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ear. Tommy hit the floor so hard he broke off three of his front teeth. When he woke up 

he was in solitary, and confined to same for a week, riding a boxcar on Sam Norton's 

famous grain and drain train. Plus a black mark on his report card. 

That was in early February in 1963, and Tommy Williams went around to six or seven 

other long-timers after he got out of solitary and got pretty much the same story. I know; 

I was one of them. But when I asked him why he wanted it, he just clammed up. 

Then one day he went to the library and spilled one helluva big budget of information to 

Andy Dufresne. And for the first and last time, at least since he had approached me about 

the Rita Hayworth poster like a kid burying his first pack of Trojans, Andy lost his cool 

... only this time he blew it entirely. 

I saw him later that day, and he looked like a man who has stepped on the business end of 

a rake and given himself a good one, whap between the eyes. His hands were trembling, 

and when I spoke to him, he didn't answer. Before that afternoon was out he had caught 

up with Billy Hanlon, who was the head screw, and set up an appointment with Warden 

Norton for the following day. He told me later that he didn't sleep a wink all that night; he 

just listened to a cold winter wind howling outside, watched the searchlights go around 

and around, putting long, moving shadows on the cement walls of the cage he had called 

home since Harry Truman was President and tried to think it all out He said it was as if 

Tommy had produced a key which fitted a cage in the back of his mind, a cage like his 

own cell. Only instead of holding a man, that cage held a tiger, and that tiger's name was 

Hope. Williams had produced the key that unlocked the cage and the tiger was out, willy- 

nilly, to roam his brain. 

Four years before, Tommy Williams had been arrested in Rhode Island, driving a stolen 

car that was full of stolen merchandise. Tommy turned in his accomplice, the DA played 

ball, and he got a lighter sentence ... two to four, with time served. Eleven months after 

beginning his term, his old cellmate got a ticket out and Tommy got a new one, a man 

named Elwood Blatch. Blatch had been busted for burglary with a weapon and was 

serving six to twelve. 

'I never seen such a high-strung guy,' Tommy said. 'A man like that should never want to 

be a burglar, specially not with a gun. The slightest little noise, he'd go three feet into the 

air ... and come down shooting, more likely than not One night he almost strangled me 

because some guy down the hall was whopping on his cell bars with a tin cup. 

'I did seven months with bun, until they let me walk free. I got time served and time off, 

you understand. I can't say we talked because you didn't, you know, exactly hold a 

conversation with El Blatch. He held a conversation with you. He talked all the time. 

Never shut up. If you tried to get a word in, he'd shake his fist at you and roll his eyes. It 

gave me the cold chills whenever he done that. Big tall guy he was, mostly bald, with 

these green eyes set way down deep in the sockets. Jeez, I hope I never see him again. 

'It was like a talkin' jag every night When he grew up, the orphanages he run away from, 

the jobs he done, the women as fucked, the crap games he cleaned out I just let him run 

an. My face ain't much, but I didn't want it, you know, rearranged for me. 

'According to him, he'd burgled over two hundred joints. It was hard for me to believe, a