肖申克的救赎-5

　　Andy wasn‘t that way, but I was. The idea of seeing the Pacific sounded good, but I wasafraid that actually being there would scare me to death - the bigness of itAnyhow, the day of that conversation about Mexico, and about Mr Peter Stevens ... thatwas the day I began to believe that Andy had some idea of doing a disappearing act. Ihoped to God he would be careful if he did, and still, I wouldn‘t have bet money on hischances of succeeding. Warden 2 Norton, you see, was watching Andy with a special closeeye. Andy wasn‘t just another deadhead with a number to Norton; they had a workingrelationship, you might say. Also, he had brains and he had heart Norton was determinedto use the one and crush the other.

As there are honest politicians on the outside - ones who stay bought - there are honestprison guards, and if you are a good judge of character and if you have some loot tospread around, I suppose it‘s possible that you could buy enough look-the-other-way tomake a break. I‘m not the man to tell you such a thing has never been done, but AndyDufresne wasn‘t the man who could do it Because, as I‘ve said, Norton was watching.

Andy knew it, and the screws knew it, too.

Nobody was going to nominate Andy for the Inside-Out programme, not as long asWarden Norton was evaluating the nominations 3. And Andy was not the kind of man totry a casual Sid Nedeau type of escape.

If I had been him, the thought of that key would have tormented 4 me endlessly. I wouldhave been lucky to get two hours‘ worth of honest shuteye a night Buxton was less thanthirty miles from Shawshank. So near and yet so far.

I still thought his best chance was to engage a lawyer and try for the retrial Anything toget out from under Norton‘s thumb. Maybe Tommy Williams could be shut up by nothingmore than a cushy furlough programme, but I wasn‘t entirely 5 sure. Maybe a good oldMississippi hardass lawyer could crack him ... and maybe that lawyer wouldn‘t even haveto work that hard. Williams had honestly liked Andy. Every now and then I‘d bring thesepoints up to Andy, who would only smile, his eyes far away, and say he was thinkingabout it.

Apparently 7 he‘d been thinking about a lot of other things, as well.

In 1975, Andy Dufresne escaped from Shawshank. He hasn‘t been recaptured, and I don‘tthink he ever will be. In fact, I don‘t think Andy Dufresne even exists anymore. But Ithink there‘s a man down in Zihuatanejo, Mexico named Peter Stevens. Probably runninga very new small hotel in this year of our Lord 1977.

I‘ll tell you what I know and what I think; that‘s about all I can do, isn‘t it?

On 12 March 1975, the cell doors in Cellblock 5 opened at 6.30 a.m., as they do everymorning around here except Sunday. And as they do every day except Sunday, theinmates of those cells stepped forward into the corridor and formed two lines as the celldoors slammed shut behind them. They walked up to the main cellblock gate, where theywere counted off by two guards before being sent on down to the cafeteria for a breakfastof oatmeal, scrambled 9 eggs, and fatty bacon.

All of this went according to routine until the count at the cellblock gate. There shouldhave been twenty-nine. Instead, there were twenty-eight. After a call to the Captain of theGuards, Cellblock 5 was allowed to go to breakfast.

The Captain of the Guards, a not half-bad fellow named Richard Gonyar, and hisassistant, a jolly prick 10 named Dave Burkes, came down to Cellblock 5 right away.

Gonyar reopened the cell doors and he and Burkes went down the corridor together,dragging their sticks over the bars, their guns out. In a case like that what you usuallyhave is someone who has been taken sick in the night, so sick he can‘t even step out of hiscell in the morning. More rarely, someone has died... or committed suicide.

But this time, they found a mystery instead of a sick man or a dead man. They found noman at all. There were fourteen cells in Cellblock 5, seven to a side, all fairly neat -restriction of visiting privileges is the penalty for a sloppy 11 cell at Shawshank - and allvery empty.

Gonyar‘s first assumption was that there had been a miscount or a practical joke. Soinstead of going off to work after breakfast, the inmates 8 of Cellblock 5 were sent back totheir cells, joking and happy. Any break in the routine was always welcome.

Cell doors opened; prisoners stepped in; cell doors closed. Some clown shouting, ‘I wantmy lawyer, I want my lawyer, you guys run this place just like a frigging prison.‘

Burkes: ‘Shut up in there, or I‘ll rank you.‘

The clown: ‘I ranked your wife, Burkie,‘

Gonyar: ‘Shut up, all of you, or you‘ll spend the day in there.‘

He and Burkes went up the line again, counting noses. They didn‘t have to go far.

‘Who belongs in this cell?‘ Gonyar asked the rightside night guard.

‘Andrew Dufresne,‘ the rightside answered, and that was all it took. Everything stopped being routine right then. The balloon went up. In all the prison movies I‘ve seen, this wailing 12 horn goes off when there‘s been a break. That never happens at Shawshank. The first thing Gonyar did was to get in touch with the warden. The second thing was to get a search of the prison going. The third was to alert

the State Police in Scarborough to the possibility of a breakout That was the routine. It didn‘t call for them to search the suspected escapee‘s cell, and so no one did. Not then. Why would they? It was a case of what you see is what you get It was a small square room, bars on the window and bars on the sliding door. There was a toilet and an empty cot. Some pretty rocks on the windowsill. And the poster, of course. It was Linda Ronstadt by then. The poster was right over his bunk 14. There had been a poster there, in that exact same place, for twenty-six years. And when someone - it was Warden Norton himself, as it turned out, poetic 15 justice if there ever was any - looked behind it, they got one hell of a shock.

But that didn‘t happen until 6.30 that night, almost twelve hours after Andy had beenreported missing, probably twenty hours after he had actually made his escape.

Norton hit the roof.

I have it on good authority - Chester, the trustee, who was waxing the hall floor in theAdmin Wing that day. He didn‘t have to polish any keyplates with his ear that day; hesaid you could hear the warden clear down to Records & Files as he chewed on RichGonyar‘s ass 6.

‘What do you mean, you‘re "satisfied he‘s not on the prison grounds"? What does thatmean? It means you didn‘t find him! You better find him! You better! Because I wanthim! Do you hear me? I want him!‘Gonyar said something.

