Execution of John Coffey

The execution of John Coffey on November 20, 1932, is the moral and emotional climax of the Green Mile narrative, the moment when the state destroys a man it has wrongly condemned and the guards who know his innocence must become his executioners. It is a cold, starry night, seasonably cold for that time of year, with frost glittering on fenceposts and the dry skeletons of July's corn. Brutus Howell is out front for this one, taking the role of capping the condemned and giving the order to roll on two. Bill Dodge is in the switch room with Jack Van Hay. At around eleven-twenty, Paul Edgecombe, Dean Stanton, and Harry Terwilliger go down to the one occupied cell, where John Coffey sits on the end of his bunk with his hands clasped between his knees and a tiny dab of meatloaf gravy on the collar of his blue shirt. He looks out through the bars at them, a lot calmer than they feel. Edgecombe's hands are cold and his temples are throbbing; it is one thing to know Coffey is willing, but another to know they are about to electrocute him for someone else's crime.

The Walk and the Prayer

Edgecombe steps into the cell, followed by Dean and Harry, both pale and downcast. He asks if Coffey is ready, and Coffey nods. Edgecombe recites the formal death-warrant speech to the end. When he finishes, Harry Terwilliger steps up and holds out his hand; Coffey, surprised, smiles and shakes it. Dean, paler than ever, offers his next and says hoarsely, "You deserve better than this, Johnny. I'm sorry." Coffey replies, "I be all right. This the hard part; I be all right in a little while." He gets up, and the St. Christopher medal Melinda Moores gave him swings free of his shirt. Edgecombe takes it, explaining that if it were lying against his skin when the current was switched on, it might fuse into his flesh or leave a charred photograph of itself on his chest. Coffey slips the chain over his head and puts the medallion in Edgecombe's pocket. As they walk the Green Mile, Coffey tells Edgecombe he dreamed about Delacroix's mouse, Mr. Jingles, that afternoon: he dreamed the mouse got down to Mouseville, that there were kids laughing at his tricks, and that the two little blond-headed girls were there too, laughing, with no blood coming out of their hair. They go into Edgecombe's office. Coffey drops to his knees without having to be asked. Edgecombe gets down on his knees with him. Coffey asks what they should pray for, and Edgecombe says, "Strength," then prays aloud: "Lord God of Hosts, please help us finish what we've started, and please welcome this man, John Coffey—like the drink but not spelled the same—into heaven and give him peace." As Edgecombe starts to get up, Coffey catches his arm and says he remembers a prayer someone taught him when he was little. He closes his eyes and says, "Baby Jesus, meek and mild, pray for me, an orphan child. Be my strength, be my friend, be with me until the end. Amen." He opens his eyes, starts to get up, then looks at Edgecombe closely. Edgecombe wipes his arm across his eyes, thinking of Delacroix, who had wanted to pray one more at the end too. Coffey squeezes his arm and smiles, then helps Edgecombe to his feet.

The Execution

There are not many witnesses—maybe fourteen in all, half the number that had been in the storage room for the Delacroix execution. Sheriff Homer Cribus is there, overflowing his chair as usual. Sitting in the front row is an elderly couple Edgecombe does not recognize at first, even though he has seen their pictures in many newspaper articles. As they near the platform where Old Sparky waits, the woman spits, "Die slow, you son of a bitch!" and Edgecombe realizes they are Klaus and Marjorie Detterick, the parents of the murdered twins. They have aged terribly; they look like elderly people who have not yet climbed out of their thirties. Coffey hunches his shoulders at the sound of her voice and Cribus's grunt of approval. Brutus Howell, standing beside Old Sparky, gives Edgecombe a small finger-tilt as they step up onto the platform. He holsters his sidearm and takes Coffey's wrist, escorting him toward the electric chair as gently as a boy leading his date out onto the dance floor. Coffey says he can feel the hate from the people watching, that it hurts, bores in like bee-stings. Howell tells him to feel how they feel, that they don't hate him. Coffey says he can feel that, but his voice is trembling and his eyes have begun to leak their slow tears again. Marjorie Detterick suddenly screams, "Kill him twice, you boys! You go on and kill that raping baby-killer twice, that'd be just fine!" Coffey cringes against Edgecombe and moans. Klaus Detterick pulls her against his shoulder and she begins to sob. Edgecombe sees with dismay that Harry Terwilliger is crying too. Howell and Edgecombe turn Coffey around. Howell presses on one of the big man's shoulders and Coffey sits. He grips 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 Edgecombe drop to their knees. The day before, they had one of the shop trusties weld temporary flexible extensions to the chair's ankle clamps, because Coffey's ankles are nigh on the size of an ordinary fellow's calves. Edgecombe has a nightmarish moment when he thinks the clamps will still come up small, but with a final extra-hard shove the clamp on his side closes. Coffey's leg jerks and he gasps; Edgecombe has pinched him. Harry gets his clamp fixed more easily, but looks at the result with a doubtful expression; the modified clamps have a hungry look, their jaws seeming to gape like the mouths of alligators. Howell has clamped one of Coffey's wrists, Dean the other. Dean nods to Howell. Howell turns his head, seems to glance at the telephone that is never going to ring for the likes of John Coffey, and calls "Roll on one!" to Jack Van Hay. There is that hum, like an old fridge kicking on, and the lights burn a little brighter. Their shadows stand out a little sharper, black shapes that climb the wall and seem to hover around the shadow of the chair like vultures. Coffey draws in a sharp breath. His knuckles are white. Mrs. Detterick shrieks brokenly, "Does it hurt yet? I hope it does! I hope it hurts like hell!" Her husband squeezes her; one side of his nose is bleeding, a narrow trickle of red working its way down into his narrow-gauge mustache. Howell steps into Coffey's field of vision and touches his shoulder as he speaks, which is irregular, but of the witnesses only Curtis Anderson knows it, and he does not seem to remark it. Coffey relaxes beneath Howell's fingers. Howell recites the formal question: "John Coffey, you have been condemned to die in the electric chair, sentence passed by a jury of your peers and imposed by a judge of good standing in this state. God save the people of this state. Do you have anything to say before sentence is carried out?" Coffey wets his lips again, then speaks clearly: "I'm sorry for what I am." The mother of the two dead girls screams, "You ought to be! Oh you monster, you ought to be! YOU DAMN WELL OUGHT TO BE!" Coffey's eyes turn to Edgecombe. Edgecombe sees no resignation in them, no hope of heaven, no dawning peace; what he sees is fear, misery, incompletion, and incomprehension—the eyes of a trapped and terrified animal.

