More important to a fellow like Tommy, a fellow with a young wife and a child,
Cashman had a furlough program… which meant a chance to live like a normal man,
at least on the weekends. A chance to build a model plane with his kid, have sex with
his wife, maybe go on a picnic.
Norton had almost surely dangled all of that under Tommy’s nose with only
one string attached: not one more word about Elwood Blatch, not now, not ever. Or
you’ll end up doing hard time in Thomaston down there on scenic Route 1 with the
real hard guys, and instead of having sex with your wife you’ll be having it with some old bull queer. ‘But why?’ Andy said. ‘Why would -‘
‘As a favour to you,’ Norton said calmly, ‘I checked with Rhode Island. They
did have an inmate named Elwood Blatch. He was given what they call a PP–
provisional parole, another one of these crazy liberal programmes to put criminals out on the streets. He’s since disappeared.’
Andy said: ‘The warden down there… is he a friend of yours?’
Sam Norton gave Andy a smile as cold as a deacon’s watchchain. ‘We are
acquainted,’ he said.
‘ Why?’ Andy repeated. ‘Can’t you tell me why you did it? You knew I wasn’t
going to talk about… about anything you might have had going. You knew that. So
why? ‘Because people like you make me sick,’ Norton said deliberately. ‘I like you
right where you are, Mr Dufresne, and as long as I am warden here at Shawshank, you
are going to be right here. You see, you used to think that you were better than anyone else. I have gotten pretty good at seeing that on a man’s face. I marked it on yours the first time I walked into the library. It might as well have been written on your
forehead in capital letters. That look is gone now, and I like that just fine. It is not just that you are a useful vessel, never think that. It is simply that men like you need to learn humility. Why, you used to walk around that exercise yard as if it was a living
room and you were at one of those cocktail parties where the hellhound walk around
coveting each others’ wives and husbands and getting swinishly drunk. But you don’t
walk around that way anymore. And I’ll be watching to see if you should start to walk
that way again. Over a period of years, I’ll be watching you with great pleasure. Now
get the hell out of here.’
‘Okay. But all the extracurricular activities stop now, Norton. The investment
counselling, the scams, the free tax advice. It all stops. Get H & R Block to tell you how to declare your extortionate income.’
Warden Norton’s face first went brick-red… and then all the colour fell out of
it ‘You’re going back into solitary for that thirty days. Bread and water. Another black mark. And while you’re in, think about this: if anything that’s been going on should
stop, the library goes. I will make it my personal business to see that it goes back to what it was before you came here. And I will make your life… very hard. Very
difficult You’ll do the hardest time it’s possible to do. You’ll lose that one-bunk Hilton down in Cellblock 5, for starters, and you’ll lose those rocks on the windowsill, and
you’ll lose any protection the guards have given you against the sodomites. You will…
lose everything. Clear?’ I guess it was clear enough.
Time continued to pass–the oldest trick in the world, and maybe the only one
that really is magic. But Andy Dufresne had changed. He had grown harder. That’s the
only way I can think of to put it He went on doing Warden Norton’s dirty work and he
held onto the library, so outwardly things were about the same. He continued to have
his birthday drinks and his New Year’s Eve drinks; he continued to share out the rest
of each bottle. I got him fresh rock-polishing cloths from time to time, and in 1967 I got him a new rock-hammer–the one I’d gotten him nineteen years ago had plumb