Rita Hayworth and Shawshank Redemption

How many had gotten away between 1938, when I came here, and that day in October when Andy first mentioned Zihuatanejo to me? Putting my information and Henley’s together, I’d say ten. Ten that got away clean. And although it isn’t the kind of thing you can know for sure, I’d guess that at least half of those ten are doing time in other institutions of lower learning like the Shank. Because you do get institutionalized. When you take away a man’s freedom and teach him to live in a cell, he seems to lose his ability to think in dimensions. He’s like that jackrabbit I mentioned, frozen in the oncoming lights of the truck that is bound to kill it. More often than not a con who’s just out will pull some dumb job that hasn’t a chance in hell of succeeding … and why? Because it’ll get him back inside. Back where he understands how things work.

Andy wasn’t that way, but I was. The idea of seeing the Pacific sounded good, but I was afraid that actually being there would scare me to death — the bigness of it. Anyhow, the day of that conversation about Mexico, and about Mr Peter Stevens … that was the day I began to believe that Andy had some idea of doing a disappearing act. I hoped to God he would be careful if he did, and still, I wouldn’t have bet money on his chances of succeeding. Warden Norton, you see, was watching Andy with a special close eye. Andy wasn’t just another deadhead with a number to Norton; they had a working relationship, you might say. Also, he had brains and he had heart. Norton was determined to use the one and crush the other.

As there are honest politicians on the outside — ones who stay bought — there are honest prison guards, and if you are a good judge of character and if you have some loot to spread around, I suppose it’s possible that you could buy enough look-the-other-way to make a break. I’m not the man to tell you such a thing has never been done, but Andy Dufresne wasn’t the man who could do it. Because, as I’ve said, Norton was watching. Andy knew it, and the screws knew it, too.

Nobody was going to nominate Andy for the Inside-Out programme, not as long as Warden Norton was evaluating the nominations. And Andy was not the kind of man to try a casual Sid Nedeau type of escape.

If I had been him, the thought of that key would have tormented me endlessly. I would have been lucky to get two hours’ worth of honest shuteye a night Buxton was less than thirty miles from Shawshank. So near and yet so far.

I still thought his best chance was to engage a lawyer and try for the retrial. Anything to get out from under Norton’s thumb. Maybe Tommy Williams could be shut up by nothing more than a cushy furlough programme, but I wasn’t entirely sure. Maybe a good old Mississippi hardass lawyer could crack him … and maybe that lawyer wouldn’t even have to work that hard. Williams had honestly liked Andy. Every now and then I’d bring these points up to Andy, who would only smile, his eyes far away, and say he was thinking about it.

Apparently he’d been thinking about a lot of other things, as well.

In 1975, Andy Dufresne escaped from Shawshank. He hasn’t been recaptured, and I don’t think he ever will be. In fact, I don’t think Andy Dufresne even exists anymore. But I think there’s a man down in Zihuatanejo, Mexico named Peter Stevens. Probably running a very new small hotel in this year of our Lord 1977.

I’ll tell you what I know and what I think; that’s about all I can do, isn’t it?

On 12 March 1975, the cell doors in Cellblock 5 opened at 6.30 a.m., as they do every morning around here except Sunday. And as they do every day except Sunday, the inmates of those cells stepped forward into the corridor and formed two lines as the cell doors slammed shut behind them. They walked up to the main cellblock gate, where they were counted off by two guards before being sent on down to the cafeteria for a breakfast of oatmeal, scrambled eggs, and fatty bacon.

All of this went according to routine until the count at the cellblock gate. There should have been twenty-nine. Instead, there were twenty-eight. After a call to the Captain of the Guards, Cellblock 5 was allowed to go to breakfast.

The Captain of the Guards, a not half-bad fellow named Richard Gonyar, and his assistant, a jolly prick named Dave Burkes, came down to Cellblock 5 right away. Gonyar reopened the cell doors and he and Burkes went down the corridor together, dragging their sticks over the bars, their guns out. In a case like that what you usually have is someone who has been taken sick in the night, so sick he can’t even step out of his cell in the morning. More rarely, someone has died… or committed suicide.

But this time, they found a mystery instead of a sick man or a dead man. They found no man at all. There were fourteen cells in Cellblock 5, seven to a side, all fairly neat — restriction of visiting privileges is the penalty for a sloppy cell at Shawshank — and all very empty.