Different Seasons(21)

“Well, why don’t you just begin at the beginning?” the warden said, probably in his sweetest let’s-all-turn-to-the-Twenty-third-Psalm-and-read-in-unison voice. “That usually works the best.”

And so Andy did. He began by refreshing Norton on the details of the crime he had been imprisoned for. Then he told the warden exactly what Tommy Williams had told him. He also gave out Tommy’s name, which you may think wasn’t so wise in light of later developments, but I’d just ask you what else he could have done, if his story was to have any credibility at all.

When he had finished, Norton was completely silent for some time. I can just see him, probably tipped back in his office chair under the picture of Governor Reed hanging on the wall, his fingers steepled, his liver lips pursed, his brow wrinkled into ladder rungs halfway to the crown of his head, his thirty-year pin gleaming mellowly.

“Yes,” he said finally. “That’s the damnedest story I ever heard. But I’ll tell you what surprises me most about it, Dufresne.”

“What’s that, sir?”

“That you were taken in by it.”

“Sir? I don’t understand what you mean.” And Chester said that Andy Dufresne, who had faced down Byron Hadley on the plate-shop roof thirteen years before, was almost floundering for words.

“Wellnow,” Norton said. “It’s pretty obvious to me that this young fellow Williams is impressed with you. Quite taken with you, as a matter of fact. He hears your tale of woe, and it’s quite natural of him to want to ... cheer you up, let’s say. Quite natural. He’s a young man, not terribly bright. Not surprising he didn’t realize what a state it would put you into. Now what I suggest is—”

“Don’t you think I thought of that?” Andy asked. “But I’d never told Tommy about the man working down at the marina. I never told anyone that—it never even crossed my mind! But Tommy’s description of his cellmate and that man

... they’re identical!” ”Wellnow, you may be indulging in a little selective perception there,” Norton said with a chuckle. Phrases like that, selective perception, are required learning for people in the penology and corrections business, and they use them all they can.

“That’s not it all. Sir.”

“That’s your slant on it,” Norton said, “but mine differs. And let’s remember that I have only your word that there was such a man working at the Falmouth Hills Country Club back then.”

“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 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, roll his eyes, and say: ‘I did it! I did it! By all means add a life term onto my 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 all the old time-cards, don’t you realize that?” Andy shouted. “They’ll have tax-forms and W-twos 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 Blatch! 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! Guard! 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.