or turns over quick? It gives me the cold chills just to think of something like that, I
swear on my mother's name it does.
'He said he'd killed people, too. People that gave him shit. At least that's what he said.
And I believed him. He sure looked like a man that could do some killing. He was just so
fucking high-strung! Like a pistol with a sawed-off firing pin. I knew a guy who had a
Smith & Wesson Police Special with a sawed-off firing pin. It wasn't no good for
nothing, except maybe for something to jaw about. The pull on that gun was so light that
it would fire if this guy, Johnny Callahan, his name was, if he turned his record-player on
full volume and put it on top of one of the speakers. That's how El Blatch was. I can't
explain it any better. I just never doubted that he had greased some people.
'So one night, just for something to say, I go: "Who'd you kill?" Like a joke, you know.
So he laughs and says, "There's one guy doing time up Maine for these two people I
killed. It was this guy and the wife of the slob who's doing time. I was creeping their
place and the guy started to give me some shit."
'I can't remember if he ever told me the woman's name or not,' Tommy went on. 'Maybe
he did. But hi New England, Dufresne's like Smith or Jones in the rest of the country,
because there's so many Frogs up here. Dufresne, Lavesque, Ouelette, Poulin, who Can
remember Frog names? But he told me the guy's name. He said the guy was Glenn
Quentin and he was a prick, a big rich prick, a golf pro. El said he thought the guy might
have cash in the house, maybe as much as five thousand dollars. That was a lot of money
back then, he says to me. So I go, "When was that?" And he goes, "After the war. Just
after the war."
'So he went in and he did the joint and they woke up and the guy gave him some trouble.
That's what El said. Maybe the guy just started to snore, that's what / say. Anyway, El
said Quentin was in the sack with some hotshot lawyer's wife and they sent the lawyer up
to Shawshank State Prison. Then he laughs this big laugh. Holy Christ, I was never so
glad of anything as I was when I got my walking papers from that place.'
I guess you can see why Andy went a little wonky when Tommy told him that story, and
why he wanted to see the warden right away. Elwood Blatch had been serving a six-to-
twelve rap when Tommy knew him four years before. By the time Andy heard all of this,
in 1963, he might be on the verge of getting out ... or already out. So those were the two
prongs of the spit Andy was roasting on - the idea that Blatch might still be in on one
hand, and the very real possibility that he might be gone like the wind on the other.
There were inconsistencies in Tommy's story, but aren't there always in real life? Blatch
told Tommy the man who got sent up was a hotshot lawyer, and Andy was a banker, but
those are two professions that people who aren't very educated could easily get mixed up.
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And don't forget that twelve years had gone by between the time Blatch was reading the
clippings about the trial and the time he told the tale to Tommy Williams. He also told
Tommy he got better than a thousand dollars from a footlocker Quentin had in his closet,
but the police said at Andy's trial that there had been no sign of burglary. I have a few
ideas about that. First, if you take the cash and the man it belonged to is dead, how are
you going to know anything was stolen, unless someone else can tell you it was there to
start with? Second, who's to say Blatch wasn't lying about that part of it? Maybe he didn't
want to admit killing two people for nothing. Third, maybe there were signs of burglary
and the cops either overlooked them - cops can be pretty dumb - or deliberately covered
them up so they wouldn't screw the DA's case. The guy was running for public office,
remember, and he needed a conviction to run on. An unsolved burglary-murder would
have done him no good at all.
But of the three, I like the middle one best. I've known a few Elwood Blatches hi my time
at Shawshank - the trigger-pullers with the crazy eyes. Such fellows want you to think
they got away with die equivalent of the Hope Diamond on every caper, even if they got
caught with a two-dollar Timex and nine bucks on the one they're doing time for.
And there was one thing in Tommy's story that convinced Andy beyond a shadow of a
doubt. Blatch hadn't hit Quentin at random. He had called Quentin 'a big rich prick', and
he had known Quentin was a golf pro. Well, Andy and his wife had been going out to that
country club for drinks and dinner once or twice a week for a couple of years, and Andy
had done a considerable amount of drinking there once he found out about his wife's
affair. There was a marina with the country club, and for a while in 1947 there had been a
part-time grease-and-gas jockey working there who matched Tommy's description of
Elwood Blatch. A big tall man, mostly bald, with deep-set green eyes. A man who had an
unpleasant way of looking at you, as though he was sizing you up. He wasn't there long,
Andy said. Either he quit or Briggs, the fellow in charge of the marina, fired him. But he
wasn't a man you forgot He was too striking for that.
So Andy went to see Warden Norton on a rainy, windy day with big grey clouds
scudding across the sky above the grey walls, a day when the last of the snow was
starting to melt away and show lifeless patches of last year's grass in the fields beyond
the prison. The warden has a good-sized office in the administration wing, and behind the
warden's desk there's a door which connects with the assistant warden's office. The
assistant warden was out that day, but a trustee was there. He was a half-lame fellow
whose real name I have forgotten; all the inmates, me included, called him Chester, after
Marshall Dillon's sidekick. Chester was supposed to be watering the plants and dusting
and waxing the floor. My guess is that the plants went thirsty that day and the only
waxing that was done happened because of Chester's dirty ear polishing the keyhole plate
of that connecting door.
He heard the warden's main door open and close and then Norton saying, 'Good morning,
Dufresne, how can I help you?'
'Warden,' Andy began, and old Chester told us that he could hardly recognize Andy's
voice it was so changed. 'Warden ... there's something ... something's happened to me
that's ... that's so ... so ... I hardly know where to begin.'
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'Well, why don't you just begin at the beginning?' the warden said, probably in his
sweetest let's-all-turn-to-the-23rd-psalm-and-read-in-unison voice. 'That usually works
the best.'
