Зеленая миля / The Green Mile

Percy was standing in the office doorway, practicing quick draws with the baton he loved so much, as he listened. He’d pull it out of that ridiculous handtooled holster he’d gotten somewhere, then twirl it (or try to; most times he would have dropped it if not for the rawhide loop he kept on his wrist), then re-holster it. I was off that night, but got the full report from Dean the following evening.

The mouse came up the Green Mile just as it had before, hopping along, then stopping and seeming to check the empty cells.

The President was awake this time, standing at his cell door. That guy was a piece of work, managing to look natty even in his prison blues. We knew just by the way he looked that he wasn’t made for Old Sparky, and we were right—less than a week after Percy’s second run at that mouse, The Pres’s sentence was commuted to life and he joined the general population.

“Say!” he called. ��There’s a mouse in here! What kind of a joint are you guys running, anyway?” He was kind of laughing, but Dean said he also sounded kind of outraged, as if even a murder rap hadn’t been quite enough to knock the Kiwanis out of his soul. He had been the regional head of an outfit called Mid-South Realty Associates, and had thought himself smart enough to be able to get away with pushing his half-senile father out a third-story window and collect on a double-indemnity whole-life policy.

“Shut up, you lugoon,” Percy said, but that was pretty much automatic. He had his eye on the mouse. He had re-holstered his baton and taken out one of his magazines, but now he tossed the magazine on the duty desk and pulled the baton out of its holster again. He began tapping it casually against the knuckles of his left hand.

“Son of a bitch,” Bill Dodge said. “I’ve never seen a mouse in here before.

“Aw, he’s sort of cute,” Dean said. “And not afraid at all.”

“How do you know?”

“He was in the other night. Percy saw him, too. Brutal calls him Steamboat Willy.”

Percy kind of sneered at that, but for the time being said nothing. He was tapping the baton faster now on the back of his hand.

“Watch this,” Dean said. “He came all the way up to the desk before. I want to see if he’ll do it again.