Зеленая миля / The Green Mile

He would be walking in a warmer fire soon, I had no doubt.

I went back up the corridor, and Dean told me about his set-to with Percy the previous night. I think he’d waited around just so he could, and I listened carefully. I always listened carefully when the subject was Percy, because I agreed with Dean a hundred per cent—I thought Percy was the sort of man who could cause a lot of trouble, as much for the rest of us as for himself.

As Dean was finishing, old Toot-Toot came by with his red snack-wagon, which was covered with handlettered Bible quotes (“REPENT for the LORD shall judge his people,” Deut.

32:36, “And surely your BLOOD of your lives will I require,” Gen. 9:5, and similar cheery, uplifting sentiments), and sold us some sandwiches and pops. Dean was hunting for change in his pocket and saying that we wouldn’t see Steamboat Willy anymore, that goddam Percy Wetmore had scared him off for good, when old Toot-Toot said, “What’s that’ere, then?”

We looked, and here came the mouse of the hour his ownself, hopping up the middle of the Green Mile.

He’d come a little way; then stop, look around with his bright little oildrop eyes, then come on again.

“Hey, mouse!” The Chief said, and the mouse stopped and looked at him, whiskers twitching. I tell you, it was exactly as if the damned thing knew it had been called. “You some kind of spirit guide?”

Bitterbuck tossed the mouse a little morsel of cheese from his supper. It landed right in front of the mouse, but Steamboat Willy hardly even glanced at it, just came on his way again, up the Green Mile, looking in empty cells.

“Boss Edgecombe!” The President called. “Do you think that little bastard knows Wetmore isn’t here? I do, by God!”

I felt about the same… but I wasn’t going to say so out loud.

Harry came out into the hall, hitching up his pants the way he always did after he’d spent a refreshing few minutes in the can, and stood there with his eyes wide. Toot-Toot was also staring, a sunken grin doing unpleasant things to the soft and toothless lower half of his face.

The mouse stopped in what was becoming its usual spot, curled its tail around its paws, and looked at us. Again I was reminded of pictures I had seen of judges passing sentence on hapless prisoners… yet, had there ever been a prisoner as small and unafraid as this one? Not that it really was a prisoner, of course; it could come and go pretty much as it pleased.