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skimming off the top. There were a hundred ways to do it -men, materials, you name it. 

But he had it coming another way, as well. The construction businesses in the area were 

deathly afraid of Norton's Inside-Out programme, because prison labour is slave labour, 

and you can't compete with that. So Sam Norton, he of the Testaments and the thirty-year 

church-pin, was passed a good many thick envelopes under the table during his fifteen- 

year tenure as Shawshank's warden. And when an envelope was passed, he would either 

overbid the project, not bid at all, or claim that ail his Inside-Outers were committed 

elsewhere. It has always been something of a wonder to me that Norton was never found 

in the trunk of a Thunderbird parked off a highway somewhere down in Massachusetts 

with his hands tied behind his back and half a dozen bullets in his head. 

Anyway, as the old barrelhouse song says, My God, how the money rolled in. Norton 

must have subscribed to the old Puritan notion that the best way to figure out which folks 

God favours is by checking their bank accounts. 

Andy Dufresne was his right hand in all of this, his silent partner. The prison library was 

Andy's hostage to fortune. Norton knew it, and Norton used it. Andy told me that one of 

Norton's favourite aphorisms was One hand washes the other. So Andy gave good advice 

and made useful suggestions. I can't say for sure that he hand-tooled Norton's Inside-Out 

programme, but I'm damned sure he processed the money for the Jesus-shouting son of a 

whore. He gave good advice, made useful suggestions, the money got spread around, and 

... son of a bitch! The library would get a new set of automotive repair manuals, a fresh 

set of Grolier Encyclopedias, books on how to prepare for the Scholastic Achievement 

Tests. And, of course, more Erie Stanley Gardeners and more Louis L'Amours. 

And I'm convinced that what happened happened because Norton just didn't want to lose 

his good right hand. I'll go further: it happened because he was scared of what might 

happen - what Andy might say against him - if Andy ever got clear of Shawshank State 

Prison. 

I got the story a chunk here and a chunk there over a space of seven years, some of it 

from Andy - but not all. He never wanted to talk about that part of his life, and I don't 

blame him. I got parts of it from maybe half a dozen different sources. I've said once that 

prisoners are nothing but slaves, but they have that slave habit of looking dumb and 

keeping their ears open. I got it backwards and forwards and in the middle, but I'll give it 

to you from point A to point Z, and maybe you'll understand why the man spent about ten 

months in a bleak, depressed daze. See, I don't think he knew the truth until 1963, fifteen 

years after he came into this sweet little hell-hole. Until he met Tommy Williams, I don't 

think he knew how bad it could get. 

Tommy Williams joined our happy little Shawshank family in November of 1962. 

Tommy thought of himself as a native of Massachusetts, but he wasn't proud; in his 

twenty-seven years he'd done time all over New England. He was a professional thief, 

and as you may have guessed, my own feeling was that he should have picked another 

profession. 

He was a married man, and his wife came to visit each and every week. She had an idea