'Pet-shop mice, yeah, you bet!' Delacroix said fiercely. 'I hate dem pet-shop mice!'
'And what they got,' Brutal said, his eyes distant now as he imagined it, 'is this tent you go into - '
'Yeah, yeah, like inna cirque! Do you gotta pay to get in?'
'You shittin me? Course you gotta pay to get in. A dime apiece, two cents for the kiddies. And there's, like, this whole city made out of Bakelite boxes and toilet-paper rolls, with windows made out of isinglass so you can see what they're up to in there - '
'Yeah! Yeah!' Delacroix was in ecstasy now. Then he turned to me. 'What ivy-glass?'
'Like on the front of a stove, where you can see in,' I. said.
'Oh sure! Dat shit!' He cranked his hand at Brutal, wanting him to go on, and Mr. Jingles's little oildrop eyes practically spun in their sockets, trying to keep that spool in view. It was pretty funny. Percy came a little closer, as if wanting to get a better look, and I saw John Coffey frowning at him, but I was too wrapped up in Brutal's fantasy to pay much attention. This took telling the condemned man what he wanted to hear to new heights, and I was all admiration, believe me.
''Well,' Brutal said, 'there's the mouse city, but what the kids really like is the Mouseville All-Star Circus, where there's mice that swing on trapezes, and mice that roll these little barrels, and mice that stack coins - '
'Yeah, dat's it! Dat's the place for Mr. Jingles!' Delacroix said. His eyes sparkled and his cheeks were high with color. It occurred to me that Brutus Howell was a kind of saint. 'You gonna be a circus mouse after all, Mr. Jingles! Gonna live in a mouse city down Florida! All ivy-glass windows! Hurrah!'
He threw the spool extra-hard. It hit low on the wall, took a crazy bounce, and squirted out between the bars of his cell door and onto the Mile. Mr. Jingles raced out after it, and Percy saw his chance.
'No, you fool!' Brutal yelled, but Percy paid no attention. Just as Mr. Jingles reached the spool - too intent on it to realize his old enemy was at hand - Percy brought the sole of one hard black workshoe down on it. There was an audible snap as Mr. Jingles's back broke, and blood gushed from his mouth. His tiny dark eyes bulged in their sockets, and in them I read an expression of surprised agony that was all too human.
Delacroix screamed with horror and grief. He threw himself at the door of his cell and thrust his arms out between the bars, reaching as far as he could, crying the mouse's name over and over.
Percy turned toward him, smiling. Toward the three of us. 'There,' he said. 'I knew I'd get him, sooner or later. Just a matter of time, really.' He turned and walked back up the Green Mile, not hurrying, leaving Mr. Jingles lying on the linoleum in a spreading pool of his own blood.
Part Four.The Bad Death of Eduard Delacroix
Chapter 16
1
All this other writing aside, I've kept a little diary since I took up residence at Georgia Pines - no big deal, just a couple of paragraphs a day, mostly about the weather - and I looked back through it last evening. I wanted to see just how long it has been since my grandchildren, Christopher and Danielle, more or less forced me into Georgia Pines. 'For your own good, Gramps,' they said. Of course they did. Isn't that what people mostly say when they have finally figured out how to get rid of a problem that walks and talks?
It's been a little over two years. The eerie thing is that I don't know if it feels like two years, or longer than that, or shorter. My sense of time seems to be melting, like a kid's snowman in a January thaw. It's as if time as it always was - Eastern Standard Time, Daylight Saving Tune, Working-Man Time - doesn't exist anymore. Here there is only Georgia Pines Time, which is Old Man Time, Old Lady Time, and Piss the Bed Tune. The rest... all gone.