If the walls of Cold Mountain Penitentiary could talk, they could tell you many stories. When you had been around as long as they had, you saw things. They had seen the deaths of many people. In fact, they had been the downfall of most of them. This was the last stop before going to hell. Most prisons call their death row the Last Mile. This one called theirs The Green Mile. Out of all the stories these walls could have seen in their day, one stood out the most. It just happened to be the last execution these walls would ever see. The year was 1932. The great depression was going on everywhere in America. Killing people for a living was not the best way to make money, but it was one of the few ways to put bread on the table. The head honcho of the Green Mile was Paul Edgecombe. He had a quiet way about him. He saw seventy-seven people put to death during his tenure in The Green Mile. This was his story, his version of the memorable events that happened during that miraculous fall of 1932. It also happened to be the year of Paul's worst urinary infection in his life, but that came into play later.
Paul and the other regular guards of The Green Mile cellblock ran a tight ship. They had a certain way of handling everything. Nobody addressed each other by their first name. It was ammunition that you didn't want to give prisoners who were going to die. They made the prisoners call them boss. When someone arrived on The Green Mile he was introduced to death row as formally as possible. Three of the guards would walk him into his cell where Boss Edgecombe would be waiting. In a quiet but firm voice that commanded control, Paul would lay out the rules of The Mile, what he expected from the prisoners and what they could expect from him or any of the other regular guards.
A typical shift on the Green Mile consisted of four guards. Two or three regular guards with one or two floaters filling in the ranks. Like all good bosses, Paul had his right hand man, the guy you would talk to if Paul wasn't around.