rock would not hide us nor the dead tree give us shelter. He had a Bible quote for
every occasion, did Mr Sam Norton, and whenever you meet a man like that, my best
advice to you would be to grin big and cover up your balls with both hands.
There were less infirmary cases than in the days of Greg Stammas, and so far as I know
the moonlight burials ceased altogether, but this is not to say that Norton was not a
believer in punishment. Solitary was always well populated. Men lost their teeth not from
beatings but from bread and water diets. It began to be called grain and drain, as in Tm on
the Sam Norton grain and drain train, boys.‘
The man was the foulest hypocrite that I ever saw in a high position. The rackets I told
you about earlier continued to flourish, but Sam Norton added his own new wrinkles.
Andy knew about them all, and because we had gotten to be pretty good friends by that
time, he let me in on some of them. When Andy talked about them, an expression of
amused, disgusted wonder would come over his face, as if he was telling me about some
ugly, predatory species of bug that has, by its very ugliness and greed, somehow more
comic than terrible.
It was Warden Norton who instituted the ‘Inside-Out‘ programme you may have read
about some sixteen or seventeen years back; it was even written up in Newsweek. In the
press it sounded like a real advance in practical corrections and rehabilitation. There were
prisoners out cutting pulpwood, prisoners repairing bridges and causeways, prisoners
constructing potato cellars. Norton called it ‘Inside-Out‘ and was invited to explain it to
damn near every Rotary and Kiwanis club in New England, especially after he got his
picture in Newsweek. The prisoners called it ‘road-ganging‘, but so far as I know, none of
them were ever invited to express their views to the Kiwanians or the Loyal Order of the
Moose.
Norton was right in there on every operation, thirty-year church-pin and all, from cutting
pulp to digging storm-drains to laying new culverts on state highways, there was Norton,
skimming off the top. There were a hundred ways to do it -men, materials, you name it.
But he had it coming another way, as well. The construction businesses in the area were
deathly afraid of Norton‘s Inside-Out programme, because prison labour is slave labour,
and you can‘t compete with that. So Sam Norton, he of the Testaments and the thirty-year
church-pin, was passed a good many thick envelopes under the table during his fifteenyear
tenure as Shawshank‘s warden. And when an envelope was passed, he would either
overbid the project, not bid at all, or claim that ail his Inside-Outers were committed
elsewhere. It has always been something of a wonder to me that Norton was never found
in the trunk of a Thunderbird parked off a highway somewhere down in Massachusetts
with his hands tied behind his back and half a dozen bullets in his head.
Anyway, as the old barrelhouse song says, My God, how the money rolled in. Norton
must have subscribed to the old Puritan notion that the best way to figure out which folks
God favours is by checking their bank accounts.
Andy Dufresne was his right hand in all of this, his silent partner. The prison library was
Andy‘s hostage to fortune. Norton knew it, and Norton used it. Andy told me that one of
Norton‘s favourite aphorisms was One hand washes the other. So Andy gave good advice
and made useful suggestions. I can‘t say for sure that he hand-tooled Norton‘s Inside-Out
programme, but I‘m damned sure he processed the money for the Jesus-shouting son of a
whore. He gave good advice, made useful suggestions, the money got spread around, and
... son of a bitch! The library would get a new set of automotive repair manuals, a fresh
set of Grolier Encyclopedias, books on how to prepare for the Scholastic Achievement
Tests. And, of cour

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