‘Didn‘t happen on your shift? That‘s what you say. So far as / can tell, no one knows whenit happened. Or how. Or if it really did. Now, I want him in my office by three o‘clockthis afternoon, or some heads are going to roll. I can promise you that, and I always keepmy promises.‘Something else from Gonyar, something that seemed to provoke Norton to even greaterrage.

‘No? Then look at this! Look at this! You recognize it? Last night‘s tally 16 for Cellblock 5.

Every prisoner accounted for! Dufresne was locked up last night at nine and it isimpossible for him to be gone now! It is impossible! Now you find him!"But at six that evening Andy was still among the missing, Norton himself stormed downto Cellblock 5, where the rest of us had been locked up all of that day. Had we beenquestioned? We had spent most of that long day being questioned by harried 17 screws whowere feeling the breath of the dragon on the backs of their necks. We all said the samething: we had seen nothing, heard nothing. And so far as I know, we were all telling thetruth. I know that I was. All we could say was that Andy had indeed been in his cell at thetime of the lock-in, and at lights-out an hour later.

One wit suggested that Andy had poured himself out through the keyhole. The suggestionearned the guy four days in solitary 18. They were uptight 19.

So Norton came down - stalked down - glaring at us with blue eyes nearly hot enough tostrike sparks from the tempered steel bars of our cages. He looked at us as if he believedwe were all in on it Probably he did believe it.

He went into Andy‘s cell and looked around. It was just as Andy had left it, the sheets ofhis bunk turned back but without looking slept-in. Rocks on the windowsill... but not allof them. The ones he liked best he took with him.

‘Rocks,‘ Norton hissed 20, and swept them off the window-ledge with a clatter 21. Gonyar,already four hours overtime 22, winced 23 but said nothing.

Norton‘s eyes fell on the Linda Ronstadt poster. Linda was looking back over hershoulder, her hands tucked into the back pockets of a very tight pair of fawn-colouredslacks. She was wearing a halter and she had a deep California tan. It must have offendedthe hell out of Norton‘s Baptist sensibilities, that poster. Watching him glare at it, Iremembered what Andy had once said about feeling he could almost step through thepicture and be with the girl.

In a very real way, that was exactly what he did - as Norton was only seconds fromdiscovering.

‘Wretched thing!‘ he grunted 24, and ripped the poster from the wall with a single swipe ofhis hand.

And revealed the gaping 25, crumbled 26 hole in the concrete behind it. Gonyar wouldn‘t go in.

Norton ordered him - God, they must have heard Norton ordering Rich Gonyar to go inthere all over the prison - and Gonyar just refused him, point-blank.

‘I‘ll have your job for this!‘ Norton screamed. He was as hysterical 27 as a woman having ahot-flush. He had utterly 28 blown his cool. His neck had turned a rich, dark red, and twoveins stood out, throbbing 29, on his forehead. ‘You can count on it, you ... you Frenchman!

I‘ll have your job and I‘ll see to it that you never get another one in any prison system inNew England!‘Gonyar silently held out his service pistol to Norton, butt 30 first. He‘d had enough. He wasfour hours overtime, going on five, and he‘d just had enough. It was as if Andy‘sdefection from our happy little family had driven Norton right over the edge of someprivate irrationality 31 that had been there for a long time ... certainly he was crazy thatnight.

I don‘t know what that private irrationality might have been, of course. But I do knowthat there were twenty-eight cons 32 listening to Norton‘s little dust-up with Rich Gonyarthat evening as the last of the light faded from a dull late winter sky, all of us hard-timersand long-line riders who had seen the administrators 34 come and go, the hard-asses and the‘candy-asses alike, and we all knew that Warden Samuel Norton had just passed what theengineers like to call ‘the breaking strain‘.

And by God, it almost seemed to me that somewhere I could heard Andy Dufresnelaughing.

Norton finally got a skinny drink, of water on the night shift to go into that hole that hadbeen behind Andy‘s poster of Linda Ronstadt. The skinny guard‘s name was RoryTremont, and he was not exactly a ball of fire in the brains department. Maybe he thoughthe was going to win a Bronze Star or something. As it turned out, it was fortunate thatNorton got someone of Andy‘s approximate height and build to go in there; if they hadsent a big-assed fellow - as most prison guards seem to be - the guy would have stuck inthere is sure as God made green grass ... and he might be there still.

Tremont went in with a nylon filament 35 rope, which someone had found in the trunk of hiscar, tied around his waist and a big six-battery flashlight in one hand. By then Gonyar,who had changed his mind about quitting and who seemed to be the only one there stillable to think clearly, had dug out a set of blueprints 37. I knew well enough what theyshowed him - a wall which looked, in cross-section, like a sandwich. The entire wall wasten feet thick. The inner and outer sections were each about four feet thick. In the centrewas two feet of pipe-space, and you want to believe that was the meat of the thing ... inmore ways than one.

Tremont‘s voice came out of the hole, sounding hollow and dead. ‘Something smellsawful in here, Warden.‘‘Never mind that! Keep going.‘Tremont‘s lower legs disappeared into the hole. A moment iater his feet were gone, too.

His light flashed dimly back and forth 38.

‘Warden, it smells pretty damn bad.‘‘Never mind, I said!‘ Norton cried.

Dolorously 39, Tremont‘s voice floated back: ‘Smells like shit. Oh God, that‘s what it is, it‘sshit, oh my God lemme outta here I‘m gonna blow my groceries oh shit it‘s shit oh myGawwwwwd - And then came the unmistakable sound of Rory Tremont lsing his lastcouple of meals.

Well, that was it for me. I couldn‘t help myself. The whole day - hell no, the last thirtyyears - all came up on me at once and I started laughing fit to split, a laugh such as I‘dnever had since I was a free man, the kind of laugh I never expected to have inside thesegrey walls. And oh dear God didn‘t it feel good!

