Зеленая миля / The Green Mile

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 stem 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-huhhuh 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.