in a Maine hayfield. It‘s a piece of volcanic glass, and until 1947 it was a
paperweight on my office desk. My friend Jim put it in that wall. There‘s a key
underneath it. The key opens a safe deposit box in the Portland branch of the Casco
Bank.‘
‘I guess you‘re in a pack of trouble,‘ I said. ‘When your friend Jim died, the IRS must have
opened all of his safety deposit boxes. Along with the executor of his will, of course.‘
Andy smiled and tapped the side of my head. ‘Not bad. There‘s more up there than
marshmallows, I guess. But we took care of the possibility that Jim might die while I was
in the slam. The box is in the Peter Stevens name, and once a year the firm of lawyers
that served as Jim‘s executors sends a check to the Casco to cover the rental of the
Stevens box.
‘Peter Stevens is inside that box, just waiting to get out His birth certificate, his S.S. card,
and his driver‘s license. The license is six years out of date because Jim died six years
ago, true, but it‘s still perfectly renewable for a five-dollar fee. His stock certificates are
there, the tax-free municipals, and about eighteen bearer bonds in the amount of ten
thousand dollars each.‘
I whistled.
‘Peter Stevens is locked in a safe deposit box at the Casco Bank in Portland and Andy
Dufresne is locked in a safe deposit box at Shawshank,‘ he said. Tit for tat And the key
that unlocks the box and the money and the new life is under a hunk of black glass in a
Buxton hayfield. Told you this much, so I‘ll tell you something else, Red - for the last
twenty years, give or take, I have been watching the papers with a more than usual
interest for news of any construction projects in Buxton. I keep thinking that someday
soon I‘m going to read that they‘re putting a highway through there, or erecting a new
community hospital, or building a shopping centre. Burying my new life under ten feet of
concrete, or spitting it into a swamp somewhere with a big load of fill.‘
I blurted, ‘Jesus Christ, Andy, if all of this is true, how do you keep from going crazy?‘
He smiled. ‘So far, all quiet on the Western front.‘
‘But it could be years -‘
‘It will be. But maybe not as many as the state and Warden Norton think it‘s going to be. I
just can‘t afford to wait that long. I keep thinking about Zihuatanejo and that small hotel.
That‘s all I want from my life now, Red, and I don‘t think that‘s too much to want. I didn‘t
kill Glenn Quentin and I didn‘t kill my wife, and that hotel ... it‘s not too much to want To
swim and get a tan and sleep in a room with open windows and space... that‘s not too
much to want.‘
He slung the stones away.
‘You know, Red,‘ he said in an offhand voice, ‘a place like that... I‘d have to have a man
who knows how to get things.‘
I thought about it for a long time. And the biggest drawback in my mind wasn‘t even that
we were talking pipedreams in a shitty little prison exercise yard with armed guards
looking down at us from their sentry posts. ‘I couldn‘t do it,‘ I said. ‘I couldn‘t get along on
the outside. I‘m what they call an institutional man now. In here I‘m the man who can get
it for you, yeah. But out there, anyone can get it for you. Out there, if you want posters or
rock-hammers or one particular record or a boat-in-a-bottle model kit, you can use the
fucking Yellow Pages. In here, I‘m the fucking Yellow Pages. I wouldn‘t know how to
begin. Or where.‘
‘You underestimate yourself,‘ he said. ‘You‘re a self-educated man, a self-made man. A
rather remarkable man, I think.‘
‘Hell, I don‘t even have a high school diploma.‘
‘I know that,‘ he said. ‘But it isn‘t just a piece of paper that makes a man. And it isn‘t just
prison that breaks one, either.‘
‘I couldn‘t hack it outside, Andy. I know that.‘ He got up. ‘You think it over,‘ he said
casually, just as the inside whistle blew. And he strolled off

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