Dean heard us and came in from the desk at the head of the Green Mile. 'Thank God! I thought you were never coming back, I'd half made up my mind you were caught, or the Warden plugged you, or—' He broke off, really seeing John for the first time. 'Holy cats, what's wrong with him? He looks like he's dying!'

'He's not dying... are you, John?' Brutal said. His eyes flashed Dean a warning.

'Course not, I didn't mean actually dyin'—Dean gave a nervous little laugh—'but, jeepers... '

'Never mind,' I said. 'Help us get him back to his cell.'

Once again we were foothills surrounding a mountain, but now it was a mountain that had suffered a few million years, worth of erosion, one that was blunted and sad. John Coffey moved slowly, breathing through his mouth like an old man who smoked too much, but at least he moved.

'What about Percy?' I asked. 'Has he been kicking up a ruckus?'

'Some at the start,' Dean said. 'Trying to yell through the tape you put over his mouth. Cursing, I believe.'

'Mercy me,' Brutal said. 'A good thing our tender ears were elsewhere.'

'Since then, just a mulekick at the door every once in awhile, you know.' Dean was so relieved to see us that he was babbling. His glasses slipped down to the end of his nose, which was shiny with sweat, and he pushed them back up. We passed Wharton's cell. That worthless young man was flat on his back, snoring like a sousaphone. His eyes were shut this time, all right.

Dean saw me looking and laughed.

'No trouble from that guy! Hasn't moved since he laid back down on his bunk. Dead to the world. As for Percy kicking the door every now and then, I never minded that a bit. Was glad of it, tell you the truth. If he didn't make any noise at all, I'd start wonderin if he hadn't choked to death on that gag you slapped over his cakehole. But that's not the best. You know the best? It's been as quiet as Ash Wednesday morning in New Orleans! Nobody's been down all night!' He said this last in a triumphant, gloating voice. 'We got away with it, boys! We did!'

That made him think of why we'd gone through the whole comedy in the first place, and he asked about Melinda.

'She's fine,' I said. We had reached John 's cell. What Dean had said was just starting to sink in: We got away with it, boys... we did.

'Was it like... you know... the mouse?' Dear asked. He glanced briefly at the empty cell when Delacroix had lived with Mr. Jingles, then down a the restraint room, which had been the mouse's seeming point of origin. His voice dropped, the way people's voices do when they enter a big church where even the silence seems to whisper. 'Was it a... ' He gulped. 'Shoot, you know what I mean—was it a miracle?'

The three of us looked at each other briefly, confirming what we already knew. 'Brought her back from her damn grave is what he did,' Harry said. 'Yeah, it was a miracle, all right.'

Brutal opened the double locks on the cell, and gave John a gentle push inside. 'Go on, now, big boy. Rest awhile. You earned it. We'll just settle Percy's hash—'

'He's a bad man,' John said in a low, mechanical voice.

'That's right, no doubt, wicked as a warlock,' Brutal agreed in his most soothing voice, 'but don't you worry a smidge about him, we're not going to let him near you. You just ease down on that bunk of yours and I'll have that cup of coffee to you in no time. Hot and strong. You'll feel like a new man.'

John sat heavily on his bunk. I thought he'd fall back on it and roll to the wall as he usually did, but he just sat there for the time being, hands clasped loosely between his knees, head lowered, breathing hard through his mouth. The St. Christopher's medal Melinda had given him had fallen out of the top of his shirt and swung back and forth in the air. He'll keep you safe, that's what she'd told him, but John Coffey didn't look a bit safe. He looked like he had taken Melinda's place on the lip of that grave Harry had spoken of.

But I couldn't think about John Coffey just then I turned around to the others. 'Dean, get Percy's pistol and hickory stick.'

'Okay.' He went back up to the desk, unlocked the drawer with the gun and the stick in it, and brought them back.

'Ready?' I asked them. My men—good men, and was never prouder of them than I was that night, nodded. Harry and Dean both looked nervous; Brutal as stolid as ever. 'Okay. I'm going to do the talking. The less the rest of you open your mouths, the better it'll probably be and the quicker it'll probably wrap up... for better or worse. Okay?'

They nodded again. I took a deep breath and walked down to the Green Mile restraint room.

Percy looked up, squinting, when the light fell on him. He was sitting on the floor and licking at the tape I had slapped across his mouth. The part I'd wound around to the back of his head had come free (probably the sweat and brilliantine in his hair had loosened it), and he'd gotten a ways toward getting the rest off, as well. Another hour and he would've been bawling for help at the top of his lungs.

He used his feet to shove himself a little way backward when we came in, then stopped, no doubt realizing that there was nowhere to go except for the southeast corner of the room.

I took his gun and stick from Dean and held them out in Percy's direction. 'Want these back?' I asked.

He looked at me warily, then nodded his head.

'Brutal,' I said. 'Harry. Get him on his feet.'

They bent, hooked him under the canvas arms of the straitjacket, and up he came. I moved toward him until we were almost nose to nose. I could smell the sour sweat in which he'd been basting. Some of it probably came from his efforts to get free of the quiet-down coat, or to administer the occasional kicks to the door Dean had heard, but I thought most of his sweat had come as a result of plain old fear: fear of what we might do to him when we came back.

I'll be okay, they ain't killers, Percy would think... and then, maybe, he'd think of Old Sparky and it would cross his mind that yes, in a way we were killers. I'd done seventy-seven myself, more than any of the men I'd ever put the chest-strap on, more than Sergeant York himself got credit for in World War I. Killing Percy wouldn't be logical, but we'd already behaved illogically, he would have told himself as he sat there with his arms behind him, working with his tongue to get the tape off his mouth. And besides, logic most likely doesn't have much power over a person's thoughts when that person is sitting on the floor of a room with soft walls, wrapped up as neat and tight as any spider ever wrapped a fly.

Which is to say, if I didn't have him where I wanted now, I never would.

'I'll take the tape off your mouth if you promise not to start yowling,' I said. 'I want to have a talk with you, not a shouting match. So what do you say? Will you be quiet?'

I saw relief come up in his eyes as he realized that, if I wanted to talk, he really did stand a good chance of getting out of this with a whole skin. He nodded his head.

'If you start noising off, the tape goes back on,' I said. 'Do you understand that, too?'

Another nod, rather impatient this time.

I reached up, grabbed the end of the runner he'd worked loose, and gave it a hard yank. It made a loud peeling sound. Brutal winced. Percy yipped with pain and began rubbing his lips. He tried to speak, realized he couldn't do it with a hand over his mouth, and lowered it.

'Get me out of this nut-coat, you lugoon,' he spat.

'In a minute,' I said.

'Now! Now! Right n—'

I slapped his face. It was done before I'd even known I was going to do it... but of course I'd known it might come to that. Even back during the first talk about Percy that I'd had with Warden Moores, the one where Hal advised me to put Percy out for the Delacroix execution, I'd known it might come to that. A man's hand is like an animal that's only half-tame; mostly it's good, but sometimes it escapes and bites the first thing it sees.