Part 1.
TWO KILLED GIRLS.

1.

This happened in 1932, when the state prison was still in Cold Mountain. And the electric chair was, of course, there too.

The prisoners made jokes about the chair in the way people usually make jokes, talking about something that scares them, but which cannot be avoided. They called him Old Sparky or Big Juicy. They made jokes about the electric bill, about how Warden Moores would cook Thanksgiving dinner this fall since his wife, Melinda, was too sick to cook.

For those who actually had to sit on this chair, the humor disappeared at the moment. During my stay in Kholodnaya Gora, I oversaw eight executions in the seventies (I never confuse this number, I will remember it on my deathbed) and I think that for most of these people it became clear what was happening to them precisely at the moment when they ankles were strapped to Old Sparky's powerful oak legs. The understanding came (one could see how the realization rose from the depths of the eyes, similar to cold fear) that their own legs had finished their journey. The blood was still running through the veins, the muscles were still strong, but it was all over, they could no longer walk a kilometer across the fields, nor dance with the girls at village festivals. The awareness of approaching death comes to Old Sparky's clients from the ankles. There is also a black silk bag, they put it on their heads after incoherent and inarticulate last words. This bag is supposed to be for them, but I always thought that it was actually for us, so that we would not see the terrible rush of fear in their eyes when they realize that they are about to die with their knees bent.

There was no death row at Kholodnaya Gora, just Block G, standing apart from the others, about four times smaller than the others, brick rather than wood, with a flat metal roof that shone in the summer sun like a mad eye. Inside there are six cells, three on each side of a wide central corridor, and each cell is almost twice the size of the cells in the other four blocks. And all are single. Excellent conditions for a prison (especially in the thirties), but the inhabitants of these cells would give a lot to get into any other one. Honestly, they would have paid dearly.

During my entire service as a warden, all six cells were never filled - and thank God. Maximum - four, there were white and black (in Kholodnaya Gora among walking dead there was no racial segregation) and it still felt like hell.

One day a woman appeared in the cell - Beverly McCall. She was as black as the queen of spades, and as beautiful as the sin that you will never have enough gunpowder to commit. She put up with the fact that her husband beat her for six years, but could not tolerate even a day of his love affairs. Having learned that her husband was cheating on her, the next evening she lay in wait for poor Lester McCall, whom his friends (and perhaps this very short-lived lover) called the Carver, upstairs on the stairs leading to the apartment from his hairdresser's. She waited until he unbuttoned his robe and then bent down to untie the laces with unsteady hands. And she used one of the Carver's razors. Two days before boarding Old Sparky, she called me and told me that she had seen her African spiritual father in a dream. He told her to give up her slave surname and die under the free surname Matuomi. Her request was that the death warrant be read to her under the name Beverly Matuomi. For some reason, her spiritual father did not give her a name, or at least she did not name it. I replied that, of course, there was no problem. Years of working in prison have taught me not to refuse requests from prisoners, except, of course, for what is really prohibited. In the case of Beverly Matuomi, this no longer mattered. The next day, at about three o'clock in the afternoon, the governor called and commuted her death sentence to life imprisonment in the Grassy Valley Correctional Facility for Women: all confinement and no fun - that was our saying. I was glad, I assure you, when I saw Bev's round butt sway to the left instead of the right as she walked up to the duty desk.

Thirty-five years later, no less, I saw this name in a newspaper on the obituaries page under a photograph of a thin black lady with a cloud gray hair, wearing glasses with rhinestones in the corners of the frames. It was Beverly. She spent the last ten years of her life as a free woman, her obituary said, and she could be said to have saved the library of the small town of Rains Falls. She also taught Sunday school and was loved in this safe haven. The obituary was headlined: “Librarian Died of Heart Failure,” and below it, in small letters, like an afterthought, “Spent more than 20 years in prison for murder.” And only the eyes, wide open and shining behind glasses with stones in the corners, remained the same. The eyes of a woman who, even at seventy-something, if need dictates, will not hesitate to take a razor out of a glass of disinfectant. You always recognize murderers, even if they end their lives as elderly librarians in small sleepy towns. And, of course, you will know if you spent as many years with the murderers as I did. Just once did I think about the nature of my work. That is why I am writing these lines.

