Rita hayworth and shawshank redemption pdf download

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If the survey takes only 5 minutes, try any poll that works for you. No text content! Rita Hayworth and Shawshank Redemption there's a guy like me in every state and federal prison in America, I think -- I'm the guy who can get it for you. Tailor made a cigarette, a sack of riffer, if you aside from this, a bottle of cognac to celebrate your son or daughter in high school graduation, or anything else within reason, that is. It wasn't always like that. I came to Shawshank when I was only twenty and I am one of the few people in our happy little family willing to own up to what he did. I committed a murder. I installed a large insurance policy on my wife - who was three years older than me - and then I set the brakes on the Chevrolet coupe her father gave us as awedding present. It worked out exactly as I had planned - except that I didn't plan for her to stop to pick up a neighbor's woman and the son of a neighbor woman on the way down Castle Hill and into town. The brakes were released and carcrashed through the bushes on the outskirts of the city overall, the speed of the collection. Passers-by said he must have been making fifty or better when he hit the base of the Civil War statue and caught fire. I also didn't plan on getting caught, but caught me. I have a seasonal pass to this place. Maine has no death penalty, but the district attorney saw to him that I was tried for all three deaths and received three life sentences to run one after the other. This has documented any on parole, which I could have had for a long, long time. The judge called what I am made a disgusting, heinous crime and it was; but it's also in the past now. You can watch it in the yellowing files of Castle Rock Call, where the big headlines announcing my belief looksort funny and antique next to the news of Hitler and Mussolini and FDR'salphabet soup agencies. I've rehabilitated myself, you ask? I don't even know what that word means as far as prisons and corrections are concerned. I think that's the word politics. It may have some other meaning, and it's possible that I'll have a chance to find out, but it's the future - something of a disadvantage to teach myself not to think. I was young, looking good, and from a poor part of town. I knocked down, grinning, stubborn girl who lived in one of the beautiful old houses on Carbin Street. Her father was willing to marry if I wanted to take a jobin optical company he owned and work my way up. I learned that what here meant, kept me in his house and under my thumb like an adisagreeable pet that is not quite a household and which can bite. Enoughhate eventually piled up to get me to do what I did. Given the second chance, I wouldn't do it again, but I'm not sure that means I'm rehabilitated. Anyway, it's not me, I want to tell you about; I want to tell you about a guy named Andy Dufresne. But before I can tell you about Andy, I have to explain afew other things about myself. It won't take long. Like I said, I've been the guy who can get it for you here in Shawshank for a heck of forty years. And that doesn't just mean contraband items such as extra 1cigarettes or booze, although these items are always top of the list. But I've got other items for men doing time here, some of them are perfectly legalyet hard to find in a place where you were supposedly brought to bepunished. There was one guy who was raping a little girl and exposing himself to dozens of others; I got him three pieces of pink Vermont marble and he made three lovely sculptures of them - a kid, a boy about twelve years old, and an abearded young man. He called them Three Centuries of Jesus, and these parts of the cult are now in the living room of a man who was once the governor of that state. Or here's a name you remember if you grew up north of Massachusetts-RobertAlan Cat. In 1951, he tried to rob the First Commodity Bank of Mechanical Falls, and the seizure turned into a bloodbath - six dead in the end, two of them gang members, three of them hostages, one of them a young state policeman who put his head in the wrong time and was shot in the eye. Cat had a penny collection. Naturally, they weren't going to let him have him here, but with the help of his mother and the middleman who used to drive the laundry I was able to get it for him. I told him, Bobby, you must be crazy, wanting to have a collection of coins in a stone hotel full of thieves. He looked at me with me. and said, I know where to keep them. They'll be safe. Don't be inspired. And he was right. Bobby the Cat died of a brain tumor in 1967, but this coin never appeared. I got men's candy for Valentine's Day; I got three of these greenmilkshakes they serve at McDonald's around St. Paddy's Day for the crazy Irishmannamed O'Malley; I even organized a midnight screening of Deep Throat and TheDevil's Miss Jones to a party of twenty people who pooled their resources torent movies . . . although I ended up doing a week in solitary for this antics. It's a risk that you risk when you're the guy who can get it. I've got handbooks and fuck-books, jokes novelties like hand buzzers and itchy powder, and on more than one occasion I've seen that longtime hasgotten pair of panties from his wife or his girlfriend . . . and I think you'll know what the guys here do with such elements for long nights when time pulls out like a blade. I don't get all these things for free, and for someitems the price comes high. But I don't just do it for money; what good is that money for me? I will never own a Cadillac car or fly to Jamaica for two weeks in February. I do it for the same reason that a good butcher will only give you fresh meat: I've gained a reputation and I want to keep it. The only two I refuse to handle are guns and heavy drugs. I'm not going to help anyone kill myself or anyone else. I've had enough murders to work on all my life. Yes, I'm just Neiman-Marcus. And when Andy Dufresne came to me in 1949 and asked if I could bring Rita Hayworth to prison for him, I said it wouldn't be a problem. And it wasn't. 2II When Andy came to Shawshank in 1948, he was thirty years old. He was a short, neat little man with sandy hair and small, smart hands. He wore gold frames. His nails were always cut and they were always clean. It's a funny thing to remember about a man, I suppose, but it seems to be sumAndy for me. He always looked like he was supposed to wear a tie. On the side, he was vice president of the trust management of a major Portland bank. Good job for a man as young as he was, especially when you consider how conservative most banks are . . . and you have to multiply that conservatism byten when you get to New England where people don't like to trust a man with that money if he's bald, limping, and constantly plucking on his pants to get his farm around right. Andy was behind the murder of his wife and her lover. Like I said, everyone in prison is an innocent man. Oh, they read this scripture the way these holy videos on TV read the Book of Revelation.They were victims of judges with stone hearts and balls to match, orincompetent lawyers, or frames, or bad luck. They read the scriptures, but you can see another scripture in the Face. Most of the cons are low sort, not good for themselves or anyone else, and their worst luck is that their matists carried them to term. In all my years, there were fewer than ten people in Shawshank, whom I believed when I was told they were innocent. Andy Dufresne was one of them, although Ionli convinced himself of his innocence for several years. If I were on the jury that heard his case in the Portland Supreme Court for six tumultuous weeks in 1947-48, I'd have voted for a guilty verdict, too. It was a hell of a case, well; one of those juicy with all rightelements. In the dock was a beautiful girl with ties to society (dead), a local figure (also dead) and a famous young businessman. There was this, plus all the newspaper scandals might hint at. The charge is open and closed. The trial lasted only as long as it was because Dawas was planning to run for the U.S. House of Representatives, and he wanted John S. Public to get a good long look at his resume. It was a crackerjack legal circus, with onlookers queuing at four in the morning despite subzerotemperatures to reassure themselves in the seat. The facts of the accusation that Andy never challenged were as follows: that he had a wife, Linda Collins Dufresne; that in June 1947 she expressed an interest in studying golf at Falmouth Hills Country Club; thatshe really take lessons for four months; that her instructor was a Gulfmouth Hills golf pro, Glenn quentin; that at the end of August 1947, Andy learned that quentin and his wife had become lovers; that Andy and Linda Dufresne were arguing on the afternoon of September 10, 1947. that the subject of their 3argument was her infidelity. He testified that Linda confessed to be glad he knew, but he was sneaking around, she said, it was hard. She told Andy she was planning to divorce Reno. Andy told her he would see her in hell before he saw her in Reno. She went to spend time with quentin in a rented quentin bungalow near the golf course. The next morning, his cleaning lady found them both dead in bed. Each of them was shot four times. It was the last fact that is more against Andy than any other. The DA with political aspirations did much of it in his openingstatement and his closing summation. Andrew Dufresne, he said, was not wrongedhusband seeking hot blood revenge against his cheating wife; that, DAsaid, could be understood if not pandered. But this revenge was much more than one type. Consider! PROSECUTOR thundered at the jury. Four and four! Not six shots, but eight! He fired an empty gun... and then stopped to recharge sohe can shoot at each of them again! Four for him and four for her, ThePortland Sun blared. The Boston Register dubbed it Even Stephen The Killer. The clerk of the Wise Pawnshop in He testified that he sold six shots to Special Police Officer Andrew Dufresne just two days before the double murder. Abartender from the Country Club Bar revealed that Andy came about seveno'clock on the evening of September 10, threw three straight whiskeys twenty minutes when he got up from the stool bar he told thebartender that he was going to Glenn's house and he, the bartender, could read about the rest of it in the papers. Another clerk, one of the Handy-Pik stores a mile or so from quentin's home, told the court that Dufresne came about a block to nine that night. He bought cigarettes, three litres of beer and some dishtowels. The county medical examiner testified that quentin and the dufresne woman were killed between 11 a.m. and 2 a.m. on the night of September 10 to 11. A detective from the Attorney General's Office, who was responsible for the case, testified that the turnout was less than seventy yards from the bungalow, and that on the afternoon of September 11, three pieces of evidence were removed from that turnout: the first paragraph, two empty quarts of Narzragett beer (with fingerprint protection on them); second paragraph, twelve cigarettes ends (allKools, the defendant's brand); third item, a plaster cast from a set of tire mounts (exactly corresponding to the tread pattern and tire wear at Plymouth in 1947). In the living room of quentin's bungalow, four dishtowels were found lying on a sofa. There were bullet holes through them and powdered burns on them. Thedetective theorized (over the excruciating objections of Andy's lawyer) that themurderer wrapped towels around the muzzle of the murder weapon to drown out the sound of gunshots. 4Indi Dufresne stood up in his defense and told his story calmly, in cold blood and impassively. He said he started hearing disturbing rumors about his wife and Glenn quentin as early as last week in July. At the end of August he became distressed enough to explore a bit. On the evening of Linda's purchase in Portland after a golf lesson, Andyhad followed her and quentin into a two-bedroom rented house by quentin (inevitably a love nest by the newspapers). He parked in the turnout while quentin drove her back to the country club where her car was parked, about three hours later.You want to tell this court that you followed your wife in your brand-new Plymouth sedan? The DA asked him cross-examination. I swapped cars for an evening with a friend, Andy said, and it's cooladmission about how well planned his investigation was made him not good at all in the eyes of the jury. Back in a friend's car and taking his, he went home. Lindahad was in bed reading a book. He asked her how her trip to Portland was. She replied that was fun, but she didn't see anything that she liked wellenough to buy. That's when I knew for sure, Andy said gasping for breath. He spoke in the same calm, remote voice in which he gave almost all of his testimony. As the man reads the ashopping list he said he considered suicide and even went so faras to buy a gun in Lewiston on September 8. His lawyer then invited him to tell the jury what happened after his wife met Glenn quentin on the night of the murder. Andy told them... and the impression he made was the worst possible. I've known him for almost thirty years, and I can tell you that he was the most obsessed man I've ever known. What was right with it, it will only give you alittle at a time. What was wrong with him, he kept the bottles inside. If it were ever going to be a dark night of the soul, as a writer called it, you would never know. He was one of those people who, if he had decided to commit suicide, would have done so without leaving a note, but not until his cases were neatly set. If he cried on the testimony, or if his voice had thickened, even if he had started yelling at this Washington-affiliated district attorney, I don't think he would have received the life sentence from which he was on 5 May. Even if he did, he would have been paroled by 1954. Butha told his story as the recording machine appeared to tell the jury: It's isit. If you don't like it, don't eat. They left him. He said he was drunk that night, that he had been more or less drunk since August 24, and that he was a man who couldn't handle his liquor very well. Of course, this in itself would be difficult for any jury to swallow. They just couldn't see this cold-composure young man in a neat two-breasted three-piece suit ever getting a dip down drunk over his wife's sleazy little romance with some small town golf