McNary was where he crossed. McNary, Texas.
So that’s my story, Jack. I never believed how long it would take to write it all
down, or how many pages it would take. I started writing just after I got that postcard, and here I am finishing up on 14 January 1976. I’ve used three pencils right down to
knuckle-stubs, and a whole tablet of paper. I’ve kept the pages carefully hidden… not that many could read my. hen-tracks, anyway.
It stirred up more memories than I ever would have believed. Writing about
yourself seems to be a lot like sticking a branch into clear river-water and roiling up the muddy bottom.
Well, you weren’t writing about yourself, I hear someone in the peanut-gallery
saying. You were writing about Andy Dufresne. You’re nothing but a minor character
in your own story. But you know, that’s just not so. It’s all about me, every damned
word of it Andy was the part of me they could never lock up, the part of me that will
rejoice when the gates finally open for me and I walk out in my cheap suit with my
twenty dollars of mad-money in my pocket That part of me will rejoice no matter how
old and broken and scared the rest of me is. I guess it’s just that Andy had more of that part than me, and used it better.
There are others here like me, others who remember Andy. We’re glad he’s
gone, but a little sad, too. Some birds are not meant to be caged, that’s all. Their
feathers are too bright, their songs too sweet and wild. So you let them go, or when
you open the cage to feed them they somehow fly out past you. And the part of you that knows it was wrong to imprison them in the first place rejoices, but still, the place where you live is that much more drab and empty for their departure.
That’s the story and I’m glad I told it, even if it is a bit inconclusive and even
though some of the memories the pencil prodded up (like that branch poking up the
river-mud) made me feel a little sad and even older than I am. Thank you for listening.
And Andy: If you’re really down there, as I believe you are, look at the stars for me
just after sunset, and touch the sand, and wade in the water, and feel free.
I never expected to take up this narrative again, but here I am with the dog-
eared, folded pages open on the desk in front of me. Here I am adding another three or four pages, writing in a brand-new tablet. A tablet I bought in a store–I just walked into a store on Portland’s Congress Street and bought it.
I thought I had put finish to my story in a Shawshank prison cell on a bleak
January day in 1976. Now it’s late June of 1977 and I am sitting in a small, cheap
room of the Brewster Hotel in Portland, adding to it The window is open, and the
sound of the traffic floating in seems huge, exciting, and intimidating. I have to look constantly over at the window and reassure myself that there are no bars on it I sleep poorly at night because the bed in this room, as cheap as the room is, seems much too
big and luxurious. I snap awake every morning promptly at six-thirty, feeling
disorientated and frightened. My dreams are bad. I have a crazy feeling of free fall.
The sensation is as terrifying as it is exhilarating.
What has happened in my life? Can’t you guess? I was paroled. After thirty-
eight years of routine hearings and routine details (in the course of those thirty-eight years, three lawyers died on me), my parole was granted. I suppose they decided that,
at the age of fifty-eight, I was finally used up enough to be deemed safe.
I came very close to burning the document you have just read. They search
outgoing parolees just as carefully as they search incoming ‘new fish’. And beyond
containing enough dynamite to assure me of a quick turnaround and another six or