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of thing that ends up with a guard grabbing some poor, sidling slob's arm and growling, 

'Where do you think you're going, you happy asshole?' 

Henley said he'd class maybe sixty of them as more serious attempts, and he included the 

'prison break' of 1937, the year before I arrived at the Shank. The new administration 

wing was under construction then and fourteen cons got out, using construction 

equipment in a poorly locked shed. The whole of southern Maine got into a panic over 

those fourteen 'hardened criminals', most of whom were scared to death and had no more 

idea of where they should go than a jackrabbit does when it's headlight-pinned to the 

highway with a big truck bearing down on it Not one of those fourteen got away. Two of 

them were shot dead - by civilians, not police officers or prison personnel -but none got 

away. 

How many had gotten away between 1938, when I came here, and that day in October 

when Andy first mentioned Zihuatanejo to me? Putting my information and Henley's 

together, I'd say ten. Ten that got away clean. And although it isn't the kind of thing you 

can know for sure, I'd guess that at least half of those ten are doing time in other 

institutions of lower learning like the Shank. Because you do get institutionalized. When 

you take away a man's freedom and teach him to live in a cell, he seems to lose his ability 

to think in dimensions. He's like that jackrabbit I mentioned, frozen in the oncoming 

lights of the truck that is bound to kill it More often than not a con who's just out will pull 

some dumb job that hasn't a chance in hell of succeeding ... and why? Because it'll get 

him back inside. Back where he understands how things work. 

Andy wasn't that way, but I was. The idea of seeing the Pacific sounded good, but I was 

afraid that actually being there would scare me to death - the bigness of it 

Anyhow, the day of that conversation about Mexico, and about Mr Peter Stevens ... that 

was the day I began to believe that Andy had some idea of doing a disappearing act. I 

hoped to God he would be careful if he did, and still, I wouldn't have bet money on his 

chances of succeeding. Warden Norton, you see, was watching Andy with a special close 

eye. Andy wasn't just another deadhead with a number to Norton; they had a working 

relationship, you might say. Also, he had brains and he had heart Norton was determined 

to use the one and crush the other. 

As there are honest politicians on the outside - ones who stay bought - there are honest 

prison guards, and if you are a good judge of character and if you have some loot to 

spread around, I suppose it's possible that you could buy enough look-the-other-way to 

make a break. I'm not the man to tell you such a thing has never been done, but Andy 

Dufresne wasn't the man who could do it Because, as I've said, Norton was watching. 

Andy knew it, and the screws knew it, too. 

Nobody was going to nominate Andy for the Inside-Out programme, not as long as 

Warden Norton was evaluating the nominations. And Andy was not the kind of man to 

try a casual Sid Nedeau type of escape. 

If I had been him, the thought of that key would have tormented me endlessly. I would 

have been lucky to get two hours' worth of honest shuteye a night Buxton was less than 

thirty miles from Shawshank. So near and yet so far. 

I still thought his best chance was to engage a lawyer and try for the retrial Anything to