pro. I believed it because I had the opportunity to see what these six men and six women didn't have. Andy Dufresne only took four drinks a year the whole time I knew him. He'll take me to the exercise yard every year for about a week before his birthday and then again about two weeks before Christmas. Every time he used a bottle of Jack Daniel. He bought it the way most cons organize to buytheir things-slave wages they pay here, and a little about their own. Upuntil 1965 that you got for your time was a penny per hour. In '65, they lifted it by a quarter. My liquor commission was and is ten percent, and when you add to this surcharge to the price of a fine sippin' whiskey like the Black Jack, you get an idea of how many hours of Andy sweat in prison laundry going to going buy it four drinks a year. On the morning of his birthday, September 20th, he'd have bigknock himself and then he'd still be out that night after turning off the lights. The next day he would give the rest of the bottle back to me and I would share it around. As for the other bottle, he inflicted one drink on Christmas Night and another on New Year's Eve. Then this bottle will also come to me with instructions to pass iton. Four drinks a year and that's the behavior of a man who was bitten by a bottle. It's hard enough to draw blood. He told jurors that on the night of the tenth he was so drunk he couldn't remember what happened in the little isolated scraps. He got drunk that afternoon - I took on a double dose of Dutch courage is how he putit-before taking on Linda.After she left to meet quentin, he remembered deciding to confront them. He couldn't remember telling the bartender that he could read about the rest of the papers or tell him anything at all. He remembered puffing beer at Handy-Pik, but not dishtowels. Why do I want to do it? He asked, and one newspaper reported that three of the ladyjurors shuddered. Later, much later, he suggested to me about the clerk who testified on the 6subject of these dishtowels, and I think it's worth writing down what he said. Suppose that during their canvas for witnesses, Andy said once in theexercise yard, they stumble upon this guy who sold me beer that night. Bythen three days have passed. The facts of the case were widely stated in all documents. Maybe they gang on a guy, five or six cops, plus a dick from the attorney general's office as well as an assistant prosecutor. Memory is a pretty kind thing, Red. They could start with Isn't it possible that he bought four or five dishtowels? And worked their way out of there. If people want you to remember something, it can be quite powerful. The question is: At least it's possible that he convinced himself. It was the focus. Reporters ask him questions, his picture in the newspapers... all topped, of course, his star turn in court. I'm not saying he intentionally falsified his story or perjured himself. I think it's possible that he could have passed a lie detector test with flying flowers, or swore on his mother's sacred name that I bought these dishtowels. But still... I know this a lot: even if my own lawyer thought I should have lied abouthalf my story, he never bought that business about dishtowels. It's crazy at first. I was drunk, too drunk to think of Shots. If I had done that, I would have just let them rip. He drank beer and smoked cigarettes. He watched the lights go down in the place of quentin. He watched one light on the stairs... and fifteen minutes later he watched that one come out. He said he could guess the rest. Mr. Dufresne, did you then go up to Glenn quentin's house and kill two of them? His lawyer thundered. By midnight, he said, he had sobered up. He felt the first signs of a bad hangover. He decided to go home and sleepit off and think about it all in more adult fashion the next day. While I was driving home, I started to think that the wisest course would be to just let her go to Reno and get her divorce. Thank you, Mr. Dufresne. DA popped out. You divorced her in the quickest way you could think of, didn't you? Youdivorced her with a .38 revolver wrapped in dishtowels, didn't you? No, sir, I didn't, Andy said calmly. And then you shot your lover. I drank two quarts of beer and smoked as many cigarettes as the police found when I got there. Then I went home and went to bed. You told the jury that between August 24th and September 10th you had a sense of suicide. Sir. Suicide is enough to buy a revolver. It would bother you overmuch, Mr. Dufresne, if I told you that you don't seem to me to be a suicidal type? , and Idoubt is very much that if I felt suicidal, I would take my problem toyou. There was a slight tense giggle in the courtroom on this one, but he won his nopoints with the jury. Do you take your thirty-eight with you on the night of the tenth of September? As I testified. DA smiled sarcastically. The question is: You threw it into the river, didn't you? The Royal River. On the afternoon of September 9th. Yes sir. The day before the murder. 8 Yes, sir. It's convenient, isn't it? It's neither convenient nor inconvenient. Just the truth. Mincher was at the head of the party that was dragging a stretch of the Royal near pond road bridge, from which Andy testified that he dropped the gun. The police didn't find him. You know, I heard that. It was pretty handy, too, wasn't it? Convenience aside, it's a fact that they didn't find the gun, Andy replied. A: But I would like to point out to both you and the jury that the pondRoad Bridge is very close to where the Royal River flows into Theyarmouth Bay. Teh Strong. The gun may have been held in bayitself. And so there can be no comparison between slicing on bullets taken from the bloodied corpses of your wife and Mr. Glenn quentin and slicing on the barrel of your gun. That's right, isn't it, Mr. Dufresne? The question is: It's also pretty convenient, isn't it? In doing so, according to the documents, Andy displayed one of the few small emotional actions he allowed himself throughout the six-week trial period. As I am innocent of this crime, sir, and since I am telling the truth about how my gun crashed into the river the day before the crime, I am completely uncomfortable that the gun was never found. THE DA scored on it in two days. He reread the testimony of The Handy-Pik Clerk about Andy's dishtowels. Andy repeated that he does not remember the purchases, but admitted that he also does not remember how he did not buy them. Is it true that Andy and Linda Dufresne took out a joint insurance policy in early 1947? Yes, that was true. And if acquitted, isn't it true that Andistud get fifty thousand dollars in benefits? True. And isn't it true that a 9-year-old came up to Glenn quentin's house with a murder in his heart, and isn't it true that he actually committed murder twice? No, that's not true. Then what did he think happened because there was no sign of a robbery? The case was reported to the jury at 1 p.m. on a snowy Wednesday afternoon. The jury and the women returned at 3:30 a.m. The bailiff said they would have been back sooner, but they spent in order to enjoy a good chicken dinner from the Bentley restaurant at the county's expense. They found him guilty, and brother, if Maine had the death penalty, he would have done an aerial dance before the crocuses of this spring poked their heads out of the snow. The prosecutor asked him what he thought had happened and Andy slipped thequestion, but he had an idea and I got it out of him late at night in 1955. It took these seven years for us to go from nodding to pretty close friends, but I never felt very close to Andyuntil 1960 or so, and I believe I was the only one who ever got very close to him. Both were long timers, we were in the same block from the start of the toend, although I was halfway down the hall from it. The question: I think there was a lot of bad luck floating around that night. More than ever can gettogether in the same short space of time again. I think it must be some kind of person just going through. Maybe someone who had a flat tire on that road after I went home. Maybe a burglar. Maybe a psychopath. He killed them, that's all. And I'm here. And he was doomed to spend the rest of his life in Shawshank Redemption - or the part of it that matters. Five years later, he began hearings and was denied as regularly as he did hours, even though he was an exemplary prisoner. Getting a pass from Shawshank when you have a murderstamped on your admittance slip is a slow run, as slow as a river of erosion rock. Seven people sit on board, two more than most state prisons, and each of those seven has as hard as water made up of mineral-springwell. You can't buy these guys, you can't sweetly talk them, you can't cry forward. As for the board of directors, the money does not talk, and no one goes. There were other reasons in Andy's case... but it belongs alittle further along in my story. There was a trust, the name Kendricks, that was in me for some pretty heavy money back in the fifties and it was four years before it got it all paid off. Most of the interest he paid me was information -- in my job, you're dead if you can't find ways to keep your ear on the ground. This Kendricks, forinstance, had access to records I was never going to see running stamped down in a damn plate shop. Kendricks told me that the parole board vote was 7-0 against Andy Dufresnethrough in 1957, 6-1 in '58, 7-0 again in '59, and 5-2 in '60. After that I do not know, but I know that sixteen years later he was still in cell 14 ofCellblock 5. By then - 1975 - he was fifty-seven years old. They probably would have got abig-hearted and released it around 1983. They give you life and that's what they take it all into, which matters anyway. Maybe they set you to lose someday, but . . . Well, look, I knew this guy, Sherwood Bolton, his name, and he had this pigeon in his cell. From 1945 to 1953, when he was released, he had this pigeon. He was not any Birdman of Alcatraz; He just had a pigeon. Jake, he called him. He freed Jake the day before he, Sherwood, was supposed to go, and Jake flew away as nicely as you might want. But about a week after Sherwood Bolton left our happy little family, a friend of mine called me to the western corner of the gym where Sherwood was hanging out. The bird was lying there like a very small pile of dirty bed linen. It looked hungry. Myfriend said: Isn't it Jake, red? It was. This pigeon was as dead as Asturd. I remember the first time Andy Dufresne got in touch with me with something; I remember how it was yesterday. It wasn't the time he wanted Rita Hayworth, however. It happened later. In the summer of 1948, he came for something. Most of my deals are done right there in the yard exercises, and that's where the 11this one went Our yard is big, much bigger than most it's perfectsquare, ninety yards on the side. The north side of the outer wall, with an aguard-tower at both ends. The guards there are armed andriot guns. The main gate is on the north side. The loading compartments are located on the south side of the yard. There are five of them. Shawshank is busy taking a week-to-day job, deliveries out. We have a license plate, and a large industrial laundry that makes all the prison wet laundry, as well as thatof Kitteri Admissions Hospital and Eliot Nursing Home. There's also a bigautomotive garage where mechanics inmates fix prisons, state and municipal vehicles - not to mention private car screws, administration officials . . . and, on more than one occasion, those of the parole board. The east side is a thick stone wall full of tiny slit windows. Cellblock 5 is on the other side of this wall. The west side of the administration and the infirmary. Shawshank has never been as crowded as most prisons, and back in '48 he was unsubscene filled with something like two-thirds of power, but at any given time theremight be eighty to hundred and twenty cons on the yard-playing in a football or baseball, shooting dice, jaws on each other, making deals. On Sunday, the place was even more crowded; On Sunday this place would look like a country holiday... if there were no women. It was On Sunday that Andy first came to me. I just finished talking to Elmore Armitage, the guy who often came in handy on my radio when Andywalked up. I knew who he was, of course, but I don't know who he is. he had a reputation as a cold fish snob. People said he was already flagged for trouble. One of those who said so was Bogs Diamond, the bad man to have on your case. Andy wasn't a cellmate, and I heard it was exactly the way he wanted it to be, even though people said he thought his shit smelled sweeter than usual. But I don't need to listen to rumors about a man when I can judge him for myself. I'm Andy Dufresne. He offered his hand, and I shook it. He did not want a person to spend time on social media; he got right to the point. The question is: I understand that you are a person who knows how to get things. I agreed that I was able to find certain items from time to time. How do you do that? Andy asked. I can't explain it. Unless it's because I'm Irish. The question is: I wonder if you could rock me a rock hammer. The question is: What would it be, and why would you want it? Andy looked surprised. Do you make motives part of your business? With 12words like the ones I could understand as he gained a reputation as a snobbish sort, the kind of guy who likes to put on conditioning, but I felt a tiny threadof of humor in his subject. The question is: If you wanted a toothbrush, I wouldn't ask questions. I'd just quote you a price. Because the toothbrush, you see, is a non-lethal sorting object. The old rubbing tape of the baseball flew towards us, and he turned, the cat quickly, and kicked it out of the air. It was a move Frank Malzone would be proud of. Andy flicked the ball to where it came from just a quick and aiesy-looking flick of his wrist, but that throw had mustard on it, just like that. I saw a lot of people watching us with one eye as they went about their business. The guards in the tower must have been watching, too. Iwon't gild a lily; There are cons that pump weight in any prison, maybe four or five in a small, maybe two or three dozen in a big one. At Shawshank, I was one of those with some weight, and what I thought about Andy Dufresne would have a lot to do with how his time passed. He probably knew about it too, but he wasn't involved or sucked at me, and I respected him for it. I'll tell you what it is and why I want it. The rock hammer looks like