Chapter 24

'When you said you could get a lawyer, you sure weren't kidding,' I said at last 'For that kind of dough you could have hired Clarence Darrow, or whoever's passing for him these days. Why didn't you, Andy? Christ! You could have been out of here like a rocket.' He smiled. It was the same smile that had been on his face when he'd told me he and his wife had had their whole lives ahead of them. 'No,' he said.
'A good lawyer would have sprung the Williams kid from Cashman whether he wanted to go or not,' I said. I was getting carried away now. 'You could have gotten your new trial, hired private detectives to look for that guy Blatch, and blown Norton out of the water to boot. Why not, Andy?'
'Because I outsmarted myself. If I ever try to put my hands on Peter Stevens's money from inside here, I'd lose every cent of it. My friend Jim could have arranged it, but Jim's dead. You see the problem?'
I saw it. For all the good the money could do Andy, it might as well have really belonged to another person. In a way, it did. And if the stuff it was invested in suddenly turned bad, all Andy could do would be to watch the plunge, to trace it day after day on the stocks-and-bonds page of the Press-Herald. It's a tough life if you don't weaken, I guess.
'I'll tell you how it is, Red. There's a big hayfield in the town of Buxton. You know where Buxton is at, don't you?'
I said I did. It lies right next door to Scarborough.
"That's right. And at the north end of this particular hayfield there's a rock wall, right out of a Robert Frost poem. And somewhere along the base of that wall is a rock that has no business in a Maine hayfield. It's a piece of volcanic glass, and until 1947 it was a paperweight on my office desk. My friend Jim put it in that wall.
There's a key underneath it. The key opens a safe deposit box in the Portland branch of the Casco Bank.'
'I guess you're in a pack of trouble,' I said. 'When your friend Jim died, the IRS must have opened all of his safety deposit boxes. Along with the executor of his will, of course.'
Andy smiled and tapped the side of my head. 'Not bad. There's more up there than marshmallows, I guess. But we took care of the possibility that Jim might die while I was in the slam. The box is in the Peter Stevens name, and once a year the firm of lawyers that served as Jim's executors sends a check to the Casco to cover the rental of the Stevens box.
'Peter Stevens is inside that box, just waiting to get out. His birth certificate, his S.S. card, and his driver's license. The license is six years out of date because Jim died six years ago, true, but it's still perfectly renewable for a five-dollar fee. His stock certificates are there, the tax-free municipals, and about eighteen bearer bonds in the amount of ten thousand dollars each.'
I whistled.
'Peter Stevens is locked in a safe deposit box at the Casco Bank in Portland and Andy Dufresne is locked in a safe deposit box at Shawshank,' he said. Tit for tat and the key that unlocks the box and the money and the new life is under a hunk of black glass in a Buxton hayfield. Told you this much, so I'll tell you something else, Red - for the last twenty years, give or take, I have been watching the papers with a more than usual interest for news of any construction projects in Buxton. I keep thinking that someday soon I'm going to read that they're putting a highway through there, or erecting a new community hospital, or building a shopping centre. Burying my new life under ten feet of concrete, or spitting it into a swamp somewhere with a big load of fill.'
I blurted, 'Jesus Christ, Andy, if all of this is true, how do you keep from going crazy?'
He smiled. 'So far, all quiet on the Western front.'
'But it could be years -'
'It will be. But maybe not as many as the state and Warden Norton think it's going to be. I just can't afford to wait that long. I keep thinking about Zihuatanejo and that small hotel. That's all I want from my life now, Red, and I don't think that's too much to want. I didn't kill Glenn Quentin and I didn't kill my wife, and that hotel ... it's not too much to want. To swim and get a tan and sleep in a room with open windows and space... that's not too much to want.'
He slung the stones away.
'You know, Red,' he said in an offhand voice, 'a place like that... I'd have to have a man who knows how to get things.'
I thought about it for a long time. And the biggest drawback in my mind wasn't even that we were talking pipedreams in a shitty little prison exercise yard with armed guards looking down at us from their sentry posts. 'I couldn't do it,' I said. 'I couldn't get along on the outside. I'm what they call an institutional man now. In here I'm the man who can get it for you, yeah. But out there, anyone can get it for you. Out there, if you want posters or rock-hammers or one particular record or a boat-in-a-bottle model kit, you can use the fucking Yellow Pages. In here, I'm the fucking Yellow Pages. I wouldn't know how to begin. Or where.'
'You underestimate yourself,' he said. 'You're a self-educated man, a self-made man.
A rather remarkable man, I think.'
'Hell, I don't even have a high school diploma.'
'I know that,' he said. 'But it isn't just a piece of paper that makes a man. And it isn't just prison that breaks one, either.'
 'I couldn't hack it outside, Andy. I know that.' He got up. 'You think it over,' he said casually, just as the inside whistle blew. And he strolled off, as if he was a free man who had just made another free man a proposition. And for a while just that was enough to make me feel free. Andy could do that. He could make me forget for a time that we were both lifers, at the mercy of a hard-ass parole board and a psalm-singing warden who liked Andy Dufresne right where he was. After all, Andy was a lap-dog who could do tax-returns. What a wonderful animal!

