I nodded.

'Oh, yes,' Hammersmith said. 'He did it. Don't you doubt it, and don't you turn your back on him. You might get away with it once or a hundred times... even a thousand... but in the end—' He raised a hand before my eyes and snapped the fingers together rapidly against the thumb, turning the hand into a biting mouth. 'You understand?'

I nodded again.

'He raped them, he killed them, and afterward he was sorry... but those little girls stayed raped, those little girls stayed dead. But you'll fix him, won't you, Edgecombe? In a few weeks you'll fix him so he never does anything like that again.' He got up, went to the porch rail, and looked vaguely at the doghouse, standing at the center of its beaten patch, in the middle of those aging turds. 'Perhaps you'll excuse me,' he said. 'Since I don't have to spend the afternoon in court, I thought I might visit with my family for a little bit. A man's children are only young once.'

'You go ahead,' I said. My lips felt numb and distant. 'And thank you for your time.'

'Don't mention it,' he said.

I drove directly from Hammersmith's house to the prison. It was a long drive, and this time I wasn't able to shorten it by singing songs. It felt like all the songs had gone out of me, at least for awhile. I kept seeing that poor little boy's disfigured face. And Hammersmith's hand, the fingers going up and down against the thumb in a biting motion.

5

Wild Bill Wharton took his first trip down to the restraint room the very next day. He spent the morning and afternoon being as quiet and good as Mary's little lamb, a state we soon discovered was not natural to him, and meant trouble. Then, around seven-thirty that evening, Harry felt something warm splash on the cuffs of uniform pants he had put on clean just that day. It was piss. William Wharton was standing at his cell, showing his darkening teeth in a wide grin, and pissing all over Harry Terwilliger's pants and shoes.

'The dirty sonofabitch must have been saving it up all day,' Harry said later, still disgusted and outraged.

Well, that was it. It was time to show William Wharton who ran the show on E Block. Harry got Brutal and me, and I alerted Dean and Percy, who were also on. We had three prisoners by then, remember, and were into what we called full coverage, with my group on from seven in the evening to three in the morning—when trouble was most apt to break out—and two other crews covering the rest of the day. Those other crews consisted mostly of floaters, with Bill Dodge usually in charge. It wasn't a bad way to run things, all and all, and I felt that, once I could shift Percy over to days, life would be even better. I never got around to that, however. I sometimes wonder if it would have changed things, if I had.

Anyway, there was a big watermain in the storage room, on the side away from Old Sparky, and Dean and Percy hooked up a length of canvas firehose to it. Then they stood by the valve that would open it, if needed.

Brutal and I hurried down to Wharton's cell, where Wharton still stood, still grinning and still with his tool hanging out of his pants. I had liberated the straitjacket from the restraint room and tossed it on a shelf in my office last thing before going home the night before, thinking we might be needing it for our new problem child. Now I had it in one hand, my index finger hooked under one of the canvas straps. Harry came behind us, hauling the nozzle of the firehose, which ran back through my office, down the storage-room steps, and to the drum where Dean and Percy were paying it out as fast as they could.

'Hey, d'jall like that?' Wild Bill asked. He was laughing like a kid at a carnival, laughing so hard he could barely talk; big tears went rolling down his cheeks. 'You come on s'fast I guess you must've. I'm currently cookin some turds to go with it. Nice soft ones. I'll have them out to y'all tomorrow—'

He saw that I was unlocking his cell door and his eyes narrowed. He saw that Brutal was holding his revolver in one hand and his nightstick in the other, and they narrowed even more.

'You can come in here on your legs, but you'll go out on your backs, Billy the Kid is goan guarantee you that,' he told us. His eyes shifted back to me. 'And if you think you're gonna put that nut-coat on me, you got another think coming, old hoss.'

'You're not the one who says go or jump back around here,' I told him. 'You should know that, but I guess you're too dumb to pick it up without a little teaching.'

I finished unlocking the door and ran it back on its track. Wharton retreated to the bunk, his cock still hanging out of his pants, put his hands out to me, palms up, then beckoned with his fingers. 'Come on, you ugly motherfucker,' he said. 'They be schoolin, all right, but this old boy's well set up to be the teacher.' He shifted his gaze and his darktoothed grin to Brutal. 'Come on, big fella, you first. This time you cain't sneak up behind me. Put down that gun—you ain't gonna shoot it anyway, not you—and we'll go man-to-man. See who's the better fel—'

Brutal stepped into the cell, but not toward Wharton. He moved to the left once he was through the door, and Wharton's narrow eyes widened as he saw the firehose pointed at him.

'No, you don't,' he said. 'Oh no, you d—'

'Dean!' I yelled. 'Turn it on! All the way!'

Wharton jumped forward, and Brutal hit him a good smart lick—the kind of lick I'm sure Percy dreamed of—across his forehead, laying his baton right over Wharton's eyebrows. Wharton, who seemed to think we'd never seen trouble until we'd seen him, went to his knees, his eyes open but blind. Then the water came, Harry staggering back a step under its power and then holding steady, the nozzle firm in his hands, pointed like a gun. The stream caught Wild Bill Wharton square in the middle of his chest, spun him halfway around, and drove him back under his bunk. Down the hall, Delacroix was jumping from foot to foot, cackling shrilly, and cursing at John Coffey, demanding that Coffey tell him what was going on, who was winning, and how dat gran' fou new boy like dat Chinee water treatment. John said nothing, just stood there quietly in his too-short pants and his prison slippers. I only had one quick glance at him, but that was enough to observe his same old expression, both sad and serene. It was as if he'd seen the whole thing before, not just once or twice but a thousand times.

'Kill the water!' Brutal shouted back over his shoulder, then raced forward into the cell. He sank his hands into the semi-conscious Wharton's armpits and dragged him out from under his bunk. Wharton was coughing and making a glub-glub sound. Blood was dribbling into his dazed eyes from above his brows, where Brutal's stick had popped the skin open in a line.

We had the straitjacket business down to a science, did Brutus Howell and me; we'd practiced it like a couple of vaudeville hoofers working up a new dance routine. Every now and then, that practice paid off. Now, for instance. Brutal sat Wharton up and held out his arms toward me the way a kid might hold out the arms of a Raggedy Andy doll. Awareness was just starting to seep back into Wharton's eyes, the knowledge that if he didn't start fighting right away, it was going to be too late, but the lines were still down between his brain and his muscles, and before he could repair them, I had rammed the sleeves of the coat up his arms and Brutal was doing the buckles up the back. While he took care of that, I grabbed the cuff-straps, pulled Wharton's arms around his sides, and linked his wrists together with another canvas strap. He ended up looking like he was hugging himself.

'Goddam you, big dummy, how dey doin widdim?' Delacroix screamed. I heard Mr. Jingles squeaking, as if he wanted to know, too.

Percy arrived, his shirt wet and sticking to him from his struggles with the watermain, his face glowing with excitement. Dean came along behind him, wearing a bracelet of purplish bruise around his throat and looking a lot less thrilled.