a miniature pick-about for so long. The question: It got asmall a sharp choice at one end and a flat, blunt hammer at the other. I want it to be because I love stones. I humorous him. We hunkered down on our haunches like Indians.Andy took a handful of training yard mud and started sifting it between his neathands, so it flowed out in a fine cloud. Small pebbles are left, one or twopark, the rest dull and plain. One of the boring ones was quartz, but it was always boring until you rubbed it clean. Then it was a good milky glow. Andy did the cleaning and then dumped it to me. I caught him and called him. The question is: And look. Mica. Shale. Drenched granite. Here is a place of graded limestone, from when they carved this place from the side of the hill. I'm a rockhound. At least... I was 13 and 13. In my old life. I would like to be again, on a limited scale. It was stupidity, and yet... seeing that little piece of quartz gave my heart afunny setting. I don't know exactly why; just a connection to the outside world, I suppose. You didn't think of such things in terms of yardage. The quartz was something you chose from a small, fast-running stream. It's better to have Sunday expeditions here than not Sunday expeditions at all, he said. You could put an object like a rock hammer in someone's skull, I said. If there's a problem, I can handle it without using a rock hammer. The question is: Maybe you want to try escaping? Going under the wall? Because if you do -- He laughed politely. When I saw the rock hammer three weeks later, I realized why. they were watching you with a spoon, they'd take it. What are you going to do, just sit here in the yard and start bangin' away? Anyway, that part wasn't my thing. The man attracts my services to get him something. Will he be able to keep it or not after I get it ishis business. I asked. When you've spent ten years in a stir like I did then, you can get terribly tired of the furs and braggadocio and loud mouths. Yes, I think it's fair to say I loved Andy from the first.Eight dollars in any rock-and-jam shop, he said, but I understand that in a business like yours you work at cost-based plus-cost plus ten percent of my rate, but I have to go up some on dangerousitem. For something like the gadget you're talking about, it takes a little more fat to get the wheel turning. Let's say ten dollars. 14 Ten is. I looked at him, smiling a little. Do you have ten dollars? I do, he said quietly. A long time later, I found that it was better than five hundred. He's commak it with him. When they check you out at this hotel, one of the bellhopsis is obliged to bend you over the ant, look at your work, but there is a lot of work, and not to put too fine a point on it, the person who really determinedcan get; A pretty big item is pretty way up to them far enough to be out of sight if the messenger you happen to draw in the mood to pull on rubber gloves and go scouting. You need to know what I expect if you get caught with what I get you. I suppose I should, he said, and I could tell, by minor changes in his grayeyes, that he knew exactly what I was going to say. It was a slight lightening, agleam of his special ironic humor If you get caught, you'll say you found it. It's about debt and short of it. You will be put in solitary confinement for three or three weeks... Plus of course you lose your toy and you get a black meth on your record. If you give them my name, you will never do business again. Not as much as a couple of hours or a Bugler bag. And I'll send some guys around to dump you. I don't like violence, but you'll understand my position. I can't let him get a job that I can't handle on my own. This will surely finish me off. I suppose it will. I understand, and you don't have to worry. I never worry, I said. Three days later he was walking beside me in theexercise yard during the morning laundry break He didn't speak or even watch myway, but pressed a picture of the Honourable Alexander Hamilton in my hands neatly as a good magician does a card-trick. He was a man who quickly adapted. I got it it He was in my cell for one night, and it was just like he described it. It wasn't a tool to escape (it took a man only about six hundred years totunnel under the wall, using that rock hammer, I figured), but I still felt some apprehension. If you put that pickaxe in a man's head, he'd never see Fibber McGee and Molly on the radio again. And Andy has already started to have a trouble with his sisters. I was hoping it wasn't them for whom he wanted a rock hammer. 15 In the end, I trusted my judgment. Early the next morning, twenty minutes before the awakening of the horn was gone, I slipped a rock hammer and a packet of camels into Ernie, an old gullible who covered Cellblock 5 corridors until he was let freein 1956. He shoved it into a tunic with no words, and I didn't see the hammer again for nineteen years, and by then he was cursed next to the worn tonothing. The next Sunday Andy came up to me in the yard exercises again. I can tell you that he didn't want to look at that day. His lower lip was swollen so bigit looked like a summer sausage, his right eye was swollen half-washed, and therewas an ugly washboard scratching across one cheek. He had problems with his sisters, but he never mentioned them. Thanks for the tool, he said, and left. I looked at him curiously. He walked a few steps, saw something in the mud, bentover, and took it. It was a small rock. Prison fatigue, except for those worn out by mechanics when they're at work, don't have pockets. But there are ways around this. The little pebble disappeared in Andy's sleeve and did not fall. I admired it... And I admired him. There are thousands of people who won't or won't, and many of them aren't in jail either. And I noticed that although his face looked as if a twister had happened to him, his hands were still neat and clean, his nails well preserved. I didn't see much about him for the next six months; Andy spent a lot of time in solitary confinement. IV 16A a few words about the sisters. In many pens they are known as bull queers or prison house susies-just lately the term in fashion is killer queens. But in Shawshank they have always been talking points. I don't know why, but other than the title I think there was no divergence. It's no surprise to most these days that there are many buggies going on inside the walls, except for some of the new fish, maybe that have themisfortune to be young, subtle, beautiful, and careless, but homosexuality, like sex, comes in a hundred different shapes and shapes. There are men who can not stand to be without sex some and turn to another man not to go crazy. Usually what follows is an agreement between two fundamentally gay men, though I have sometimes wondered they're pretty asheterosexual as they thought they thought were going to be when they go back to their girlfriends or their girlfriends. There are also men who get turned in prison. In the current language they are gogay, or get out of the closet. The question is basically (but not always) they play thefemale, and their favors compete for furiously. And then there are the sisters. They need to prison society that rapist for society outside the walls. They are usually longtime, make tough bullets for violent crimes. Their prey are young, weak and inexperienced... or, as is the case with AndyDufresne, a faint look. Their hunting grounds are souls, cramped, tunnel-like areaway for industrial washers in the laundry, sometimes theinfirmary. Repeatedly, the rapes took place in a closet the size of a cubicle behind the auditorium. More often than not, what the sisters take is the power they could have for free if they wanted to; those who have been turned always seem to be pressing on one sister or another like teenage girls with their Sinatra, Presley, or Redfords. But for the sisters the joy has always been to take it by force... and I think it will always be. Because of his small size and fair appearance (and perhaps also because I admired the quality of self-ownership), the sisters have been looking at Andy since the day he entered. If it was some kind of fairy tale, I'd tell you that Andy fought well until they left him alone. I wish I could say it, but I can't. Prison is not a fairytale world. The first time for him was in the shower less than three days after he joined our happy Shawshank family. Just a lot of slapping and tickling that time, I don't know. They would size you before they make their real move as 17jackals figure out if mining is as weak and hamstrung as it looks. Andy hit back and bloodied lips with a big, clumsy sister named BogsDiamond-gone these many years since, who knows where. The guard broke him before he could go on, but Bogs promised to get it and Bogs did. The second time was for the pucks in the laundry room. Much has happened in this long, dusty and narrow space over the years; the guards know about it and just talk about it. It's dim and studded with bags of washing and whitening compounds, the hexlite catalyst drums are as harmless as salt if your hands are dry, killousas acid batteries if they're wet. The guards don't like going back there. There's no room for manoeuvre, and one of the first things they teach them when they come to work is in a place like this never let cons you into a place where you can't back up your backup business. Bogs wasn't there that day, but Henley Backus, who has had a toilet foremandown there since 1922, told me that four of his friends were. Andy kept their atbay for a while with a scoop of burning Hexlite, threatening to throw him in the eye if they came closer, but he stumbled while trying to support one of the great Washexfourpockets. That was all it took. I think the phrase gang rape is one that doesn't change much from one generation to the next. That's what they did to him, these four sisters. They bent him over the transfer box and one of them held Phillips' screwdriver to his temple while they ran his business. It breaks you some but not bad- I speak from personal experience, you ask? - I only wish I had been. You've been bleeding for a while. If you don't want some clown asking you if you've just started your period, you pack a bunch of toilet paper and keep it down the back of your underwear to its top. Bleeding is really like a menstrual flow; it holds up for two, perhaps three days, a slow trickle. Then he stops. No harm, unless they've done something even more unnatural for you. There is no physical harm but rape rape, and eventually you have to look at your face in the mirror again and decide what to do with yourself. Andy went through it alone as he went through everything alone in those days. He must have come to the conclusion that others before him came to, namely that then only two ways to fight the sisters: fight them and gettaken or just get accepted. He decided to fight. When Bogs and two of his cam buddies followed him a week or so after the laundry incident (I heard I went bankrupt, Bogs said, according to Ernie, who was around at the time), Andy slugged it with them. He broke thenose a guy named Rooster McBride, a heavy gutted farmer who was forbeating his stepdaughter to death. The rooster died here, I'm happy to add. They took him, all three of them. When it was done, Rooster and the other eggs-it 18might were Pete Verness, but I'm not quite sure forced Andy to his knees. Bogs Diamond came out in front of him. He had a pearl razor inthose day with the words Diamond Pearl engraved on either side of the capture heopened him and said: I'm going to open my fly now, lord man, and you're going toswallow that I give you a swallow. And when you're done swallowing mine, you swallow the Rooster. I think you did broke your nose and I think he should have something to pay for it. Andy said: All you have a stick in your mouth you're going to loseit.Bogs looked at Andy like he was crazy, Ernie said. The question is: You didn't understand what I said. You're going to do something like this, and I'm going to put all eight inches of this steel in your ear. Get it? I don't think you understand me. I'll bite whenever you put it in my mouth. You can put that razor in my brain, I think, but you should know that sudden serious brain injury causes the victim tosimultaneously urinate, defecate . . . and bite down. smile of him, old Ernie said, as if three of them discussing stocks and bonds with him rather than throwing it to him as hard as they could. Just as if he was wearing the costumes of one of his three-piece bankers instead of kneeling on a dirty broom cupboard floor with his pants around his ankles and blood flowing down the insides of histhighs. I understand that the reflex bite is sometimes so strong that the victim's jaws must be pried open with a crowbar or jackhandle.The gods did not put anything in Andy's mouth that night in late February 1948. and didn't Do Rooster McBride, and as far as I know, no one ever did, either. What the three of them did was beat Andy an inch from his life, and all four ended up making a push in solitary confinement. Andy and Rooster MacBride went through the infirmary. How many times did he have this particular team? I do not know. I think Brewster lost his taste quite early - being in nasal sprats for a month can dotohat for a guy - and Bogs Diamond stopped this summer, all at once. It was weird. Bogs was found in his cell, badly beaten, one morning in early June when he didn't go to breakfast with his nose. He wouldn't have done it, or how they got to him, but being in my business, I know that the screw can be bribed to do almost anything except get a gun for a 19inmate. They didn't make big salaries back then, and they're not now. And in those days there was no electronic lock system, no closed TV, no master switches, which controlled entire areas of the prison. Back in 1948, each block had its own turnkey. The security guard could have been bribed very easily to have someone, maybe two or three of someone in the block, and, yes, even to Diamond's cell. Of course, a job like that will cost a lot of money. Not by external standards, no. The prison economy is smaller. When you've been in hereawhile, the dollar bill in your hand looks like twenty made outside. I think that if Bogs was done, it cost someone a serious piece of change fifteen bucks, we'll say for turnkey, and two or three apiece for each of the lump-upguys. I'm not saying it was Andy Dufresne, but I know he brought in five hundred dollars when he came in and he was a banker in the straight world-a man who understands better than the rest of us how money can become a power. And I know it: after beating three broken ribs, a hemorrhage of the eyes, a sprained back, and a dislocated hip, Gods Diamond left Andy alone. In fact, after that he left everyone pretty much alone. It should be like a strong wind in the summer, all noise and not biting. You could actually say that he turnedinto weak sister.It was the end of Bogs Diamond, the man who eventually killed Andy, if he did not take steps to prevent it (if it was he who took action). But Andy's problems with his sisters didn't end there. had a little break, and then it started again, though not as difficult or so often. The jackals are like easyprey, and it was easier to gather around than Andy Dufresne.He's always struggled with them, that's what I remember. He knew, I think, that if you letthem there on you even once without a fight, it got that much easier to let them have their way without fighting next time. So Andy would end up with bruises on his face every once in a while, and there was a question of two brokenfingers six or eight months after beating Diamond. Yes- and sometime in late 1949, a man landed in the infirmary with a broken cheekbone, which probably resulted in someone swinging a nice piece of pipe with a business endwrapped in the flannel. He always resisted, and as a result, he made his time unsalted. But I don't think loneliness was hard for Andy, which it was for some men. He got along with himself. The sisters were something he adapted to, and then, in 1950, he completely stopped. It's part of my story that I'll get in due course. 