'No, sir,' Andy broke in again. 'No, that isn't true. Because-' 'Anyway,' Norton overrode him, expansive and loud, 'let's just look at it from the
other end of the telescope, shall we? Suppose -just suppose, now - that there really was a fellow named Elwood Blotch.'
'Blatch,' Andy said tightly.
'Blatch, by all means. And let's say he was Thomas Williams's cellmate in Rhode Island. The chances are excellent that he has been released by now. Excellent. Why, we don't even know how much time he might have done there before he ended up with Williams, do we? Only that he was doing a six-to-twelve.'
'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............