‘Get that man out of here!‘ Warden Norton was screaming, and I was laughing so hard Ididn‘t know if he meant me or Tremont I just went on laughing and kicking my feet andholding onto my belly 40. I couldn‘t have stopped if Norton had threatened to shoot medead-bang on the spot. ‘Get him OUT!‘Well, friends and neighbours, I was the one who went Straight down to solitary, and thereI stayed for fifteen days. A long shot. But every now and then I‘d think about poor oldnot-too-bright Rory Tremont bellowing 41 oh shit it‘s shit, and then I‘d think about AndyDufresne heading south in his own car, dressed in a nice suit, and I‘d just have to laugh. Idid that fifteen days in solitary practically standing 42 on my head Maybe because half ofme was with Andy Dufresne, Andy Dufresne who had waded 44 in shit and came out cleanon the other side, Andy Dufresne, headed for the Pacific.

I heard the rest of what went on that night from half a dozen sources. There wasn‘t all thatmuch, anyway. I guess that Rory Tremont decided 45 he didn‘t have much left to lose afterhe‘d lost his lunch and dinner, because he did go on. There was no danger of falling downthe pipe-shaft 46 between the inner and outer segments of the cllblock wall; it was so narrowthat Tremont actually had to wedge himself down. He said later that he could only takehalf-breaths and that he knew what it would be like to be buried alive.

What he found at the bottom of the shaft was a master sewer 47-pipe which served thefourteen toilets in Cellblock 5, a porcelain 48 pipe that had been laid thirty-three yearsbefore. It had been broken into. Beside the jagged hole in the pipe, Tremont found Andy‘srock-hammer.

Andy had gotten free, but it hadn‘t been easy.

The pipe was even narrower than the shaft Tremont had just descended 49; it had a two-footbore. Rory Tremont didn‘t go in, and so far as I know, no one else did, either. It musthave been damn near unspeakable. A rat jumped out of the pipe as Tremont wasexamining the hole and the rock-hammer, and he swore later that it was nearly as big as acocker spaniel pup. He went back up the crawlspace to Andy‘s cell like a monkey on astick.

Andy had gone into that pipe. Maybe he knew that it emptied into a stream five hundredyards beyond the prison on the marshy 50 western side. I think he did. The prison blueprintswere around, and Andy would have found a way to look at them. He was a methodicalcuss. He would haveknown or found out that the sewerpipe running out of Cellblock 5 was the last one inShawshank not hooked into the new waste-treatment plant, and he would have known itwas do it by mid-1975 or do it never, because in August they were going to switch usover to the new waste-treatment plant, too.

Five hundred yards. The length of five football fields. Just shy of a mile. He crawled thatdistance, maybe with one of those small Penlites in his hand, maybe with nothing but acouple of books of matches. He crawled through foulness 51 that I either can‘t imagine ordon‘t want to imagine. Maybe the rats scattered 52 in front of him, or maybe they went forhim the way such animals sometimes will when they‘ve had a chance to grow bold in thedark. He must have had just enough clearance 53 at the shoulders to keep moving, and heprobably had to shove himself through the places where the lengths of pipe were joined.

If it had been me, the claustrophobia would have driven me mad a dozen times over. Buthe did itAt the far end of the pipe they found a set of muddy footprints leading out of thesluggish, polluted creek 54 the pipe fed into. Two miles from there a search party found hisprison uniform - that was a day later.

The story broke big in the papers, as you might guess, but no one within a fifteen-mileradius of the prison stepped forward to report a stolen car, stolen clothes, or a naked manin the moonlight There was not so much as a barking dog in a farmyard. He came out ofthe sewerpipe and he disappeared like smoke.

But I am betting he disappeared in the direction of Buxton.

Three months after that memorable 55 day, Warden Norton resigned. He was a broken man,it gives me great pleasure to report The spring was gone from his step. On his last day heshuffled out with his head down like an old con 1 shuffling 56 down to the infirmary for hiscodeine pills. It was Gonyar who took over, and to Norton that must have seemed like theunkindest cut of all. For all I know, Sam Norton is down there in Eliot now, attendingservices at the Baptist church every Sunday, and wondering how the hell Andy Dufresneever could have gotten the better of him.

I could have told him; the answer to the question is simplicity 57 itself. Some have got it,Sam. And some don‘t, and never will.

That‘s what I know; now I‘m going to tell you what I think. 1 may have it wrong on someof the specifics, but I‘d be willing to bet my watch and chain that I‘ve got the generaloutline down pretty well. Because, with Andy being the sort of man that he was, there‘sonly one or two ways that it could have been. And every now and then, when I think itout, I think of Normaden, that half-crazy Indian. ‘Nice fella,‘ Normaden had said aftercelling with Andy for six or eight months. ‘I was glad to go, me. All the time cold. Hedon‘t let nobody touch his things. That‘s okay. Nice man, never make fun. But bigdraught.‘ Poor crazy Normaden. He knew more than ail 13 the rest of us, and he knew itsooner. And it was eight long months before Andy could get him out of there and havethe cell to himself again. If it hadn‘t been for the eight months Normaden had spent withhim after Warden Norton first came in, I do believe that Andy would have been freebefore Nixon resigned.

I believe now that it began in 1949, way back then - not with the rock-hammer, but withthe Rita Hayworth poster. I told you how nervous he seemed when he asked for that,nervous and filled with suppressed excitement. At the time I thought it was justembarrassment, that Andy was the sort of guy who‘d never want someone else to knowthat he had feet of clay and wanted a woman ... even if it was only a fantasy-woman. ButI think now that I was wrong. I think now that Andy‘s excitement came from somethingelse altogether.

What was responsible for the hole that Warden Norton eventually found behind theposter of a girl that hadn‘t even been born when that photo of Rita Hayworth was taken?

Andy Dufresne‘s perseverance 58 and hard work, yeah - I don‘t take any of that away fromhim. But there were two other elements in the equation: a lot of luck, and WPA concrete.

You don‘t need me to explain the luck, I guess. The WPA concrete I checked out formyself. I invested some time and a couple of stamps and wrote first to the University ofMaine History Department and then to a fellow whose address they were able to give me.

