He was Brutus Howel, but everybody called him Brutal. .
It also happened to be the summer that Percy Wetmore came to the block. He was one of those people who could only get a job because he had the right connections. His uncle was the governor at the time. He was a raging inferno, doing whatever he wanted whenever he wanted to. There was no way that Percy belonged on death row, he had no control. He treated the prisoners like they were nothing and tried to treat the other guards the same way. Everything is a circle and eventually Percy got his due. I digress, Paul and Percy had a mutual hatred for each other. Paul hated Percy because he ran things his way and Percy hated Paul because nobody could tell him what to do.
Percy came to the block like an out of control animal. Nobody liked him. He was young, arrogant and impossible to control. His uncle was the person who got him the job. He reminded you that there was nothing you could do about it every chance he could. He was like a loose cannon, ready to go off in any direction at any time. Paul tried to teach him the way things were done on his block. However like most people who thought that they knew everything, Percy just did what he wanted. The day the most remarkable prisoner The Green Mile had ever seen started with Percy yelling, "dead man walking!".
He must have seen it in some movie, because nobody was ever introduced to The Green Mile that way. However Percy had always done things his way. It didn't surprise anybody that Percy used the first chance he had to make the new prisoner feel worse than you already could, knowing that this would be the last time you would ever see the sky, except for through the bars of a small cage. That was John Coffeys introduction to The Mile. .
Everyone else's introduction to John Coffey however was quite different. Imagine if you could the biggest person you had ever seen in your life. Now add a hundred pounds or so and make him black.
