Chapter 16 Section fifteen

Tommy joined our happy little family in November 1962.Tommy considered himself a Massachusetts native, but he wasn't proud of it.During his twenty-seven years of life, he sat in prisons in New England.He's a professional thief, but I think he should pick something else, and maybe you will too. He is married and his wife visits him once a week.She thought that if Tommy could finish high school, the situation might gradually improve, and she and her three-year-old son would naturally benefit, so she persuaded Tommy to continue his education, so Tommy began to visit the library regularly.

Helping inmates with their studies has become routine for Andy, who helps Tommy revisit high school subjects (not many) and pass his equivalency exams.At the same time, he also taught Tommy how to use the correspondence courses to complete the subjects that he failed or did not take before. Tommy may not have been the best student Andy ever taught, and I don't know if he ever got a high school diploma, but none of that matters to the story we're about to tell.The important thing is that Tommy later became very fond of Andy, as did many others. In several conversations, he asked Andy, "How did someone as smart as you end up like this?" which was the same as asking someone, "How did a nice girl like you end up like this?" abrupt.But Andy wasn't the type to answer such questions, so he diverted the conversation with a smile.Tommy, of course, went to others for advice, and at last he figured out the whole thing, but he himself was astonished.

The object of his questioning was a fellow laundryman named Charlie Rapp.Charlie has spent twelve years in prison on a murder charge.He couldn't wait to tell Tommy the whole trial process. The action of pulling out the clean sheets from the gin and stuffing them into the basket that day was no longer as monotonous as usual.Charlie was just telling the jury to wait until after lunch before returning to court to convict Andy when the sirens sounded and the cloth gin screeched to a halt.It was the other inmates' job to push freshly laundered nursing home sheets into the gin at the other end of the machine, and spit out a dry, ironed sheet every five seconds at Tommy and Charlie's end. Pull up the bed sheets spit out by the machine one by one, fold them and put them into the cart, which is already covered with clean brown kraft paper.

But when Tommy heard the sirens, he just stood there in a daze, his mouth wide open, his chin almost touching his chest, and he stared blankly at Charlie.The sheets spit out from the machine fell to the floor and accumulated, soaking up the dirty water on the floor, which is usually damp and dirty in the laundry room.Foreman Home came running up and growling loudly, wondering what was wrong.But Tommy turned a blind eye and continued talking to Charlie as if Home, who had beaten so many people, didn't exist at all. "What did you say was the golf coach's name?" "Quentin," Charlie replied, looking confused and frustrated.He said afterwards that Tommy's face was like a white flag raised when he was defeated and surrendered. "Looks like Glenn Quentin—something."

"Hey! Hey! Pay attention!" Holm's neck swelled as red as a rooster's comb. "Put the sheets back in the cold water, hurry up, God, you—" "Glyn Quentin, my God!" said Tommy, and that was all he could say, for Holm gave him a hard blow to the back of the head with his baton, and Tommy fell to the ground, knocking the Three front teeth.When he woke up, he was already in the confinement room.He was held in solitary confinement for a week, given only water, bread, and a fine. That happened in February 1963. After he was released from the solitary confinement, Tommy asked half a dozen more old prisoners, and all the stories he heard were similar.I was one of the people who was asked, but when I asked him why he cared, he just didn't answer.

One day, he went to the library and told Andy a lot.For the first and last time since Andy came up to me and asked me to buy a Rita Hayworth poster, he lost his composure... only this time he lost control. When I saw him later that day, he seemed to have been hit hard, right between the eyebrows.His hands trembled, and when I spoke to him he did not answer.That evening he ran to Captain Billy Hanlon, and made an appointment to see Warden Norton the next day.He told me afterwards that he didn't close his eyes all night, listening to the cold wind howling outside in midwinter, watching the rays of searchlights sweeping around, drawing long moving shadows on the concrete wall of the cage, starting from the time when Truman was in power. Since the beginning of time, this cage has become his home.His mind was racing through the whole thing.He said it was as if Tommy had a key in his hand that opened the inner cage of his heart, the cage of his own self-imprisonment.What was locked in that cage was not a person, but a tiger, and the name of that tiger was "Hope".The key that Tommy had given was just enough to open the cage, releasing the Tiger of Hope, roaring in his head.

Four years ago, Tommy was arrested in Rhode Island while driving a stolen car full of stolen goods.Tommy enlists his accomplices in exchange for a reduced sentence, so he only needs to serve two to four years.When he was in prison for nearly a year, his cellmate got out and was replaced by another inmate named Aiu Blache.Blatch was sentenced to six to 12 years in prison for armed home invasion and theft. "I've never seen such a jumpy guy," Tommy told me. "A guy like that shouldn't be a thief at all, at least not with a gun. If there's even the slightest sound around, he's likely to jump to the In mid-air, just out of the draw. One night, he almost strangled me just because someone was in another cell, scratching the bars of their cell with an iron mug.

