'You think you're tough,' I said, 'and maybe you are, sonny, but in here tough don't matter. Your stampeding days are over. If you take it easy on us, we'll take it easy on you. If you make it hard, you'll die in the end just the same, only we'll sharpen you like a pencil before you go.'
'You're gonna be so happy to see the end of me,' Wharton said in a hoarse voice. He was struggling against the straitjacket even though he must have known it would do no good, and his face was as red as a tomato. 'And until I'm gone, I'll make your lives miserable.' He bared his teeth at me like an angry baboon.
'If that's all you want, to make our lives miserable, you can quit now, because you've already succeeded,' Brutal said. 'But as far as your time on the Mile goes, Wharton, we don't care if you spend all of it in the room with the soft walls. And you can wear that damned nut-coat until your arms gangrene from lack of circulation and fall right off.' He paused. 'No one much comes down here, you know. And if you think anyone gives much of a shit what happens to you, one way or another, you best reconsider. To the world in general, you're already one dead outlaw.'
Wharton was studying Brutal carefully, and the color was fading out of his face. 'Lemme out of it,' he said in a placatory voice - a voice too sane and too reasonable to trust. 'I'll be good. Honest Injun.'
Harry appeared in the cell doorway. The end of the corridor looked like a rummage sale, but we'd set things to rights with good speed once we got started. We had before; we knew the drill. 'All ready,' Harry said.
Brutal grabbed the bulge in the canvas where Wharton's right elbow was and yanked him to his feet. 'Come on, Wild Billy. And look on the good side. You're gonna have at least twenty-four hours to remind yourself never to sit with your back to the door, and to never hold onto no aces and eights.'
'Lemme out of it,' Wharton said. He looked from Brutal to Harry to me, the red creeping back into his face. 'I'll be good - I tell you I've learned my lesson. I... I... ummmmmahhhhhhh - !'
He suddenly collapsed, half of him in the cell, half of him on the played-out lino of the Green Mile, kicking his feet and bucking his body.
'Holy Christ, he's pitchin a fit,' Percy whispered.
'Sure, and my sister's the Whore of Babylon,' Brutal said. 'She dances the hootchie-kootchie for Moses on Saturday nights in a long white veil.' He bent down and hooked a hand into one of Wharton's armpits. I got the other one. Wharton threshed between us like a hooked fish. Carrying his jerking body, listening to him grunt from one end and fart from the other was one of my life's less pleasant experiences.
I looked up and met John Coffey's eyes for a second. They were bloodshot, and his dark cheeks were wet. He had been crying again. I thought of Hammersmith making that biting gesture with his hand and shivered a little. Then I turned my attention back to Wharton.
We threw him into the restraint room like he was cargo, and watched him lie on the floor, bucking hard in the straitjacket next to the drain we had once checked for the mouse which had started its E Block life as Steamboat Willy.
'I don't much care if he swallows his tongue or something and dies,' Dean said in his hoarse and raspy voice, 'but think of the paperwork, boys! It'd never end.'
'Never mind the paperwork, think of the hearing,' Harry said gloomily. 'We'd lose our damned jobs. End up picking peas down Mississippi. You know what Mississippi is, don't you? It's the Indian word for ass**le.'
'He ain't gonna die, and he ain't gonna swallow his tongue, either,' Brutal said. 'When we open this door tomorrow, he's gonna be just fine. Take my word for it.'
That's the way it was, too. The man we took back to his cell the next night at nine was quiet, pallid, and seemingly chastened. He walked with his head down, made no effort to attack anyone when the straitjacket came off, and only stared listlessly at me when I told him it would go just the same the next time, and he just had to ask himself how much time he wanted to spend pissing in his pants and eating baby-food a spoonful at a time.
'I'll be good, boss, I learnt my lesson,' he whispered in a humble little voice as we put him back in his cell. Brutal looked at me and winked.
Late the next day, William Wharton, who was Billy the Kid to himself and never that bushwhacking John Law Wild Bill Hickok, bought a moon-pie from Old Toot-Toot. Wharton had been expressly forbidden any such commerce, but the afternoon crew was composed of floaters, as I think I have said, and the deal went down. Toot himself undoubtedly knew better, but to him the snack-wagon was always a case of a nickel is a nickel, a dime is a dime, I'd sing another chorus but I don't have the time.