This fellow had been foreman of the WPA project that built the Shawshank Max SecurityWing.

The wing, which contains Cellblocks 3,4, and 5, was built in the years 1934-37. Now,most people don‘t think of cement and concrete as ‘technological developments‘, the waywe think of cars and oil furnaces and rocket-ships, but they really are. There was nomodern cement until 1870 or so, and no modern concrete until after the turn of thecentury. Mixing concrete is as delicate a business as making bread. You can get it toowatery or not watery 59 enough. You can get the sand-mix too thick or too thin, and thesame is true of the gravel-mix. And back in 1934, the science of mixing the stuff was alot less sophisticated than it is today.

The walls of Cellblock 5 were solid enough, but they weren‘t exactly dry and toasty. As amatter of fact, they were and are pretty damned dank. After a long wet spell they wouldsweat and sometimes even drip. Cracks had a way of appearing, some an inch deep, andwere routinely mortared over.

Now here comes Andy Dufresne into Cellblock 5. He‘s a man who graduated from theUniversity of Maine‘s school of business, but he‘s also a man who took two or threegeology courses along the way. Geology had, in fact, become his chief hobby. I imagineit appealed to his patient, meticulous 60 nature. A ten-thousand-year ice age here. A millionyears of mountain-building there. Tectonic plates grinding against each other deep underthe earth‘s skin over the millennia 61. Pressure. Andy told me once that all of geology is thestudy of pressure.

And time, of course.

He had time to study those walls. Plenty of time. When the cell door slams and the lightsgo out, there‘s nothing else to look at.

First-timers usually had a hard time adjusting to the confinement 62 of prison life. They getscrew-fever, they have to be hauled down to the infirmary and sedated 63 couple of timesbefore they get on the beam. It‘s not unusual to hear some new member of our happy littlefamily bang on the bars of his cell and screaming to be let out ... before the cries havegone on for long, the chant starts up along the cellblock: ‘Fresh fish, hey little fishie, freshfish, fresh fish, got fresh fish today!‘Andy didn‘t flip 64 out like that when he came to the Shank 1948, but that‘s not to say thathe didn‘t feel many of same things. He may have come close to madness; some and somego sailing right over the edge. Old life blown away in the wink 65 of an eye, indeterminatenightmare stretching out ahead, a long season in hell.

So what did he do, I ask you? He searched almost desperately 66 for something to divert hisrestless mind. Oh. there are all sorts of ways to divert yourself, even in prison; it seemslike the human mind is full of an infinite number of possibilities when it comes todiversion. I told you about the sculptor 67 and his Three Ages of Jesus. There were coincollectors who were always losing their collections to thieves, stamp collectors, onefellow who had postcards from thirty-five different countries - and let me tell you, hewould have turned out your lights if he‘d caught you diddling with his postcards.

Andy got interested in rocks. And the walls of his cell.

I think that his initial intention might have been to do no more than to carve his initialsinto the wall where the poster of Rita Hayworth would soon be hanging. His initials, ormaybe a few lines from some poem. Instead, what he found was that interestingly weakconcrete. Maybe he started to carve his initials and a big chunk 68 of the wall fell out I cansee him, lying there on his bunk, looking at that broken chunk of concrete, turning it overin his hands. Never mind the wreck 69 of your whole life, never mind that you got railroadedinto this place by a whole trainload of bad luck. Let‘s forget all that and look at this pieceof concrete.

Some months further along he might have decided it wouldbe fun to see how much of that wall he could take out. But you can‘t just start digginginto your wall and then, when the weekly inspection 70 (or one of the surprise inspectionsthat are always turning up interesting caches of booze, drugs, dirty pictures, andweapons) comes around, say to the guard: This? Just excavating 71 a little hole in my cellwall. Not to worry, my good man.‘No, he couldn‘t have that So he came to me and asked if I could get him a Rita Hayworthposter. Not a little one but a big one.

And, of course, he had the rock-hammer. I remember thinking when I got him that gadgetback in ‘48 that it would take a man six hundred years to burrow 72 through the wall with itTrue enough. But Andy went right through the wall -even with the soft concrete, it tookhim two rock-hammers and twenty-seven years to hack 73 a hole big enough to get his slimbody through four feet of itOf course he lost most of one of those years to Normaden, and he could only work atnight, preferably late at night, when almost everybody is asleep - including the guardswho work the night shift. But I suspect the thing which slowed him down the most wasgetting rid of the wall as he took it out He could muffle 74 the sound of his work bywrapping the head of his hammer in rock-polishing cloths, but what to do with thepulverized concrete and the occasional chunks 76 that came out whole?

I think he must have broken up the chunks into pebbles 78 and...

I remembered the Sunday after I had gotten him the rock-hammer. I remember watchinghim walk across the exercise yard, his face puffy from his latest go-round with the sisters.

I saw him stoop, pick up a pebble 77 ... and it disappeared up his sleeve. That inside sleevepocketis an old prison trick. Up your sleeve or just inside the cuff 79 of your pants. And Ihave another memory, very strong but unfocused, maybe something I saw more thanonce. This memory is of Andy Dufresne walking across the exercise yard on a hotsummer day when the air was utterly still. Still, yeah ... except for the little breeze thatseemed to be blowing sand around Andy Dufresne‘s feet.

So maybe he had a couple of cheaters in his pants below the knees. You loaded thecheaters up with fill and then just strolled around, your hands in your pockets, and whenyou feel safe and unobserved, you gave the pockets a little twitch 80. The pockets, of course,are attached by string or strong thread to the cheaters. The fill goes cascading 81 out of yourpantslegs as you walk. The World War II POWS who were trying to tunnel out used thedodge.

The years went past and Andy brought his wall out to the exercise yard cupful by cupful.

He played the game with administrator 33 after administrator, and they thought it wasbecause he wanted to keep the library growing. I have no doubt that was part of it, but themain thing Andy wanted was to keep cell 14 in Cellblock 5 a single occupancy.

