The Green Mile

4

Then it was time for the execution of Arlen Bitterbuck, in reality no chief but first elder of his tribe on the Washita Reservation, and a member of the Cherokee Council as well. He had killed a man while drunk – while both of them were drunk, in fact. The Chief had crushed the man’s head with a cement block. At issue had been a pair of boots. So, on July seventeenth of that rainy summer, my council of elders intended for his life to end.

Visiting hours for most Cold Mountain prisoners were as rigid as steel beams, but that didn’t hold for our boys on E Block. So, on the sixteenth, Bitterbuck was allowed over to the long room adjacent to the cafeteria – the Arcade. It was divided straight down the middle by mesh interwoven with strands of barbed wire. Here The Chief would visit with his second wife and those of his children who would still treat with him. It was time for the good-byes.

He was taken over there by Bill Dodge and two other floaters. The rest of us had work to do – one hour to cram in at least two rehearsals. Three if we could manage it.

Percy didn’t make much protest over being put in the switch room with Jack Van Hay for the Bitterbuck electrocution; he was too green to know if he was being given a good spot or a bad one. What he did know was that he had a rectangular mesh window to look through, and although he probably didn’t care to be looking at the back of the chair instead of the front, he would still be close enough to see the sparks flying.

Right outside that window was a black wall telephone with no crank or dial on it. That phone could only ring in, and only from one place: the governor’s office. I’ve seen lots of jailhouse movies over the years where the official phone rings just as they’re getting ready to pull the switch on some poor innocent sap, but ours never rang during all my years on E Block, never once. In the movies, salvation is cheap. So is innocence. You pay a quarter, and a quarter’s worth is just what you get. Real life costs more, and most of the answers are different.

We had a tailor’s dummy down in the tunnel for the run to the meatwagon, and we had Old Toot-Toot for the rest. Over the years, Toot had somehow become the traditional stand-in for the condemned, as time-honored in his way as the goose you sit down to on Christmas, whether you like goose or not. Most of the other screws liked him, were amused by his funny accent – also French, but Canadian rather than Cajun, and softened into its own thing by his years of incarceration in the South. Even Brutal got a kick out of Old Toot. Not me, though. I thought he was, in his way, an older and dimmer version of Percy Wetmore, a man too squeamish to kill and cook his own meat but who did, all the same, just love the smell of a barbecue.

We were all there for the rehearsal, just as we would all be there for the main event. Brutus Howell had been ‘put out,’ as we said, which meant that he would place the cap, monitor the governor’s phone-line, summon the doctor from his place by the wall if he was needed, and give the actual order to roll on two when the time came. If it went well, there would be no credit for anyone. If it didn’t go well, Brutal would be blamed by the witnesses and I would be blamed by the warden. Neither of us complained about this; it wouldn’t have done any good. The world turns, that’s all. You can hold on and turn with it, or stand up to protest and be spun right off.

Dean, Harry Terwilliger, and I walked down to The Chief’s cell for the first rehearsal not three minutes after Bill and his troops had escorted Bitterbuck off the block and over to the Arcade. The cell door was open, and Old Toot-Toot sat on The Chief’s bunk, his wispy white hair flying.

‘There come-stains all over dis sheet,’ Toot-Toot remarked. ‘He mus’ be tryin to get rid of it before you fellas boil it off.’ And he cackled.

‘Shut up, Toot,’ Dean said. ‘Let’s play this serious.’

‘Okay,’ Toot-Toot said, immediately composing his face into an expression of thunderous gravity. But his eyes twinkled. Old Toot never looked so alive as when he was playing dead.

I stepped forward. ‘Arlen Bitterbuck, as an officer of the court and of the state of blah-blah, I have a warrant for blah-blah, such execution to be carried out at twelve-oh-one on blah-blah, will you step forward?’

Toot got off the bunk. ‘I’m steppin forward, I’m steppin forward, I’m steppin forward,’ he said.

‘Turn around,’ Dean said, and when Toot-Toot turned, Dean examined the dandruffy top of his head. The crown of The Chief’s head would be shaved tomorrow night, and Dean’s check then would be to make sure he didn’t need a touch-up. Stubble could impede conduction, make things harder. Everything we were doing today was about making things easier.

‘All right, Arlen, let’s go,’ I said to Toot-Toot, and away we went.

