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corrections. Number one was more walls, number two was more bars, and number three 

was more guards. As far as the state senate was concerned, Stammas explained, the folks 

in Thomastan and Shawshank and Pittsfield and South Portland were the scum of the 

earth. They were there to do hard time, and by God and Sonny Jesus, it was hard time 

they were going to do. And if there were a few weevils in the bread, wasn't that just too 

fucking bad? 

Andy smiled his small, composed smile and asked Stammas what would happen to a 

block of concrete if a drop of water fell on it once every year for a million years. 

Stammas laughed and clapped Andy on the back. 'You got no million years, old horse, 

but if you did, I believe you'd do it with that same little grin on your face. You go on and 

write your letters. I'll even mail them for you if you pay for the stamps.' 

Which Andy did. And he had the last laugh, although Stammas and Hadley weren't 

around to see it Andy's requests for library funds were routinely turned down until 1960, 

when he received a check for two hundred dollars - the senate probably appropriated it in 

hopes that he would shut up and go away. Vain hope. Andy felt that he had finally gotten 

one foot in the door and he simply redoubled his efforts; two letters a week instead of 

one. In 1962 he got four hundred dollars, and for the rest of the decade the library 

received seven hundred dollars a year like clockwork. By 1971 that had risen to an even 

thousand. Not much stacked up against what your average small-town library receives, I 

guess, but a thousand bucks can buy a lot of recycled Perry Mason stories and Jake 

Logan Westerns. By the time Andy left, you could go into the library (expanded from its 

original paint-locker to three rooms), and find just about anything you'd want. And if you 

couldn't find it, chances were good that Andy could get it for you. 

Now you're asking yourself if all this came about just because Andy told Byron Hadley 

how to save the taxes on his windfall inheritance. The answer is yes ... and no. You can 

probably figure out what happened for yourself. 

Word got around that Shawshank was housing its very own pet financial wizard. In the 

late spring and the summer of 1950, Andy set up two trust funds for guards who wanted 

10 assure a college education for their kids, he advised a couple of others who wanted to 

take small fliers in common stock (and they did pretty damn well, as things turned out; : 

ne of them did so well he was able to take an early retirement two years later), and I'll be 

damned if he didn't advise the warden himself, old Lemon Lips George Dunahy, on how 

to go about setting up a tax-shelter for himself. That was just before Dunahy got the 

bum's rush, and I believe he - ust have been dreaming about ail the millions his book was 

going to make him. By April of 1951, Andy was doing the tax returns for half the screws 

at Shawshank, and by 1952, he was doing almost all of them. He was paid in what may 

be a prison's most valuable coin: simple goodwill. 

Later on, after Greg Stammas took over the warden's office, Andy became even more 

important - but if I tried to tell you the specifics of just how, I'd be guessing. There are 

some things I know about and others I can only guess at. I know that there were some 

prisoners who received all sorts of special considerations - radios in their cells, 

extraordinary visiting privileges, things like that - and there were people on the outside