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The problem was, Andy was too pretty for prison. Andy was too much a lot of things for Shawshank, but ‘pretty’ was the one Red noticed first, and he wasn’t the only one. He was too smart, too naive in his own way. A man who did two weeks in the hole for a bit of opera, and then came out speaking about hope. No, he never thought Andy belonged in Shawshank, but Red never thought he might actually be innocent.
So when Tommy Williams started telling them about Elmo Blatch, Red was dumbfounded.
*
That time on the roof was the first time Red saw Andy smile. Really smile. After that, well, he seemed more relaxed with the fellas, especially once Bogs and the Sisters stopped hassling him. Red liked to think he got most Andy's sly smiles over the years, small quirks of the lip, like there was some secret joke that Red was sure to be in on.
There were some nights in the library, as they shelved the last of the books, that felt almost romantic. Granted, it had been a few decades since Red had tried his hand at romance, but the light seemed softer in the library, all the paper absorbing the harsh edge to it and reflecting back a kind of warmth. It would have been easy enough to reach out and touch Andy’s hand with his own and hold it there between the stacks.
“What’s that you’ve got there?” Red asked one night.
Andy held up the book he’d just set aside. “Poetry, Walt Whitman.”
Red hummed; the plain cover didn’t give him much to go on.
“Here, you take it, I’ve read them before.”
Their fingers brushed as Red took the book him, and he turned it over in his hands. “You think I’ll like them?”
“I don’t know,” Andy said with a private sort of smile. “I guess you’ll have to let me know.”
*
It was a strange thing to think about, Andy being innocent. Red always knew that Andy didn't belong in Shawshank, but he'd fit in his own way, and the idea of Andy gone, back out there in the world…. It was a lot for a man to wrap his mind around.
Apparently the Warden felt the same way, and Red didn't much like the idea of having anything in common with him. He tried not to think of Andy’s month in the hole as a trial run, practice for when Andy wouldn’t be there every morning at breakfast, or most evenings in the library. He didn’t think missing Andy was a callus he could build, but he tried.
*
Red like to think that given a bit of privacy - a door that locked from the inside - and some time alone with Andy, all these soft looks and deliberately chaste touches might become a little less so. Or at the very least, he'd bring up the idea of it.
It wasn't that there weren’t private enough spots at Shawshank, but the constant awareness that Heywood or Hadley could come in at any time made it harder to discuss delicate matters. Besides, Andy had been to all those spots with Bogs and the Sisters back in the early days, and that wasn't the kind of environment that might make him amenable to what Red wanted to discuss.
But sometimes, sometimes Andy would catch Red watching him, and quirk his lips just a little, like he knew Red was thinking about things like amenability. On those nights, Red stayed up awful late playing his harmonica to keep his mind off where he’d rather have his hands and lips. It might not be Mozart, but Andy and the fellas seemed to like it just as well. Certainly better than Heywood’s singing in the library.
He spent many a night with his harmonica after Andy lent him that book of poems, but he played every night that Andy spent in the hole, hoping maybe he could hear it. That was what it was all about, wasn’t it? Andy said music was hope, and even if Red wasn’t one hundred percent sure what he was hoping for as he played, he still played.
*
The thing of it was, Red liked Tommy Williams. Liked his rock ‘n roll hair, liked his stories, liked his easy laugh. Red was proud of him when he decided he’d try for his high school equivalency, had shared a proud look with Andy about it. He just hadn’t considered what exactly that would involve.
At first it wasn't so bad, as Red chatted with the other guys over dinner and Andy coaxed Tommy into reading to him at the end of the table. It helped that for the first few weeks, Tommy would try to brush Andy off, insisting he'd get to it later - embarrassed the guys would hear him struggling over the words. Red actually liked it, hearing the slow rhythm of Tommy's voice occasionally interspersed with gentle correction or encouragement from Andy. But as the weeks wore on, the occasional meal time lesson pushed later into the evenings, when Andy would normally sit with Red in the library.
