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'No. We don't know how much time he'd done. But Tommy said he was a bad actor, a
cut-up. I think there's a fair chance that he may still be in. Even if he's been released, the
prison will have a record of his last known address, the names of his relatives -'
'And both would almost certainly be dead ends.'
Andy was silent for a moment, and then he burst out: 'Well, it's a chance, isn't it?'
'Yes, of course it is. So just for a moment, Dufresne, let's assume that Blatch exists and
that he is still safely ensconced in the Rhode Island State Penitentiary. Now what is he
going to say if we bring this kettle of fish to him in a bucket? Is he going to fall down on
his knees, roil his eyes, and say "I did it! I did it! By all means add a life term onto my
burglary charge!"?'
'How can you be so obtuse?' Andy said, so low that Chester could barely hear. But he
heard the warden just fine.
'What? What did you call me?'
'Obtuse? Andy cried. 'Is it deliberate?'
'Dufresne, you've taken five minutes of my time - no, seven - and I have a very busy
schedule today. So I believe we'll just declare this little meeting closed and -'
'The country club will have ail the old time-cards, don't you realize that?' Andy shouted.
They'll have tax-forms and W-2s and unemployment compensation forms, all with his
name on them! There will be employees there now that were there then, maybe Briggs
himself! It's been fifteen years, not forever! They'll remember him! They will remember
Blotch! If I've got Tommy to testify to what Blatch told him, and Briggs to testify that
Blatch was there, actually working at the country club, I can get a new trial! I can -'
'Guard! Guardl Take this man away!'
'What's the matter with you?' Andy said, and Chester told me he was very nearly
screaming by then. 'It's my life, my chance to get out, don't you see that? And you won't
make a single long-distance call to at least verify Tommy's story? Listen, I'll pay for the
call! I'll pay for -'
Then there was a sound of thrashing as the guards grabbed him and started to drag him
out
'Solitary,' Warden Norton said dryly. He was probably - gering his thirty-year pin as he
said it 'Bread and water.'
And so they dragged Andy away, totally out of control now, still screaming at the
warden; Chester said you could hear him even after the door was shut: 'It's my life! It's
my life, don't you understand it's my life?'
Twenty days on the grain and drain train for Andy down there in solitary. It was his
second jolt in solitary, and his dust-up with Norton was his first real black mark since he
had joined our happy little family.
I'll tell you a little bit about Shawshank's solitary while we're on the subject It's
something of a throwback to those hardy pioneer days of the early-to-mid-1700s in
Maine. In ..those days no one wasted much time with such things as penalogy' and
'rehabilitation' and 'selective perception'. In ,those days, you were taken care of in terms
of absolute black and white. You were either guilty or innocent. If you were guilty, you