the cigar box

The cigar box that became Mr. Jingles's home began its life on E Block as a piece of prison commerce. Old Toot-Toot, the trusty who ran the snack cart, kept a Corona cigar box among his wares, and it was this box that Percy Wetmore, of all people, suggested Delacroix might buy for his new pet mouse. Delacroix had only four pennies, but Dean Stanton and Paul Edgecombe each added a cent, and after some haggling, Toot agreed to what Brutal Howell called "a great price for renting one" — the box would be returned after Delacroix's execution. Percy, acting on a promise extracted by Warden Moores, sneaked cotton batting from the dispensary to line the bottom, and the "Mousie Hilton" was open for business.

The Box as Home and Stage

From the moment Delacroix lowered Mr. Jingles into the box, the mouse accepted it as his own. He snuggled into the white cotton as if it were a fine comforter, and from that night on, the cigar box was his home. Delacroix kept the box spotlessly clean — no mouse droppings ever appeared inside it, a fact that amazed the guards. The box also became the stage for Mr. Jingles's most celebrated trick: when Delacroix rolled a brightly colored wooden spool across the cell floor, the mouse would chase it, nose it back, and return to the box, where he would settle down again, his tail curled around his paws. The guards — Brutal, Harry Terwilliger, Dean Stanton, even Bill Dodge — would gather to watch, and Delacroix would trumpet, "Maintenant, m'sieurs et mesdames! Le cirque présentement le mous' amusant et amazeant!"

The Peppermint and the Spool

The box also held the props of Mr. Jingles's act. Delacroix kept a supply of peppermint candies, sent by an old maiden aunt, and the mouse would sit beside him, holding a pink mint in his paws and munching contentedly, his white-furred belly distending. The colored spool — one end yellow, the other green, the drum firehouse red — was stored in the box when not in use. Harry Terwilliger had brought crayons from the restraint room so Delacroix could color the spool, making Mr. Jingles a "circus mouse." The box thus became a repository not just of a pet, but of a condemned man's last joy.

The Box's Fate and the End of a World

Old Toot-Toot had worried that the box would be ruined by mouse droppings, but Brutal assured him it would be returned clean. "Delacroix will keep the box clean enough to eat a church dinner out of," he said. "The way he loves that mouse, he'd lick it clean if that's what it took." After Delacroix's botched execution, the box was indeed returned to Toot, as promised. But the world it had contained — the world of a murderer and his mouse, of peppermint and colored spools and the brief, improbable happiness of a man about to die — was gone. The box itself, a simple object of wood and paper, outlasted the life it had sheltered, a mute witness to the fragile, humane bonds that could form even on the Green Mile.