I doubt if he had any real plans or hopes of breaking out, at least not at first. He probablyassumed the wall was ten feet of solid concrete, and that if he succeeded in boring all theway through it, he‘d come out thirty feet over the exercise yard. But like I say, I don‘tthink he was worried overmuch about breaking through. His assumption could have runthis way: I‘m only making a foot of progress every seven years or so; therefore, it wouldtake me seventy years to break through; that would make me one hundred and sevenyears old.

Here‘s a second assumption I would have made, had I been Andy: that eventually I wouldbe caught and get a lot of solitary time, not to mention a very large black mark on myrecord. After all, there was the regular weekly inspection and a surprise toss - whichusually came at night - every second week or so. He must have decided that thingscouldn‘t go on for long. Sooner or later, some screw was going to peek 82 behind RitaHayworth just to make sure Andy didn‘t have a sharpened spoon-handle or somemarijuana reefers Scotch-taped to the wall.

And his response to that second assumption must have been to hell with it. Maybe heeven made a game out of it. How far in can I get before they find out? Prison is a goddamboring place, and the chance or being surprised by an unscheduled inspection in themiddle of the night while he had his poster unstuck probably added some spice to his lifeduring the early years.

And I do believe it would have been impossible for him to get away just on dumb luck.

Not for twenty-seven years. Nevertheless, I have to believe that for the first two years -until mid-May of 1950, when he helped Byron Hadley get around the tax on his windfallinheritance - that‘s exactly what he did get by on.

Or maybe he had something more than dumb luck going for him even back then. He hadmoney, and he might have been slipping someone a little squeeze every week to take iteasy on him. Most guards will go along with that if the price is right; it‘s money in theirpockets and the prisoner gets to keep his whack-off pictures or his tailormade cigarettes.

Also, Andy was a model prisoner - quiet, well-spoken, respectful, non-violent. It‘s thecrazies and the stampeders that get their cells turned upside-down at least once every sixmonths, their mattresses 83 unzipped, their pillows taken away and cut open, the outflowpipe from their toilets carefully probed.

Then, in 1950, Andy became something more than a model prisoner. In 1950, he becamea valuable commodity, a murderer who did tax returns as well as H & R Block. He gavegratis estate-planning advice, set up tax-shelters, filled out loan applications (sometimescreatively). I can remember him sitting behind his desk in the library, patiently goingover a car-loan agreement paragraph by paragraph with a screwhead who wanted to buy aused DeSoto, telling the guy what was good about the agreement and what was bad aboutit, explaining to him that it was possible to shop for a loan and not get hit quite so bad,steering him away from the finance companies which in those days were sometimes littlebetter than legal loan-sharks. When he‘d finished, the screwhead started to put out hishand ... and then drew it back to himself quickly. He‘d forgotten for a moment, you see,that he was dealing 84 with a mascot 85, not a man.

Andy kept up on the tax laws and the changes in the stock market, and so his usefulnessdidn‘t end after he‘d been in cold storage for a while, as it might have done. He began toget his library money, his running war with the sisters had ended, and nobody tossed hiscell very hard. He was a good nigger.

Then one day, very late in the going - perhaps around October of 1967 - the long-timehobby suddenly turned into something else. One night while he was in the hole up to hiswaist with Raquel Welch hanging down over his ass, the pick end of his rock-hammermust have suddenly sunk into concrete past the hilt.

He would have dragged some chunks of concrete back, but maybe he heard others fallingdown into that shaft, bouncing back and forth, clinking off that standpipe. Did he knowby then that he was going to come upon that shaft, or was he totally surprised? I don‘tknow. He might have seen the prison blueprints by then or he might not have. If not, youcan be damned sure he found a way to look at them not long after.

All at once he must have realized that, instead of just playing a game, he was playing forhigh stakes ... in terms of his own life and his own future, the highest Even then hecouldn‘t have known for sure, but he must have had a pretty good idea because it wasright around then that he talked to me about Zihuatanejo for the first time. All of asudden, instead of just being a toy, that stupid hole in the wall became his master - if heknew about the sewer-pipe at the bottom, and that it led under the outer wall, it did,anyway.

He‘d had the key under the rock in Buxton to worry about for years. Now he had to worrythat some eager-beaver new guard would look behind his poster and expose the wholething, or that he would get another cellmate, or that he would, after all those years,suddenly be transferred. He had all those things on his mind for the next seven years. AllI can say is that he must have been one of the coolest men who ever lived. I would havegone completely nuts after a while, living with all that uncertainty 86. But Andy just went onplaying the game.

He had to carry the possibility of discovery for another eight years - the probability of it,you might say, because no matter how carefully he stacked the cards in his favour, as aninmate of a state prison, he just didn‘t have that many to stack ... and the gods had beenkind to him for a very long time; some eighteen years.

The most ghastly irony 87 I can think of would have been if he had been offered a parole.

Can you imagine it? Three days before the parolee is actually released, he is transferredinto the light security wing to undergo a complete physical and a battery of vocationaltests. While he‘s there, his old cell is completely cleaned out. Instead of getting his parole,Andy would have gotten a long turn downstairs in solitary, followed by some more timeupstairs ... but in a different cell.

If he broke into the shaft in 1967, how come he didn‘t escape until 1975?

I don‘t know for sure - but I can advance some pretty good guesses.

First, he would have become more careful than ever. He was too smart to just push aheadat flank speed and try to get out in eight months, or even in eighteen. He must have goneon widening the opening on the crawlspace a little at a time. A hole as big as a teacup bythe time he took his New Year‘s Eve drink that year. A hole as big as a dinner-plate bythe time he took his birthday drink in 1968. As big as a serving-tray by the time the 1969baseball season opened.

For a time I thought it should have gone much faster than it apparently did - after hebroke through, I mean. It seemed to me that, instead of having to pulverize 75 the crap andtake it out of his cell in the cheater gadgets 88 I have described, he could simply let it dropdown the shaft. The length of time he took makes me believe that he didn‘t dare do that.

He might have decided that the noise would arouse someone‘s suspicions. Or, if he knewabout the sewer-pipe, as I believe he must have, he would have been afraid that a fallingchunk of concrete would break it before he was ready, screwing up the cellblock sewagesystem and leading to an investigation 89. And an investigation, needless to say, would leadto ruin.

