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, willy-nilly, 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. He held a conversation with you.
He talked all the time. Never shut up. If you tried to get a word in, he’d shake his fist at you and roll his eyes. It gave me the cold chills whenever he done that. Big tall guy he was, mostly bald, with these green eyes set way down deep in the sockets. Jeez, I
hope I never see him again. ‘It was like a talkin’ jag every night When he grew up, the orphanages he run away from, the jobs he done, the women he’s fucked, the crap
games he cleaned out I just let him run an. My face ain’t much, but I didn’t want it,
you know, rearranged for me. ‘According to him, he’d burgled over two hundred joints.
It was hard for me to believe, a guy like him who went off like a firecracker every
time someone cut a loud fart, but he swore it was true. Now… listen to me, Red. I
know guys sometimes make things up after they know a thing, but even before I knew
about this golf pro guy, Quentin, I remember thinking that if El Blatch ever burgled
my house, and I found out about it later, I’d have to count myself just about the
luckiest motherfucker going still to be alive. Can you imagine him in some lady’s
bedroom, sifting through her jool’ry box, and she coughs in her sleep or turns over
quick? It gives me the cold chills just to think of something like that, I swear on my mother’s name it does.
‘He said he’d killed people, too. People that gave him shit. At least that’s what