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been a good boy - on more than one night when he was having his problems with Bogs, 

Rooster, and the rest, I wondered how long it would be before he used the rock-hammer 

to crack someone's head open. 

Posters are a big part of my business, just behind the booze and cigarettes, usually half a 

step ahead of the reefer. In the 60s the business exploded in every direction, with a lot of 

people wanting funky hang-ups like Jimi Hendrix, Bob Dylan, that Easy Rider poster. 

But mostly it's girls; one pinup queen after another. 

A few days after I spoke to Ernie, a laundry driver I did business with back then brought 

in better than sixty posters, most of them Rita Hayworths. You may even remember the 

picture; I sure do. Rita is dressed - sort of- in a bathing suit, one hand behind her head, 

her eyes half closed, those full, sulky red lips parted. They called it Rita Hayworth, but 

they might as well have called it Woman in Heat. 

The prison administration knows about the black market, in case you were wondering. 

Sure they do. They probably know as much about my business as I do myself. They live 

with it because they know that a prison is like a big pressure cooker, and there have to be 

vents somewhere to let off steam. They make the occasional bust, and I've done time in 

solitary a time or three over the years, but when it's something like posters, they wink. 

Live and let live. And when a big Rita Hayworth went up in some fishie's cell, the 

assumption was that it came in the mail from a friend or a relative. Of course all the care- 

packages from friends and relatives are opened and the contents inventoried, but who 

goes back and re-checks the inventory sheets for something as harmless as a Rita 

Hayworth or an Ava Gardner pin-up? When you're in a pressure-cooker you learn to live 

and let live or somebody will carve you a brand-new mouth just above the Adam's apple. 

You learn to make allowances. 

It was Ernie again who took the poster up to Andy's cell, 14, my own, 6. And it was Ernie 

who brought back the written in Andy's careful hand, just one word: Thanks.' 

A little while later, as they filed us out for morning chow, I glanced into his ceil and saw 

Rita over his bunk in all her swimsuited glory, one hand behind her head, her eyes half- 

closed, those soft, satiny lips parted. It was over his bunk when he could look at her 

nights, after lights out, in the glow of the arc sodiums in the exercise yard. 

But in the bright morning sunlight, there were dark slashes across her face - the shadow 

of the bars on his single slit-window. 

Now I'm going to tell you what happened in mid-May of 1950 that finally ended Andy's 

three-year series of skirmishes with the sisters. It was also the incident which eventually 

got him out of the laundry and into the library, where he filled out his work-time until he 

left our happy little family earlier this year. 

You may have noticed now much of what I've told you Lready is hearsay - someone saw 

something and told me and I told you. Well, in some cases I've simplified it even more 

than it really was, and have actually repeated (or will repeat) fourth- or fifth-hand 

information. That's the way it s here. The grapevine is very real, and you have to use it if 

you're going to stay ahead. Also, of course, you have to know how to pick out the grains 

of truth from the chaff of lies, rumours, and wish-it-had-beens. 

You may also have gotten the idea that I'm describing someone who's more legend than