"I lived with him for seven months before I got free. I can't say we talked because, you know, you can't really talk to Blatche, and every time we talked, it was always him gushing no. After all, I'm only listening. He never stops talking, and if you try to interrupt, he rolls his eyes and shakes his fist at you. Every time he does that, it gives me chills down my spine. He's tall, Almost bald, with green eyes set in deep-set sockets. God, I hope I never see him again in my life. "He goes on and on every night: where he grew up, how he escaped from the orphanage, what he did, the women he fucked, the poker he won; Listen to him carefully. My face is not very good, but I don't want plastic surgery.

"It's unbelievable that he's taken at least two hundred places by what he says, and he'd startle like a firecracker when someone farts loudly, but he swears it's true.  …Listen, Ray Dude, I know some people make up stories after hearing something, but before I heard about this golf coach named Quentin, I remember thinking that if one day Bratche would sneak into my house and steal something I would be lucky if I found out after the fact. I can't imagine what would happen if she coughed or turned over in her sleep when he sneaked into a woman's room and rummaged through a jewelry box? Just thinking of this Everything is chilling.

"He said he killed people, killed people who pissed him off, at least that's what he said, and I believed him, he looked like he could. It's like a gun with the firing pin sawn off and ready to fire. I know a guy who has a police pistol with the firing pin sawn off. It's no good, it's just boring because the trigger on the pistol is so sensitive Well, as long as he has the stereo on full blown and puts the gun on the speaker box, it will probably fire automatically. Blatche is such a guy. I can't be more specific. Anyway, I believe he bombed some people . "So one night, on a whim, I asked him who had he killed? I was just kidding, you know. He laughed and said, 'There's a guy serving time in Maine for killing two people. I killed This stupid wife and another guy, I sneaked into his house, and the guy got on with me.' I don't remember if he ever told me the woman's name," Tommy went on, "maybe he did, but in New England, where Dufresne is as common as Smith and Jones elsewhere. But he did tell me the name of the fellow he killed, and he said his name was Glenn Quentin, and he was a nuisance, Rich bastard, professional golfer. He said he thought the guy had a lot of cash in the house, maybe five thousand dollars, which was a lot of money at the time. So I asked, 'What's the When did it happen?' He said: 'After the war, not long after the war ended.'

"So, he broke into their house, woke the two of them up, and Quentin gave him some trouble, that's what he said. I thought, maybe the guy just started snoring. And he told me, Quentin was hanging out with a lawyer's wife and the court sent the lawyer to Shawshank. He laughed when he finished. God, I was so thankful when I finally got out of prison and out of that cell." I think you can easily see why Andy lost his mind a little after hearing Tommy's story, and why he asked to see the warden immediately.Blatch was sentenced to six to twelve years, and Tommy had known him four years ago.By the time Andy heard about it in 1963, Blatch might have been on the verge of getting out of jail...even out of jail.What Andy worries about is that, on the one hand, Blatch may still be in prison, and on the other hand, he may also disappear with the wind. Tommy's story isn't entirely consistent, but isn't that true of real life?Blatche told Tommy that the one locked up was a famous lawyer, while Andy was a banker, but people with little education could easily confuse the two professions.And let's not forget that it had been twelve years since Brache told Tommy about the trial.Blatche told Tommy he took more than $1,000 from Quentin's drawer, but police said at trial that there was no sign of theft in the house.In my opinion, first of all, if the person who owned the money is dead, how can you possibly know how much was stolen from the house?Second, maybe Blatche was lying after all?Maybe he didn't want to admit that he killed two people for no reason.Third, maybe there were indeed signs of burglary in the house, but they were ignored by the police-the police are sometimes very stupid, or they may have deliberately covered it up in order not to spoil the prosecutor's big business.Don't forget, the prosecutor was running for office at the time, and he really needed to convict people for publicity, and a burglary-murder case that was still unsolved wasn't doing him any favors. But among these three possibilities, I think the second is the most likely.I knew a lot of guys like Blatche in Shawshank, they all had crazy eyes and were ready to pull the trigger.Even if they got caught stealing a cheap two-dollar watch and nine-dollar change, they'd make it out that they stole a giant diamond like a Hope and got away with it every time. Despite slight misgivings, one thing convinces Andy of Tommy's story.Blatche didn't kill Quentin on the spur of the moment. He called Quentin a "rich bastard," and he knew Quentin was a professional golfer.During those one or two years, Andy and his wife would go to the country club to drink and eat twice a week, and after Andy found out that his wife was cheating, he often drank there alone.The country club had a marina for boats, and for a while in 1947 there was a part-time employee who fit Tommy's description of Blatch.The man was tall, almost bald, with deep-set green eyes.When he stares at you, it seems that he is looking at you, which will make you feel uncomfortable.He didn't stay there long, and either resigned himself or the man in charge of the docks fired him.But you don't easily forget a guy like him, he's so conspicuous.