Still and all, I‘d guess that, by the time Nixon was sworn in for his second term, the holewould have been wide enough for him to wriggle 90 through ... and probably sooner thanthat Andy was a small guy.

Why didn‘t he go then?

That‘s where my educated guesses run out, folks; from this point they becomeprogressively wilder. One possibility is that the crawlspace itself was clogged 91 with crapand he had to clear it out But that wouldn‘t account for all the time. So what was it?

I think that maybe Andy got scared.

I‘ve told you as well as I can how it is to be an institutional man. At first you can‘t standthose four walls, then you get so you can abide 92 them, then you get so you accept them ...

and then, as your body and your mind and your spirit adjust to life on an HO scale, youget to love them. You are told when to eat, when you can write letters, when you cansmoke. If you‘re at work in the laundry or the plate-shop, you‘re assigned five minutes ofeach hour when you can go to the bathroom. For thirty-five years, my time was twentyfiveminutes after the hour, and after thirty-five years, that‘s the only time I ever felt theneed to take a piss or have a crap: twenty-five minutes past the hour. And if for somereason I couldn‘t go, the need would pass at thirty after, and come back at twenty-fivepast the next hour.

I think Andy may have been wrestling with that tiger - that institutional syndrome 93 - andalso with the bulking fears that all of it might have been for nothing.

How many nights must he have lain awake under his poster, thinking about that sewerline, knowing that the one chance was all he‘d ever get? The blueprints might have toldhim how big the pipe‘s bore was, but a blueprint 36 couldn‘t tell him what it would be likeinside that pipe - if he would be able to breathe without choking, if the rats were bigenough and mean enough to fight instead of retreating ... and a blueprint couldn‘t‘ve toldhim what he‘d find at the end of the pipe, when and if he got there. Here‘s a joke evenfunnier than the parole would have been: Andy breaks into the sewer line, crawls throughfive hundred yards of choking, shit-smelling darkness, and comes up against a heavygaugemesh screen at the end of it all. Ha, ha, very funny.

That would have been on his mind. And if the long shot actually came in and he was ableto get out, would he be able to get some civilian 94 clothes and get away from the vicinity ofthe prison undetected? Last of all, suppose he got out of the pipe, got away fromShawshank before the alarm was raised, got to Buxton, overturned the right rock ... andfound nothing beneath? Not necessarily something so dramatic as arriving at the rightfield and discovering that a high-rise apartment building had been erected 95 on the spot, orthat it had turned into a supermarket parking lot. It could have been that some little kidwho liked rocks noticed that piece of volcanic 96 glass, turned it over, saw the deposit-boxkey, and took both it and the rock back to his room as souvenirs. Maybe a Novemberhunter kicked the rock, left the key exposed, and a squirrel or a crow with a liking 97 forbright shiny things had taken it away. Maybe there had been spring floods one year,breaching the wall, washing the key away. Maybe anything.

So I think - wild guess or not - that Andy just froze in place for a while. After all, youcan‘t lose if you don‘t bet. What did he have to lose, you ask? His library, for one thing.

The poison peace of institutional life, for another. Any future chance to grab his safeidentity.

But he finally did it, just as I have told you. He tried ... and, my! Didn‘t he succeed inspectacular fashion? You tell me!

But did he get away, you ask? What happened after? What happened when he got to thatmeadow and turned over the rock ... always assuming the rock was still there?

I can‘t describe that scene for you, because this institutional man is still in this institution,and expects to be for years to come.

But I‘ll tell you this. Very late in the summer of 1975, on 15 September to be exact, I gota postcard which had been mailed from the tiny town of McNary, Texas. That town is onthe American side of the border, directly across from El Porvenir. The message side ofthe card was totally blank. But I know. I know it in my heart as surely as I know thatwe‘re all going to die someday.

McNary was where he crossed. McNary, Texas.

So that‘s my story, Jack 98. I never believed how long it would take to write it all down, orhow many pages it would take. I started writing just after I got that postcard, and here Iam finishing up on 14 January 1976. I‘ve used three pencils right down to knuckle-stubs,and a whole tablet of paper. I‘ve kept the pages carefully hidden ... not that many couldread my. hen-tracks, anyway.

It stirred up more memories than I ever would have believed. Writing about yourselfseems to be a lot like sticking a branch into clear river-water and roiling 99 up the muddybottom.

Well, you weren‘t writing about yourself, I hear someone in the peanut-gallery saying.

You were writing about Andy Dufresne. You‘re nothing but a minor 100 character in yourown story. But you know, that‘s just not so. It‘s all about me, every damned word of itAndy was the part of me they could never lock up, the part of me that will rejoice whenthe gates finally open for me and I walk out in my cheap suit with my twenty dollars ofmad-money in my pocket That part of me will rejoice no matter how old and broken andscared the rest of me is. I guess it‘s just that Andy had more of that part than me, and usedit better.

There are others here like me, others who remember Andy. We‘re glad he‘s gone, but alittle sad, too. Some birds are not meant to be caged, that‘s all. Their feathers are toobright, their songs too sweet and wild. So you let them go, or when you open the cage tofeed them they somehow fly out past you. And the part of you that knows it was wrong toimprison them in the first place rejoices, but still, the place where you live is that muchmore drab and empty for their departure.

That‘s the story and I‘m glad I told it, even if it is a bit inconclusive and even thoughsome of the memories the pencil prodded 101 up (like that branch poking 102 up the river-mud)made me feel a little sad and even older than I am. Thank you for listening. And Andy: Ifyou‘re really down there, as I believe you are, look at the stars for me just after sunset,and touch the sand, and wade 43 in the water, and feel free.

I never expected to take up this narrative 103 again, but here I am with the dog-eared, foldedpages open on the desk in front of me. Here I am adding another three or four pages,writing in a brand-new tablet. A tablet I bought in a store - I just walked into a store onPortland‘s Congress Street and bought it.

