Coffey on the Mile

11

I WAS ALL RIGHT until I got home. It was dawn by then, and birds singing. I parked my flivver, I got out, I walked up the back steps, and then the second greatest grief I have ever known washed over me. It was thinking of how he’d been afraid of the dark that did it. I remembered the first time we’d met, how he’d asked if we left a light on at night, and my legs gave out on me. I sat on my steps and hung my head over my knees and cried. It didn’t feel like that weeping was just for John, either, but for all of us.

Janice came out and sat down beside me. She put an arm over my shoulders.

“You didn’t hurt him any more than you could help, did you?”

I shook my head no.

“And he wanted to go.”

I nodded.

“Come in the house,” she said, helping me up. It made me think of the way John had helped me up after we’d prayed together. “Come in and have coffee.”

I did. The first morning passed, and the first afternoon, then the first shift back at work. Time takes it all, whether you want it to or not. Time takes it all, time bears it away, and in the end there is only darkness. Sometimes we find others in that darkness, and sometimes we lose them there again. That’s all I know, except that this happened in 1932, when the state penitentiary was still at Cold Mountain.

And the electric chair, of course.