'What are you doing here?' Moores asked us again. A lot of the determination had gone out of his voice - his wife's wavering cries had done that. 'I don't understand. Is it a prison break, or... '
John set Harry aside - just picked him up and moved him over - and then climbed to the stoop. He stood between Brutal and me, so big he almost pushed us off either side and into Melly's holly bushes. Moores's eyes turned up to follow him, the way a person's eyes do when he's trying to see the top of a tall tree. And suddenly the world fell back into place for me. That spirit of discord, which had jumbled my thoughts like powerful fingers sifting through sand or grains of rice, was gone. I thought I also understood why Harry had been able to act when Brutal and I could only stand, hopeless and indecisive, in front of our boss. Harry had been with John... and whatever spirit it is that opposes that other, demonic one, it was in John Coffey that night. And, when John stepped forward to face Warden Moores, it was that other spirit - something white, that's how I think of it, as something white - which took control of the situation. The other thing didn't leave, but I could see it drawing back like a shadow in a sudden strong light.
'I want to help,' John Coffey said. Moores looked up at him, eyes fascinated, mouth hanging open. When Coffey plucked the Buntline Special from his hand and passed it to me, I don't think Hal even knew it was gone. I carefully lowered the hammer. Later, when I checked the cylinder, I would find it had been empty all along. Sometimes I wonder if Hal knew that. Meanwhile, John was still murmuring. 'I came to help her. Just to help. That's all I want.'
'Hal!' she cried from the back bedroom. Her voice sounded a little stronger now, but it also sounded afraid, as if the thing which had so confused and unmanned us had now retreated to her. 'Make them go away, whoever they are! We don't need no sales men in the middle of the night! No Electrolux! No Hoover! No French knickers with come in the crotch! Get them out! Tell them to take a flying f**k at a rolling d... d... ' Something broke - it could have been a waterglass - and then she began to sob.
'Just to help,' John Coffey said in a voice so low it was hardly more than a whisper. He ignored the woman's sobbing and profanity equally. 'Just to help, boss, that's all.'
'You can't,' Moores said. 'No one can.' It was a tone I'd heard before, and after a moment I realized it was how I'd sounded myself when I'd gone into Coffey's cell the night he cured my urinary infection. Hypnotized. You mind your business and I'll mind mine was what I'd told Delacroix... except it had been Coffey who'd been minding my business, just as he was minding Hal Moores's now.
'We think he can,' Brutal said. 'And we didn't risk our jobs - plus a stretch in the can ourselves, maybe - just to get here and turn around and go back without giving it the old college try.'
Only I had been ready to do just that three minutes before. Brutal, too.
John Coffey took the play out of our hands. He pushed into the entry and past Moores, who raised a single strengthless hand to stop him (it trailed across Coffey's hip and fell off; I'm sure the big man never even felt it), and then shuffled down the hall toward the living room, the kitchen beyond it, and the back bedroom beyond that where that shrill unrecognizable voice raised itself again: 'You stay out of here! Whoever you are, just stay out! I'm not dressed, my tits are out and my bitchbox is taking the breeze!'
John paid no attention, just went stolidly along, head bent so he wouldn't smash any of the light fixtures, his round brown skull gleaming, his hands swinging at his sides. After a moment we followed him, me first, Brutal and Hal side by side, and Harry bringing up the rear. I understood one thing perfectly well: it was all out of our hands now, and in John's.
Chapter 25
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