Pleasure Reading 5

Part 5

Night Journey

The narrator had spoken to Hal Moores that morning, and he had told him that Melinda's brain tumor had caused her to lapse into bouts of cursing and foul language...The quavering in his voice, coupled with the memory of how John Coffey had healed both my urinary infection and the broken back of Delacroix's pet mouse, had finally pushed me over the line that runs between just thinking about a thing and actually doing a thing. When the narrator suggested that another miracle might result if he with his friends took John Coffey to Melinda Moores. Brutal came on the block at quarter to seven, Dean at ten 'til. It was twenty-five miles to Hal Moores's house on Chimney Ridge sitting back there with John Coffey. Brutal and the narrator had just reached the foot of the steps when the front door was hauled open hard enough to flap the brass knocker against its plate. There stood Hal Moores in blue pajama pants, clasped in his right hand, it was fully cocked. From somewhere behind him, a weak and wavery female voice called and he turned in that direction for just a moment, his face confused and despairing. John Coffey took the play out of our hands. He pushed into the entry and past Moores, who raised a single strengthless hand to stop him. John paid no attention, just went stolidly along. The woman in the back bedroom, propped up against the headboard and staring wall-eyed at the giant who had come into her muddled sight, didn't look at all like the Melly Moores. Closer he bent, and closer still. For a moment his huge face stopped less than two inches from hers. John Coffey went on kissing her in that deep and intimate way, inhaling. Melinda shook free of Hal's hand and ran as lightly as a girl to where John stood. She put her arms around him and gave him another hug. Then she reached around to the nape of her neck and pulled a fine-link chain out of her bodice. At the end of it was a silver medallion. She held it out to John, who looked at it uncomprehendingly. John took it, slipped the chain around his bullneck, and dropped the St. Christopher medallion into the front of his shirt.