myself. They live with it because they know that a prison is like a big pressure cooker, and there have to be vents somewhere to let off steam. They make the occasional bust,
and I’ve done time in solitary a time or three over the years, but when it’s something like posters, they wink. Live and let live. And when a big Rita Hayworth went up in
some fishie’s cell, the assumption was that it came in the mail from a friend or a
relative. Of course all the care-packages from friends and relatives are opened and the contents inventoried, but who goes back and re-checks the inventory sheets for
something as harmless as a Rita Hayworth or an Ava Gardner pin-up? When you’re in
a pressure-cooker you learn to live and let live or somebody will carve you a brand-
new mouth just above the Adam’s apple. You learn to make allowances.
It was Ernie again who took 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 half-closed, 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 already 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 is 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