The floor in the wide corridor in the center of block "G" was covered with lemon-green linoleum, and what in other prisons was called the Last Mile was called the Green Mile in Kholodnaya Gora. Its length was, I suppose, sixty long steps from south to north, counting from bottom to top. Below was a restraint room. Upstairs there is a T-shaped corridor. Turning left meant life - if you can call it that in the sun-drenched exercise yard. And many called it that, many lived that way for years without visible bad consequences. Thieves, arsonists and rapists with their conversations, walks and small affairs.

Very briefly USA, 1932. Negro sentenced to death penalty for a murder committed by another, has the gift of healing. He cures the prison warden's wife of cancer, but this does not save him from execution.

The novel is written from the perspective of Paul Edgecombe, who lives in a nursing home. In order not to lose the remnants of his mind, he writes down the events of 1932 that changed his life.

Part 1. Two murdered girls

Paul serves as the head of the prison guard on death row, which is called the Green Mile because of its green linoleum. In the room adjacent to the Mile there is an electric chair. That year, another one was added to Mile's three guards - Percy. This cruel young man, a relative of the governor, could have gotten any job, but he chose death row, and Paul has to endure him.

In the fall, John Coffey, a black man of enormous stature and powerful physique, sentenced to death for the murder and rape of white twin girls, is transferred to the Mile. Coffey acts very meek. He is afraid of the dark, seems a little slow and cries all the time. In his strange eyes there is “an expression of calm absence,” as if Coffey himself was somewhere far away.

Paul learns about his crime from the newspapers. The daughters of a cotton farm owner disappeared from a closed terrace at night. After a long search with dogs, they were found in a forest clearing. John Coffey rocked the naked dead girls, cried and repeated: “I tried to bring everything back, but it was too late.” No one doubted the black man’s guilt, although during the search the dogs found another trace.

Paul strives to maintain a calm environment in the Mile, but with Percy's arrival, peace is impossible. Not only the prisoners hate him, but also the guards.

It resembled a dose of arsenic injected into a wedding cake.

Warden Moores calls Paul and asks him to be patient a little longer. Percy is going to transfer to a mental hospital, but before that he wants to command the execution - this is his condition. Paul agrees to everything.

In the summer, even before Coffey arrives, a very smart mouse appears on Mile. The animal regularly walks around empty cells, as if looking for someone. Percy tries to kill the mouse, but it escapes into the restraint room for the violent, which serves as a storage room on the Mile.

Part 2. Mouse on the Mile

The mouse only comes to the Mile when Percy is away. Soon Edouard Delacroix is ​​transferred to the Mile, and it seems to Paul that the mouse was waiting for him. Little balding Delacroix, nicknamed Del, is convicted of rape, murder and arson. Having committed a crime, he seemed to throw out the evil that had accumulated in him and turned into a modest and quiet man.

Percy hates Del and bullies him constantly. Percy calms down only when Paul promises that he will command Del's execution.

It's funny how some people change when given the right stimulus.

Del calls the mouse Mr. Jingles. The mouse runs around Del's hands and rolls a wooden spool. Del believes that he trained the mouse, but the guards are convinced that Mr. Jingles could do this before.

While Paul's genitourinary infection worsens and Warden Moores learns that his wife has brain cancer, Wild Bill is transferred to the Mile. This frail, fair-haired nineteen-year-old guy from the category of “problem children” managed to do a lot of evil. As soon as he appears on the Mile, Bill tries to strangle the guard, and he is stunned by a blow to the head.

Part 3. The hands of John Coffey

On this day, Paul suffers especially badly from his infection. Coffey, who had been sitting quietly in the cell during the commotion, calls him over. The rules prohibit this, but Paul seems to be attracted to Coffey’s “otherworldly” eyes. The black man presses his hand to Paul's groin, and something like an electric charge pierces him. Then the throbbing pain disappears, and a "cloud of small black insects" flies out of Coffey's mouth. They turn white and disappear. Paul believes he "received healing, real, miraculous, from Almighty God." He asks Coffey how he does it, but he shakes his head. John doesn’t remember what happened to him yesterday, but he knows how to heal.

