prison society as a scaled-down model of your outside world, but I had no idea of how
fast 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 of
the human race for forty years, I was suddenly working in a store filled with them. Old
women, pregnant women wearing T-shirts with arrows pointing downward and the
printed motto reading BABY HERE, skinny women with their nipples poking out of their
shirts - a woman wearing something like that when I went in would have gotten arrested
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and then had a sanity hearing - women of every shape and size. I found myself going
around 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 always
came on me at twenty-five past the hour), I had to fight the almost overwhelming need to
check it with my boss. Knowing that was something I could just go and do in this too-
bright outside world was one thing; adjusting my inner self to that knowledge after all
those years of checking it with the nearest screwhead or facing two days in solitary for
the oversight... that was something else.
My boss didn't like me. He was a young guy, twenty-six or -seven, and I could see that I
sort of disgusted him, the way a cringing, servile old dog that crawls up to you on its
belly to be petted will disgust a man. Christ, I disgusted myself. But ... I couldn't make
myself stop. I wanted to tell him, That's what a whole life in prison does for you, young
man. It turns everyone in a position of authority into a master, and you into every
master's dog. Maybe you know you've become a dog, even in prison, but since everyone
else in grey is a dog, too, it doesn't seem to matter so much. Outside, it does. But I
couldn't tell a young guy like him. He would never understand. Neither would my P.O., a
big, bluff ex-Navy man with a huge red beard and a large stock of Polish jokes. He saw
me for about five minutes every week. 'Are you staying out of the bars, Red?' he'd ask
when he'd run out of Polish jokes. I'd say yeah, and that would be the end of it until next
week.
Music on the radio. When I went in, the big bands were just getting up a good head of
steam. Now every song sounds like it's about fucking. So many cars. At first I felt like I
was 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, or
can 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 to
think about stealing some money or shoplifting stuff from the FoodWay, anything, to get
back in where it was quiet and you knew everything that was going to come up in the
course 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 so
he 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 lot
of money. But that's not really true, you know. Because he didn't know for sure that the
new identity was still there, and without the new identity, the money would always be out
of reach. No, what he needed was just to be free, and if I kicked away what I had, it
would 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 of
Buxton. 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 season
playing the only game I'm sure God approves of. When I went on these trips, I carried a
Silva compass in my pocket.
There's a big hayfield in Buxton, Andy had said, and at the north end of that hayfield
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there's a rock wall, right out of a Robert Frost poem. And somewhere along the base of
that 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 like
Buxton? Fifty? A hundred? Speaking from personal experience, I'd put it at even higher
than that, if you add in the fields now cultivated which might have been haygrass when
Andy went in. And if I did find the right one, I might never know it Because I might
overlook that black piece of volcanic glass, or, much more likely, Andy put it into his
pocket and took it with him.
So I'd agree with you. A fool's errand, no doubt about it. Worse, a dangerous one for a
man on parole, because some of those fields were clearly marked with NO
TRESPASSING signs. And, as I've said, they're more than happy to slam your ass back
inside if you get out of line. A fool's errand ... but so is chipping at a blank concrete wall
for twenty-eight years. And when you're no longer the man who can get it for you and
just an old bag-boy, it's nice to have a hobby to take your mind off your new life. My
hobby 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 runoff
in the culverts, examine the bottles the retreating snows had revealed - all useless non-
returnables, I am sorry to say; the world seems to have gotten awfully spendthrift since I
went into the slam - and looking for hayfields.
Most of them could be eliminated right off. No rock walls. Others had rock walls, but my
compass told me they were facing the wrong direction. I walked these wrong ones
anyway. It was a comfortable thing to be doing, and on those outings I really felt free, at
peace. An old dog walked with me one Saturday. And one day I saw a winter-skinny
deer.
Then came 23 April, a day I'll not forget even if I live another fifty-eight years. It was a
balmy Saturday afternoon, and I was walking up what a little boy fishing from a bridge
told 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 my
leavings, as my dad had taught me before he died, when I was a sprat no older than the
fisherman 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 end
of it, running roughly northwest I walked back to it, squelching over the wet ground, and
began 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 as
smooth as silk. A rock with no earthly business in a Maine hayfield. For a long time I just
looked at it, feeling that I might cry, for whatever reason. The squirrel had followed me,
and it was still chattering away. My heart was beating madly.
When I felt I had myself under control, I went to the rock, squatted beside it - the joints in
my knees went off like a double-barrelled shotgun - and let my hand touch it It was real. I
didn't pick it up because I thought there would be anything under it; I could just as easily
have walked away without finding what was beneath. I certainly had no plans to take it
away with me, because I didn't fed it was mine to take - I had a feeling that taking that
rock from the field would have been the worst kind of theft. No, I only picked it up to
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feel it better, to get the heft of the thing, and, I suppose, to prove its reality by feeling its
satiny texture against my skin.
I had to look at what was underneath for a long time. My eyes saw it, but it took a while
for my mind to catch up. It was an envelope, carefully wrapped in a plastic bag to keep
away 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 before
him.
Dear Red,
If you're reading this, then you're out. One way or another, you're out. And If you've
followed along this far, you might be willing to come a little further. 1 think you
remember the name of the town, don't you? I could use a good man to help me get my
project 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 thing
ever dies. I will be hoping that this letter finds you, and finds you well.
Your friend, Peter Stevens
I didn't read that letter in the field. A kind of terror had come over me, a need to get away
from there before I was seen. To make what may be an appropriate pun, I was in terror of
being apprehended.
I went back to my room and read it there, with the smell of old men's dinners drifting up
the stairwell to me - Beefaroni, Ricearoni, Noodleroni. You can bet that whatever the old
folks of America, the ones on fixed incomes, are eating tonight, it almost certainly ends
in 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 a fugitive from justice again - parole
violation is my crime. No one's going to throw up any roadblocks to catch a criminal
wanted 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 that
holds everything I own. I have nineteen fifties, four tens, a five, three ones, and assorted
change. 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 living
or get busy dying.
First I'm going to put this manuscript back in my bag. Then I'm going to buckle it up,
grab my coat, go downstairs, and check out of this fleabag. Then I'm going to walk
uptown to a bar and put that five dollar bill down in front of the bartender and ask him to
bring 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. I will leave the bar
and walk up Spring Street to the Greyhound terminal there and buy a bus ticket to El
Paso by way of New York City. When I get to El Paso, I'm going to buy a ticket to
McNary. And when I get to McNary, I guess I'll have a chance to find out if an old crook
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like 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 forget
I find I am excited, so excited I can hardly hold the pencil in my trembling hand. I think it
is the excitement that only a free man can feel, a free man starting a long journey whose
conclusion 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.
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