John Coffey grabbed my forearm in one of his hamhock fists, pulling me back down as effortlessly as I might have done to a toddler. 'Look, boss,' he said, pointing. 'Someone's up.'
I followed the direction of his finger and felt a sinking - not just of the belly, but of the heart. There was a spark of light in one of the back windows. The room where Melinda now spent her days and nights, most likely; she would be no more capable of using the stairs than she would of going out to rake the leaves which had fallen during the recent storm.
They'd heard the truck, of course - Harry Terwilliger's goddam Farmall, its engine bellowing and farting down the length of an exhaust pipe unencumbered by anything so frivolous as a muffler. Hell, the Mooreses probably weren't sleeping that well these nights, anyway.
A light closer to the front of the house went on (the kitchen), then the living-room overhead, then the one in the front hall, then the one over the stoop. I watched these forward-marching lights the way a man standing against a cement wall and smoking his last cigarette might watch the lockstep approach of the firing squad. Yet I did not entirely acknowledge to myself even then that it was too late until the uneven chop of the Farmall's engine faded into silence, and the doors creaked, and the gravel crunched as Harry and Brutal got out.
John was up, pulling me with him. In the dim light, his face looked lively and eager. Why not? I remember thinking. Why shouldn't he look eager? He's a fool.
Brutal and Harry were standing shoulder to shoulder at the foot of the truck, like kids in a thunderstorm, and I saw that both of them looked as scared, confused, and uneasy as I felt. That made me feel even worse.
John got down. For him it was more of a step than a jump. I followed, stiff-legged and miserable. I would have sprawled on the cold gravel if he hadn't caught me by the arm.
'This is a mistake,' Brutal said in a hissy little voice. His eyes were very wide and very frightened. 'Christ Almighty, Paul, what were we thinking?'
'Too late now,' I said. I pushed one of Coffey's hips, and he went obediently enough to stand beside Harry. Then I grabbed Brutal's elbow like this was a date we were on and got the two of us walking toward the stoop where that light was now burning. 'Let me do the talking. Understand?'
'Yeah,' Brutal said. 'Right now that's just about the only thing I do understand.'
I looked back over my shoulder. 'Harry, stay by the truck with him until I call for you. I don't want Moores to see him until I'm ready.' Except I was never going to be ready. I knew that now.
Brutal and I had just reached the foot of the steps when the front door was hauled open hard enough to flap the brass knocker against its plate. There stood Hal Moores in blue pajama pants and a strapstyle tee-shirt, his iron-gray hair standing up in tufts and twists. He was a man who had made a thousand enemies over the course of his career, and he knew it. Clasped in his right hand, the abnormally long barrel not quite pointing at the floor, was the pistol which had always been mounted over the mantel. It was the sort of gun known as a Ned Buntline Special, it had been his grandfather's, and right then (I saw this with a further sinking in my gut) it was fully cocked.
'Who the hell goes there at two-thirty in the goddam morning?' he asked. I heard no fear at all in his voice. And - for the time being, at least - his shakes had stopped. The hand holding the gun was as steady as a stone. 'Answer me, or - ' The barrel of the gun began to rise.
'Stop it, Warden!' Brutal raised his hands, palms out, toward the man with the gun. I have never heard his voice sound the way it did then; it was as if the shakes turned out of Moores's hands had somehow found their way into Brutus Howell's throat. 'It's us! It's Paul and me and... it's us!'