would have found a way to look at them. He was a methodical
cuss. He would have
known or found out that the sewerpipe running out of Cellblock 5 was the last one in
Shawshank not hooked into the new waste-treatment plant, and he would have known it
was do it by mid-1975 or do it never, because in August they were going to switch us
over to the new waste-treatment plant, too.
Five hundred yards. The length of five football fields. Just shy of a mile. He crawled that
distance, maybe with one of those small Penlites in his hand, maybe with nothing but a
couple of books of matches. He crawled through foulness that I either can‘t imagine or
don‘t want to imagine. Maybe the rats scattered in front of him, or maybe they went for
him the way such animals sometimes will when they‘ve had a chance to grow bold in the
dark. He must have had just enough clearance at the shoulders to keep moving, and he
probably 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. But
he did it
At the far end of the pipe they found a set of muddy footprints leading out of the
sluggish, polluted creek the pipe fed into. Two miles from there a search party found his
prison uniform - that was a day later.
The story broke big in the papers, as you might guess, but no one within a fifteen-mile
radius of the prison stepped forward to report a stolen car, stolen clothes, or a naked man
in the moonlight There was not so much as a barking dog in a farmyard. He came out of
the sewerpipe and he disappeared like smoke.
But I am betting he disappeared in the direction of Buxton.
Three months after that memorable 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 he
shuffled out with his head down like an old con shuffling down to the infirmary for his
codeine pills. It was Gonyar who took over, and to Norton that must have seemed like the
unkindest cut of all. For all I know, Sam Norton is down there in Eliot now, attending
services at the Baptist church every Sunday, and wondering how the hell Andy Dufresne
ever could have gotten the better of him.
I could have told him; the answer to the question is simplicity 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 some
of the specifics, but I‘d be willing to bet my watch and chain that I‘ve got the general
outline down pretty well. Because, with Andy being the sort of man that he was, there‘s
only one or two ways that it could have been. And every now and then, when I think it
out, I think of Normaden, that half-crazy Indian. ‘Nice fella,‘ Normaden had said after
celling with Andy for six or eight months. ‘I was glad to go, me. All the time cold. He
don‘t let nobody touch his things. That‘s okay. Nice man, never make fun. But big
draught.‘ Poor crazy Normaden. He knew more than ail the rest of us, and he knew it
sooner. And it was eight long months before Andy could get him out of there and have
the cell to himself again. If it hadn‘t been for the eight months Normaden had spent with
him after Warden Norton first came in, I do believe that Andy would have been free
before Nixon resigned.
I believe now that it began in 1949, way back then - not with the rock-hammer, but with
the 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 just
embarrassment, that Andy was the sort of guy who‘d never want someone else to know
that he had feet of clay and wanted a woman ... even if it was only a fantasy-woman. But
I think now that I was wrong. I think now that Andy‘s excitement came from something
el

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