There weren't many witnesses - maybe fourteen in all, half the number that had been in the storage room for the Delacroix execution. Homer Cribus was there, overflowing his chair as per usual, but I didn't see Deputy McGee. Like Warden Moores, he had apparently decided to give this one a miss.
Sitting in the front row was an elderly couple I didn't recognize at first, even though I had seen their pictures in a good many newspaper articles by that day in the third week of November. Then, as we neared the platform where Old Sparky waited, the woman spat, 'Die slow, you son of a bitch!' and I realized they were the Dettericks, Klaus and Marjorie. I hadn't recognized them because you don't often see elderly people who haven't yet climbed out of their thirties.
John hunched his shoulders at the sound of the woman's voice and Sheriff Cribus's grunt of approval. Hank Bitterman, who had the guard-post near the front of the meager group of spectators, never took his eyes off Klaus Detterick. That was per my orders, but Detterick never made a move in John 's direction that night. Detterick seemed to be on some other planet.
Brutal, standing beside Old Sparky, gave me a small finger-tilt as we stepped up onto the platform. He holstered his sidearm and took John 's wrist, escorting him toward the electric chair as gently as a boy leading his date out onto the floor for their first dance as a couple.
'Everything all right, John?' he asked in a low voice.
'Yes, boss, but... ' His eyes were moving from side to side in their sockets, and for the first time he looked and sounded scared. 'But they's a lot of folks here hate me. A lot. I can feel it. Hurts. Bores in like bee-stings an' hurts.'
'Feel how we feel, then,' Brutal said in that same low voice. 'We don't hate you - can you feel that?'
'Yes, boss.' But his voice was trembling worse now, and his eyes had begun to leak their slow tears again.
'Kill him twice, you boys!' Marjorie Detterick suddenly screamed. Her ragged, strident voice was like a slap. John cringed against me and moaned. 'You go on and kill that raping baby-killer twice, that'd be just fine!' Klaus, still looking like a man dreaming awake, pulled her against his shoulder. She began to sob.
I saw with dismay that Harry Terwilliger was crying, too. So far none of the spectators had seen his tears - his back was to them - but he was crying, all right. Still, what could we do? Besides push on with it, I mean?
Brutal and I turned John around. Brutal pressed on one of the big man's shoulders and John sat. He gripped Sparky's wide oak arms, his eyes moving from side to side, his tongue darting out to wet first one corner of his mouth, then the other.
Harry and I dropped to our knees. The day before, we'd had one of the shop-trusties weld temporary flexible extensions to the chair's ankle clamps, because John Coffey's ankles were nigh on the size of an ordinary fellow's calves. Still, I had a nightmarish moment when I thought they were still going to come up small, and we'd have to take him back to his cell while Sam Broderick, who was head of the shop guys in those days, was found and tinkered some more. I gave a final, extra-hard shove with the heels of my hands and the clamp on my side closed. John 's leg jerked and he gasped. I had pinched him.
'Sorry, John,' I murmured, and glanced at Harry. He had gotten his clamp fixed more easily (either the extension on his side was a little bigger or John 's right calf was a little smaller), but he was looking at the result with a doubtful expression. I guessed I could understand why; the modified clamps had a hungry look, their jaws seeming to gape like the mouths of alligators.
'It'll be all right,' I said, hoping that I sounded convincing... and that I was telling the truth. 'Wipe your face, Harry.'
He swabbed at it with his arm, wiping away tears from his cheeks and beads of sweat from his forehead. We turned. Homer Cribus, who had been talking too loudly to the man sitting next to him (the prosecutor, judging from the string tie and rusty black suit), fell silent. It was almost time.
Brutal had clamped one of John 's wrists, Dean the other. Over Dean's shoulder I could see the doctor, unobtrusive as ever, standing against the wall with his black bag between his feet. Nowadays I guess they just about run such affairs, especially the ones with the IV drips, but back then you almost had to yank them forward if you wanted them. Maybe back then they had a clearer idea of what was right for a doctor to be doing, and what was a perversion of the special promise they make, the one where they swear first of all to do no harm.
Dean nodded to Brutal. Brutal turned his head, seemed to glance at the telephone that was never going to ring for the likes of John Coffey, and called 'Roll on one!' to Jack Van Hay.