Paul does not understand why God placed a miraculous gift in the hands of a child killer. He goes to the crime scene. The journalist who wrote about the murder is convinced of Coffey's guilt.

Such as your Negro, is able to bite at the first opportunity how a mongrel dog can bite if it gets into his head.

The day of Del's execution is approaching. Percy must place a sponge soaked in brine on the top of his head, which will conduct a current directly to the brain.

Breaking the rules, Percy gets too close to Wild Bill's cell and is grabbed by him. Out of fear, Percy wets his pants. Del notices this and laughs.

The night before his execution, Del plays with Mr. Jingles and throws him a reel. She rolls out of the cell. The mouse runs after her, Percy steps on him and, satisfied with revenge, leaves.

Part 4. The terrible death of Edouard Delacroix

Coffey asks that the dying mouse be given to him “while there is still time.” He brings Mr. Jingles to his face, inhales sharply through his mouth, then again releases a cloud of black midges from his mouth, and the mouse returns unharmed to the Case.

While preparing Del for execution, Percy places a dry sponge under the contact, and the Frenchman burns alive. Paul cannot turn off the electricity while Delacroix is ​​alive, because then everything will have to start all over again. Finally Del quiets down.

The helmet slipped to one side, but when we removed it, almost all the skin from the head and the remaining hair came off with it, firmly stuck to the metal.

Frightened Percy makes excuses, but Paul understands: he wanted to do a minor dirty trick, but did not suspect what the result would be. Paul tells them not to touch Percy: he could get them fired, and finding work during the Great Depression is not easy. Mr. Jingles, who survived the execution in the hands of Coffey, feels Del's torment through him and disappears from the Mile forever.

Paul reports the incident to Moores, but he has no time for trouble in prison: his wife is dying. Paul believes Coffey can help her and gathers Mili's guards at his home.

Part 5. Night journey

The guards decide to secretly bring Coffey to Moores' house and formulate a detailed plan.

First, they neutralize Wild Bill by slipping sleeping pills into his drink. They then put Percy in a straitjacket and lock him in a padded room. Coffey already knows that he has to cure the white lady.

Wild Bill is unconscious, but when Coffey walks past his cell, he stands up and grabs his arm.

Coffey's reaction was surprising. He... screamed, letting out air through his teeth, as if he had touched something cold and unpleasant.

The friends manage to sneak Coffey outside the prison fence unnoticed. They take him to the boss's house in an old truck. Moores meets them with a gun in his hand, but Coffey calmly walks to his dying wife.

Approaching the bed, Coffey bends down, presses his mouth to the woman's lips and takes a deep breath. A strange scream is heard. Coffey pulls away and Paul sees that the woman is healthy. This time Coffey doesn't exhale the midges. On the way to prison he becomes ill.

Part 6: Coffey Walks a Mile

The guards have difficulty getting Coffey to the cell. They then release Percy and try to intimidate him. Paul, however, is sure that Percy will not remain silent.

Freed, Percy heads towards the exit from the Mile. When he passes Coffey's cell, he grabs him, presses his lips to his mouth and releases black flies. Without realizing it, Percy walks up to Wild Bill's cell, shoots him six times, and then midges fly out of his mouth. From that day on, Percy does not utter a word and is declared insane.

Paul again goes to where Coffey was arrested and talks to the deputy sheriff. He undertakes to help him and meets with the father of the murdered girls. It turned out that shortly before the tragedy he hired an assistant - Wild Bill, who, according to Paul, killed the girls. Coffey found them and wanted to revive them, but didn’t have time. The black man found out about this by touching Bill and used Percy as a weapon. Because of the color of his skin, Paul can neither open a retrial nor organize Coffey's escape.

The day of execution arrives. Coffey tells Paul that he is tired of feeling the pain of the people around him and wants to leave. During the conversation, he takes Paul's hand, and he feels a tingling sensation.

Now John didn't know he was doing this. And suddenly I was scared... It was as if lights were turning on inside me. Not just in the brain, throughout the body.

When Coffey lets go of his hand, Paul's vision and hearing become sharper for a while.