I thought I had put finish to my story in a Shawshank prison cell on a bleak 104 January dayin 1976. Now it‘s late June of 1977 and I am sitting in a small, cheap room of theBrewster Hotel in Portland, adding to itThe window is open, and the sound of the traffic floating in seems huge, exciting, andintimidating. I have to look constantly over at the window and reassure 105 myself that thereare no bars on it I sleep poorly at night because the bed in this room, as cheap as the roomis, seems much too big and luxurious 106. I snap awake every morning promptly 107 at six-thirty,feeling disorientated and frightened. My dreams are bad. I have a crazy feeling of freefall. The sensation is as terrifying as it is exhilarating.

What has happened in my life? Can‘t you guess? I was paroled. After thirty-eight years ofroutine hearings and routine details (in the course of those thirty-eight years, threelawyers died on me), my parole was granted. I suppose they decided that, at the age offifty-eight, I was finally used up enough to be deemed safe.

I came very close to burning the document you have just read. They search outgoingparolees just as carefully as they search incoming ‘new fish‘. And beyond containingenough dynamite 108 to assure me of a quick turnaround and another six or eight years inside,my ‘memoirs‘ contained something else: the name of the town where I believe AndyDufresne to be. Mexican police gladly cooperate with the American police, and I didn‘twant my freedom - or my unwillingness 109 to give up the story I‘d worked so long and hardto write - to cost Andy his.

Then I remembered how Andy had brought in his five hundred dollars back in 1948, andI took out my story of him the same way. Just to be on the safe side, I carefully rewroteeach page which mentioned Zihuatanejo. If the papers had been found during my ‘outsidesearch‘, as they call it at the Shank, I would have gone back in on turnaround ... but thecops would have been looking for Andy in a Peruvian seacoast town named LasIntrudres.

The Parole Committee got me a job as a ‘stock-room assistant‘ at the big FoodWayMarket at the Spruce Mall in South Portland - which means I became just one moreageing bag-boy. There‘s only two kinds of bag-boys, you know; the old ones and theyoung ones. No one ever looks at either kind. If you shop at the Spruce Mall FoodWay, Imay have even taken your groceries out to your car ... but you‘d have had to haveshopped there between March and April of 1977, because that‘s as long as I worked there.

At first I didn‘t think I was going to be able to make it on the outside at all. I‘ve describedprison society as a scaled-down model of your outside world, but I had no idea of howfast things moved on the outside; the raw speed people move at. They even talk faster.

And louder.

It was the toughest adjustment I‘ve ever had to make, and I haven‘t finished making it yet... not by a long way. Women, for instance. After hardly knowing that they were half ofthe human race for forty years, I was suddenly working in a store filled with them. Oldwomen, pregnant women wearing T-shirts with arrows pointing downward and theprinted motto reading BABY HERE, skinny women with their nipples poking out of theirshirts - a woman wearing something like that when I went in would have gotten arrestedand then had a sanity 110 hearing - women of every shape and size. I found myself goingaround with a semi-hard almost all the time and cursing myself for being a dirty old man.

Going to the bathroom, that was another thing. When I had to go (and the urge alwayscame on me at twenty-five past the hour), I had to fight the almost overwhelming need tocheck it with my boss. Knowing that was something I could just go and do in this toobrightoutside world was one thing; adjusting my inner self to that knowledge after allthose years of checking it with the nearest screwhead or facing two days in solitary forthe oversight 111... that was something else.

My boss didn‘t like me. He was a young guy, twenty-six or -seven, and I could see that Isort of disgusted him, the way a cringing 112, servile old dog that crawls up to you on itsbelly to be petted will disgust a man. Christ, I disgusted myself. But ... I couldn‘t makemyself stop. I wanted to tell him, That‘s what a whole life in prison does for you, youngman. It turns everyone in a position of authority into a master, and you into everymaster‘s dog. Maybe you know you‘ve become a dog, even in prison, but since everyoneelse in grey is a dog, too, it doesn‘t seem to matter so much. Outside, it does. But Icouldn‘t tell a young guy like him. He would never understand. Neither would my P.O., abig, bluff 113 ex-Navy man with a huge red beard and a large stock of Polish jokes. He sawme for about five minutes every week. ‘Are you staying out of the bars, Red?‘ he‘d askwhen he‘d run out of Polish jokes. I‘d say yeah, and that would be the end of it until nextweek.

Music on the radio. When I went in, the big bands were just getting up a good head ofsteam. Now every song sounds like it‘s about fucking. So many cars. At first I felt like Iwas taking my life into my hands every time I crossed the street.

There was more - everything was strange and frightening -but maybe you get the idea, orcan at least grasp a corner of it I began to think about doing something to get back in.

When you‘re on parole, almost anything will serve. I‘m ashamed to say it, but I began tothink about stealing some money or shoplifting stuff from the FoodWay, anything, to getback in where it was quiet and you knew everything that was going to come up in thecourse of the day.

If I had never known Andy, I probably would have done that But I kept thinking of him,spending all those years chipping patiently away at the cement with his rock-hammer sohe could be free. I thought of that and it made me ashamed and I‘d drop the idea again.

Oh, you can say he had more reason to be free than I did - he had a new identity and a lotof money. But that‘s not really true, you know. Because he didn‘t know for sure that thenew identity was still there, and without the new identity, the money would always be outof reach. No, what he needed was just to be free, and if I kicked away what I had, itwould be like spitting in the face of everything he had worked so hard to win back.

So what I started to do on my time off was to hitchhike a ride down to the little town ofBuxton. This was in the early April of 1977, the snow just starting to melt off the fields,the air just beginning to be warm, the baseball teams coming north to start a new seasonplaying the only game I‘m sure God approves of. When I went on these trips, I carried aSilva compass in my pocket.

There‘s a big hayfield in Buxton, Andy had said, and at the north end of that hayfieldthere‘s a rock wall, right out of a Robert Frost poem. And somewhere along the base ofthat wall is a rock that has no earthly business in a Maine hayfield.

