Night Journey to Heal Melinda Moores

The Night Journey to Heal Melinda Moores is the secret, illegal expedition in which four E Block guards—Paul Edgecombe, Brutus Howell, Harry Terwilliger, and Dean Stanton—remove John Coffey from Cold Mountain Penitentiary and transport him to the home of Warden Hal Moores, where Coffey uses his healing power to draw a brain tumor out of the warden's dying wife, Melinda. The event occurs on the night after Eduard Delacroix's horrific execution, a botched electrocution that Percy Wetmore deliberately sabotaged by using a dry sponge, and it represents the guards' desperate attempt to atone for their complicity in that death and to test the limits of Coffey's mysterious gift. The journey transforms each participant's understanding of Coffey, confirms his innocence of the Detterick twins' murders, and sets in motion the catastrophe that ends with Percy shooting William Wharton and then lapsing into permanent catatonia.

Causes and Background

The night journey is born from a convergence of moral crises. The botched execution of Eduard Delacroix—in which Percy Wetmore, using a dry sponge, caused the condemned man's face to catch fire and his eyeballs to burst from their sockets—leaves Edgecombe, Howell, Terwilliger, and Stanton haunted by their own role in the atrocity. Edgecombe, who had already experienced a miraculous healing of his urinary infection at Coffey's hands, and who had watched Coffey restore Delacroix's crushed mouse, Mr. Jingles, to life, begins to see a possible redemption: if Coffey can heal a man's infection and a mouse's broken back, perhaps he can save Melinda Moores, who is dying of a brain tumor that the doctors at Indianola have declared inoperable. The warden's wife has begun to swear uncontrollably and to lose control of her body; her husband, Hal Moores, is a broken man. Edgecombe calls his three most trusted colleagues to his home for lunch the day after Delacroix's execution and lays out his plan. He argues that taking Coffey to Melinda is an act of atonement—"in my church they call it atonement instead of balancing," he tells them—and that the risk of losing their jobs is worth the chance to save a life. The men are initially skeptical, but Edgecombe reveals a crucial piece of evidence: Coffey cannot tie his own shoes. This fact, combined with the detail that the lunch found in Coffey's pocket when he was arrested had been wrapped in butcher's twine, suggests that someone else—not Coffey—had prepared that lunch and fed the sausages to the Dettericks' dog. The men begin to believe that Coffey may be innocent of the murders for which he is condemned to die.

The Plan and the Escape from E Block

The plan requires careful coordination. On the night of the journey, Edgecombe, Howell, Terwilliger, and Stanton drug William Wharton with morphine pills dissolved in a bottle of R.C. Cola, rendering him unconscious. They then confront Percy Wetmore in Edgecombe's office, overpower him, strap him into a straitjacket, tape his mouth shut with friction-tape, and lock him in the restraint room at the far end of the Green Mile. The guards have rehearsed a cover story: if anyone asks, Coffey became upset and had to be restrained, and the other men are over in the laundry, "washing their clothes." With Percy secured and Wharton unconscious, the four men escort John Coffey out of his cell. Coffey, who has been sitting on the end of his bunk with his hands clasped, seems to know what is happening; when Howell asks if he wants to go for a ride, Coffey replies, "Yes, sir. I reckon." He refuses to be chained. The group moves through the storage room, past the electric chair—where Coffey pauses, staring at it, and murmurs, "They're still in there. Pieces of them, still in there. I hear them screaming"—and down into the tunnel that runs under the highway. At the far end, Edgecombe uses the Aladdin master key to unlock the bulkhead door, and the four men emerge onto the shoulder of the road, a quarter-mile from the prison walls. Harry Terwilliger's Farmall truck is hidden under pine boughs a short walk away. Coffey rides in the back, wrapped in an old blanket, staring up at the stars with a look of "sublime unthinking happiness." For the first time since his arrival on E Block, his tears have stopped.

The Healing of Melinda Moores

The truck arrives at the Mooreses' Cape Cod house on Chimney Ridge shortly after two-thirty in the morning. Warden Moores, awakened by the noise, meets them at the door with a cocked Buntline Special revolver, but Coffey calmly takes the gun from his hand and passes it to Edgecombe. The warden's wife, Melinda, is in the back bedroom, propped up against the headboard. She is emaciated, her skin the color of parchment, her face fallen away to show the shape of the skull. The tumor has caused her to swear uncontrollably; she calls out obscenities as the men enter. Coffey ignores the profanity. He sits on the bed beside her, takes her hands, and looks into her eyes. "I see it," he says. "I see it, and I can help." He bends forward and presses his mouth to hers, inhaling deeply. The house shakes—a grandfather clock falls over in the parlor, a windowpane cracks, a picture crashes to the floor. Smoke rises from the counterpane where Melinda's foot is jittering. Coffey inhales for what seems like an eternity, and then he pulls away. Melinda's face has smoothed out; the droop on the right side of her mouth is gone; her eyes have regained their normal shape. Some of her hair has turned back to black. She sits up, asks where she is, and remembers nothing of her illness. Coffey, however, is devastated. He falls to his knees, coughing violently, his skin turning gray. He has swallowed the tumor—the "black insects" that he usually expels—rather than spitting it out, and the effort has nearly killed him. Melinda, restored, hugs him and gives him her St. Christopher medal. "I dreamed you were wandering in the dark, and so was I," she tells him. "We found each other."

Consequences and Aftermath

The return journey is harrowing. Coffey is too weak to walk; the guards must push him back through the tunnel on the gurney. He is gray-faced, coughing, barely conscious. When they finally get him back to his cell, he collapses on his bunk. The guards then release Percy from the restraint room, expecting him to be furious but manageable. Instead, Percy is eerily calm. He walks up the Green Mile, and as he passes William Wharton's cell, John Coffey—who has been lying on his bunk—reaches through the bars, grabs Percy by the neck, and presses his mouth to Percy's. He transfers the tumor—the "black, swirling tide"—into Percy's body. Percy screams, then goes blank. He draws his revolver and empties all six shots into the sleeping Wharton, killing him instantly. Percy then falls into a catatonic state from which he never recovers; he is sent to Briar Ridge, where he remains silent and blank until his death in 1965. The guards, terrified, agree on a cover story: Percy went crazy and shot Wharton. The investigation never uncovers the truth. John Coffey is executed on November 20, 1932, still weeping, still afraid of the dark. The night journey, which saved Melinda Moores's life, also sealed Coffey's fate and destroyed Percy Wetmore's mind. It is the event that finally convinces Edgecombe that Coffey is innocent—and that the justice system has condemned a gift of God to die.