the peppermint candies

The peppermint candies, large pink disks marketed under the name Canada Mints, arrive on E Block in a five-pound bag sent to Eduard Delacroix by his maiden aunt, his only remaining relation. The bag is too large to be given to the prisoner all at once—Delacroix, like almost every murderer who ever walked the Green Mile, has no understanding of moderation—so the guards dole them out half a dozen at a time, and only when he remembers to ask. The candies quickly become the centerpiece of Delacroix's new life with the mouse he calls Mr. Jingles.

The Mouse and the Mint

Mr. Jingles is first seen eating one of the pink mints while sitting beside Delacroix on his bunk, holding the candy in his paws and munching contentedly. The candy is half the size of the mouse, and his white-furred belly is already distended from it. Brutus Howell, alarmed, warns Delacroix that the mouse will eat until he bursts, and Delacroix, looking nervously at Mr. Jingles's belly, takes the half-eaten mint away. The mouse gives it up meekly, then plops down into his cigar box, lying on his side in an exhausted way that makes the watching guards laugh. From that point on, the guards become accustomed to seeing the mouse sitting beside Delacroix, holding a mint and munching away as neatly as an old lady at an afternoon tea-party, both of them surrounded by the half-bitter, half-sweet smell of peppermint candy.

A Ghostly Trace

Months later, long after Delacroix's execution and Mr. Jingles's disappearance from the block, Brutus Howell discovers the mouse's secret hiding place. In the restraint room, high up in a hole where two roof beams are joined, Howell finds a stash of tiny, brightly colored splinters of wood—the remains of the spool Mr. Jingles used to chase. When Paul Edgecombe climbs up to investigate, he puts his face close to the hole and is struck by a powerful smell: the keen breath of a winter night, and something else. The smell of peppermint. The scent of the candies, which had permeated Delacroix's cell and the mouse's fur, has lingered in that hidden space, a ghostly testament to the bond between the man and his pet, and to the mouse's strange, almost human capacity for memory and attachment. The discovery of the peppermint-scented hole, along with the colored splinters, is the moment that finally convinces Edgecombe he can no longer work on the Green Mile.