20VIn the fall of 1948, Andy met me one morning in a backyard exercise and asked me if I could get him half a dozen rock blankets. He told me that this was exactly what the rockhounds called them; They are polishing the fabric about the size of dishtowels. They were heavily soft, with a smooth side and groin side of the smooth side like fine-grained sandpaper, the rough side almost asabrasive as industrial steel wool (Andy also kept that box in his chamber, although he didn't get it from me, I think he bundled it out of prisonlaundry). I told him that I thought we could do business on those and I ended up getting themfrom the same rock and jam shop where I arranged to get a rock hammer. This time I charged Andy my usual ten percent, not a penny more. I didn't see anything lethal or even dangerous in a dozen 7 x 7 squares of soft clothing. Rock blankets, really. It was about five months later that Andy asked if I could get him Rita Hayworth.That conversation took place in the audience during a movie show. We currently have a movie show once or twice a week, but then the shows were monthlyevent. Usually the movies we got were morally uplifting messages for them, and this one, Lost Weekend, is no different. The moral is that drinking is dangerous. It was a moral in which we could take comfort. Andy maneuvered to get near me, and about halfway through the show he leaned a little closer and asked if I could get him Rita Hayworth. I'll tell you, it tickled me somehow. He tended to be cool, calm, and collected, but that day he was jittery as hell, almost embarrassed, as if he had asked me to gethim loads of trojans or one of those sheepskin-lined gadgets that should enhance your solitary pleasure, as the magazines put it. He seemed, charged, the man on blowing his radiator. I can get it, I said. Do you want a big or thelittle one? At the time Rita was my best girl (a few years before she was a Betty Grable) and she came in two sizes. For a dollar, you could get a little Rita. For two and fifty you could have a big Rita, four feet tall, and all women. I tell you, it was a hot sketch that 21night. He blushed like a child, trying to get into the show with his brother's draft. Can you do that? Take it easy, of course I can. Does the bear shit in the woods? The audience was catcalling and catcalling as errors came out of the walls to get Ray Milland, who was having a bad DT's case How soon? . Maybe less. But the question he sounded disappointed, as if he hoped there was one stuffed my pants right then. How much?, I quoted his wholesale price. I could afford to give it to him at cost; he was a good customer of that with his rock hammer and his rock blankets. Also, he was a good boy-about for more than one night when he was with hisproblems with Bogs Rooster, and the rest, I wondered how long it would be before used a rock hammer to crack someone's head open. Posters are a big part of my business, just over the booze, cigarettes are usually half a step ahead of the reefer. In the sixties the business exploded in either direction, with a lot of people wanting funky hovering like Jimi Hendrix, Bob Dylan that Easy Rider poster. But mostly they are girls; one charming queen afteranother. A few days after Andy spoke to me, the laundry driver I did business with backthen brought better than sixty posters, most of them Rita Hayworths. You mayeven remember the picture; sure what to do. Rita is dressed-like-in-a-swimsuit, one hand behind her head, eyes half-washed, those full, grinning red lips. They called him Rita Hayworth, but they might as well have named him Woman in The Heat.The prison administration knows about the black market, in case you were in the face. Of course they do. They probably know almost a lot about my business as Ido themselves. They live with this because they know that prison is like bigpressure-cooking, and there have to be air vents somewhere to let off steam. They do the event; bust and I made time in single time or three for a year, but when it's a bit of a poster, they wink. Live and Let Live and when Abigail Rita Hayworth came up in the cell of some fish, the assumption was that he came in the mail from a friend or relative. Sure, all the aid packages from friends and family are open and the contents are inventoryed, but who goes backand rechecks inventory sheets for something as harmless as Ava Gardner's Rita Haywardor charming? When you are in a pressure cooker you will learn to live and letlive or someone will cut you new mouth just above Adam Adam 22Y will learn how to make allowances. It was Ernie again who took the poster up to Andy's cage, 14, from my own, 6.And it was Ernie who brought a note written in Andy's cautious hand, just one word: Thank you. A short time later, as they served us up for morning chow, I looked into it and saw Rita over his bunk in all her swimsuit fame, one hand behind her head, eyes half-washed, those soft, satiny lips parted. It was above his bunk where he could look at her nights, after lighting, in the glow of an arc light in the yard of the exercise. But in bright morning sunshine, there were dark slashes across her face-shadow bars on its one-slit window. 23VINow I'll tell you what happened in mid-May 1950, which finally ended a three-year series of skirmishes and Andy's clashes with the sisters. Also theincident who eventually got him out of the laundry and into the library where he filled his working hours until he left our happy little family earlier this year. You may have noticed as much of what I told you already rumors- someone saw something and told me and I told you. Well, in some cases I simplified iteven more than it really was, and repeated (or will repeat) the fourth orfifth-side of the information. That's how it is here. The vine is very real and you have to use it if you are going to stay ahead. Also, of course, you should know how to choose the grain of truth from the chaff of lies, rumors, andwish-it-were-were. You may also have got the idea that I describe someone who is a more legendary person, and I have to agree that there is some truth in this. For us centenarians who have known Andy for years, there was an element of fantasy to him, feeling, almost, myth-magic, if you get what I mean. This story ipassed about Andy refusing to give Bogs Diamond a is part of thatmyth, and how he continued to fight with the sisters is part of it, and how he got thelibrary job is part of it, too... but with one important difference: I was there and I saw what happened and I swear in my mother's name that it is alltrue. A convicted murderer's oath may not cost much, but believe it: I don't cheat. Andy and I were on fair terms by then. The guy fascinated me. Looking back on the poster episode, I see there is one thing I forgot to tell you, andmaybe I should. Five weeks after he hung Rita up (I forgot all about it bythen, and went for other deals), Ernie passed a small white box through the bars of my camera. From Dufresne, he said, low, and never missed a stroke with his push broom. Thank you, Ernie, I said, and slipped him half a pack of camels. I was wondering how I slipped the lid out of the box. There was a lot of white cotton inside, and there was a lot of white cotton downstairs... I've been looking for a long time. Within minutes it was like I didn't even touchthem, touchthem, were so beautiful. There's a crying shortage of beautiful things in theslam, and the real pity for it is that many men don't even seem to miss them. There were two pieces of quartz in the box, both carefully polished. They were chipped into snags of mold. There were little sequins of iron 24pyrites in them as patches of gold. If they weren't so heavy, they'd serve as a lovely pair of men's cufflinks - they were so close to being an amatched set. How much work was eighth in the creation of these two parts? A few hours after the light, I knew that. First chipped and shaping, then almost asexual polishing and finishing with these rock blankets. Looking at them, I thank the warmth that any man or woman feels when he or she looks at something beautiful, what has been designed and done is what really separates us from the animals, I think, and I felt something different, too. In awe of the man's gross perseverance. But I never knew how much Andy Dufresne could be much later. In May 1950, the authorities to be resolved that the roof license plate should be resurfaced with roofing resin. They wanted it done before it was too hot and asked volunteers for work that was scheduled for the week. More than seventy people spoke out because it was a job, and May is a damn good month for outside work. Nine or ten names were pulled out of the hat, and two of them turned out to be Andy and my own. The next week we were taken to the gym after breakfast, with two guards in front and two more behind... Plus all the guards in towerskeeping weather eye on proceedings through their field glasses for goodmeasure. Four of us would carry a large staircase extension on those morning marches - Ialways enjoyed the way Dickie Betts, who was at this job, called thatsort stairs extensible - and we'd put it against the side of that low, flat building. Then we'd start bucket-brigading hot tar buckets right away. Spill this shit on you and you would jitterbug all the way to the infirmary. There were six guards in the draft, all of them were chosen on the basis of mentality. It was almost as good as a week's vacation, because instead of splashing it out in the laundry or plate-shop or standing over a bunch of guys cutting pulp or brushing somewhere in the fields, they were having a aregular May holiday in the sun, just sitting there with their backs against a low parapet, shooting the bull back and forth. They didn't even have to keep more than half an eye on us because the southwall hour post was close enough so the guys out there could spittheir chews on us if they wanted to. If someone at a rooftop sealing party made one funny move, it would take four seconds to cut it into two with a 45-caliber machine gun. So these screws just sat there and took theirease. All they needed was a couple of six packs buried in crushed ice, and they would be the masters of all creation. One of them was a guy named Byron Hadley, and that year 1950, he was 25at Shawshank longer than I was. The guy running the show in 1950 was a choppy-lookingdown-eastern Yankee named George Danahi. He had a degree in criminal administration. No one liked him as far as I could tell, except the people who got it hisappointment. I heard that he was only interested in three things: compiling statistics for a book (which was later published by a small New England outfitcalled Light Side Press, where he probably had to pay to do it), whichteam won the intramural baseball championship every September, and getting an adeath-penalty law passed in Maine. A regular bear for the death penalty was George Dunahi. He was sacked from his job in 1953 when it was revealed that he was running a discount auto repair service down in the prison garage and had profited from Byron Hadley and Greg Stammas. Hadley and Stammas came out of this one well- they had old hands on keeping them covered, but Dunahy took a walk. No one regretted seeing him go, but no one was exactly happy to see Greg Stammas step into his shoes, either. He was a short man with a dense, hardgout and the coldest brown eyes you've ever seen. He always had a painful, smirk on his face, as if he had to go to the bathroom and couldn't quite let her out. There was a lot of brutality in the Showman during Stammas's time as a warden, and although I have no evidence, I believe there may have been half a dozen graves in the woods east of the prison. Dunahi was bad, but Greg Stammas was a cruel, unhappy, cold-blooded man. He and Byron Hadley were good friends. As a warden, George Dunahy was nothing but a posturing figure; it was Stammas, and through him, Hadley, who was actually anadminated prison. Hadley was a tall, shambling man with thinning red hair. He tanned easily and he spoke loudly, and if you didn't move fast enough to satisfy him, he'd influence youwith his stick. That day, our third on the roof, he was talking to another security guard named Mert Entwhistle.Hadley got some amazing good news, so he was gripping about it. It was a washis style-he was an ungrateful man, not a good word to anyone, a man who was consconvinced that the whole world was against him. The world deceived him out of the best years of his life, and the world would be more than happy to deceive him out of the rest. I've seen some screws that I think were almost holy, and I think I know why this is happening -- they can the difference between a life of their own, poor and struggling, whatever it may be, and the lives of the people the state paid Over. These guards are able to articulate acomparison regarding pain. Others can't or won't. There was no