Percy Shoots William Wharton

Percy Wetmore shoots William Wharton to death in a sudden, brutal act that ends the life of one condemned man and completes the psychological destruction of another. The shooting occurs on the Green Mile of E Block at Cold Mountain Penitentiary, moments after Percy has been released from the restraint room where Edgecombe and the other guards confined him during their secret night journey to bring John Coffey to heal Melinda Moores. The event is the direct consequence of John Coffey's transfer of the brain tumor—and the madness it had caused—from Melinda into Percy, a transfer that leaves Percy catatonic and homicidal, while simultaneously revealing the true nature of the violence that has been building on the block since Wharton's arrival.

Causes and Background

The shooting is the culmination of a chain of events set in motion by John Coffey's healing of Melinda Moores. During the night journey, Coffey had drawn the tumor out of Melinda's body, but instead of expelling it as he had done with Paul's urinary infection and Mr. Jingles's broken back, he held it inside himself. Later, when Percy—freshly released from the restraint room and still furious at his humiliation—walked too close to Coffey's cell, Coffey reached through the bars, grabbed Percy by the neck, and transferred the tumor into him through a kiss. Percy immediately began to cough and choke, and a cloud of black, swirling stuff emerged from his mouth, turning white and disappearing. From that moment, Percy was no longer himself; he stood with blank eyes, his mind shattered. The guards, realizing what had happened, quickly concocted a cover story, but the damage was done. Percy, now a vessel for the tumor's madness, was a walking time bomb.

What Happens

Percy, still in his uniform and carrying his revolver, walks up the Green Mile after being released from the restraint room. He is disoriented, his eyes vacant, and he lists to one side as he moves. He stops outside William Wharton's cell, where Wharton lies sleeping on his bunk, heavily drugged from the morphine the guards had put in his soda pop earlier that night. Without warning, Percy draws his revolver and empties all six shots into the sleeping man: "bam-bam-bam, bam-bam-bam, as fast as he could pull the trigger." The sound is deafening in the enclosed space. Wharton, who had been snoring loudly, never wakes; he dies instantly, shot once in the groin, once in the gut, once in the chest, and three times in the head. Percy then simply lets the gun fall from his hand. His bladder and bowels release, and he stands staring into a corner, his eyes never seeing the real world again. He is catatonic, a condition from which he will never recover.

Consequences and Aftermath

The immediate aftermath is chaos. The guards—Paul Edgecombe, Brutus Howell, Harry Terwilliger, and Dean Stanton—rush to the cell, but there is nothing to be done. Wharton is dead, and Percy is a mindless shell. The guards quickly realize that the shooting, while a catastrophe, also provides a convenient cover story: Percy, driven mad by the stress of the botched Delacroix execution and Wharton's earlier harassment, had snapped and killed the prisoner. The truth—that John Coffey had transferred the tumor into Percy, and that Percy had then acted as Coffey's unwitting instrument of vengeance—must never be revealed. The guards agree on a simple, edited version of events: Percy had been quiet all night, then suddenly drew his gun and shot Wharton without warning. The story holds, and the subsequent investigation, inquest, and Board of Enquiry accept it without serious challenge. Percy is sent to Briar Ridge, a state mental hospital, where he remains catatonic until his death in 1965. Wharton's body is removed, and the case is closed. The shooting, however, leaves a permanent scar on the guards, particularly Edgecombe, who understands that he has been complicit in a kind of execution—one carried out not by the state, but by a force he cannot fully comprehend. The event also seals John Coffey's fate; with Wharton dead, there is no possibility of reopening the investigation into the Detterick murders, and Coffey's own execution proceeds as scheduled.