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geology courses along the way. Geology had, in fact, become his chief hobby. I imagine
it appealed to his patient, meticulous nature. A ten-thousand-year ice age here. A million
years of mountain-building there. Tectonic plates grinding against each other deep under
the earth's skin over the millennia. Pressure. Andy told me once that all of geology is the
study of pressure.
And time, of course.
He had time to study those walls. Plenty of time. When the cell door slams and the lights
go out, there's nothing else to look at.
First-timers usually had a hard time adjusting to the confinement of prison life. They get
screw-fever, they have to be hauled down to the infirmary and sedated couple of times
before they get on the beam. It's not unusual to hear some new member of our happy little
family bang on the bars of his cell and screaming to be let out ... before the cries have
gone on for long, the chant starts up along the cellblock: 'Fresh fish, hey little fishie, fresh
fish, fresh fish, got fresh fish today!'
Andy didn't flip out like that when he came to the Shank 1948, but that's not to say that
he didn't feel many of same things. He may have come close to madness; some and some
go sailing right over the edge. Old life blown away in the wink of an eye, indeterminate
nightmare stretching out ahead, a long season in hell.
So what did he do, I ask you? He searched almost desperately for something to divert his
restless mind. Oh. there are all sorts of ways to divert yourself, even in prison; it seems
like the human mind is full of an infinite number of possibilities when it comes to
diversion. I told you about the sculptor and his Three Ages of Jesus. There were coin
collectors who were always losing their collections to thieves, stamp collectors, one
fellow who had postcards from thirty-five different countries - and let me tell you, he
would have turned out your lights if he'd caught you diddling with his postcards.
Andy got interested in rocks. And the walls of his cell.
I think that his initial intention might have been to do no more than to carve his initials
into the wall where the poster of Rita Hayworth would soon be hanging. His initials, or
maybe a few lines from some poem. Instead, what he found was that interestingly weak
concrete. Maybe he started to carve his initials and a big chunk of the wall fell out I can
see him, lying there on his bunk, looking at that broken chunk of concrete, turning it over
in his hands. Never mind the wreck of your whole life, never mind that you got railroaded
into this place by a whole trainload of bad luck. Let's forget all that and look at this piece
of concrete.
Some months further along he might have decided it would
be fun to see how much of that wall he could take out. But you can't just start digging
into your wall and then, when the weekly inspection (or one of the surprise inspections
that are always turning up interesting caches of booze, drugs, dirty pictures, and
weapons) comes around, say to the guard: This? Just excavating a little hole in my cell
wall. Not to worry, my good man.'
No, he couldn't have that So he came to me and asked if I could get him a Rita Hayworth
poster. Not a little one but a big one.