reason for comparison for Byron Hadley. He could sit there, cool and at his ease under the warm May sun, and find the audacity to mourn his luck while less than ten feet away a bunch of men worked and sweated and put their hands on big big buckets filled with bubbling resin, men who 26 to work so hard in their usual round days that it looked like a respite. You may remember an old question, one that should define youroutlook for life when you answer it. For Byron Hadley the answer will always be empty, the glass is half empty. Forever and forever, amen. If you gave him an acool drink of apple cider, he'd be thinking about vinegar. If you'd told him his wife was always loyal to him, he'd have told you it was because she was so damn faithful. So he sat talking to Mert Entwhistle loudly enough for all of us to hear his wide white forehead already beginning to turn red from the sun. He was in one hand discarded on a low parapet around the roof. The other was on the butt of his .38.We all got the story along with Mert. Hadley's older brother seemed to go to Texas about fourteen years ago, and the rest of the family hasn't had a son of a since. They all assumed he was dead, and a good decision. Then, a week and a half ago, a lawyer called them a long-distance from Austin. It seemed that Hadley's brother died four months ago, and the arich man is that (it's frigging incredible how lucky some asshole might get, this sample of gratitude on the roof of the plate shop said). The money came as aresult oil and oil leases, and it was about a million dollars. No, Hadley wasn't a millionaire who could make even him happy, at least for a while, but his brother left a pretty damn worthy will of the trit of five thousand dollars to every surviving member of his family back inMaine if they could be found. Not bad. How to get lucky and winning asweepstakes. But Byron Hadley's glass was always half empty. He spent much of mite whining about the bite that the damn government was going to take out of his windfall. They'll leave me about enough to buy a new car with, it's allowed, and then what happens? You have to pay damning car taxes, and the repairs and maintenance you got your damn kids pestered to you to take'em to drive from the top down - and drive it if they're old enough, said Mert. Old Mert Entwhistle knew on whose side his bread was greased, and he didn't say it must have been as pretastey for him as for the rest of us: If this money bothers you so badly, Byronold's baby is an old sock, I'll just take it off your hands. At the end What are friends for? That's right, wanting to drive it, wanting to learn to ride it, forChrissake, said Byron with The question is: Then what happens at the end of the year? If you have misunderstood the tax and you don't have enough left to paythe overdraft, you should pay out of your own pocket, or maybe even borrow it from one of these kikey credit agencies. And they're testing you anyway, you know. It doesn't matter. And when the government checks you out, they always take more. Who can fight Uncle Sam? He puts his hand in your shirt and squeezes your tit until it's purple and you end up getting a short end. He went into sullen silence, thinking about that terrible bad luck he had to inherit that thirty-five thousand dollars. Andy Dufresne was spreading a tarwith large brush less than fifteen feet away, and now he threw it into his body and walked up to where Mert and Hadley were sitting. We all pulled up, and I saw one of the other screws, Tim Youngblood, dragging his hands to where the holster was. One of the guys in the clock tower hit his partner on the arm, and they both turned, too. At one point I thought andy was going to get shot, or bludgeoned, or both. Then he said, very quietly, Hadley: Do you trust his wife? Hadley was just looking at him. He started blushing in his face, and I knew it was a bad sign. After about three seconds he was about to pull his Billy cluband to give Andy the butt end of it right in the solar plexus, where that big bundle of nerves. A strong enough punch there can kill you, but they always go for it. If it doesn't kill you, it will paralyze you long enough to forget all the cutemove it was what you had planned.Boy, Hadley said: I'll give you only one chance to pick up this brush. And then you get off the roof on your head. Andy just looked at him, very calm and calm. His eyes were like ice. It was as if he had not heard. And I found that I wanted to tell him what it was like to give him a crash course. Crash course you never let what you hear theguards say, you never try to horn on their conversation if you'reasked (and then you always tell them just what they want to hear and shut up). Black man, white man, red man, yellow man, in prison it doesn't matter because we have our own brand of equality. In prison, every crook is a low life, and you have to get used to this idea if you're going to survive people like Hadley and Greg Stammas who will really kill you as soon as you look at you. When you move, you belong to the state, and if you forget about it, grief is you. I know men who have lost their eyes, men who have lost their toes and toes; I knew one man who had lost part of his penis and thought he was happy that was all he had lost. I was going to tell Andy it's too late. He could come back and pick him up. There will still be some great drag waiting for him in the shower that night, ready charlie-horse both legs and leave him writhing on cement. You can buy a drag like that for pack of cigarettes or three Baby Roots. Most of all, I wanted to tell him not to make it worse than it already was. What I did was keep working the pitches on the roof as if nothing was 28happening. Like everyone else, I first come for mine. I have to. It's already been cut off, and Shawshank Hashenka has always had Hadley ready to find work to break it. Andy said: Maybe I was wrong. Whether you trust her or not, it doesn't matter. The problem is, do you believe that she will ever go behind your back, try to pin you down. Mert got up. Tim Youngblood got up. Hadley's face was as red as the side of a brick house. Your only problem, he said, will be how many times you still got uninterrupted. They can be counted in the infirmary. Come on, Mert. We're throwing this sucker aside. Tim Youngblood drew a gun. The rest of us continued to tar like crazy. Sunset. They were going to do it; Hadley and Mert were just going to break it down. It's a terrible accident. Dufresne, a prisoner of 81433-SHNK, took the acouple void down and slipped on the stairs. Very bad. They put it, Mert on his right hand, Hadley on the left. Andy wasn't a coach. His eyes never left Hadley's red face. The final score, Mr. Byron Hadley thirty-five thousand, Uncle Sam zip. Hadley was just standing there. For a moment Andy was like a rope between them in a tug-of-war. Then Hadley said, Hold on for one second, Mert. What do you mean, boy? I mean, if you have a thumb on your wife, you can give it to her, Andysaid. You better start making sense, boy, or you're going over. The IRS allows you to once only gift to your spouse, Andy said. That's well up to sixty thousand dollars.Hadley now looked at Andy as if he was poleaxed. Naw, that's not right, he said. «Tax free?» Andy said. The IRS can't touch a cent one. How would you know something like this? 29Tim Youngblood said: He was once a banker, Byron. I s'pose he could - Shut me head, trout, Hadley said without looking at him. Tim Youngblood blushed and shut up. Some guards called him Trout because of his thick lips and buggy eyes. Hadley kept looking at Andy. The question is: You're the smart banker who shot his wife. Why should I trust a smart banker like you? So I can drive you here, smashing rocks right next to you? You'd love it, wouldn't you? and Andy said softly, If you went to jail for tax evasion, you'd go to federal court, not Shawshank. But you're not getting in touch. A tax-free gift to the spouse is a very legal loophole. I made dozens . . . No, there are hundreds of them. This is primarily for people with small business pass on, or for people who can once only have unforeseen circumstances. Like you. There was emotion dawning on his face, something that was grotesque overlyingthat long, ugly face and that receding, tanned forehead. Almost obscene excitement when seen on the features of Byron Hadley. It was hope. No, I'm not lying. There's no reason why you should always take my word for it. Attracting a lawyer -emergency-chasing highway-robbing sobbing! Hadley was crying. Andy shrugged. The question: Then go to the IRS. They will tell you the same for free. Actually, you don't need me to tell you. You would explore thematter for yourself. I don't need any smart wife-killing banker to show me where thebears go in the woods. You will need a tax lawyer or banker to create a gift for you and that willcost you something, said Andy. The question Is it . . . If you were interested, I'd be happy toset it for you almost for free. The price will be three beers apiece for my colleagues - employees, said Mert, and release a rusty guffaw. He hit his knee. Realknee-slapper was an old Mert and I hope he died of bowel cancer in a part of the world where morphine is as yet discovered. Employees, isn't that cut out? Colleagues! You don't have any - Shut up your friggin trap, Hadley boiled over, and Mert closed. Hadley looked at Andyagain. What you said 30 I said I would only ask three beers apiece for my colleagues if thatseems fair, said Andy. The question: I think a person feels more like a person when he works out the doors in the spring if he can have a bottle of foam. It's just a myopion. It would go smoothly and I'm sure you'd thank them. felt the same way. Suddenly it was Andy who was on top. It was Hadley who had a gun on his hip and Billy in his hand, Hadleywho had his friend Greg Stammas behind him and the entire prison administration, all the power of the state for it, but all at once in this golden sun it didn't matter and I felt my heart jumped into my chest as he had never had since the truck drove me and four other gates back to 1938 and I went out to exercise the yard. Andy looked at Hadley with these cold, clear, calm eyes, and it wasn't just thirty-five thousand back then, we all agreed to it. I've played it over and over in my head and I know. It was a man against a man, and Andy just forced him as a strong man to force a weaker man's wrist to the table in gameof Indian rasseling. There was no reason, you see, why Hadley could not nod at the same moment, smashed Andy over over head, and Andy's still-lit advice. There's no reason. But he didn't. I could get you all a couple of beers if I wanted to, Hadley said. Beer is delicious while you're running a colossal bastard even managed to soundmagnanimous.I'd just give you one advice the IRS wouldn't bother with,' Andy said. His eyes were axed unwinkingly at Hadley. Give a gift to your wife, if you're sure. If you think there's even a chance that she might cross you twice or backwards, could we devise something else - Double Cross me? Hadley asked harshly. The question is: Double cross me? Mr. Hotshot Banker, if she had eaten her way through the ex-Lax boxcar, she wouldn't dare fart if Igave her nod. Mert, Youngblood, and the other screws disgusted him dutifully. Andy never smiled: I'll write down the forms you need, he said. You can get them in a post-off and I'll fill them out for your signature. It sounded appropriately important, and Hadley's chest swollen. Then he glaredaround at the rest of us and shouted: What are you jimmies starin on? Move 31our donkeys, gosh! He looked back at Andy. The question is: You come here with me, hotshot. And listen to me well: if you messin' I somehow, you're going to findyourself chasing your own head around the C shower up to a week out yes, I understand that, Andy said quietly. And he understood that. As it turned out, he understood much more than Idid - more than any of us. That's how, on the second-to-last day of work, the convicted crew who tarredthe the roof factory plate in 1950 ended up sitting in a row at ten o'clock in the morning, drinking Black Label beer delivered the toughest screw, whatever the turn at Shawshank State Prison. This beer was warm but it was still the best I've ever had in my life. We sat and drank it and felt sunon our shoulders, and not even the expression of half-entertainment, the semi-contemptuous Hadley's face, as if he were watching monkeys drink beer rather than the male-couldspoil him. It lasted twenty minutes of that beer break, and for those twenty minutes we felt like free men. We could drink beer and tar hatch one of our own homes. Except Andy didn't drink. I've already told you about his drinking habits. He sat in the shadows, his hands dangling between his knees, watching us and a little wash. It's amazing how many men remember him this way, and an amazinghow a lot of men were on that crew job when Andy Dufresne faced down Byron Hadley.I thought there were nine or ten of us, but by 1955 there must have been twohundred of us, maybe more . . . if you believed what you heard. So, yes, if you asked me to give you a flat answer to the question of why I'm trying to tell you about a man or legend who has made up around a man like a pearl around a small piece of sand, I have to say that theanswer lies somewhere nearby. All I know sure andy Dufresnewasn't much like me or anyone else I've ever known since I came inside. He brought in five hundred dollars stuck on the back porch, but somehow that gray sonof bitch coat managed to bring in something else as well. Feeling his own value, maybe, or feeling that he would be the winner in the end . . . or maybe it wasn't with a sense of freedom, even inside those bloody gray walls. It was a kind of inner light that he carried with him. I knew he was going to lose that light, and that's part of the story, too. VII 32By World Series time 1950-it was the year Philadelphia Whiz Kidsdropped four straight, you remember Andy had no more problems with the sisters. Stammas and Hadley passed the word. If Andy Dufresne came toeither them, or any of the other screws that are part of their coterie, and showed so much as one drop of blood in their underpants, every sister inShawshank would sleep that night with a headache. They didn't fight it. As I noted, there was always an eighteen-year-old hijacker or firefighter some guy who got his feet handling young kids. After a day on the roof of the shop, Andy went his own way, and the sisters went