Coffey's Hands

Coffey's Hands is the third instalment of The Green Mile by Stephen King, published in 1996 by Penguin. The work was issued as a sequence of short books rather than as a single volume.

Two developments carry this part. Paul Edgecombe's persistent bladder infection is healed by John Coffey, which is how the guard learns what the condemned man is capable of, and the discovery changes what Edgecombe thinks about the crime Coffey has been sentenced for. In the same stretch of the narrative, Eduard Delacroix trains the mouse Mr Jingles to perform tricks and becomes attached to the animal.

The mouse matters because of who objects. The instalment structure means the reveal here lands before the book has supplied its consequences. The instalments were published separately through 1996 and then gathered as one novel, which is why a section like this can end on a discovery rather than a resolution. The healing is the first proof of what Coffey is, and Percy's treatment of the mouse is the first proof of what Percy is, so the two halves of the section pull in opposite directions.