During Coffey's execution, the guards cry. Paul is sure that they are killing the miracle of God, and this will be credited to them after death.

Thanks to Coffey's touch, Paul lives to be one hundred and four years old. In a barn near a nursing home lives the long-grey Mr. Jingles. Paul found the world's oldest mouse on the back steps. There Mister Jingles dies, and Paul lives for a very long time.

We all deserve to die, no exceptions, I know that, but sometimes, God, the Green Mile is too long.

Part 1.

TWO KILLED GIRLS

1.

This happened in 1932, when the state prison was still in Cold Mountain. And the electric chair was, of course, there too.

The prisoners made jokes about the chair in the way people usually make jokes, talking about something that scares them, but which cannot be avoided. They called him Old Sparky or Big Juicy. They made jokes about the electric bill, about how Warden Moores would cook Thanksgiving dinner this fall since his wife, Melinda, was too sick to cook.

For those who actually had to sit on this chair, the humor disappeared at the moment. During my stay in Kholodnaya Gora, I oversaw eight executions in the seventies (I never confuse this number, I will remember it on my deathbed) and I think that for most of these people it became clear what was happening to them precisely at the moment when they ankles were strapped to Old Sparky's powerful oak legs. The understanding came (one could see how the realization rose from the depths of the eyes, similar to cold fear) that their own legs had finished their journey. The blood was still running through the veins, the muscles were still strong, but it was all over, they could no longer walk a kilometer across the fields, nor dance with the girls at village festivals. The awareness of approaching death comes to Old Sparky's clients from the ankles. There is also a black silk bag, which is put on their heads after incoherent and inarticulate last words. This bag is supposed to be for them, but I always thought that it was actually for us, so that we would not see the terrible rush of fear in their eyes when they realize that they are about to die with their knees bent.

There was no death row at Kholodnaya Gora, just Block G, standing apart from the others, about four times smaller than the others, brick rather than wood, with a flat metal roof that shone in the summer sun like a mad eye. Inside there are six cells, three on each side of a wide central corridor, and each cell is almost twice the size of the cells in the other four blocks. And all are single. Excellent conditions for a prison (especially in the thirties), but the inhabitants of these cells would give a lot to get into any other one. Honestly, they would have paid dearly.

During my entire service as a warden, all six cells were never filled - and thank God. The maximum was four, there were whites and blacks (there was no racial segregation among the walking dead in Kholodnaya Gora), and it still resembled hell.

One day a woman appeared in the cell - Beverly McCall. She was as black as the queen of spades, and as beautiful as the sin that you will never have enough gunpowder to commit. She put up with the fact that her husband beat her for six years, but could not tolerate even a day of his love affairs. Having learned that her husband was cheating on her, the next evening she lay in wait for poor Lester McCall, whom his friends (and perhaps this very short-lived lover) called the Carver, upstairs on the stairs leading to the apartment from his hairdresser's. She waited until he unbuttoned his robe and then bent down to untie the laces with unsteady hands. And she used one of the Carver's razors. Two days before boarding Old Sparky, she called me and told me that she had seen her African spiritual father in a dream. He told her to give up her slave surname and die under the free surname Matuomi. Her request was that the death warrant be read to her under the name Beverly Matuomi. For some reason, her spiritual father did not give her a name, or at least she did not name it. I replied that, of course, there was no problem. Years of working in prison have taught me not to refuse requests from prisoners, except, of course, for what is really prohibited. In the case of Beverly Matuomi, this no longer mattered. The next day, at about three o'clock in the afternoon, the governor called and commuted her death sentence to life imprisonment in the Grassy Valley Correctional Facility for Women: all confinement and no fun - that was our saying.

