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Mr. H. G. Wells once wrote a story about a man who invented a time machine, and I have discovered that, in the writing of these memoirs, I have created my own time machine. Unlike Wells's, it can only travel into the past—^back to 1932, as a matter of fact, when I was the bull-goose screw in E Block of Cold Mountain State Penitentiary—^but it's eerily efficient, for all that. Still, this time machine reminds me of the old Ford I had in those days: you could be sure that it would start eventually, but you never knew if a turn of the key would be enough to fire the motor, or if you were going to have to get out and crank until your arm practically fell off.
I've had a lot of easy starts since I started telling the story of John Coffey, but yesterday I had to crank. I think it was because I'd gotten to Delacroix's execution, and part of my mind didn't want to have to relive that. It was a bad death, a terrible death, and it happened the way it did because of Percy Wet-more, a young man who loved to comb his hair but couldn't stand to be laughed at—not even by a half-