----------------------- Page 14-----------------------

'In fact,' he went on, 'I understand that the bite-reflex is sometimes so strong that the 

victim's jaws have to be pried open with a crowbar or a jackhandle.' 

Bogs didn't put anything in Andy's mouth that night in late February of 1948, and neither 

did Rooster MacBride, and so far as I know, no one else ever did, either. What the three 

of them did was to beat Andy within an inch of his life, and all four of them ended up 

doing a jolt in solitary. Andy and Rooster MacBride went by way of the infirmary. 

How many times did that particular crew have at him? I don't know. I think Rooster lost 

his taste fairly early on -being in nose-splints for a month can do that to a fellow -and 

Bogs Diamond left off that summer, all at once. 

That was a strange thing. Bogs was found in his cell, badly beaten, one morning in early 

June, when he didn't show up in the breakfast nose-count He wouldn't say who had done 

it, or how they had gotten to him, but being in my business, I know that a screw can be 

bribed to do almost anything accept get a gun for an inmate. They didn't make big 

salaries then, and they don't now. And in those days there was no electronic locking 

system, no closed-circuit TV, no master-switches which controlled whole areas of the 

prison. Back in 1948, each cellblock had its own turnkey. A guard could have been 

bribed real easy to let someone - maybe two or three someones - into the block, and, yes, 

even into Diamond's cell. 

Of course a job like that would have cost a lot of money. Not by outside standards, no. 

Prison economics are on a smaller scale. When you've been in here a while, a dollar bill 

in your hand looks like a twenty did outside. My guess is, that if Bogs was done, it cost 

someone a serious piece of change - fifteen bucks, well say, for the turnkey, and two or 

store apiece for each of the lump-up guys. 

I'm not saying it was Andy Dufresne, but I do know that he brought in five hundred 

dollars when he came, and he was a banker in the straight world - a man who understands 

better than the rest of us the ways in which money can become power. 

And I know this: After the beating - the three broken ribs, the haemorrhaged eye, the 

sprained back and the dislocated hip - Bogs Diamond left Andy alone. In fact, after that 

he left everyone pretty much alone. He got to be like a high wind in the summertime, all 

bluster and no bite. You could say, in fact, that he turned into a 'weak sister'. 

That was the end of Bogs Diamond, a man who might eventually have killed Andy if 

Andy hadn't taken steps to prevent it (if it was him who took the steps). But it wasn't the 

end of Andy's trouble with the sisters. There was a little hiatus, and then it began again, 

although not so hard nor so often. Jackals like easy prey, and there were easier pickings 

around than Andy Dufresne. 

He always fought them, that's what I remember. He knew, I guess, that if you let them 

have at you even once, without fighting it, it got that much easier to let them have their 

way without fighting next time. So Andy would turn up with bruises on his face every 

once in a while, and there was the matter of the two broken fingers six or eight months 

after Diamond's beating. Oh yes - and sometime in late 1949, the man landed in the 

infirmary with a broken cheekbone that was probably the result of someone swinging a 

nice chunk of pipe with the business-end wrapped in flannel. He always fought back, and 

as a result, he did his time in solitary. But don't think solitary was the hardship for Andy