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 fifteen-year tenure as Shawshank’s warden. And
when an envelope was passed, he would either overbid the project, not bid at all, or
claim that all 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 program, 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 course, more Erie Stanley
Gardeners and more Louis L’Amours. And I’m convinced that what happened
happened because Norton just didn’t want to lose his good right hand. I’ll go further: it happened because he was scared of what might happen–what Andy might say against
him–if Andy ever got clear of Shawshank State Prison.
I got the story a chunk here and a chunk there over a space of seven years,
some of it from Andy–but not all. He never wanted to talk about that part of his life, and I don’t blame him. I got parts of it from maybe half a dozen different sources. I’ve said once that prisoners are nothing but slaves, but they have that slave habit of
looking dumb and keeping their ears open. I got it backwards and forwards and in the
middle, but I’ll give it to you from point A to point Z, and maybe you’ll understand
why the man spent about ten months in a bleak, depressed daze. See, I don’t think he
knew the truth until 1963, fifteen years after he came into this sweet little hell-hole.
Until he met Tommy Williams, I don’t think he knew how bad it could get.
Tommy Williams joined our happy little Shawshank family in November of
1962. Tommy thought of himself as a native of Massachusetts, but he wasn’t proud; in
his twenty-seven years he’d done time all over New England. He was a professional
thief, and as you may have guessed, my own feeling was that he should have picked
another profession.
He was a married man, and his wife came to visit each and every week. She
had an idea that things might go better with Tommy–and consequently better with
their three-year-old and herself–if he got his high school degree. She talked him into it, and so Tommy Williams started visiting the library on a regular basis. For Andy,