Stephen King - Coffey's Hands

“You think they’d take Mr. Jingles?” Brutal asked me, simultaneously ignoring Del and drawing him on. “Think he’s got the stuff, Paul?”

I tried to appear considering. “You know,” I said, “the more I think of it, the more it seems like a brilliant idea.” From the corner of my eye I saw Percy come partway down the Green Mile (giving Wharton’s cell a very wide berth). He stood with one shoulder leaning against an empty cell, listening with a small, contemptuous smile on his lips.

“What dis Mouseville?” Del asked, now frantic to know.

“A tourist attraction, like I told you,” Brutal said. “There’s, oh I dunno, a hundred or so mice there. Wouldn’t you say, Paul?”

“More like a hundred and fifty these days,” I said. “It’s a big success. I understand they’re thinking of opening one out in California and calling it Mouseville West, that’s how much business is booming. Trained mice are the coming thing with the smart set, I guess—I don’t understand it, myself.”

Del sat with the colored spool in his hand, looking at us, his own situation forgotten for the time being.

“They only take the smartest mice,” Brutal cautioned, “the ones that can do tricks. And they can’t be white mice, because those are pet-shop mice.”

“Pet-shop mice, yeah, you bet!” Delacroix said fiercely. “I hate dem pet-shop mice!”

“And what they got,” Brutal said, his eyes distant now as he imagined it, “is this tent you go into—”

“Yeah, yeah, like inna cirque ! Do you gotta pay to get in?”

“You shittin me? Course you gotta pay to get in. A dime apiece, two cents for the kiddies. And there’s, like, this whole city made out of Bakelite boxes and toilet-paper rolls, with windows made out of isinglass so you can see what they’re up to in there—”

“Yeah! Yeah!” Delacroix was in ecstasy now. Then he turned to me. “What ivy-glass?”

“Like on the front of a stove, where you can see in,” I said.

“Oh sure! Dat shit!” He cranked his hand at Brutal, wanting him to go on, and Mr. Jingles’s little oildrop eyes practically spun in their sockets, trying to keep that spool in view. It was pretty funny. Percy came a little closer, as if wanting to get a better look, and I saw John Coffey frowning at him, but I was too wrapped up in Brutal’s fantasy to pay much attention. This took telling the condemned man what he wanted to hear to new heights, and I was all admiration, believe me.

“Well,” Brutal said, “there’s the mouse city, but what the kids really like is the Mouseville All-Star Circus, where there’s mice that swing on trapezes, and mice that roll these little barrels, and mice that stack coins—”

“Yeah, dat’s it! Dat’s the place for Mr. Jingles!” Delacroix said. His eyes sparkled and his cheeks were high with color. It occurred to me that Brutus Howell was a kind of saint. “You gonna be a circus mouse after all, Mr. Jingles! Gonna live in a mouse city down Florida! All ivy-glass windows! Hurrah!”

He threw the spool extra-hard. It hit low on the wall, took a crazy bounce, and squirted out between the bars of his cell door and onto the Mile. Mr. Jingles raced out after it, and Percy saw his chance.

“No, you fool!” Brutal yelled, but Percy paid no attention. Just as Mr. Jingles reached the spool—too intent on it to realize his old enemy was at hand—Percy brought the sole of one hard black workshoe down on it. There was an audible snap as Mr. Jingles’s back broke, and blood gushed from his mouth. His tiny dark eyes bulged in their sockets, and in them I read an expression of surprised agony that was all too human.

Delacroix screamed with horror and grief. He threw himself at the door of his cell and thrust his arms out between the bars, reaching as far as he could, crying the mouse’s name over and over.

Percy turned toward him, smiling. Toward the three of us. “There,” he said. “I knew I’d get him, sooner or later. Just a matter of time, really.” He turned and walked back up the Green Mile, not hurrying, leaving Mr. Jingles lying on the linoleum in a spreading pool of his own blood.

Volume I: The Two Dead Girls

Volume II: The Mouse on the Mile

Volume III: Coffey’s Hands

Volume IV: The Bad Death of Eduard Delacroix

Volume V: Night Journey

Volume VI: Coffey on the Mile

Stephen Kingis the author of more than fifty books, all of them worldwide bestsellers. His recent work includes Mr. Mercedes, winner of the 2015 Edgar Award for Best Novel; Doctor Sleep; and Under the Dome , a major TV miniseries on CBS. His novel 11/22/63 was named a top ten book of 2011 by The New York Times Book Review and won the Los Angeles Times Book Prize for best Mystery/Thriller. He is the recipient of the 2003 National Book Foundation Medal for Distinguished Contribution to American Letters and a 2014 National Medal of Arts. He lives in Bangor, Maine, with his wife, novelist Tabitha King.

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Copyright © 1996 by Stephen King

Illustrations copyright © 1996 by Mark Geyer

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ISBN 978-1-5011-3830-0 (ebook)