The Final Moments

Howell takes the new mask from its brass hook on the back of the chair, but as soon as Coffey sees it and understands what it is, his eyes widen in horror. He looks at Edgecombe, huge droplets of sweat standing out on the curve of his naked skull as big as robin's eggs. He says in a moaning little whisper, "Please, boss, don't put that thing over my face. Please don't put me in the dark, don't make me go into the dark, I's afraid of the dark." Howell is frozen in place, the mask in his hands, his eyes asking Edgecombe to make the call. Edgecombe thinks as fast as he can: the mask is tradition, not law, and it is meant to spare the witnesses. He decides the witnesses do not need to be spared, not this once; Coffey has not done a damned thing in his life to warrant dying under a mask. He murmurs, "All right, John." Howell puts the mask back. From behind them, Homer Cribus calls out indignantly, "Say, boy! Put that-air mask on him! Think we want to watch his eyes pop?" Edgecombe tells him to be quiet, that this is an execution and he is not in charge of it. Harry whispers, "Any more than you were in charge of catching him, you tub of guts." Howell bends over and plucks the disk of sponge out of its bucket. He presses a finger into it and licks the tip, but he hardly has to; the ugly brown thing is dripping. He tucks it into the cap, then puts the cap on Coffey's head. Edgecombe sees that Howell is pale too, pasty white, on the verge of passing out. Water from the sponge is dripping down the sides of Coffey's face. Dean Stanton runs the strap—let out to its maximum length on this occasion—across Coffey's chest and gives it to Edgecombe. Howell checks the strap, then stands back. Edgecombe waits for him to speak, but he does not. As Howell crosses his hands behind his back and stands at parade rest, Edgecombe knows that he will not, perhaps cannot. Edgecombe does not think he can either, but then he looks at Coffey's terrified, weeping eyes and knows he has to. He says in a dusty, cracking voice he hardly recognizes as his own, "Roll on two." The cap hums. Eight large fingers and two large thumbs rise from the ends of the chair's broad oak arms and splay tensely in ten different directions, their tips jittering. Coffey's big knees make caged pistoning motions, but the clamps on his ankles hold. Overhead, three of the hanging lights blow out—Pow! Pow! Pow! Marjorie Detterick screams at the sound and faints in her husband's arms. Coffey surges forward against the chest-strap. For a moment his eyes meet Edgecombe's. They are aware; Edgecombe is the last thing he sees as they tilt him off the edge of the world. Then he falls against the seatback, the cap coming askew on his head a little, smoke—a sort of charry mist—drifting out from beneath it. It is quick. The hands are limp again, the formerly bluish-white moons at the base of the fingernails now a deep eggplant hue, a tendril of smoke rising off cheeks still wet with salt water from the sponge and his tears. John Coffey's last tears.

Aftermath and Significance

Edgecombe is all right until he gets home at dawn. He parks his car, gets out, walks up the back steps, and then the second greatest grief he has ever known washes over him. It is thinking of how Coffey had been afraid of the dark that does it. He remembers the first time they met, how Coffey asked if they left a light on at night, and his legs give out on him. He sits on his steps and hangs his head over his knees and cries. It does not feel like that weeping is just for Coffey, but for all of them. Janice comes out and sits beside him, puts an arm over his shoulders, and asks if he did not hurt Coffey any more than he could help. He shakes his head no. She asks if Coffey wanted to go. He nods. She helps him up, making him think of the way Coffey had helped him up after they prayed together, and leads him inside for coffee. The execution of John Coffey is the last execution Paul Edgecombe ever participates in. He and Brutus Howell agree that night in the restraint room, over the colored splinters of Mr. Jingles's spool, that they cannot do this work any longer. Neither of them ever takes part in another execution. John Coffey is the last. The event also permanently alters Edgecombe's body: Coffey's touch during their conversation two days before the execution inoculates him with life, making him resistant to the diseases and injuries that eventually bring down other people. Edgecombe will live to be over a hundred years old, outliving all his friends and his wife, and will come to understand that sometimes there is no difference at all between salvation and damnation.