ding there, staring at Charlie Lathrop, his mouth
unhinged all the way to his chest. He was standing in & drift of sheets that had come
through dean and which were now sopping up all the wet muck on the floor - and in a
laundry wetwash, there‘s plenty of muck.
So the head bull that day, Homer Jessup, comes rushing over, bellowing his head off and
on the prod for trouble. Tommy took no notice of him. He spoke to Charlie as if old
Homer, who had busted more heads than he could probably count, hadn‘t been there.
‘What did you say that golf pro‘s name was?‘
‘Quentin,‘ Charlie answered back, all confused and upset by now. He later said that the
kid was as white as a truce flag, *Glenn Quentin, I think. Something like that, anyway -‘
‘Here now, here now,‘ Homer Jessup roared, his neck as red as a rooster‘s comb. ‘Get
them sheets in cold water! Get quick! Get quick, by Jesus, you -‘
‘Glenn Quentin, oh my God,‘ Tommy Williams said, and that was all he got to say
because Homer Jessup, that least peaceable of men, brought his billy down behind his
ear. Tommy hit the floor so hard he broke off three of his front teeth. When he woke up
he was in solitary, and confined to same for a week, riding a boxcar on Sam Norton‘s
famous grain and drain train. Plus a black mark on his report card.
That was in early February in 1963, and Tommy Williams went around to six or seven
other long-timers after he got out of solitary and got pretty much the same story. I know;
I was one of them. But when I asked him why he wanted it, he just clammed up.
Then one day he went to the library and spilled one helluva big budget of information to
Andy Dufresne. And for the first and last time, at least since he had approached me about
the Rita Hayworth poster like a kid burying his first pack of Trojans, Andy lost his cool
... only this time he blew it entirely.
I saw him later that day, and he looked like a man who has stepped on the business end of
a rake and given himself a good one, whap between the eyes. His hands were trembling,
and when I spoke to him, he didn‘t answer. Before that afternoon was out he had caught
up with Billy Hanlon, who was the head screw, and set up an appointment with Warden
Norton for the following day. He told me later that he didn‘t sleep a wink all that night; he
just listened to a cold winter wind howling outside, watched the searchlights go around
and around, putting long, moving shadows on the cement walls of the cage he had called
home since Harry Truman was President and tried to think it all out He said it was as if
Tommy had produced a key which fitted a cage in the back of his mind, a cage like his
own cell. Only instead of holding a man, that cage held a tiger, and that tiger‘s name was
Hope. Williams had produced the key that unlocked the cage and the tiger was out, willynilly,
to roam his brain.
Four years before, Tommy Williams had been arrested in Rhode Island, driving a stolen
car that was full of stolen merchandise. Tommy turned in his accomplice, the DA played
ball, and he got a lighter sentence ... two to four, with time served. Eleven months after
beginning his term, his old cellmate got a ticket out and Tommy got a new one, a man
named Elwood Blatch. Blatch had been busted for burglary with a weapon and was
serving six to twelve.
‘I never seen such a high-strung guy,‘ Tommy said. ‘A man like that should never want to
be a burglar, specially not with a gun. The slightest little noise, he‘d go three feet into the
air ... and come down shooting, more likely than not One night he almost strangled me
because some guy down the hall was whopping on his cell bars with a tin cup.
‘I did seven months with bun, until they let me walk free. I got time served and time off,
you understand. I can‘t say we talked because you didn‘t, you know, exactly hold a
conversation with El Blatch.

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