect it,' I said, and I didn't... but I had hopes. Bill Dodge wasn't the sort to let a man just stand around and do the heavy looking-on. 'I'm more interested in the big boy, for the time being. Are we going to have trouble with him?'
   Harry shook his head with decision.
   'He was quiet as a lamb at court down there in Trapingus County,' Dean said. He took his little rimless glasses off and began to polish them on his vest. 'Of course they had more chains on him than Scrooge saw on Marley's ghost, but he could have kicked up dickens if he'd wanted. That's a pun, son.'
   'I know,' I said, although I didn't. I just hate letting Dean Stanton get the better of me.
   'Big one, ain't he?' Dean said.
   'He is,' I agreed. 'Monstrous big.'
   'Probably have to crank Old Sparky up to Super Bake to fry his ass.'
   'Don't worry about Old Sparky,' I said absently. 'He makes the big 'uns little.'
   Dean pinched the sides of his nose, where there were a couple of angry red patches from his glasses, and nodded. 'Yep,' he said. 'Some truth to that, all right.'
   I asked, 'Do either of you know where he came from before he showed up in... Tefton? It was Tefton, wasn't it?'
   'Yep,' Dean said. 'Tefton, down in Trapingus County. Before he showed up there and did what he did, no one seems to know. He just drifted around, I guess. You might be able to find out a little more from the newspapers in the prison library, if you're really interested. They probably won't get around to moving those until next week.' He grinned. 'You might have to listen to your little buddy bitching and moaning upstairs, though.'
   'I might just go have a peek, anyway,' I said, and later on that afternoon I did.
   The prison library was in back of the building that was going to become the prison auto shop—at least that was the plan. More pork in someone's pocket was what I thought, but the Depression was on, and I kept my opinions to myself—the way I should have kept my mouth shut about Percy, but sometimes a man just can't keep it clapped tight. A man's mouth gets him in more trouble than his pecker ever could, most of the time. And the auto shop never happened, anyway—the next spring, the prison moved sixty miles down the road to Brighton. More backroom deals, I reckon. More barrels of pork. Wasn't nothing to me.
   Administration had gone to a new building on the east side of the yard; the infirmary was being moved (whose country-bumpkin idea it had been to put an infirmary on the second floor in the first place was just another of life's mysteries); the library was still partly stocked—not that it ever had much in it—and standing empty. The old building was a hot clapboard box kind of shouldered in between A and B Blocks. Their bathrooms backed up on it and the whole building was always swimming with this vague pissy smell, which was probably the only good reason for the move. The library was L-shaped, and not much bigger than my office. I looked for a fan, but they were all gone. It must have been a hundred degrees in there, and I could feel that hot throb in my groin when I sat down. Sort of like an infected tooth. I know that's absurd, considering the region we're talking about here, but it's the only thing I could compare it to. It got a lot worse during and just after taking a leak, which I had done just before walking over.
   There was one other fellow there after all—a scrawny old trusty named Gibbons dozing away in the corner with a Wild West novel in his lap and his hat pulled down over his eyes. The heat wasn't bothering him, nor were the grunts, thumps, and occasional curses from the infirmary upstairs (where it had to be at least ten degrees hotter, and I hoped Percy Wetmore was enjoying it). I didn't bother him, either, but went around to the short side of the L, where the newspapers were kept. I thought they might be gone along with the fans, in spite of what Dean had said. They weren't, though, and the business about the Detterick twins was easily enough looked out; it had been front-page news from the commission of the crime in June right through the trial in late August and September.
   Soon I had forgotten the heat and the thumps from upstairs and old Gibbons's wheezy snores. The thought of those little nine-year-old girls—their fluffy heads of blonde hair and their engaging Bobbsey Twins smiles—in connection with Coffey's hulking darkness was unpleasant but impossible to ignore. Given his size, it was easy to imagine him actually eating them, like a giant in a fairy tale. What he had done was even worse, and it was a lucky thing for him that he hadn't just been lynched right there on the riverbank. If, that was, you considered waiting to walk the Green Mile and sit in Old Sparky's lap lucky