Зеленая миля / The Green Mile

Then he scampered down the other side, Delacroix giggling as his tail tickled the side of his neck. The mouse ran all the way down his arm to his wrist, then turned, scampered back up to Delacroix’s left shoulder, and curled his tail around his feet again.

“I’ll be damned,” Harry said.

“I train him to do that,” Delacroix said proudly. I thought, In a pig’s ass you did, but kept my mouth shut. “His name is Mr. Jingles.”

“Nah,” Harry said goodnaturedly. “It’s Steamboat Willy, like in the pitcher-show.

Boss Howell named him.”

“It’s Mr. Jingles,” Delacroix said. On any other subject he would have told you that shit was Shinola, if you wanted him to, but on the subject of the mouse’s name he was perfectly adamant. “He whisper it in my ear. Cap’n, can I have a box for him? Can I have a box for my mous’, so he can sleep in here wit me?” His voice began to fall into wheedling tones I had heard a thousand times before. “I put him under my bunk and he never be a scrid of trouble, not one.

”

“Your English gets a hell of a lot better when you want something,” I said, stalling for time.

“Oh-oh,” Harry murmured, nudging me. “Here comes trouble.”

But Percy didn’t look like trouble to me, not that night. He wasn’t running his hands through his hair or fiddling with that baton of his, and the top button of his uniform shirt was actually undone. It was the first time I’d seen him that way, and it was amazing, what a change a little thing like that could make.

Mostly, though, what struck me was the expression on his face. There was a calmness there. Not serenity—I don’t think Percy Wetmore had a serene bone in his body—but the look of a man who has discovered he can wait for the things he wants. It was quite a change from the young man I’d had to threaten with Brutus Howell’s fists only a few days before.

Delacroix didn’t see the change, though; he cringed against the wall of his cell, drawing his knees up to his chest.

His eyes seemed to grow until they were taking up half his face. The mouse scampered up on his bald pate and sat there. I don’t know if he remembered that he also had reason to distrust Percy, but it certainly looked as if he did. Probably it was just smelling the little Frenchman’s fear, and reacting off that.

“Well, well,” Percy said. “Looks like you found yourself a friend, Eddie.