And so Andy did. He began by refreshing Norton of the details of the crime he had been
imprisoned for. Then he told the warden exactly what Tommy Williams had told him. He
also gave out Tommy's name, which you may think wasn't so wise in light of later
developments, but I'd just ask you what else he could have done, if his story was to have
any credibility at all.
When he had finished, Norton was completely silent for some time. I can just see him,
probably tipped back in his office chair under the picture of Governor Reed hanging on
the wall, his fingers steepled, his liver lips pursed, his brow wrinkled into ladder rungs
halfway to the crown of his head, his thirty-year pin gleaming mellowly.
'Yes,' he said finally. That's the damnedest story I ever heard. But I'll tell you what
surprises me most about it, Dufresne.'
'What's that, sir?'
'That you were taken in by it.'
'Sir? I don't understand what you mean.' And Chester said that Andy Dufresne, who had
faced down Byron Hadley on the plate-shop roof thirteen years before, was almost
floundering for words.
'Well now,' Norton said. 'It's pretty obvious to me that this young fellow Williams is
impressed with you. Quite taken with you, as a matter of fact He hears your tale of woe,
and it's quite natural of him to want to ... cheer you up, let's say. Quite natural. He's a
young man, not terribly bright Not surprising he didn't realize what a state it would put
you into. Now what I suggest is -'
'Don't you think I thought of that?' Andy asked. 'But I'd never told Tommy about the man
working down at the marina. I never told anyone that - it never even crossed my mind!
But Tommy's description of his cellmate and that man ... they're identical!'
'Well now, you may be indulging in a little selective perception there,' Norton said with a
chuckle. Phrases like that, selective perception, are required learning for people in the
penalogy and corrections business, and they use them all they can.
"That's not it at all. Sir.'
"That's your slant on it,' Norton said, 'but mine differs. And let's remember that I have
only your word that there was such a man working at the Falmouth Country Club back
then.'
'No, sir,' Andy broke in again. 'No, that isn't true. Because-'
'Anyway,' Norton overrode him, expansive and loud, 'let's just look at it from the other
end of the telescope, shall we? Suppose -just suppose, now - that there really was a fellow
named Elwood Blotch.'
'Blatch,' Andy said tightly.
'Blatch, by all means. And let's say he was Thomas Williams's cellmate in Rhode Island.
The chances are excellent that he has been released by now. Excellent. Why, we don't
even know how much time he might have done there before he ended up with Williams,
do we? Only that he was doing a six-to-twelve.'
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'No. We don't know how much time he'd done. But Tommy said he was a bad actor, a
cut-up. I think there's a fair chance that he may still be in. Even if he's been released, the
prison will have a record of his last known address, the names of his relatives -'
'And both would almost certainly be dead ends.'
Andy was silent for a moment, and then he burst out: 'Well, it's a chance, isn't it?'
'Yes, of course it is. So just for a moment, Dufresne, let's assume that Blatch exists and
that he is still safely ensconced in the Rhode Island State Penitentiary. Now what is he
going to say if we bring this kettle of fish to him in a bucket? Is he going to fall down on
his knees, roil his eyes, and say "I did it! I did it! By all means add a life term onto my
burglary charge!"?'
'How can you be so obtuse?' Andy said, so low that Chester could barely hear. But he
heard the warden just fine.
'What? What did you call me?'
'Obtuse? Andy cried. 'Is it deliberate?'
'Dufresne, you've taken five minutes of my time - no, seven - and I have a very busy
schedule today. So I believe we'll just declare this little meeting closed and -'
'The country club will have ail the old time-cards, don't you realize that?' Andy shouted.
They'll have tax-forms and W-2s and unemployment compensation forms, all with his
name on them! There will be employees there now that were there then, maybe Briggs
himself! It's been fifteen years, not forever! They'll remember him! They will remember
Blotch! If I've got Tommy to testify to what Blatch told him, and Briggs to testify that
Blatch was there, actually working at the country club, I can get a new trial! I can -'
'Guard! Guardl Take this man away!'
'What's the matter with you?' Andy said, and Chester told me he was very nearly
screaming by then. 'It's my life, my chance to get out, don't you see that? And you won't
make a single long-distance call to at least verify Tommy's story? Listen, I'll pay for the
call! I'll pay for -'
Then there was a sound of thrashing as the guards grabbed him and started to drag him
out
'Solitary,' Warden Norton said dryly. He was probably - gering his thirty-year pin as he
said it 'Bread and water.'
And so they dragged Andy away, totally out of control now, still screaming at the
warden; Chester said you could hear him even after the door was shut: 'It's my life! It's
my life, don't you understand it's my life?'
Twenty days on the grain and drain train for Andy down there in solitary. It was his
second jolt in solitary, and his dust-up with Norton was his first real black mark since he
had joined our happy little family.
I'll tell you a little bit about Shawshank's solitary while we're on the subject It's
something of a throwback to those hardy pioneer days of the early-to-mid-1700s in
Maine. In ..those days no one wasted much time with such things as penalogy' and
'rehabilitation' and 'selective perception'. In ,those days, you were taken care of in terms
of absolute black and white. You were either guilty or innocent. If you were guilty, you
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were either hung or put in gaol. And if you were sentenced to gaol, you did not go to an
institution. No, you dug your own gaol with a spade provided to you by the Province of
Maine. You dug it as wide and as deep as you could during the period between sunup and
sundown. Then ,they gave you a couple of skins and a bucket, and down you went Once
down, the gaoler would bar the top of your hole, -.row down some grain or maybe a piece
of maggoty meat once or twice a week, and maybe there would be a dipperful ; barley