them. He worked in the library, then, under a tough old con named Brooks Hatlen.Hatlen got the job back in the late twenties because he had collegeeducation. Brooksy's degree was in livestock, true, but collegeeducations in lower education institutes like Shank are so rare that it is a case of beggars unable to be electoral. In 1952, Brooksy, who killed his wife and daughter after losing a streak ago when Coolidge was president, was released on parole. As usual, the state in its wisdom let him go long after any chance that it might have to become a inhabited part of society disappeared. He was sixty- eight years old and had arthritis when he bent out of the main gate in his Polish suit and his French boots, hisparole documents in one hand and a Greyhound bus ticket in the other. He cried when he left. Shawshank was his world. What lay behind its walls was as terrible for Brooks as the Western Seas, for the superstitious northern 15th century. In prison, Brooksy was a man of some significance. He was a liberal, educated man. If he went to Kittery's library and asked for a job, he wouldn't even be given a library card. I heard that he died in a house for poor old men before Freeport Way in 1953, and in doing so it lasted about six months longer than I thought he would. Yes, I think the state has its own support for Brooksy, okay. They taught him to love him in a shitty house, and then they kicked him out. Andy excelled at Brooksy's work, and he was a librarian for twenty-three years. He used the same willpower I saw him use on Byron to get what hewanted for the library, and I saw it gradually gradually One small room (which stillsmelled the skipidar because it was a paint closet until 1922 and was never properly aired) lined up with Reedest Compressed Books and National Geography into the best prison library in New England.He made it step by step. He put the offer box at the door and patiently crawled out of such attempts of humour as more Phuc-Boox Pleeze and Excape's 10 equalisers. He took possession of what the prisoners seemed to be serious about. He wrote at major book clubs in New York and got two of them, the Literary Guild and the Book-of-The-Month Club, to send editions of all their major selections to us 33at special cheap bets. He found a thirst for information about such small sobs as soap carving, woodworking, sleight of hand and card solitaire. He made all the books he could on such topics. And these two prison staples, Erie Stanley Gardner and Louis L'Amour. Cons never seem to get enough of thecourtroom or open range. And yes, he kept a box of pretty spicypaperbacks under the till, borrowing them carefully and making sure they're always back. Despite this, every new acquisition of this type was quickly read to shreds. He began writing to the state Senate in August 1954. Stammas was a warden, and he pretended Andy was some kind of mascot. He was always in prison shooting a bull with Andy, and sometimes he even threw his father's weapon around Andy's shoulders or gave him a goose. He didn't lie to anyone. AndyDufresne was not a single mascot. He told Andy that he may have been a banker on the street, but that part of his life is quickly receding into his past, and he'd better get hold of the facts of prison life. As for this bunch of republican Rotarians in Augusta, there were only three viable taxpayer spending in prisons and corrections. Number one was morewalls, number two had more bars and number three had more guards. As for the state Senate, Stammas explained, the people in Thomastan andShawshank and Pittsfield and South Portland were scum of the land. They were there to make a hard time and God and Sonny Jesus, it was a hard time they were going to do. And if there were a few weevils in the bread, wouldn't that just be damn bad? Andy smiled at his little, composed smile and asked Stammas what would happen to the concrete block if a drop of water fell on him once a year for a million years. Stammas laughed and slapped Andy on the back. The question is: You don't have a million years old horse, but if you did, I bleeve you would do it with the same little smile onyour face. Go and write your letters. I'll even mail them for you if you pay for stamps. Which Andy did. And he had the last laugh, though Stammas and Hadley weren't on the sidelines to see him. Andy's requests for library funds were regularly rejected year when he he two hundred dollars check - the Senate probably appropriated it in the hope that he would shut up and leave. It's a vain hope. Andy felt that he had finally got one foot in the door and he just doubled hisefforts; two letters a week instead of one. In 1962, he received four hundred dollars, and by the end of the decade the library received seven hundred dollars a year. By 1971, that figure had risen to a thousand. Not much stacked upagainst is what your average small-town library gets, I think, but thousandbucks can buy a lot of recycled Perry Mason stories and Jake Logan westerns. By the time Andy is gone, you can go to the library (expanded from its original 34paint-locker to three rooms) and find almost anything you want. And if you couldn't find it, the odds were good that Andy could get it for you. Now you ask yourself if all this happened just because Andy told ByronHadley how to keep taxes on his windfall inheritance. The answer is yes. And no. You can probably find out what happened for yourself. Shawshank is said to be housing his own pet financial wizard. In late spring and summer 1950, Andy set up two trust funds for security guards who wanted to provide higher education for their children; he advised a couple of ethers that wanted to take small flyers in total (and they made a pretty damnwell, as it turned out; one of them did so well, he was able to take an earlyretirement two years later) and I'll be damned if he did not advise wardenhimself, the old lemon lips of George Dunahy, on how to go about creating an atax-refuge for himself. It was just before the dune got a boom rush and I believe he must have dreamed of all the millions of his book going to tomake it. By April 1951, Andy was making tax returns for half of Shawshank's screws, and by 1952 he was doing almost all of them. He was paid the prison's most valuable coin: simple goodwill. Later, after Greg Stammas took over as warden, Andy became even more important, but if I tried to tell you the specifics of exactly how, I'd beguessing. There are some things that I know and others that I can only guess. I know there were some inmates who were getting all sorts of special radio finishers in their cells, extraordinary visiting privileges, things like that- and there were people on the street who paid for them to have the privileges. Prisoners are known as angels. All atonce some guy would be relieved from work in a plate-shop in Saturdayforenoons and you know that the guy was an angel there who would cough up achunk dough to make sure it happened. As it usually works, it is that Theangel will pay a bribe to some mid-level screw, and the screw will spread the fat both up and down the administrative Then there was the discount of auto repair who put the warden Dunahy low. It passed underground for a while and then became stronger than ever in the latefifties. And some of the contractors who worked in the prison from time to time had to pay kickbacks to top administration officials, I'm sure, and the same was almost certainly true for companies whose equipment was bought installed in a laundry and license plate shop and a punching mill was built in 1963.By in the late sixties there was also a boom in pill trading, and the sameadministrative crowd was involved in turning the dollar on it. All this added to the pretty well-sized river of illegal income. Not like the bunch of clandestinebucks that have to fly around a really big prison like Attica or San quentin, but 35not peanuts, either. And money itself becomes a problem after a while. You can't just stuff it into your wallet and then lay out a bunch of crumpled twenties and dog-eared dozens when you want a pool built in your backyard or addput on your home. Once you get past a certain point, you have to explain where that money came from . . . and if your explanations are not convincing enough, you tend to end up wearing the room yourself. So there was a need for Andy's services. They pulled him out of the laundry room and detained him in the library, but if you wanted to see it differently, he was pulled out of the laundry. They just put him to work washing money instead of dirty sheets He sent it to stocks, bonds, tax freemunicipals, you name it. He told me that about ten years after that day on the roof of the store plate, that his details of what he was doing were pretty clear, and that his conscience was perfectly calm. The rackets would have gone with or without him. He did not ask to be sent to Shawshank, he continued; he was an innocent man who was the victim of tremendous bad luck, not a missionary or a good one. I'll give you a rather strange axiom: the amount of expert financial assistance from individuals or companyneeds rises in direct proportion to how many people that person or business is isscrewing.The people who run this place are stupid, brutal monsters for the most part. The people who run the straight world are cruel and monstrous, but they are not so stupid because the level of competence there is alittle higher. Not much, but not much. But pills, I said. Reds, uppers, downers, nembutals - now they have these things that they called Phase Four. I'm not getting anything like that. Never was. The question is: I don't like pills, either. Never was. But I don't muchof one for cigarettes or booze, either. But I'm not pushing pills. I'm not smming. in, and I don't sell them once they're in. There's a fine line. What it boils down to is, red, some people refuse to get their hands dirty at all. It's called holiness, and thepigeons land on your shoulders and shit all over your shirt. Other extremes take a bath in the mud and deal with any damn thing that will turn 36-dollar guns, switchblades big H. what the hell. Do you ever have a scam to come up to you and offer you a contract? It's happened many times over the years. You are, after all, the person who can get it. And they believe if you can get their batteries for their radio stations or Luckies boxes or riffer covers, you can put them in touch with the guy who will use the knife. Of course you have, Andy agreed. The question is: But you don't. Because guys like us, Red, we know there's a third choice. Analternative for staying Simon-clean or bathing in mud and mucus. It's an alternative that adults around the world choose. You balance with your walks through the pigs wallowing against what it gets you. You choose the lesser of two evils and try to keep your good intentions in front of you. And I think you know how well you do, how well you sleep at night . . . and what your dreams like. Good intentions, I said, and laughed. The question is: I know all about that Andy. A guy can go to hell on this road. The question is: It's hell right here. Right here in Shank. They sell pills, and I tell them what to do with the money. But I also have a library, and I know more than two dozen guys who used books there to help them pass their high school equivalence tests. Maybe when they get out of here, they can slide off the shitty pile. When we turned our backs on the second room in 1957, I got it. Because they want them in me. I work cheaply. It's a compromise. That's how I like it. But during all this time Andy never had a cellmate, except for a large, silent Indian named Normaden (like all Indians in Shank, he was called the leader), and Normaden did not last long. Many other centenarians thought Andy was kracyen, but Andy just smiled. He lived alone, and he loved it so much... and, as he said, they loved to keep him happy. It worked cheaply. Prison time is a slow time, sometimes you can swear that it's a stoppage time, but it passes. It passes. George Danahi left the stage in a welter of newspaper headlines shouting and NEST- FEATHERING. Stammas changed it, and for the next Shawshank was a kind of hell. Hell. Greg Stammas' reign of beds in the infirmary and the cells in the single wing were always full. 37 One day in 1958, I looked at myself in a small shaving mirror I was holding in my cell, and I saw a 40-year-old man looking at me. The child came back in 1938, a child with a large mop of carrot red hair, half-crazy with remorse, thinking about suicide. This guy wasn't there. The red hair turned gray and began to go nuts. There were crow tracks around his eyes. That day I could see the old man inside, waiting for his time to get out. It scared me. No one wants to get old in the stir. Stammas left in early 1959. There have been several investigative reporters around, and one of them even made four months under his name, for a crime committed from a whole cloth. They were going to pull SKAND and NEST- FEATHERING again, but before they could bring a hammer blow to him, Stammas ran. I can understand that; Boy, I can someday. If he was convicted, he could be right here. If so, it could last all five hours. Byron Hadley left two years ago. The sucker had a heart attack and took early retirement. Andy was never touched by The Stammas case. In early 1959, a new warden, a new assistant warden and a new chief of guards were appointed. For the next months or so, Andy was just another con again. It was during this period that Normaden, a large semi-breed of Passamacuddi, shared Andy's cage with him. Then it all started again. Normaden was moved, and Andy relived in solitary splendor again. The names at the top change, but the rackets never do. I once talked to Normaden about Andy. Nice Della, Normaden said. It was difficult to work out everything he said, because he had a hare and a cleft palate; his words all went out into slush. The question is: I liked it there. He never made fun of himself. But he didn't want me there. I could tell. The question is: I was happy to go, I. It's cold all the time. He doesn't let anyone touch his things. It's juice. A good man, never made fun of himself. But a big project. VIII 38Rita Hayworth hung in Andy's cell until 1955, if I remember correctly. Then it was Marilyn Monroe that pictured a seven-year-old itch where she stands over a subway grille and warm air flipping her skirt up. Marilyn lasted until 1960, and she was significantly ragged about the edges when Andy replaced her with Jane Mansfield. Jane