at library turned back into a storage room and
paint-locker again. Do you understand?‘
‘I was trying to set your mind at ease, that‘s all.‘
‘Well now, when I need a sorry son of a bitch like you to set my mind at ease, I‘ll retire. I
agreed to this appointment because I got tired of being pestered, Dufresne. I want it to
stop. If you want to buy this particular Brooklyn Bridge, that‘s your affair. Don‘t make it
mine. I could hear crazy stories like yours twice a week if I wanted to lay myself open to
them. Every sinner in this place would be using me for a crying towel. I had more respect
for you. But this is the end. The end. Have we got an understanding?‘
‘Yes,‘ Andy said. ‘But I‘ll be hiring a lawyer, you know.‘
‘What in God‘s name for?‘
‘I think we can put it together,‘ Andy said. ‘With Tommy Williams and with my testimony
and corroborative testimony from records and employees at the country club, I think we
can put it together.‘
‘Tommy Williams is no longer an inmate of this facility.‘
‘What?‘
‘He‘s been transferred.‘
‘Transferred where?‘
‘Cashman.‘
At that, Andy fell silent. He was an intelligent man, but it would have taken an
extraordinarily stupid man not to smelt deal all over that. Cashman was a minimumsecurity
prison far up north in Aroostook County. The inmates pick a lot of potatoes, and
that‘s hard work, but they are paid a decent wage for their labour and they can attend
classes at CVI, a pretty decent vocational-technical institute, if they so desire. More
important to a fellow like Tommy, a fellow with a young wife and a child, Cashman had
a furlough programme ... which meant a chance to live like a normal man, at least on the
weekends. A chance to build a model plane with his kid, have sex with his wife, maybe
go on a picnic.
Norton had almost surely dangled all of that under Tommy‘s nose with only one string
attached: not one more word about Elwood Blatch, not now, not ever. Or you‘ll end up
doing hard time in Thomaston down there on scenic Route 1 with the real hard guys, and
instead of having sex with your wife you‘ll be having it with some old bull queer.
‘But why?‘ Andy said. ‘Why would -‘
‘As a favour to you,‘ Norton said calmly, ‘I checked with Rhode Island. They did have an
inmate named Elwood Blatch. He was given what they call a PP - provisional parole,
another one of these crazy liberal programmes to put criminals out on the streets. He‘s
since disappeared.‘
Andy said: ‘The warden down there ... is he a friend of yours?‘
Sam Norton gave Andy a smile as cold as a deacon‘s watchchain. ‘We are acquainted,‘ he
said.
‘ Why?‘ Andy repeated. ‘Can‘t you tell me why you did it? You knew I wasn‘t going to
talk about ... about anything you might have had going. You knew that. So why?
‘Because people like you make me sick,‘ Norton said deliberately. ‘I like you right where
you are, Mr Dufresne, and as long as I am warden here at Shawshank, you are going to be
right here. You see, you used to think that you were better than anyone else. I have gotten
pretty good at seeing that on a man‘s face. I marked it on yours the first time I walked
into the library. It might as well have been written on your forehead in capital letters.
That look is gone now, and I like that just fine. It is not just that you are a useful vessel,
never think that. It is simply that men like you need to learn humility. Why, you used to
walk around that exercise yard as if it was a living room and you were at one of those
cocktail parties where the hellhound walk around coveting each others‘ wives and
husbands and getting swinishly drunk. But you don‘t walk around that way anymore. And
I‘ll be watching to see if you should start to walk that way again. Over a period of years,
I‘ll be watching you with great pleasure. Now get the hell out of here.‘
‘Okay. But all the extracurricula

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