A fool‘s errand, you say. How many hayfields are there in a small rural town likeBuxton? Fifty? A hundred? Speaking from personal experience, I‘d put it at even higherthan that, if you add in the fields now cultivated which might have been haygrass whenAndy went in. And if I did find the right one, I might never know it Because I mightoverlook that black piece of volcanic glass, or, much more likely, Andy put it into hispocket and took it with him.

So I‘d agree with you. A fool‘s errand, no doubt about it. Worse, a dangerous one for aman on parole, because some of those fields were clearly marked with NOTRESPASSING signs. And, as I‘ve said, they‘re more than happy to slam your ass backinside if you get out of line. A fool‘s errand ... but so is chipping at a blank concrete wallfor twenty-eight years. And when you‘re no longer the man who can get it for you andjust an old bag-boy, it‘s nice to have a hobby to take your mind off your new life. Myhobby was looking for Andy‘s rock.

So I‘d hitchhike to Buxton and walk the roads. I‘d listen to the birds, to the spring runoffin the culverts, examine the bottles the retreating snows had revealed - all useless nonreturnables,I am sorry to say; the world seems to have gotten awfully 114 spendthrift since Iwent into the slam - and looking for hayfields.

Most of them could be eliminated right off. No rock walls. Others had rock walls, but mycompass told me they were facing the wrong direction. I walked these wrong onesanyway. It was a comfortable thing to be doing, and on those outings I really felt free, atpeace. An old dog walked with me one Saturday. And one day I saw a winter-skinnydeer.

Then came 23 April, a day I‘ll not forget even if I live another fifty-eight years. It was abalmy Saturday afternoon, and I was walking up what a little boy fishing from a bridgetold me was called The Old Smith Road. I had taken a lunch in a brown FoodWay bag,and had eaten it sitting on a rock by the road. When I was done I carefully buried myleavings, as my dad had taught me before he died, when I was a sprat no older than thefisherman who had named the road for me.

Around two o‘clock I came to a big field on my left. There was a stone wall at the far endof it, running roughly northwest I walked back to it, squelching 115 over the wet ground, andbegan to walk the wall. A squirrel scolded me from an oak tree.

Three-quarters of the way to the end, I saw the rock. No mistake. Black glass and assmooth as silk. A rock with no earthly business in a Maine hayfield. For a long time I justlooked at it, feeling that I might cry, for whatever reason. The squirrel had followed me,and it was still chattering 116 away. My heart was beating madly.

When I felt I had myself under control, I went to the rock, squatted 117 beside it - the joints 118 inmy knees went off like a double-barrelled shotgun - and let my hand touch it It was real. Ididn‘t pick it up because I thought there would be anything under it; I could just as easilyhave walked away without finding what was beneath. I certainly had no plans to take itaway with me, because I didn‘t fed it was mine to take - I had a feeling that taking thatrock from the field would have been the worst kind of theft. No, I only picked it up tofeel it better, to get the heft of the thing, and, I suppose, to prove its reality by feeling itssatiny texture 119 against my skin.

I had to look at what was underneath 120 for a long time. My eyes saw it, but it took a whilefor my mind to catch up. It was an envelope, carefully wrapped in a plastic bag to keepaway the damp. My name was written across the front in Andy‘s clear script.

I took the envelope and left the rock where Andy had left it, and Andy‘s friend beforehim.

Dear Red,If you‘re reading this, then you‘re out. One way or another, you‘re out. And If you‘vefollowed along this far, you might be willing to come a little further. 1 think youremember the name of the town, don‘t you? I could use a good man to help me get myproject on wheels.

Meantime, have a drink on me - and do think it over. I will be keeping an eye out for you.

Remember that hope is a good thing, Red, maybe the best of things, and no good thingever dies. I will be hoping that this letter finds you, and finds you well.

Your friend, Peter StevensI didn‘t read that letter in the field. A kind of terror had come over me, a need to get awayfrom there before I was seen. To make what may be an appropriate pun, I was in terror ofbeing apprehended 121.

I went back to my room and read it there, with the smell of old men‘s dinners drifting upthe stairwell to me - Beefaroni, Ricearoni, Noodleroni. You can bet that whatever the oldfolks of America, the ones on fixed 122 incomes, are eating tonight, it almost certainly endsin roni.

I opened the envelope and read the letter and then I put my head in my arms and cried.

With the letter there were twenty new fifty-dollar bills.

And here I am in the Brewster Hotel, technically 123 a fugitive 124 from justice again - paroleviolation is my crime. No one‘s going to throw up any roadblocks to catch a criminalwanted on that charge, I guess - wondering what I should do now.

I have this manuscript I have a small piece of luggage about the size of a doctor‘s bag thatholds everything I own. I have nineteen fifties, four tens, a five, three ones, and assortedchange. I broke one of the fifties to buy this tablet of paper and a deck of smokes.

Wondering what I should do.

But there‘s really no question. It always comes down to just two choices. Get busy livingor get busy dying.

First I‘m going to put this manuscript back in my bag. Then I‘m going to buckle 125 it up,grab my coat, go downstairs, and check out of this fleabag. Then I‘m going to walkuptown to a bar and put that five dollar bill down in front of the bartender and ask him tobring me two straight shots of Jack Daniels - one for me and one for Andy Dufresne.

Other than a beer or two, they‘ll be the first drinks I‘ve taken as a free man since 1938.

Then I am going to tip the bartender a dollar and thank him kindly 126. I will leave the barand walk up Spring Street to the Greyhound terminal there and buy a bus ticket to ElPaso by way of New York City. When I get to El Paso, I‘m going to buy a ticket toMcNary. And when I get to McNary, I guess I‘ll have a chance to find out if an old crooklike me can find a way to float across the border and into Mexico.

Sure I remember the name. Zihuatanejo. A name like that is just too pretty to forgetI find I am excited, so excited I can hardly hold the pencil in my trembling hand. I think itis the excitement that only a free man can feel, a free man starting a long journey whoseconclusion is uncertain.

I hope Andy is down there.

I hope I can make it across the border.

I hope to see my friend and shake his hand.

I hope the Pacific is as blue as it has been in my dreams.

I hope.