‘I’m walkin down the corridor, I’m walkin down the corridor, I’m walkin down the corridor,’ Toot said. I flanked him on the left, Dean on the right. Harry was directly behind him. At the head of the corridor we turned right, away from life as it was lived in the exercise yard and toward death as it was died in the storage room. We went into my office, and Toot dropped to his knees without having to be asked. He knew the script, all right, probably better than any of us. God knew he’d been there longer than any of us.

‘I’m prayin, I’m prayin, I’m prayin,’ Toot-Toot said, holding his gnarled hands up. They looked like that famous engraving, you probably know the one I mean. ‘The Lord is my shepherd, so on n so forth.’

‘Who’s Bitterbuck got?’ Harry asked. ‘We’re not going to have some Cherokee medicine man in here shaking his dick, are we?’

‘Actually –’

‘Still prayin, still prayin, still gettin right with Jesus,’ Toot overrode me.

‘Shut up, you old gink,’ Dean said.

‘I’m prayin!’

‘Then pray to yourself.’

‘What’s keepin you guys?’ Brutal hollered in from the storage room. That had also been emptied for our use. We were in the killing zone again, all right; it was a thing you could almost smell.

‘Hold your friggin water!’ Harry yelled back. ‘Don’t be so goddam impatient!’

‘Prayin,’ Toot said, grinning his unpleasant sunken grin. ‘Prayin for patience, just a little goddam patience.’

‘Actually, Bitterbuck’s a Christian – he says,’ I told them, ‘and he’s perfectly happy with the Baptist guy who came for Tillman Clark. Schuster, his name is. I like him, too. He’s fast, and he doesn’t get them all worked up. On your feet, Toot. You prayed enough for one day.’

‘Walkin,’ Toot said. ‘Walkin again, walkin again, yes sir, walkin on the Green Mile.’

Short as he was, he still had to duck a little to get through the door on the far side of the office. The rest of us had to duck even more. This was a vulnerable time with a real prisoner, and when I looked across to the platform where Old Sparky stood and saw Brutal with his gun drawn, I nodded with satisfaction. Just right.

Toot-Toot went down the steps and stopped. The folding wooden chairs, about forty of them, were already in place. Bitterbuck would cross to the platform on an angle that would keep him safely away from the seated spectators, and half a dozen guards would be added for insurance. Bill Dodge would be in charge of those. We had never had a witness menaced by a condemned prisoner in spite of what was, admittedly, a raw set-up ... and that was how I meant to keep it.

‘Ready, boys?’ Toot asked when we were back in our original formation at the foot of the stairs leading down from my office. I nodded, and we walked to the platform. What we looked like more than anything, I often thought, was a color-guard that had forgotten its flag.

‘What am I supposed to do?’ Percy called from behind the wire mesh between the storage room and the switch room.

‘Watch and learn,’ I called back.

‘And keep yer hands off yer wiener,’ Harry muttered. Toot-Toot heard him, though, and cackled.

We escorted him up onto the platform and Toot turned around on his own – the old vet in action. ‘Sittin down,’ he said, ‘sittin down, sittin down, takin a seat in Old Sparky’s lap.’

I dropped to my right knee before his right leg. Dean dropped to his left knee before his left leg. It was at this point we ourselves would be most vulnerable to physical attack, should the condemned man go berserk ... which, every now and then, they did. We both turned the cocked knee slightly inward, to protect the crotch area. We dropped our chins to protect our throats. And, of course, we moved to secure the ankles and neutralize the danger as fast as we could. The Chief would be wearing slippers when he took his final promenade, but ‘it could have been worse’ isn’t much comfort to a man with a ruptured larynx. Or writhing on the floor with his balls swelling up to the size of Mason jars, for that matter, while forty or so spectators – many of them gentlemen of the press – sit in those Grange-hall chairs, watching the whole thing.

We clamped Toot-Toot’s ankles. The clamp on Dean’s side was slightly bigger, because it carried the juice. When Bitterbuck sat down tomorrow night, he would do so with a shaved left calf. Indians have very little body-hair as a rule, but we would take no chances.

While we were clamping Toot-Toot’s ankles, Brutal secured his right wrist. Harry stepped smoothly forward and clamped the left. When they were done, Harry nodded to Brutal, and Brutal called back to Van Hay: ‘Roll on one!’

I heard Percy asking Jack Van Hay what that meant (it was hard to believe how little he knew, how little he’d picked up during his time on E Block) and Van Hay’s murmur of explanation. Today Roll on one meant nothing, but when he heard Brutal say it tomorrow night, Van Hay would turn the knob that goosed the prison generator behind B Block. The witnesses would hear the genny as a steady low humming, and the lights all over the prison would brighten. In the other cellblocks, prisoners would observe those overbright lights and think it had happened, the execution was over, when in fact it was just beginning.

