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skimming off the top. There were a hundred ways to do it -men, materials, you name it.
But he had it coming another way, as well. The construction businesses in the area were
deathly afraid of Norton's Inside-Out programme, because prison labour is slave labour,
and you can't compete with that. So Sam Norton, he of the Testaments and the thirty-year
church-pin, was passed a good many thick envelopes under the table during his fifteen-
year tenure as Shawshank's warden. And when an envelope was passed, he would either
overbid the project, not bid at all, or claim that ail his Inside-Outers were committed
elsewhere. It has always been something of a wonder to me that Norton was never found
in the trunk of a Thunderbird parked off a highway somewhere down in Massachusetts
with his hands tied behind his back and half a dozen bullets in his head.
Anyway, as the old barrelhouse song says, My God, how the money rolled in. Norton
must have subscribed to the old Puritan notion that the best way to figure out which folks
God favours is by checking their bank accounts.
Andy Dufresne was his right hand in all of this, his silent partner. The prison library was
Andy's hostage to fortune. Norton knew it, and Norton used it. Andy told me that one of
Norton's favourite aphorisms was One hand washes the other. So Andy gave good advice
and made useful suggestions. I can't say for sure that he hand-tooled Norton's Inside-Out
programme, but I'm damned sure he processed the money for the Jesus-shouting son of a
whore. He gave good advice, made useful suggestions, the money got spread around, and
... son of a bitch! The library would get a new set of automotive repair manuals, a fresh
set of Grolier Encyclopedias, books on how to prepare for the Scholastic Achievement
Tests. And, of course, more Erie Stanley Gardeners and more Louis L'Amours.
And I'm convinced that what happened happened because Norton just didn't want to lose
his good right hand. I'll go further: it happened because he was scared of what might
happen - what Andy might say against him - if Andy ever got clear of Shawshank State
Prison.
I got the story a chunk here and a chunk there over a space of seven years, some of it
from Andy - but not all. He never wanted to talk about that part of his life, and I don't
blame him. I got parts of it from maybe half a dozen different sources. I've said once that
prisoners are nothing but slaves, but they have that slave habit of looking dumb and
keeping their ears open. I got it backwards and forwards and in the middle, but I'll give it
to you from point A to point Z, and maybe you'll understand why the man spent about ten
months in a bleak, depressed daze. See, I don't think he knew the truth until 1963, fifteen
years after he came into this sweet little hell-hole. Until he met Tommy Williams, I don't
think he knew how bad it could get.
Tommy Williams joined our happy little Shawshank family in November of 1962.
Tommy thought of himself as a native of Massachusetts, but he wasn't proud; in his
twenty-seven years he'd done time all over New England. He was a professional thief,
and as you may have guessed, my own feeling was that he should have picked another
profession.
He was a married man, and his wife came to visit each and every week. She had an idea