Зеленая миля / The Green Mile

“Ready, boys?” Toot asked when we were back in our original formation at the foot of the stairs leading down from my office. I nodded, and we walked to the platform. What we looked like more than anything, I often thought, was a color-guard that had forgotten its flag.

“What am I supposed to do?” Percy called from behind the wire mesh between the storage room and the switch room.

“Watch and learn,” I called back.

“And keep yer hands off yer wiener,” Harry muttered. Toot-Toot heard him, though, and cackled.

We escorted him up onto the platform and Toot turned around on his own—the old vet in action. “Sittin down,” he said, “sittin down. sittin down, takin a seat in Old Sparky’s lap.”

I dropped to my right knee before his right leg. Dean dropped to his left knee before his left leg. It was at this point we ourselves would be most vulnerable to physical attack, should the condemned man go berserk, which, every now and then, they did. We both turned the cocked knee slightly inward, to protect the crotch area.

We dropped our chins to protect our throats. And, of course, we moved to secure the ankles and neutralize the danger as fast as we could. The Chief would be wearing slippers when he took his final promenade, but “it could have been worse” isn’t much comfort to a man with a ruptured larynx. Or writhing on the floor with his balls swelling up to the size of Mason jars, for that matter, while forty or so spectators—many of them gentlemen of the press—sit in those Grange-hall chairs, watching the whole thing.

We clamped Toot-Toot’s ankles. The clamp on Dean’s side was slightly bigger, because it carried the juice. When Bitterbuck sat down tomorrow night, he would do so with a shaved left calf. Indians have very little body-hair as a rule, but we would take no chances.

While we were clamping Toot-Toots ankles, Brutal secured his right wrist. Harry stepped smoothly forward and clamped the left.

When they were done, Harry nodded to Brutal, and Brutal called back to Van Hay: “Roll on one!”

I heard Percy asking Jack Van Hay what that meant (it was hard to believe how little he knew, how little he’d picked up during his time on E Block) and Van Hay’s murmur of explanation. Today Roll on one meant nothing, but when he heard Brutal say it tomorrow night, Van Hay would turn the knob that goosed the prison generator behind B Block.