ok the poster up to Andy's cell, 14, my own, 6. And it was Ernie
who brought back the written in Andy's careful hand, just one word: Thanks.'
A little while later, as they filed us out for morning chow, I glanced into his ceil and saw
Rita over his bunk in all her swimsuited glory, one hand behind her head, her eyes halfclosed,
those soft, satiny lips parted. It was over his bunk when he could look at her
nights, after lights out, in the glow of the arc sodiums in the exercise yard.
But in the bright morning sunlight, there were dark slashes across her face - the shadow
of the bars on his single slit-window.
Now I'm going to tell you what happened in mid-May of 1950 that finally ended Andy's
three-year series of skirmishes with the sisters. It was also the incident which eventually
got him out of the laundry and into the library, where he filled out his work-time until he
left our happy little family earlier this year.
You may have noticed now much of what I've told you Lready is hearsay - someone saw
something and told me and I told you. Well, in some cases I've simplified it even more
than it really was, and have actually repeated (or will repeat) fourth- or fifth-hand
information. That's the way it s here. The grapevine is very real, and you have to use it if
you're going to stay ahead. Also, of course, you have to know how to pick out the grains
of truth from the chaff of lies, rumours, and wish-it-had-beens.
You may also have gotten the idea that I'm describing someone who's more legend than
man, and I would have to agree that there's some truth to that. To us long-timers who
knew Andy over a space of years, there was an element of fantasy to him, a sense,
almost, of myth-magic, if you get what I mean. That story I passed on about Andy
refusing to give Bogs Diamond a head-job is part of that myth, and how he kept on
fighting the sisters is part of it, and how he got the library job is part of it, too ... but with
one important difference: I was there and I saw what happened, and I swear on my
mother's name that it's all true. The oath of a convicted murderer may not be worth much,
but believe this: I don't lie.
Andy and I were on fair speaking terms by then. The guy fascinated me. Looking back to
the poster episode, I see there's one thing I neglected to tell you, and maybe I should.
Five weeks after he hung Rita up (I'd forgotten all about it by then, and had gone on to
other deals), Ernie passed a small white box through the bars of my cell.
'From Dufresne,' he said, low, and never missed a stroke with his push-broom.
Thanks, Ernie,' I said, and slipped him half a pack of Camels.
Now what the hell was this, I was wondering as I slipped the cover from the box. There
was a lot of white cotton inside, and below that...
I looked for a long time. For a few minutes it was like I didn't even dare touch them, they
were so pretty. There's a crying shortage of pretty things in the slam, and the real pity of
it is that a lot of men don't even seem to miss them.
There were two pieces of quartz in that box, both of them carefully polished. They had
been chipped into driftwood shapes. There were little sparkles of iron pyrites in them like
flecks of gold. If they hadn't been so heavy, they would have served as a fine pair of
men's cufflinks - they were that close to being a matched set
How much work went into creating those two pieces? Hours and hours after lights out, I
knew that First the chipping and shaping, and then the almost endless polishing and
finishing with those rock-blankets. Looking at them, I felt the warmth that any man or
woman feels when he or she is looking at something pretty, something that has been
worked and made - that's the thing that really separates us from the animals, I think - and
I felt something else, too. A sense of awe for the man's brute persistence. But I neve

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