His dark mood broke around the time of the 1967 World Series. That was the dream
year, the year the Red Sox won the pennant instead of placing ninth, as the Las Vegas
bookies had predicted. When it happened – when they won the American League pennant
– a kind of ebullience engulfed the whole prison. There was a goofy sort of feeling that if
the Dead Sox could come to life, then maybe anybody could do it I can’t explain that
feeling now, any more than an ex-Beatlemaniac could explain that madness, I suppose.
But it was real. Every radio in the place was tuned to the games as the Red Sox pounded
down the stretch. There was gloom when the Sox dropped a pair in Cleveland near the
end, and a nearly riotous joy when Rico Petrocelli put away the pop fly that clinched it
And then there was the gloom that came when Lonborg was beaten in the seventh game
of the Series to end the dream just short of complete fruition. It probably pleased Norton
to no end, the son of a bitch. He liked his prison wearing sackcloth and ashes.
But for Andy, there was no tumble back down into gloom. He wasn’t much of a
baseball fan anyway, and maybe that was why. Nevertheless, he seemed to have caught
the current of good feeling, and for him it didn’t peter out again after the last game of the
Series. He had taken that invisible coat out of the closet and put it on again.
I remember one bright-gold fall day in very late October, a couple of weeks after the
World Series had ended. It must have been a Sunday, because the exercise yard was full
of men ‘walking off the week’ – tossing a Frisbee or two, passing around a football,
bartering what they had to barter. Others would be at the long table in the Visitors’ Hall,
under the watchful eyes of the screws, talking with their relatives, smoking cigarettes,
telling sincere lies, receiving their picked-over care packages.
Andy was squatting Indian-fashion against the wall, chunking two small rocks together
in his hands, his face turned up into the sunlight. It was surprisingly warm, that sun, for a
day so late in the year.
‘Hello, Red,’ he called. ‘Come on and sit a spell.’
I did.
‘You want this?’ he asked, and handed me one of the two carefully polished
‘millennium sandwiches’ I just told you about
‘I sure do,’ I said. ‘It’s very pretty. Thank you.’
He shrugged and changed the subject ‘Big anniversary coming up for you next year.’
I nodded. Next year would make me a thirty-year man. Sixty per cent of my life spent
in Shawshank Prison.
Think you’ll ever get out?’
‘Sure. When I have a long white beard and just about three marbles left rolling around
upstairs.’
He smiled a little and then turned his face up into the sun again, his eyes closed. ‘Feels
good.’
‘I think it always does when you know the damn winter’s almost right on top of you.’
He nodded, and we were silent for a while.
‘When I get out of here,’ Andy said finally, ‘I’m going where it’s warm all the time.’ He
spoke with such calm assurance you would have thought he had only a month or so left to
serve. ‘You know where I’m goin’, Red?’
‘Nope.’
‘Zihuatcnejo,’ he said, rolling the word softly from his tongue like music. ‘Down in
Mexico. It’s a little place maybe twenty miles from Playa Azul and Mexico Highway 37.
It’s a hundred miles north-west of Acapulco on the Pacific Ocean. You know what the
Mexicans say about the Pacific?’
I told him I didn’t
They say it has no memory. And that’s where I want to finish out my life, Red. In a
warm place that has no memory.’
He had picked up a handful of pebbles as he spoke; now he tossed them, one by one,
and watched them bounce and roll across the baseball diamond’s dirt infield, which would
be under a foot of snow before long.
‘Zihuatanejo. I’m going to have a little hotel down there. Six cabanas along the beach,
and six more set further back, for the highway trade. I’ll have a guy who’ll take my guests
out charter fishing. There’ll be a trophy for the guy who catches the biggest marlin of the
season, and I’ll put his picture up in the lobby. It won’t be a family place. It’ll be a place
for people on their honeymoons … first or second varieties.’
‘And where are you going to get the money to buy this fabulous place?’ I asked. ‘Your
stock account?’
He looked at me and smiled. ‘That’s not so far wrong,’ he said. ‘Sometimes you startle
me, Red.’
‘What are you talking about?’
There are really only two types of men in the world when it comes to bad trouble,’
Andy said, cupping a match between his hands and lighting a cigarette. ‘Suppose there
was a house full of rare paintings and sculptures and fine old antiques, Red? And suppose
the guy who owned the house heard that there was a monster of a hurricane headed right at it. One of those two kinds of men just hopes for the best The hurricane will change
course, he says to himself. No right-thinking hurricane would ever dare wipe out all these
Rembrandts, my two Degas horses, my Jackson Pollocks and my Paul Klees.
Furthermore, God wouldn’t allow it. And if worst comes to worst, they’re insured. That’s
one sort of man. The other sort just assumes that hurricane is going to tear right through
the middle of his house. If the weather bureau says the hurricane just changed course, this
guy assumes it’ll change back in order to put his house on ground zero again. This second
type of guy knows there’s no harm in hoping for the best as long as you’re prepared for the
worst.’
I lit a cigarette of my own. ‘Are you saying you prepared for the eventuality?’
‘Yes. I prepared for the hurricane. I knew how bad it looked. I didn’t have much time,
but in the time I had, I operated. I had a friend – just about the only person who stood by
me – who worked for an investment company in Portland. He died about six years ago.’
‘Sorry.’
‘Yeah.’ Andy tossed his butt away. ‘Linda and I had about fourteen thousand dollars.
Not a big bundle, but hell, we were young. We had our whole lives ahead of us.’ He
grimaced a little, then laughed. ‘When the shit hit the fan, I started lugging my
Rembrandts out of the path of the hurricane. I sold my stocks and paid the capital gains
tax just like a good little boy. Declared everything. Didn’t cut any corners.’
‘Didn’t they freeze your estate?’
‘I was charged with murder, Red, not dead! You can’t freeze the assets of an innocent
man – thank God. And it was a while before they even got brave enough to charge me
with the crime. Jim – my friend – and I, we had some time. I got hit pretty good, just
dumping everything like that. Got my nose skinned. But at the time I had worse things to
worry about than a small skinning on the stock market.’
‘Yeah, I’d say you did.’
‘But when I came to Shawshank it was all safe. It’s still safe. Outside these walls, Red,
there’s a man that no living soul has ever seen face to face. He has a Social Security card
and a Maine driver’s license. He’s got a birth certificate. Name of Peter Stevens. Nice,
anonymous name, huh?’
‘Who is he?’ I asked. I thought I knew what he was going to say, but I couldn’t believe
it.
‘Me.’
‘You’re not going to tell me that you had time to set up a false identity while the bulls
were sweating you,’ I said, ‘or that you finished the job while you were on trial for -‘
‘No, I’m not going to tell you that. My friend Jim was the one who set up the false
identity. He started after my appeal was turned down, and the major pieces of
identification were in his hands by the spring of 1950.’
‘He must have been a pretty close friend,’ I said. I was not sure how much of this I
believed – a little, a lot, or none. But the day was warm and the sun was out, and it was
one hell of a good story. ‘All of that’s one hundred per cent illegal, setting up a false ID
like that.’
‘He was a close friend,’ Andy said. ‘We were in the war together. France, Germany, the
occupation. He was a good friend. He knew it was illegal, but he also knew that setting up
a false identity in this country is very easy and very safe. He took my money – my money