1.
This happened in 1932, when the state prison was still in Cold Mountain. And the electric chair was, of course, there too.
The prisoners made jokes about the chair in the way people usually make jokes, talking about something that scares them, but which cannot be avoided. They called him Old Sparky or Big Juicy. They made jokes about the electric bill, about how Warden Moores would cook Thanksgiving dinner this fall since his wife, Melinda, was too sick to cook.
For those who actually had to sit on this chair, the humor disappeared at the moment. During my stay in Kholodnaya Gora, I oversaw eight executions in the seventies (I never confuse this number, I will remember it on my deathbed) and I think that for most of these people it became clear what was happening to them precisely at the moment when they ankles were strapped to Old Sparky's powerful oak legs. The understanding came (one could see how the realization rose from the depths of the eyes, similar to cold fear) that their own legs had finished their journey. The blood was still running through the veins, the muscles were still strong, but it was all over, they could no longer walk a kilometer across the fields, nor dance with the girls at village festivals. The awareness of approaching death comes to Old Sparky's clients from the ankles. There is also a black silk bag, which is put on their heads after incoherent and inarticulate last words. This bag is supposed to be for them, but I always thought that it was actually for us, so that we would not see the terrible rush of fear in their eyes when they realize that they are about to die with their knees bent.
There was no death row at Kholodnaya Gora, just Block G, standing apart from the others, about four times smaller than the others, brick rather than wood, with a flat metal roof that shone in the summer sun like a mad eye. There are six cells inside, three on each side of a wide central corridor, and each cell is almost twice the size of the cells in the other four blocks. And all are single. Excellent conditions for a prison (especially in the thirties), but the inhabitants of these cells would give a lot to get into any other one. Honestly, they would have paid dearly.
During my entire service as a warden, all six cells were never filled - and thank God. The maximum was four, there were whites and blacks (there was no racial segregation among the walking dead in Kholodnaya Gora), and it still resembled hell.
One day a woman appeared in the cell - Beverly McCall. She was as black as the queen of spades, and as beautiful as the sin that you will never have enough gunpowder to commit. She put up with the fact that her husband beat her for six years, but could not tolerate even a day of his love affairs. Having learned that her husband was cheating on her, the next evening she lay in wait for poor Lester McCall, whom his friends (and perhaps this very short-lived lover) called the Carver, upstairs on the stairs leading to the apartment from his hairdresser's. She waited until he unbuttoned his robe and then bent down to untie the laces with unsteady hands. And she used one of the Carver's razors. Two days before boarding Old Sparky, she called me and told me that she had seen her African spiritual father in a dream. He told her to give up her slave surname and die under the free surname Matuomi. Her request was that the death warrant be read to her under the name Beverly Matuomi. For some reason, her spiritual father did not give her a name, or at least she did not name it. I replied that, of course, there was no problem. Years of working in prison have taught me not to refuse requests from prisoners, except, of course, for what is really prohibited. In the case of Beverly Matuomi, this no longer mattered. The next day, at about three o'clock in the afternoon, the governor called and commuted her death sentence to life imprisonment in the Grassy Valley Correctional Facility for Women: all confinement and no fun - that was our saying. I was glad, I assure you, when I saw Bev's round butt sway to the left instead of the right as she walked up to the duty desk.
Thirty-five years later, no less, I saw this name in a newspaper on the obituaries page under a photograph of a thin black lady with a cloud of gray hair, wearing glasses with rhinestones in the corners of the frames. It was Beverly. She spent the last ten years of her life as a free woman, her obituary said, and she could be said to have saved the library of the small town of Rains Falls. She also taught Sunday school and was loved in this safe haven. The obituary was headlined: “Librarian Died of Heart Failure,” and below it, in small letters, like an afterthought, “Spent more than 20 years in prison for murder.” And only the eyes, wide open and shining behind glasses with stones in the corners, remained the same. The eyes of a woman who, even at seventy-something, if need dictates, will not hesitate to take a razor out of a glass of disinfectant. You always recognize murderers, even if they end their lives as elderly librarians in small sleepy towns. And, of course, you will know if you spent as many years with the murderers as I did. Just once did I think about the nature of my work. That is why I am writing these lines.
The floor in the wide corridor in the center of block "G" was covered with lemon-green linoleum, and what in other prisons was called the Last Mile was called the Green Mile in Kholodnaya Gora. Its length was, I suppose, sixty long steps from south to north, counting from bottom to top. Below was a restraint room. Upstairs there is a T-shaped corridor. Turning left meant life - if you can call it that in the sun-drenched exercise yard. And many called it that, many lived that way for years without any visible bad consequences. Thieves, arsonists and rapists with their conversations, walks and small affairs.
Turning right is a completely different matter. First you go into my office (where the carpet is also green, I kept meaning to replace it, but never got around to it) and walk in front of my desk, with an American flag on the left and a state flag on the right. There are two doors on the far wall: one leads to a small toilet, which I and other guards of block "G" (sometimes even Warden Moores) use, the other leads to a small room like a storage room. This is where the path called the Green Mile ends.
The door is small, I have to bend down, and John Coffey even had to sit down and get through. You come to a small area, then go down three concrete steps to a wooden floor. A small room without heating with a metal roof, exactly the same as the one next door in the same block. In winter it is cold and steam comes out of your mouth, and in summer you can suffocate from the heat. At the time of Elmer Manfred's execution - either in July or August of '30 - the temperature, I think, was about forty degrees Celsius.
On the left in the closet there was life again. Tools (all covered with bars crossed with chains, as if they were carabiners rather than shovels and picks), rags, bags of seeds for spring planting in the prison garden, boxes of toilet paper, pallets loaded with forms for the prison printing press... even a bag of lime for markings of a baseball diamond and a net on a football field. The prisoners played in the so-called pasture, and therefore many in Kholodnaya Gora were looking forward to the autumn evenings.
On the right is death again. Old Sparky, himself, stands on a wooden platform in the southeast corner, strong oak legs, wide oak armrests that have absorbed the cold sweat of many men in the last moments of their lives, and a metal helmet usually hanging casually on the back of a chair, similar to the robot kid's cap from the Buck Rogers comics. A wire comes out of it and goes through a sealed hole in the cinder block wall behind the back. On the side is a galvanized bucket. If you look into it, you will see a circle of sponge exactly the size of a metal helmet. Before execution, it is soaked in brine to better conduct the direct current charge running through the wire through the sponge directly into the brain of the condemned person.

