Chapter 17

It was Warden Norton who instituted the 'Inside-Out' programme you may have read about some sixteen or seventeen years back; it was even written up in Newsweek. In the press it sounded like a real advance in practical corrections and rehabilitation. There were prisoners out cutting pulpwood, prisoners repairing bridges and causeways, prisoners constructing potato cellars. Norton called it 'Inside-Out' and was invited to explain it to damn near every Rotary and Kiwanis club in New England, especially after he got his picture in Newsweek. The prisoners called it 'road-ganging', but so far as I know, none of them were ever invited to express their views to the Kiwanians or the Loyal Order of the Moose.
Norton was right in there on every operation, thirty-year church-pin and all, from cutting pulp to digging storm-drains to laying new culverts on state highways, there was Norton, 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 all 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 that things might go better with Tommy - and consequently better with their three-year-old mi and herself - if he got his high school degree. She talked him into it, and so Tommy Williams started visiting the library on a regular basis.
For Andy, this was an old routine by then. He saw that Tommy got a series of high school equivalency tests. Tommy would brush up on the subjects he had passed in high-school - there weren't many - and then take the test. Andy also saw that he was enrolled in a number of correspondence courses covering the subjects he had failed in school or just missed by dropping out.
He probably wasn't the best student Andy ever took over the jumps, and I don't know if he ever did get his high school diploma, but that forms no part of my story. The important thing was that he came to like Andy Dufresne very much, as most people did after a while.
On a couple of occasions he asked Andy 'what a smart guy like you is doing in the joint' - a question which is the rough equivalent of that one that goes 'What's a nice girl like you doing in a place like this?' But Andy wasn't the type to tell him; he would only smile and turn the conversation into some other channel. Quite normally, Tommy asked someone else, and when he finally got the story, I guess he also got the shock of his young life.
The person he asked was his partner on the laundry's steam ironer and folder. The inmates call this device the mangier, because that's exactly what it will do to you if you aren't paying attention and get your bad self caught in it. His partner was Charlie Lathrop, who had been in for about twelve years on a murder charge. He was more than glad to reheat the details of the Dufresne murder trial for Tommy; it broke the monotony of pulling freshly pressed bedsheets out of the machine and tucking them into the basket. He was just getting to the jury waiting until after lunch to bring in their guilty verdict when the trouble whistle went off and the mangle grated to a stop. They had been feeding in freshly washed sheets from the Eliot Nursing Home at the far end; these were spat out dry and neatly pressed at Tommy's and Charlie's end at the rate of one every five seconds. Their job was to grab them, fold them, and slap them into the cart, which had already been lined with brown paper.