Brutal stepped around the chair so that Toot could see him. ‘Arlen Bitterbuck, you have been condemned to die in the electric chair, sentence passed by a jury of your peers and imposed by a judge in good standing in this state. God save the people of this state. Do you have anything to say before sentence is carried out?’

‘Yeah,’ Toot said, eyes gleaming, lips bunched in a toothless happy grin. ‘I want a fried chicken dinner with gravy on the taters, I want to shit in your hat, and I got to have Mae West sit on my face, because I am one horny motherfucker.’

Brutal tried to hold onto his stern expression, but it was impossible. He threw back his head and began laughing. Dean collapsed onto the edge of the platform like he’d been gutshot, head down between his knees, howling like a coyote, with one hand clapped to his brow as if to keep his brains in there where they belonged. Harry was knocking his own head against the wall and going huh-huh-huh as if he had a glob of food stuck in his throat. Even Jack Van Hay, a man not known for his sense of humor, was laughing. I felt like it myself, of course I did, but controlled it somehow. Tomorrow night it was going to be for real, and a man would die there where Toot-Toot was sitting.

‘Shut up, Brutal,’ I said. ‘You too, Dean. Harry. And Toot, the next remark like that to come out of your mouth will be your last. I’ll have Van Hay roll on two for real.’

Toot gave me a grin as if to say that was a good ’un, Boss Edgecombe, a real good ’un. It faltered into a narrow, puzzled look when he saw I wasn’t answering it. ‘What’s wrong witchoo?’ he asked.

‘It’s not funny,’ I said. ‘That’s what’s wrong with me, and if you’re not smart enough to get it, you better just keep your gob shut.’ Except it was funny, in its way, and I suppose that was what had really made me mad.

I looked around, saw Brutal staring at me, still grinning a little.

‘Shit,’ I said, ‘I’m getting too old for this job.’

‘Nah,’ Brutal said. ‘You’re in your prime, Paul.’ But I wasn’t, neither was he, not as far as this goddam job went, and both of us knew it. Still, the important thing was that the laughing fit had passed. That was good, because the last thing I wanted was somebody remembering Toot’s smart-aleck remark tomorrow night and getting going again. You’d say such a thing would be impossible, a guard laughing his ass off as he escorted a condemned man past the witnesses to the electric chair, but when men are under stress, anything can happen. And a thing like that, people would have talked about it for twenty years.

‘Are you going to be quiet, Toot?’ I asked.

‘Yes,’ he said, his averted face that of the world’s oldest, poutiest child.

I nodded to Brutal that he should get on with the rehearsal. He took the mask from the brass hook on the back of the chair and rolled it down over Toot-Toot’s head, pulling it snug under his chin, which opened the hole at the top to its widest diameter. Then Brutal leaned over, picked the wet circle of sponge out of the bucket, pressed one finger against it, then licked the tip of the finger. That done, he put the sponge back in the bucket. Tomorrow he wouldn’t. Tomorrow he would tuck it into the cap perched on the back of the chair. Not today, though; there was no need to get Toot’s old head wet.

The cap was steel, and with the straps dangling down on either side, it looked sort of like a doughboy’s helmet. Brutal put it on Old Toot-Toot’s head, snugging it down over the hole in the black head-covering.

‘Gettin the cap, gettin the cap, gettin the cap,’ Toot said, and now his voice sounded squeezed as well as muffled. The straps held his jaw almost closed, and I suspected Brutal had snugged it down a little tighter than he strictly had to for purposes of rehearsal. He stepped back, faced the empty seats, and said: ‘Arlen Bitterbuck, electricity shall now be passed through your body until you are dead, in accordance with state law. May God have mercy on your soul.’

Brutal turned to the mesh-covered rectangle. ‘Roll on two.’

Old Toot, perhaps trying to recapture his earlier flare of comic genius, began to buck and flail in the chair, as Old Sparky’s actual customers almost never did. ‘Now I’m fryin!’ he cried. ‘Fryin! Fryyyin! Geeeaah! I’m a done torn turkey!’

Harry and Dean, I saw, were not watching this at all. They had turned away from Sparky and were looking across the empty storage room at the door leading back into my office. ‘Well, I’ll be goddamned,’ Harry said. ‘One of the witnesses came a day early.’

Sitting in the doorway with its tail curled neatly around its paws, watching with its beady black oilspot eyes, was the mouse.