This happened in 1932, when the state prison was still in Cold Mountain. And the electric chair was, of course, there too.

The prisoners made jokes about the chair in the way people usually make jokes, talking about something that scares them, but which cannot be avoided. They called him Old Sparky or Big Juicy. They made jokes about the electric bill, about how Warden Moores would cook Thanksgiving dinner this fall since his wife, Melinda, was too sick to cook.

For those who actually had to sit on this chair, the humor disappeared at the moment. During my stay in Kholodnaya Gora, I oversaw eight executions in the seventies (I never confuse this number, I will remember it on my deathbed) and I think that for most of these people it became clear what was happening to them precisely at the moment when they ankles were strapped to Old Sparky's powerful oak legs. The understanding came (one could see how the realization rose from the depths of the eyes, similar to cold fear) that their own legs had finished their journey. The blood was still running through the veins, the muscles were still strong, but it was all over, they could no longer walk a kilometer across the fields, nor dance with the girls at village festivals. The awareness of approaching death comes to Old Sparky's clients from the ankles. There is also a black silk bag, which is put on their heads after incoherent and inarticulate last words. This bag is supposed to be for them, but I always thought that it was actually for us, so that we would not see the terrible rush of fear in their eyes when they realize that they are about to die with their knees bent.

There was no death row at Kholodnaya Gora, just Block G, standing apart from the others, about four times smaller than the others, brick rather than wood, with a flat metal roof that shone in the summer sun like a mad eye. Inside there are six cells, three on each side of a wide central corridor, and each cell is almost twice the size of the cells in the other four blocks. And all are single. Excellent conditions for a prison (especially in the thirties), but the inhabitants of these cells would give a lot to get into any other one. Honestly, they would have paid dearly.

During my entire service as a warden, all six cells were never filled - and thank God. The maximum was four, there were whites and blacks (there was no racial segregation among the walking dead in Kholodnaya Gora), and it still resembled hell.