was, you must forgive the expression, bust. Afteronly a year or so she was replaced by an English actress, perhaps were HazelCourt, but I'm not sure. In 1966, that one came down and Raquel Welch climbed to a record six-year engagement to Andy's camera. The last poster to hang was a handsome country rock singer whose name was Linda Ronstadt.I asked him once what the posters meant for and he gave me a peculiar, surprised look. The question is: Why, they are they same for me as they do for mostcons, I think, he said. Freedom. You look at these beautiful women and you feel like you could almost . . . not quite, but almost . . . step straight through and bebeside them. Be free. I guess that's why I've always loved Raquel Welch best. It wasn't just her; it was the beach she was standing on. Looks like she was in Mexico somewhere. Somewhere quiet, where a person can hear himself think. You've never felt this way about a picture, Red? What should you almost step right through it? I said I never thought of it that way. Maybe someday you'll see what I mean, he said, and he was right. Years later Isaw is exactly what he meant . . . and when I did, the first thing I thought about was About Norcadon, and how he said it was always cold in Andy's cell. A terrible thing happened to Andy in late March or early April 1963. I told you he had something that most other prisoners, including me, seemed to lack. Call it a sense of equanimity, or a sense of innerpeace, maybe even a constant and unshakable belief that someday longnightmare will end. Whatever you want to call it, Andy Dufresne always seemed like his own thing. There was none of this sullen despair about him that seems to toafflict most lifers after a while; You could never smell hopelessness on it. Until this late winter '63.We had another warden by then, a man named Samuel Norton. Mathers, Cottonand Rising, would feel at home with Sam Norton. As far as I know, no one has ever seen him so much as a cracked smile. He had a thirty-year-old pin from Eliot's Advent Baptist Church. His main innovation as head of our family was to make sure that every incoming prisoner had a New Testament. The sampler on the wall made by his wife read: 39HIS JUDGMENT COMETH AND THAT RIGHT EARLY. It's the last feeling to cut zero ice with most of us. We felt that the trial had already taken place and we would be willing to confirm with the best of them that the rock would not hide us nor the dead treegive us refuge. He had a quote from the Bible on every occasion made by Mr. Sam Norton, and whenever you meet a person like that my best advice to you would be to grinbig and hide your balls with both hands. There were fewer cases in the infirmary than in Greg Stammas's time, and as far as I know, the lunar burials have completely stopped, but that doesn't mean Norton didn't believe in punishment. The lonely was always well populated. Menloist teeth are not from beatings, but from the bread and water diet. It began to be called grain and runoff, as in I on Sam Norton grain and train, boys. The man was the dirtiest hypocrite I've ever seen in a high position. Therackets I told you about previously continued to flourish, to thrive, Sam Norton added his new wrinkles. Andy knew about them all, and because by the time we became good friends, he let me in some of them. When Andy talked about them, the expression amused, disgusted by the miracle would come on his face, as if he were telling me about some ugly, predatory kind of bug that was, byits very ugliness and greed, somehow more comical than scary. It was Superintendent Norton, who founded the Inside-Out program, which you may have read about sixteen or seventeen years ago; it was even written in Newsweek.In the press it sounded like real progress in practical andrehabilitation corrections. Prisoners chopped pulp, prisoners repaired bridges and dams, prisoners built potato cellars. Norton called it Inside-Out and was invited to explain it next to every Rotary and Kiwanisclub in New England, especially after he got his picture in Newsweek. Theprisoners called it a road gang, but as far as I know, none of them have ever been called to express their views on the Kiwans or loyal Order of Moose.Norton was right there at every operation, thirty-year-old churchpin and all; From cutting pulp to digging storm drains to laying new culverts under statehighways, there was no Norton. There were a hundred ways to do it-men, materials, you name it. But he was coming his other way as well. Construction workers in the area have been fatally afraid of Norton'sInside-Out program because prison labor is slave labor and you can't compete with that. Thus, Sam Norton, from the Covenant and a thirty- year-old church pin, was handed many thick envelopes under the table during his 16th-year tenure as Shawshank's warden. And when the envelope has been handed over, it will either be a 40overbid project rather than a bid at all, or claim that all of its Inside-Outers have been donated elsewhere. It's always been something amazing to me that Nortonwas never found in the trunk of a Thunderbird parked by a highway somewhere down in Massachusetts with his hands tied behind his back and half a dozenbullets in his head. Anyway, as the old barrel song says, my God, how money rolled in. Norton must have subscribed to the old Puritan notion that the best way to figure out what kind of people God stands for is by checking their bank accounts. Andy Dufresne had his right hand in all this, his silent partner. Prison was andy's hostage. Norton knew it, and Norton used it. Andy told me that one of Norton's favorite aphorisms was one hand washing the other. So Andy gave good advice and made useful suggestions. I can't say for sure that he handtooled Norton's Inside-Out program, but I'm damn sure he handled the money for Jesus' screaming son whore. He gave good advice, did the money was distributed, and... Son of a bitch! The library will receive a new new Automotive Repair Guides, a fresh set of GrolierEncyclopedias, books on how to prepare for Scholastic Achievement Tests.And of course more Earl Stanley Gardners and more Louis L'Amours. And I'm convinced that what happened was because Norton just didn't want to believe in his good right hand. I'll go further: it happened because he was afraid of what might happen, what Andy might say against him if Andy ever got away fromShawshank State Prison.I got a story piece here and a piece there for seven years, some of it from Andy, but not all. He never wanted to talk about this part of his life, and I don't blame him. I got parts of it from maybe half a dozen different sources. I have said once that prisoners are nothing but slaves, but they have a slave habit of looking dull and keeping their ears open. I've got it back and forth and in the middle, but I'll give it to you from point A to point of Z., and maybe you'll understand why a man spent about ten months in a grim, depressed stupor. You see, I don't think he knew the truth until 1963, fifteen years after he entered that sweet hellhole. Until he met Tommy Williams, I don't think he knew how bad it could get. Tommy Williams joined our happy little Shawshank family in November 1962.Tommy thought of himself as a Massachusetts native, but he wasn't proud; inhis twenty-seven years he made time all over New England. He was an aprefezous thief, and as you may have guessed, my own feeling was that he had to choose a different profession. He was a married man, and his wife came to visit every week. She had an anida that things could go better with Tommy - and therefore better with their 41-year-old son and herself if he got a high school degree. She talked to him, and so Tommy Williams started visiting the library on a regular basis. For Andy, it was an old routine by then. He saw that Tommy had received a series of high school equivalency tests. Tommy would brush off on the subjects he went around in high school- there wasn't much and then take the test. Andy also saw that he was enrolled in a series of correspondence courses covering a subject she failed at school or simply missed by graduating. He probably wasn't the best student Andy ever took on the jumps, and I don't know if he'll ever get a high school diploma, but that's not part of my story. The important thing is that he came as Andy Dufresne very much, as most people did after a while. A couple of times he asked Andy what a smart guy like you is doing in a shoal - a question that is the rough equivalent of the one that goes What a good girl like you do in a place like this? But Andy was not thetype to tell him; he was just smiling and turning the conversation into some other channel. It's quite normal, Tommy asked. another, and when he finally got thestory, I think he also got a shock shock his young life. The man he asked was his partner in the steam iron and laundry folder. Inmates call this device a mangler because that's exactly what it will do for you if you're not paying attention and get your bad self caught in it. He was more than happy to warm up the details of Dufresne's murder trial for Tommy; He broke the monotony of pulling freshly squeezed sheets out of themachine and stacking them in a basket. He was just getting to the jury waiting until the afternoon to bring in their guilty verdict when troublewhistle went and mangle grated to the stop. They fed infrequently washed sheets from Eliot's nursing home at the far end; They were spated out dry and neatly pressed by Tommy and Charlie at the end at a rate of one-five seconds. Their job was to grab them, fold them up, and slap them in a basket that had already been lined with clean brown paper. But Tommy Williams just stood there, looking at Charlie Latrobe, his excuses all the way to his chest. He was standing in a snowdrift of sheetsthat came through the net and who were now sopping all the wet nastiness on the floor and in the laundry wet, there is a lot of dirt. So, the main bull that day, Homer Jessup, rushes, roaring his head and pushing to trouble. Tommy didn't pay attention to him. He spoke to Charlie, as if an old homer that broke more goals than he could probably count, wasn't there. 42 What did you say the name of the golf professional was? quentin, Charlie replied, everyone is confused and upset by now. He later said the child was as white as a truce flag. The question is: Glenn quentin, I think. Something like that, anyway - Here now, here now, Homer Jessup roared, his neck as red as the roosters comb. Get their sheets in cold water! Faster! Get fast, Jesus, you -- Glenn quentin, oh my God, said Tommy Williams, and that was all he had to say, because Homer Jessup, that least peace-loving man, brought his Billy down behind his ear. Tommy hit the floor so hard he tore off three front teeth. When he woke up, he was in solitary confinement, and confined to the same for a week, riding boxcaron Sam Norton's famous grain and drainage train. Plus a black mark on his card. It was early February 1963, and Tommy Williams went around six orseven other long timers after he got out of the solitary and got almost the same story. I know; I was one of them. But when I asked him why he wanted it, he just fell silent. And then one day he went to the library and spilled one hellish big budget of information and Andy Dufresne. And for the first and last time, at least since he came up to me about a poster of Rita Hayworth as a kid buying his first pack of Trojans, Andy lost his . . . only this time he blew it completely. I saw him later that and he looked like a man who stepped on the business end of the rake and gave himself a nice, whap between his eyes. His hands were shaking, and when I spoke to him, he didn't answer. Before that, after he came out he caught up with Billy Hanlon, who was head screw, and set up a meeting with Warden Norton the next day. He told the meleter that he had not slept to wink all night; he just listened to the cold wind howle outside, watched the floodlights walk in and around, putting long, moving shadows on the cement walls of the cage he called homeince Harry Truman was president, and tried to think it all out. He said it was as if Tommy had made a key that fits into a cage at the back of his mind, a cage, like his own camera. Only instead of holding a man, this cage held a tiger, and this tiger was called Hope. Williams produced a key that opened the cage the tiger was out, way-nilly, to roam his brain. Four years ago, Tommy Williams was arrested in Rhode Island for driving an Astolen car full of stolen goods. Tommy turned in his accomplice, DA played the ball and he got a softer sentence . . . two or four, over time. Eleven months after the beginning of his term, his old cellmate received a ticket and Tommy got a new one, a man named Elwood Blatch. Blatch was arrested 43 for burglary with a weapon and served between six and twelve. A man like that everyone wants to be a burglar, especially not with a gun. The smallest little one, he would have gone three feet into the air . . . and the shoot is likely not. One night he almost strangled me because some guy down the hall was jumping on his grille with a tin cup. I've had time served and fallen behind, you know. I can't say what we said because you didn't, you know, exactly have a conversation with El Blatch. He had a conversation with you. He was talking all the time. Don't ever shut up. If you tried to talk, he'd shake your fist and roll your eyes. He gave me cold chills when he did it. The big tall guy he was, mostly bald, with those green eyes set way down deep into the socket. God, I hope I never see him again. Where he grew up, the orphanages from which he escaped, the work he did, the women he fucked, the crappy games he cleaned. I just let him run on. My face is not much, but I don't want to, you know, rearrange for me. According to him, he robbed more than two hundred joints. I found it hard to believe a guy like him who left like a firecracker every time someone cut out the fart out loud, but he swore it was true. Nwo... Listen to me, Red. I know guys sometimes do things after they know a thing, but even before I knew about this golf about the guy, quentin, I remember thinking that El Blatch ever robbed my house and I found out about it later, I would have to count on myself just about the lucky bastard to be still alive. Can you imagine him in some hostess's bedroom, sifting through her jool'ry box and she coughs in her sleep orturns more quickly? It gives me cold chills just to think of something like this, I swear