----------------------- Page 28-----------------------
gone. The red hair was half grey and starting to recede. There were crow's tracks around
the eyes. On that day I could see an old man inside, waiting his time to come out. It
scared me. Nobody wants to grow old in stir.
Stammas went early in 1959. There had been several investigative reporters sniffing
around, and one of them even did four months under an assumed name, for a crime made
up out of whole cloth. They were getting ready to drag out SCANDAL and NEST-
FEATHERING again, but before they could bring the hammer down on him, Stammas
ran. I can understand that; boy, can I ever. If he had been tried and convicted, he could
have ended up right in here. If so, he might have lasted all of five hours. Byron Hadley
had gone two years earlier. The sucker had a heart attack and took an early retirement.
Andy never got touched by the Stammas affair. In early 1959 a new warden was
appointed, and a new assistant warden, and a new chief of guards. For the next eight
months or so, Andy was just another con again. It was during that period that Normaden,
the big half-breed Passamaquoddy, shared Andy's cell with him. Then everything just
started up again. Normaden was moved out, and Andy was living in solitary splendour
again. The names at the top change, but die rackets never do.
I talked to Normaden once about Andy. 'Nice fella,' Normaden said. It was hard to make
out anything he said because he had & harelip and a cleft palate; his words all came out
in a slush. 'I liked it there. He never made fun. But he didn't want me there. I could tell.'
Big shrug. 'I was glad to go, me. Bad draught in that cell. All the time cold. He don't let
nobody touch his things. That's okay. Nice man, never made fun. But big draught.'
Rita Hay worth hung in Andy's cell until 1955, if I remember right Then it was Marilyn
Monroe, that picture from The Seven Year Itch where she's standing over a subway
grating and the warm air is flipping her skirt up. Marilyn lasted until i960, and she was
considerably tattered about the edges when Andy replaced her with Jayne Mansfield.
Jayne was, you should pardon the expression, a bust. After only a year or so she was
replaced with an English actress - might have been Hazel Court, but I'm not sure. In 1966
that one came down and Raquel Welch went up for a record-breaking six-year
engagement in Andy's ceil. The last poster to hang there was a pretty country-rock singer
whose name was Linda Ronstadt
I asked him once what the posters meant to him, and he gave me a peculiar, surprised sort
of look. 'Why, they mean the same thing to me as they do to most cons, I guess,' he said.
'Freedom. You look at those pretty women and you feel like you could almost ... not quite
but almost step right through and be beside them. Be free. I guess that's why I always
liked Raquel Welch the best It wasn't just her; it was that beach she was standing on.
Looked like she was down in Mexico somewhere. Someplace quiet, where a man would
be able to hear himself think. Didn't you ever feel that way about a picture, Red? That
you could almost step right through it?'
I said I'd never really thought of it that way.
'Maybe someday you'll see what I mean,' he said, and he was right Years later I saw
exactly what he meant ... and when I did, the first thing I thought of was Normaden, and
about how he'd said it was always cold in Andy's cell.