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shit in the buckwheat.'
'You'll need a tax lawyer or a banker to set up the gift for you and that will cost you
something,' Andy said. 'Or ... if you were interested, I'd be glad to set it up for you nearly
free of charge. The price would be three beers apiece for my co-workers -'
'Co-workers,' Mert said, and let out a rusty guffaw. He slapped his knee. A real knee-
slapper was old Mert, and I hope he died of intestinal cancer in a part of the world were
morphine is as of yet undiscovered. 'Co-workers, ain't that cute? Co-workers! You ain't
got any -'
'Shut your friggin' trap,' Hadley growled, and Mert shut.
Hadley looked at Andy again. 'What was you saying?'
'I was saying that I'd only ask three beers apiece for my co-workers, if that seems fair,'
Andy said. 'I think a man feels more like a man when he's working out of doors in the
springtime if he can have a bottle of suds. That's only my opinion. It would go down
smooth, and I'm sure you'd have their gratitude.'
I have talked to some of the other men who were up there that day - Rennie Martin,
Logan St Pierre, and Paul Bonsaint were three of them - and we all saw the same thing
then ...felt the same thing. Suddenly it was Andy who had the upper hand. It was Hadley
who had the gun on his hip and the billy in his hand, Hadley who had his friend Greg
Staminas behind him and the whole prison administration behind Stammas, the whole
power of the state behind that, but all at once in that golden sunshine it didn't matter, and
I felt my heart leap up in my chest as it never had since the truck drove me and four
others through the gate back in 1938 and I stepped out into the exercise yard.
Andy was looking at Hadley with those cold, clear, calm eyes, and it wasn't just the
thirty-five thousand then, we all agreed on that. I've played it over and over in my mind
and I know. It was man against man, and Andy simply forced him, the way a strong man
can force a weaker man's wrist to the table in a game of Indian wrestling. There was no
reason, you see, why Hadley couldn't've given Mert the nod at that very minute, pitched
Andy overside onto his head, and still taken Andy's advice.
No reason. But he didn't.
'I could get you all a couple of beers if I wanted to,' Hadley said. 'A beer does taste good
while you're workin'.' The colossal prick even managed to sound magnanimous.
'I'd just give you one piece of advice the IRS wouldn't bother with,' Andy said. His eyes
were fixed unwinkingly on Hadley's. 'Make the gift to your wife if you're sure. If you
think there's even a chance she might double-cross you or backshoot you, we could work
out something else -'
'Double-cross me?' Hadley asked harshly. 'Double-cross me! Mr Hotshot Banker, if she
ate her way through a boxcar of Ex-Lax, she wouldn't dare fart unless I gave her the nod.'
Mert, Youngblood, and the other screws yucked it up dutifully. Andy never cracked a
smile.
'I'll write down the forms you need,' he said. 'You can get them at the post office, and I'll
fill them out for your signature.'
That sounded suitably important, and Hadley's chest swelled. Then he glared around at
the rest of us and hollered, "What are you jimmies starin' at? Move your asses,