in my mother's name it does. He said he killed people, too. The people who gave him shit. At least that's what he said. And I believed him. He certainly looked like a man who could do some bit. He was just so damn high! Like a gun with a sawn-off pin. I knew a guy who had Smith and Wesson police swat officers with the shooting. It wasn't good for anything, except maybe something of the jaw of O. Pull to this gun was so light that it would have shot if this guy, Johnny Callahan, had his name been called if he had turned his record holder at full volume and had confused him on top of one of the speakers. So was El Blatch. I can't explain it better. I just never doubted that he smeared some people. Like a joke, you know. So he laughs and says: There's one guy making time up-maine for thesetwo people I killed. It was that guy and the slob wife who does 44 times. I crawled their place, and the guy started giving me a little. I can't remember if he ever told me the name of a woman or not, Tommy continued. Maybe he did. But in New England, Dufresne is like Smith or Jones in the rest of the country because there are so many frogs here. Dufresne, Lavezque, Houellette, Pulin, who remembers the names of the frogs? But he told me this guy's name. Hesaid the guy was Glenn quentin and he was a prick, a great rich prick, a golf professional. Al said he thought the guy might have cash in the house, maybe up to five thousand dollars. It was a lot of money back then, he tells me. So I go: When was it? And he says: After the war. Right after the war. The question: So he came in and he did a joint and they woke up and the guy gave him some worries. That's what Al said. Maybe the guy just started snoring, that's what Isaiah is. Anyway, Elle said quentin was in the bag with the wife of some hotshot lawyer andthey sent a lawyer to Shawshank State Prison. Then he laughs at this biglaugh. Holy Christ, I have never been so excited about anything as I was when I got mywalking papers from this place. IX 45I think you can understand why Andy went a little wobbly when Tommy told him this story and why he wanted to see the warden right away. Elwood Blatch served asix-twelve rap when Tommy knew him four years ago. By the time Andy heard it all, in 1963, he might be on the verge of quitting . . . or not. So it was two prongs of Andy's braids was roasting on-the-idea that TheBlatch could still be one hand, and the very real possibility that the hemight would disappear wind, on the other hand. There were inconsistencies in Tommy's story, but wasn't it always in real life? Blatch told Tommy that the man who was sent was an ardent lawyer, and Andy was a banker, but these are two professions that people who aren't very educated could easily get mixed up. And don't forget that twelve years passed between the time Blatch read clippings about the trial and timehe told the tale of Tommy Williams. He also told Tommy that he had better than athousand dollars from the footlocker quentin was in his closet, but policesaid at Andy's trial that there was no sign of burglary. I have a few ideas on this. First, if you take the cash and the person to whom they belonged is dead, how are you going to know that anything has been stolen if someone else can't tell you that it was there to start with? Second, who said Blatch didn't lie about it? Maybe he didn't want to confess to killing two people for nothing. Third, maybe there were signs of burglary and the cops either missed them-cops can be pretty dumb or intentionally covered them so they didn't screw da'scase. The guy was running for public office, remember, and he had to run. An unsolved burglary would not have done him any good. But of the three, I like the average best. I know a few Elwood Blatchesin my time in Shawshank-trigger-pullers with crazy eyes. Such fellows want you to think they're coming off the no-equivalent hope of Diamond on an everycaper, even if they're caught with a two-dollar Timex and nine bucks on onethey're making time for. And there was one thing in Tommy's story that convinced Andy beyond the shadows of a doubt. Blatch didn't hit quentin at random. He called him a big rich man and knew that he was a golf professional. Well, Andy and his wife go to this country club for drinks and dinner once or twice a week for a few years, and Andy did a considerable amount of drinking there because he found out about his wife's affair. There was a marina with a countryclub, and for a while in 1947 there was no part-time lubricant and gas jockey out there that matched the description of Tommy Elwood Blatch. A big tall man, mostly bald, with deep green eyes. A man who had a nasty look at you, like he'd satiate you in size. He hasn't been there long, Andy said. Either he left or Briggs, the guy in charge of the marina fired him. But he wasn't the man you forgot. He was too startling for that. 46 With Andy went to warden Norton on a rainy, windy day with big gray clouds, dwelling across the sky above the gray walls, on a day when the last of the snowy waves begins to melt and show lifeless patches of last year's grass in the fields outside the prison. The boss has a good office size in wing, and at the table thewarden there is a door that connects with with Assistant Warden's Office. The warden's assistant was that day, but the gullible was there. He was an ahalf-lame guy whose real name I had forgotten; all the prisoners, myself included, called him Chester, after Assistant Marshal Dillon. Chester had to lead the plants and wax the floor. I think the plants wentthirsty that day, and the only waxing that was made was because of Chester's sdirty ear polishing the keyhole plate that connective door. He heard the warden's main door open and close, and then Norton said, Good name, Dufresne, how can I help you? began Andy, and old Chester told us that he could barely recognize Andy's voice, that he had changed so much. The question is: The Guardian . . . There is something... something for me is . . . Just like that... So... I hardly know where tobegin is. Well, why don't you just start at the beginning? Said warden is probably inhis sweet let-all-turn-to-twenty-third-psalm-and-read-in-unisonvoice. It usually works better. And so Andy did. He began by refreshing Norton about the details of the crime for which he was jailed. He then told the warden exactly what Tommy Williams had told him. He also gave out the name Tommy, which you think wasn't so wise in light of later events, but I would just ask you what else he could have done if his story was to have any credibility at all. When he finished, Norton was completely silent for some time. I can just seehim, probably tipped back into his office chair under the image of Governor Reedhanging on the wall, his fingers mired, his liver lips clenched, his browwrinkled in the stairs steps halfway to the crown of his head, his thirty-year-old pingleaming gently. It's the damnest story I've ever heard. But I'll tell you what surprises me most about this, Dufresne. I don't understand what you mean. and Chester said that Andy Dufresne, who bumped down Byron Hadley's rooftop plate shop thirteen years ago, was the most floundering for words. It's pretty obvious to me that this young Williams guy isimpressed with you. Pretty took with him, actually. He hears your story of grief and it is only natural that he wants... cheer you up, let's say. It's only natural. He's a young man, not very bright. No wonder he didn't know what state it would put you in. Now what I'm proposing is -- Don't you think I've been thinking about it? Andy asked. But I never told Tommy about a man working on the wharf. I never told anyone that-it didn't even cross mymind! But Tommy's description of his cellmate and this man . . . They are identical! Well, now, you may be indulging in a bit of selective perception out there, Nortonsaid with a laugh. Such phrases, selective perception, training for people in the penology and correction business and they use them all they can. Sir. It's your tilt at it, Norton said: But mine is different. And let's remember that I have your word that there was such a person working at Falmouth Hills Country Clubback back then. The question is: No, it's not. Because- Anyway, Norton overrode it, expansive and loud, let's just look at it with anotherend telescope, right? Suppose, just assume that now that there really was a guy called Elwood Blotch. Blatch, Andy said firmly. And suppose he was Thomas William's cellmate in Rhode Island. It's cool. Why, we don't even know how long he could have done there before he ended up with Williams, do we? Just what he did six or twelve. We don't know how long he did. But Tommy said he was a bad actor. I think there's a chance he might still be in. Even if he is released, theprison will have a record of his last known address, the names of his relatives - and both will almost certainly be deadlocked. Andy was silent for a moment, and then he flashed: Well, it's a chance, isn't it? Yes, of course it is. So for a moment, Dufresne, assume that Blatch exists, and that he's still safely sheltered in a Rhode Island state prison. What's he going to say if we get him a kettle of fish in a bucket? He'll fall on his knees, roll his eyes and say, I did it! I did it! By all means add a life sentence to mycharge! How can you be so stupid? said Andy, so low that Chester could barely hear. But he heard the warden just fine. What did you call me? Is this intentional? Dufresne, you took five minutes of my time-no, seven- and I have a very busyschedule today. So I believe we just announce this little meeting closed and - Country Club will have all the old time cards, you don't understand that? Andy was screaming. They will have tax forms and W-two and forms of unemployment compensation, all with his name on them! There will be staff there now who were there then, maybe Briggshim himself! It's been fifteen years, not forever! They'll remember him! They will rememberBlatch. If I have Tommy to testify about what Blatch told him, and Briggs to testify that Blatch was there, actually working at a ready-made club, I can get a new trial! I can-Guard! Protection. Get this man away! What happened to you? Andy said, and Chester told me he was very respectful by then. The question is: This is my life, my chance to get out, you don't see that? And you're not going to make a single long-distance call to at least check Tommy's story? Look, I'll pay for the call! Then there was the sound. thrashing as the guards grabbed him and began to drag him. He probably fingered his thirty-year-old pin like he said it. Bread and water. And so they pulled Andy, completely out of control now, still screaming at the warden; Chester said you could hear it even after the door was closed: This is my life! This is my life, don't you realize this is my life? The question: Twenty days on a grain and drainage train for Andy out there in solitary confinement. It was his second push in solitary confinement, and his dust with Norton was his first real black meth since he joined our happy little family. I'm going to tell you a little bit about the lonely Shawshank Redemption while we're talking about it. It's something of a throwback to those hardy pioneer days in the early to mid-1700s in Maine. In those 49 days, no one wasted much time with things like penology and rehabilitation and selective perception. You were either guilty or innocent. If you were guilty, you'd either be hanged or put in jail. And if you were sentenced to prison, you didn't go to the facility. No, you dug your own prison with a shovel provided by the province of Maine. You dug it as wide and asdeep as you could in between sunup and sunset. Then they gave you acouple skins and a bucket, and down you went. Once down, the gazer would bar on top of your hole, toss a little grain or maybe a piece of meat larvae once or twice a week, and maybe wouldn't have dipperful barley soup on a Sunday night. You threw in a bucket and you held the same bucket for water when looking camearound at six in the morning. When it rained, you used a bucket to help out your prison cell... if, that is, you like to drown like a rat in a barrel of rain. No one spent a long time in the pit, as it was called; Thirty months has been an unusually long term, and so far, as far as I was able to tell, the longest time ever spent, from which aninmate actually appeared alive served by the so-called Durham Boy, a fourteen-year-old psychopath who neutered a classmate with a piece of rusty metal. He did seven years, but of course he went in young and strong. You have to remember that for a crime that was more serious than petty theft orblasphemy or forgetting to put a snot rag in your pocket when out of the door on Sabbath, you were hanged. For low crimes such as those that have just been mentioned, and for other likethem, you'd make your three or six or nine months into the hole and get out fishbelly white, cringing from wide open spaces, your eyes half-blind, your teeth more likelyrocking and rolling in their scurvy sockets, your feet crawling with the fungus. The province of Jollyold, Maine. Yo-ho-ho and a bottle of rum. Shawshank's solitary wing has nowhere been as bad as this . . . I guess. come in threemajor degrees in experience, I think. It's good, bad and awful. And as you descend into progressive darkness to the scary, it becomes harder and harder to do. To get to the solitary wing you led down twenty-three steps to the basement level where the only sound was drip water. The only light was supplied by a series of danglingsixty-watt bulbs. The cages were barrel-shaped, as those wall-safe rich people sometimes had behind the picture. Like a safe, the round doorways were hinged, and solid, not barred. You got ventilation from above, but no light, except for your own sixty watt lamp, which was turned off by the master switch quickly at 8:00 p.m., an hour before turning off the lights in the rest of the prison. The light bulb wasn't in a wire mesh cage or anything like that. It felt like if you wanted to exist there in the dark, you were approaching it. Not many did . . . but after eight, of course, you had no choice. You're pinned to the wall and maybe without a toilet. You had three ways to spend your time: sit, or sleep. Plenty of choice. Twenty days may seem like a year. Thirty days may seem like two, and forty-five 50 50 rita hayworth and shawshank redemption pdf download. rita hayworth and shawshank redemption book download

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