One day a woman appeared in the cell - Beverly McCall. She was as black as the queen of spades, and as beautiful as the sin that you will never have enough gunpowder to commit. She put up with the fact that her husband beat her for six years, but could not tolerate even a day of his love affairs. Having learned that her husband was cheating on her, the next evening she lay in wait for poor Lester McCall, whom his friends (and perhaps this very short-lived lover) called the Carver, upstairs on the stairs leading to the apartment from his hairdresser's. She waited until he unbuttoned his robe and then bent down to untie the laces with unsteady hands. And she used one of the Carver's razors. Two days before boarding Old Sparky, she called me and told me that she had seen her African spiritual father in a dream. He told her to give up her slave surname and die under the free surname Matuomi. Her request was that the death warrant be read to her under the name Beverly Matuomi. For some reason, her spiritual father did not give her a name, or at least she did not name it. I replied that, of course, there was no problem. Years of working in prison have taught me not to refuse requests from prisoners, except, of course, for what is really prohibited. In the case of Beverly Matuomi, this no longer mattered. The next day, at about three o'clock in the afternoon, the governor called and commuted her death sentence to life imprisonment in the Grassy Valley Correctional Facility for Women: all confinement and no fun - that was our saying. I was glad, I assure you, when I saw Bev's round butt sway to the left instead of the right as she walked up to the duty desk.

Thirty-five years later, no less, I saw this name in a newspaper on the obituaries page under a photograph of a thin black lady with a cloud of gray hair, wearing glasses with rhinestones in the corners of the frames. It was Beverly. She spent the last ten years of her life as a free woman, her obituary said, and she could be said to have saved the library of the small town of Rains Falls. She also taught Sunday school and was loved in this safe haven. The obituary was headlined: “Librarian Died of Heart Failure,” and below it, in small letters, like an afterthought, “Spent more than 20 years in prison for murder.” And only the eyes, wide open and shining behind glasses with stones in the corners, remained the same. The eyes of a woman who, even at seventy-something, if need dictates, will not hesitate to take a razor out of a glass of disinfectant. You always recognize murderers, even if they end their lives as elderly librarians in small sleepy towns. And, of course, you will know if you spent as many years with the murderers as I did. Just once did I think about the nature of my work. That is why I am writing these lines.

The floor in the wide corridor in the center of block "G" was covered with lemon-green linoleum, and what in other prisons was called the Last Mile was called the Green Mile in Kholodnaya Gora. Its length was, I suppose, sixty long steps from south to north, counting from bottom to top. Below was a restraint room. Upstairs there is a T-shaped corridor. Turning left meant life - if you can call it that in the sun-drenched exercise yard. And many called it that, many lived that way for years without any visible bad consequences. Thieves, arsonists and rapists with their conversations, walks and small affairs.

Turning right is a completely different matter. First you go into my office (where the carpet is also green, I kept meaning to replace it, but never got around to it) and walk in front of my desk, with an American flag on the left and a state flag on the right. There are two doors on the far wall: one leads to a small toilet, which I and other guards of block "G" (sometimes even Warden Moores) use, the other leads to a small room like a storage room. This is where the path called the Green Mile ends.

The door is small, I have to bend down, and John Coffey even had to sit down and get through. You come to a small area, then go down three concrete steps to a wooden floor. A small room without heating with a metal roof, exactly the same as the one next door in the same block. In winter it is cold and steam comes out of your mouth, and in summer you can suffocate from the heat. At the time of Elmer Manfred's execution - either in July or August of '30 - the temperature, I think, was about forty degrees Celsius.

On the left in the closet there was life again. Tools (all covered with bars crossed with chains, as if they were carabiners rather than shovels and picks), rags, bags of seeds for spring planting in the prison garden, boxes of toilet paper, pallets loaded with forms for the prison printing press... even a bag of lime for markings of a baseball diamond and a net on a football field. The prisoners played in the so-called pasture, and therefore many in Kholodnaya Gora were looking forward to the autumn evenings.

On the right is death again. Old Sparky, himself, stands on a wooden platform in the southeast corner, strong oak legs, wide oak armrests that have absorbed the cold sweat of many men in the last moments of their lives, and a metal helmet usually hanging casually on the back of a chair, similar to the robot kid's cap from the Buck Rogers comics. A wire comes out of it and goes through a sealed hole in the cinder block wall behind the back. On the side is a galvanized bucket. If you look into it, you will see a circle of sponge exactly the size of a metal helmet. Before execution, it is soaked in brine to better conduct the direct current charge running through the wire through the sponge directly into the brain of the condemned person.