It didn't make any damn sense, the twisting annoyance Red felt when Tommy poked his head in with a sheepish grin. Half the time he and Andy didn't speak for most of the evening, just moved around the library quietly, occasionally commenting on a book someone had left out, which records were getting worn down, nothing specific. Nothing so important as Tommy bettering himself, giving himself the opportunity to make life better for his wife and daughter.
But still, after months of additional company, Red had nothing but a tight smile to offer in return.
Oh, he still talked history with the kid while they worked in the woodshop; tried to make the dates in Andy’s curriculum stick a little easier by telling Tommy all about a book he’d read on the revolution, things his grandpa had told him about the Civil War, anything he thought might help. Red was a fair hand at math, too, but Andy had everyone in Shawshank beat there.
"He's taking the test tomorrow," Andy said, looking at Tommy laughing with the guys across the yard.
"Yeah?" Red said. "You think he's ready for it?"
Andy smiled a little. "Wouldn't have him take it if I didn't."
It sounded like something Andy had already said a few times, and Red nodded. "Wish you had given me a little more notice, I'd have gotten him something. A good luck charm."
"He doesn't need luck. Save it for when he passes."
*
Red felt bad for how happy he was after Tommy finished the test, since Tommy himself was in an awful mood, muttering to himself about the pointlessness of it all. Still, Red wasn't in the penitentiary because he was a good man, and he felt something in him loosen when he found Andy alone in the library that night.
"What've you got there?" Red asked, sliding into a seat next to him.
Andy picked the encyclopedia off a small pile of papers that had obviously seen better days. "Tommy's exam."
"Didn't think that was where he left it."
Andy shrugged. "Pass me that envelope?"
"You sure you should be doing this?" Red asked, even as he reached for the stationery. He didn't know how this whole situation worked, if Tommy would be allowed to take it again if he didn't pass it this time.
"Wouldn't be sending it in if I weren't." Their fingers brushed as Andy took the envelope, and Red sat back in his chair, watching Andy work.
*
Tommy took to following Red around as Red took care of the library for Andy, and in what some might call a twist of dramatic irony, Red was glad for the company. He asked Tommy about his wife and little girl, trying to imagine what life was like on the outside these days, what Andy might get up to if they could get his retrial. When Tommy’s test results came back, Red bribed the guard to share the news, and kept passing Tommy books instead of issues of Car and Driver.
“I passed already,” Tommy laughed. “No one’s going to quiz me on no subjects or predicates anymore.”
“Andy might,” Red said.
He was halfway through Journey to the Center of the Earth when the guards shot him.
*
It’s a lonely month, even with Heywood and the boys.
*
"My wife used to say I'm a hard man to know. A closed book."
Red sat silently, but couldn’t help but disagree. In her defense, Red had known Andy longer than Andy’s wife ever did; doubly so, probably. So maybe it was right that Red knew Andy so well. On a different day, he might interject and remind Andy of all the ways they knew each other, but he kept quiet as Andy stared into the middle distance.
"She was beautiful. God, I loved her. I just didn't know how to show it, that's all." He glanced at Red, and Red had to curl his hands towards himself. He listened as Andy blamed himself for her murder, knowing he had to choose his words carefully.
Red slowly lowered himself down next to Andy. “That don’t make you a murderer. Bad husband, maybe. Feel bad about it if you want to, but you didn’t pull the trigger.”
Andy had always been a better man than them, even before they knew he was innocent. Now they just knew how much.
“No, I didn’t. Somebody else did. And I wound up in here. Bad luck, I guess.”
“Yeah,” Red said. And that was the hell of it. The worst luck of Andy’s life had been the best of Red’s, and it wasn’t bound to end any time soon.
“Think you'll ever get out of here?”
Red was startled by Andy’s question. It was the first time he felt like Andy was looking at him and actually seeing him since he’d been released. “Me? Yeah, one day when I’ve got a long white beard, and two or three marbles rolling around upstairs, they’ll let me out.”
"You know where I'd go?” Andy asked, looking at Red but also somewhere far beyond him. “Zihuatanejo."