back in 1957, I got it Because they want to keep me happy. I work cheap. That’s the
trade-off.’
‘And you’ve got your own private quarters.’
‘Sure. That’s the way I like it.’
The prison population had risen slowly all through the fifties, and it damn near
exploded in the sixties, what with every college-age kid in America wanting to try
dope and the perfectly ridiculous penalties for the use of a little reefer. But in all that time Andy never had a cellmate, except for a big, silent Indian named Normaden (like
all Indians in The Shank, he was called Chief), and Normaden didn’t last long. A lot
of the other long-timers thought Andy was crazy, but Andy just smiled. He lived
alone and he liked it that way… and as he’d said, they liked to keep him happy. He
worked cheap.
Prison time is slow time, sometimes you’d swear it’s stop-time, but it passes. It
passes. George Dunahy departed the scene in a welter of newspaper headlines
shouting SCANDAL and NEST-FEATHERING. Stammas succeeded him, and for
the next six years Shawshank was a kind of living hell. During the reign of Greg
Stammas, the beds in the infirmary and the cells in the solitary wing were always full.
One day in 1958 I looked at myself in a small shaving mirror I kept in my cell and
saw a forty-year-old man looking back at me. A kid had come in back in 1938, a kid
with a big mop of carrotty red hair, half-crazy with remorse, thinking about suicide.
That kid was gone. The red hair was half grey and starting to recede. There were
crow’s tracks around the eyes. On that day I could see an old man inside, waiting his
time to come out. It scared me. Nobody wants to grow old in stir.
Stammas went early in 1959. There had been several investigative reporters sniffing around, and one of them even did four months under an assumed name, for a
crime made up out of whole cloth. They were getting ready to drag out SCANDAL
and NEST-FEATHERING again, but before they could bring the hammer down on
him, Stammas ran. I can understand that; boy, can I ever. If he had been tried and
convicted, he could have ended up right in here. If so, he might have lasted all of five hours. Byron Hadley had gone two years earlier. The sucker had a heart attack and
took an early retirement. Andy never got touched by the Stammas affair. In early 1959
a new warden was appointed, and a new assistant warden, and a new chief of guards.
For the next eight months or so, Andy was just another con again. It was during that
period that Normaden, the big half-breed Passamaquoddy, shared Andy’s cell with
him. Then everything just started up again. Normaden was moved out, and Andy was
living in solitary splendour again. The names at the top change, but the rackets never do.
I talked to Normaden once about Andy. ‘Nice fella,’ Normaden said. It was
hard to make out anything he said because he had & harelip and a cleft palate; his words all came out in a slush. ‘I liked it there. He never made fun. But he didn’t want me there. I could tell.’ Big shrug. ‘I was glad to go, me. Bad draught in that cell. All the time cold. He don’t let nobody touch his things. That’s okay. Nice man, never
made fun. But big draught.’ Rita Hay worth hung in Andy’s cell until 1955, if I
remember right Then it was Marilyn Monroe, that picture from The Seven Year Itch
where she’s standing over a subway grating and the warm air is flipping her skirt up.
Marilyn lasted until 1960, and she was considerably tattered about the edges when
Andy replaced her with Jayne Mansfield. Jayne was, you should pardon the
expression, a bust. After only a year or so she was replaced with an English actress–
might have been Hazel Court, but I’m not sure. In 1966 that one came down and
Raquel Welch went up for a record-breaking six-year engagement in Andy’s cell. The
last poster to hang there was a pretty country-rock singer whose name was Linda