But Tommy Williams was just standing there, staring at Charlie Lathrop, his mouth unhinged all the way to his chest. He was standing in adrift of sheets that had come through dean and which were now sopping up all the wet muck on the floor - and in a laundry wetwash, there's plenty of muck.
So the head bull that day, Homer Jessup, comes rushing over, bellowing his head off and on the prod for trouble. Tommy took no notice of him. He spoke to Charlie as if old Homer, who had busted more heads than he could probably count, hadn't been there.

　　诺顿建立了一种“外役监”制度。你也许在十六、七年前看过这类报道；连《新闻周刊》都为此写过专题，听来似乎是狱政感化的一大革新。让囚犯到监狱外面伐木、修桥筑堤、建造贮藏马铃薯的地窖。诺顿称之为“外役监”，而且应邀到新英格兰的每个扶轮社和同济会去演讲，尤其当他的玉照登上《新闻周刊》之后，更加炙手可热。犯人却称之为“筑路帮派”，但没有一个犯人曾受邀到同济会或扶轮社去发表他们的观点。
　　于是，从伐木、挖水沟到铺设地下电缆管道，都可以看见诺顿在里面捞油水，中饱私囊。无论是人员、物料，还是任何你想得到的项目，都有上百种方法可以从中揩油。但是诺顿还另辟蹊径。由于监狱囚犯是廉价奴工，你根本没有办法和他们竞争，所以建筑业全都怕极了诺顿的外役监计划。因此，手持《圣经》、戴着三十年纪念襟章的虔诚教徒诺顿，在十六年的肖申克典狱长任内从桌底下收过不少厚厚的信封。当他收到信封后，他会出过高的价钱来投标工程，或根本不投标工程，或是宣称他的“外役监”计划已经和别人签约了。我只是觉得纳闷，为什么从来不曾有人在麻省某条公路上，发现诺顿的尸体塞在被弃置的雷鸟车后车厢中，双手缚在背后，脑袋瓜中了六颗子弹。
　　总之，正如酒吧中播放的老歌歌词：我的天，钱就这么滚滚而来！诺顿一定非常同意清教徒的传统观念，只要检查每个人的银行账户，就知道谁是上帝最眷顾的子民。
　　这段期间，安迪是诺顿的左右手和沉默的合伙人，而监狱图书馆就成了押在诺顿手中的人质。诺顿心知肚明，而且也充分利用这点。安迪说，诺顿最喜欢的格言就是，用一只手洗净另外一只手的罪孽。于是，安迪提供诺顿各种有用的建议。我不敢说他亲手打造诺顿的“外役监”计划，但是我很确定他为那龟儿子处理各种钱财，提供有用的建议。钱越滚越多，而……好家伙！图书馆也添购了新的汽车修理手册、百科全书，以及准备升学考试的参考书，当然还有更多加德纳和拉摩尔的小说。
　　我相信这件事之所以会发生，一则是诺顿不想失去左右手，二则是他怕安迪如果真的出狱的话，会说一些不利于他的话。
　　我的消息是在七年中这边弄一点、那边弄一点所拼凑出来的，有些是从安迪口中得知，但不是全部。他从来不想多谈这些事，我不怪他，有些事情我是从六七个不同的消息来源那儿打探来的。我曾说过囚犯只不过是奴隶罢了，他们也像奴隶一样，表面装出一副笨样子，实际上却竖起耳朵。我把故事说得忽前忽后，不过我会从头到尾把故事完整地说给你听，然后你也许就明白，为什么安迪会陷入沮丧绝望的恍惚状态长达十个月之久。我认为，他直到一九六三年、也就是进来这个甜蜜的地狱牢房十五年后，才清楚谋杀案的真相。在他认识汤米·威廉斯之前，我猜他并不晓得情况会变得那么糟糕。
　　汤米在一九六二年十一月加入我们这个快乐的小家庭。汤米自认是麻省人，但他并不以此为荣。在他二十七年的生命中，他坐遍了新英格兰地区的监狱。他是个职业小偷，我却认为他该拣别的行业干，或许你也会这样想。
　　他已经结婚，太太每周来探监一次。她认为如果汤米能够完成高中学业，情况也许会逐渐好转，她和三岁的儿子自然也会受益，因此她说服汤米继续进修，于是汤米便开始定期造访图书馆。
　　对安迪而言，帮助囚犯读书已经成为例行公事，他协助汤米重新复习高中修过的科目（并不是很多），然后通过同等学力考试。同时他也指导汤米如何利用函授课程，把以前不及格或没有修过的科目修完。
　　汤米可能不是安迪教过的学生中最优秀的一位，我也不知道他后来到底有没有拿到高中文凭，但是这些都和我们要讲的故事无关。重要的是，汤米后来非常喜欢安迪，正如其他许多人一样。
　　有几次谈话时，他问安迪：“像你这么聪明的人怎么会沦落到这种地方？”这句话就和问人家“像你这样的好女孩怎么会沦落到这种地方？”一样唐突。但安迪不是会回答这种问题的人，微笑着把话岔开。汤米自然去请教别人，最后，他终于弄清楚整个事情，但他自己也极为震惊。
　　他询问的对象是跟他一起在洗衣房工作的伙伴，名叫查理·拉朴。查理因为被控谋杀，已经在牢里蹲了十二年。他迫不及待地把整个审判过程原原本本告诉汤米，那天把轧布机熨平的干净床单一条条拉出来塞进篮子里的动作，都不再像平日那么单调了。查理正讲到陪审团等到午餐后，才回到法庭上宣告安迪有罪，这时候机器故障的警笛响起，轧布机吱吱嘎嘎地停了下来。其他囚犯从机器的另一端把刚洗好的老人院床单一条条塞进轧布机里，然后在汤米和查理这一端每五秒钟吐出一条烫得平平整整的干床单，他们的工作是把机器吐出的床单一条条拉起来，折叠好以后放进推车里，推车里早已铺好棕色的干净牛皮纸。
　　但是汤米听到警笛声后，只顾站在那儿发愣，张大嘴巴，下巴都要碰到胸口了，呆呆地瞪着查理。机器吐出的床单掉在地上，越积越多，吸干了地上的脏水，而洗衣房的地面通常都很潮湿肮脏。工头霍姆跑过来大声咆哮，想知道哪里出了问题。但是汤米视若无睹，继续和查理谈话，仿佛打人无数的霍姆根本不存在似的。