Зеленая миля / The Green Mile

Maybe it was the unseasonable heat, maybe it was the urinary infection heating up my groin and making the itch of my flannel underwear all but unbearable, maybe it was knowing that the state had sent me a black man next door to an idiot to execute, and Percy clearly wanted to hand-tool him a little first. Probably it was all those things. Whatever it was, I stopped caring about his political connections for a little while.

“Percy.” I said. “They’re moving house over in the infirmary.

”

“Bill Dodge[14 - Bill Dodge – Билл Додж] is in charge of that detail—”

“I know he is,” I said. “Go and help him.”

“That isn’t my job,” Percy said. “This big lugoon is my job.” “Lugoon” was Percy’s joke name for the big ones—a combination of lug and goon. He resented the big ones. He wasn’t skinny, like Harry Terwilliger, but he was short. A banty-rooster sort of guy, the kind that likes to pick fights, especially when the odds are all their way.

And vain about his hair. Could hardly keep his hands off it.

“Then your job is done,” I said. “Get over to the infirmary.”

His lower lip pooched out. Bill Dodge and his men were moving boxes and stacks of sheets, even the beds; the whole infirmary was going to a new frame building over on the west side of the prison. Hot work, heavy lifting. Percy Wetmore wanted no part of either.

“They got all the men they need,” he said.

“Then get over there and straw-boss,” I said, raising my voice. I saw Harry wince and paid no attention. If the governor ordered Warden Moores to fire me for ruffling the wrong set of feathers, who was Hal Moores going to put in my place? Percy? It was a joke. “I really don’t care what you do, Percy, as long as you get out of here for awhile!”

For a moment I thought he was going to stick and there’d be real trouble, with Coffey standing there the whole time like the world’s biggest stopped clock.

Then Percy rammed his billy back into its hand-tooled holster—foolish damned vanitorious thing—and went stalking up the corridor. I don’t remember which guard was sitting at the duty desk that day-one of the floaters, I guess—but Percy must not have liked the way he looked, because he growled, “You wipe that smirk off your shitepoke face or I’ll wipe it off for you” as he went by.