I went through my set speech, all about how we had the radio—Make Believe Ballroom and Our Gal Sunday, and how we’d treat him jake if he did the same for us. That little homily was not what you’d call one of my great successes. He cried all the way through it, sitting huddled up at the foot of his bunk, as far from me as he could get without actually fading into the corner. He cringed every time I moved, and I don’t think he heard one word in six. Probably just as well. I don’t think that particular homily made a whole lot of sense, anyway.

Fifteen minutes later I was back at the desk, where a shaken-looking Brutus Howell was sitting and licking the tip of the pencil we kept with the visitors’ book. “Will you stop that before you poison yourself, for God’s sake?” I asked.

“Christ almighty Jesus,” he said, putting the pencil down. “I never want to have another hooraw like that with a prisoner coming on the block.”

“My Daddy always used to say things come in threes,” I said.

“Well, I hope your Daddy was full of shit on that subject,” Brutal said, but of course he wasn’t. There was a squall when John Coffey came in, and a fullblown storm when “Wild Bill” joined us—it’s funny, but things really do seem to come in threes. The story of our introduction to Wild Bill, how he came onto the Mile trying to commit murder, is something I’ll get to shortly; fair warning.

“What’s this about Delacroix copping his joint?” I asked.

Brutal snorted. “He was ankle-chained and ole Percy was just pulling him too fast, that’s all. He stumbled and started to fall as he got out of the stagecoach. He put his hands out same as anyone would when they start to fall, and one of them brushed the front of Percy’s pants. It was a complete accident!”

“Did Percy know that, do you think?” I asked. “Was he maybe using it as an excuse just because he felt like whaling on Delacroix a little bit? Showing him who bosses the shooting match around here?”

Brutal nodded slowly. “Yeah. I think that was probably it.”

“We have to watch him, then,” I said, and ran my hands, through my hair. As if the job wasn’t hard enough. “God, I hate this. I hate him.”

“Me, too. And you want to know something else, Paul? I don’t understand him. He’s got connections, I understand that, all right, but why would he use them to get a job on the Green fucking Mile? Anywhere in the state pen, for that matter? Why not as a page in the state senate, or the guy who makes the lieutenant governor’s appointments? Surely his people could’ve gotten him something better if he’d asked them, so why here?”

I shook my head. I didn’t know. There were a lot of things I didn’t know then. I suppose I was naive.

After that, things went back to normal again… for awhile, at least. Down in the county seat, the state was preparing to bring John Coffey to trial, and Trapingus County Sheriff Homer Cribus was pooh-poohing the idea that a lynch-mob might hurry justice along a little bit. None of that mattered to us; on E Block, no one paid much attention to the news. Life on the Green Mile was, in a way, like life in a soundproof room. From time to time you heard mutterings that were probably explosions in the outside world, but that was about all. They wouldn’t hurry with John Coffey; they’d want to make damned sure of him.

On a couple of occasions Percy got to ragging Delacroix, and the second time I pulled him aside and told him to come up to my office. It wasn’t my first interview with Percy on the subject of his behavior, and it wouldn’t be the last, but it was prompted by what, was probably the clearest understanding of what he was. He had the heart of a cruel boy who goes to the zoo not so he can study the animals but so he can throw stones at them in their cages.

“You stay away from him, now, you hear?” I said. “Unless I give you a specific order, just stay the hell away from him.”

Percy combed his hair back, then patted at it with his sweet little hands. That boy just loved touching his hair. “I wasn’t doing nothing to him,” he said. “Only asking how it felt to know you had burned up some babies, is all.” Percy gave me a round-eyed, innocent stare.

“You quit with it, or there’ll be a report,” I said.

He laughed. “Make any report you want,” he said. “Then I’ll turn around and make my own. Just like I told you when he came in. We’ll see who comes off the best.”

I leaned forward, hands folded on my desk, and spoke in a tone I hoped would sound like a friend being confidential. “Brutus Howell doesn’t like you much,” I said. “And when Brutal doesn’t like someone, he’s been known to make his own report. He isn’t much shakes with a pen, and he can’t quit from licking that pencil, so he’s apt to report with his fists. If you know what I mean.”

Percy’s complacent little smile faltered. “What are you trying to say?”