　　“当你说你可以请个律师时，你确实不是在开玩笑，”我最后说，“有这么多钱在手上，你连丹诺ClarenceDarrow,1857—1938，美国名律师及演说家、作家。这种等级的名律师都请得起。你为什么不请律师为你申冤呢？你很快就可以出狱呀？”
　　他微笑着，以前当他告诉我，他和老婆有美好的前程摆在面前时，脸上也带着那种微笑。“不行。”他说。
　　“如果你有个好律师，就可以把汤米这小子从凯西门弄出来，不管他愿不愿意。”我说，开始得意忘形起来。“你可以要求重新开庭，雇私家侦探去找布拉契，把诺顿扳倒，为什么不这么做呢？”
　　“因为我被自己的计谋困住了，如果我企图从狱中动用彼得·斯蒂芬的钱，很可能所有的钱都保不住。原本吉米可以帮我的忙，但是他死了，你看出问题出在哪里了吗？”
　　我懂了。尽管这笔钱能带来很大的好处，但安迪所有的钱都是属于另一个人的。如果他所投资的领域景气突然变差，安迪也只能眼睁睁看着它下跌，每天盯着报上的股票和债券版，我觉得这真是一种折磨人的生活。
　　“我告诉你到底是怎么一回事好了，雷德。巴克斯登镇有一片很大的牧草地。你知道巴克斯登在哪里吧？”
　　我说我知道，就在斯卡伯勒附近。
　　“没错。牧草地北边有一面石墙，就像弗罗斯特的诗里所描写的石墙一样。石墙底部有一块石头，那块石头和缅因州的牧草地一点关系也没有，那是一块火山岩玻璃，在一九四七年前，那块玻璃一直都放在我办公桌上当镇纸。我的朋友吉米把它放在石墙下，下面藏了一把钥匙，那把钥匙能开启卡斯柯银行波特兰分行的一个保险柜。”
　　“我想你麻烦大了，当你的朋友吉米过世时，税捐处的人一定已经把他所有的保险箱都打开了，当然，和他的遗嘱执行人一起。”
　　安迪微笑着，拍拍我的头。“不错嘛，脑袋瓜里不是只装了浆糊。不过我们早有准备了，我们早就把吉米在我出狱前就过世的可能性都考虑在内。保险箱是用彼得·斯蒂芬的名字租的，吉米的律师每年送一张支票给波特兰的银行付租金。彼得·斯蒂芬就在那个盒子里，等着出来，他的出生证、社会保险卡和驾照都在那里，这张驾照已有六年没换了，因为吉米死了六年，不过只要花五块钱，就可以重新换发，他的股票也在那儿，还有免税的市府公债和每张价值一万元的债券，一共十八张。”
　　我吹了一声口哨。
　　“彼得·斯蒂芬锁在波特兰的银行保险柜中，而安迪·杜佛尼则锁在肖申克监狱的保险柜中，”他说，“真是一报还一报。而打开保险柜和开启新生活的那把钥匙则埋在巴克斯登牧草地的一大块黑玻璃下面。反正已经跟你讲了这么多，雷德，我再告诉你一些其他事情好了。过去二十年来，我天天看报的时候，都特别注意巴克斯登有没有任何工程在进行，我总在想，有一天我会看到报上说，那儿要建一座医院、或一条公路、或一个购物中心，那么我的新生活就要永远埋在十英尺的水泥地下，或是随着一堆废土被倒入沼泽中。”
　　我脱口而出说：“天哪，安迪，如果你说的都是真的，你怎么有办法不发疯呢？”
　　他微笑道：“到目前为止，西线无战事。”
　　“但可能要好多年——”
　　“是要好多年，但也许没有诺顿认为的那么久，我等不了那么久，我一直想着齐华坦尼荷和我的小旅馆，现在我对生命的要求仅止于此了，雷德，这应该不算非分的要求吧。我根本没有杀格林·昆丁，也没杀我太太。一家小旅馆……不算奢求吧！我可以游游泳、晒晒太阳，睡在一间可以敞开窗子的房间……这不是非分的要求。”
　　他把石头扔了出去。
　　“雷德，你知道，”他漫不经心地说，“在那样的地方……我需要有人知道如何弄到我要的东西。”
　　我沉吟良久，当时我想到的最大困难，居然不是我们不过是在监狱的小运动场上痴人说梦，还有武装警卫居高临下监视着我们。“我没办法，”我说，“我无法适应外面的世界。我已经变成所谓体制化的人了。在这儿，我是那个可以替你弄到东西的人，出去以后，如果你要海报、锤子或什么特别的唱片，只需查工商分类电话簿就可以了。在这里，我就是那他妈的工商分类电话簿，出去了以后，我不知道要从何开始，或如何开始。”
　　“你低估了自己，”他说，“你是个懂得自我教育的人，一个相当了不起的人，我觉得。”
　　“我连高中文凭都没有。”
　　“我知道，”他说，“但是一纸文凭不见得就可以造就一个人，正如同牢狱生涯也不见得会打垮每一个人。”
　　“到了外面，我会应付不来的，安迪，我很清楚。”
　　他站起来。“你考虑考虑。”他说。就在这时，哨声响起，他走开了，仿佛刚才不过是个自由人在向另一个自由人提供工作机会，在那一刻，我也有种自由的感觉。只有他有办法做到这点，让我暂时忘记我们都是被判无期徒刑的终身犯，命运完全操在严苛的假释委员会和整天唱圣诗的典狱长手中，而典狱长一点都不想放安迪出狱，毕竟安迪是条懂得报税的小狗，养在身边多么有用啊！