I remember the day he strolled over to me in the yard. It was in the summer of '19. He hadn't spoken more than two words to anyone in his time at Shawshank.
"I hear you're a man who knows how to get things," he said. I replied, "I've been known to get a thing or two, here and there."
"What I need is a baseball game." "Baseball game? You know, if they catch you with it, they'll take it." "You let me worry about that. Can you do it?" "For the usual price ... plus ten percent." "Ten percent?" "Yep. Risk goes up, price goes up. And if you get caught, you don't know me, or we'll never do business again, not even for a stick of gum." He nodded, paid the price, and I made sure my connections could get what I needed; as if I had any doubt.
Few weeks later, he came to me in the yard again. "Thanks," he offered, "got it hidden where no one will ever find it." I barely shrugged, but I felt a sudden unease in his walk, like a man with every care the world.
"Red," he began, "I'm having some trouble with, you know, the fielding." And there it was; Andy Dufresne, a man sentenced to life behind bars for the brutal murder of his wife and her lover -- Andy Dufresne, the coolest cucumber to ever walk the yard at Shawshank -- had been laid low by the fielding rules.
"Let me let you in on a little secret," I whispered, "there are shortcuts, you know." His eyes twinkled. "Could you show them to me?" "Absolutely, for the usual price, of course." He handed me an envelope. "It's all there. Meet me in the library this afternoon. You can show me then. I'll be ready."
When I got to the library, he'd already set up the game and the markers. It shocked me that he'd be so open with this contraband. But ever since he'd set up Hadley with a tax-free, irrevocable trust for the inheritance he'd received (after almost throwing Andy clear off the roof we were repairing), Andy had curried favor with the guards. That meant they knew Andy had a contraband game, but as long as Andy kept it in library with the chess and checkers sets, they would look the other way.
"All this moving and plotting," Andy started, "it's taking up what precious little time I have to play while I'm down here." "Not to worry," I said, "Ol' Red will take care of you."
And so it was, in the summer of '19, that two of the nastiest cons in Shawshank learned how to use what I referred to as "SherCo Shortcuts".
For example, I used pre-set fielding positions for every fielder, not just the pitcher and catcher. Based them on where they would normally play in an average-sized ballpark. Andy wondered if this would skew the results; I assured him it would not. I explained that the fielders would allow the proper amount of balls to fall in for hits, especially doubles and triples into the gaps, that any perceived "rejection" of one of the selling points of the game would not kill his interest.
I also shared with him that I didn't actually plot the fielders and the movement of the ball. He stared in stunned silence as I explained that although the game's greatest selling feature is the stop-action play mechanics, after you've played enough games, you find you don't need to move anything on the field. Though I do put the ball on the proper square (adjusted, of course, for wind) as a reminder since the original dice roll will be soon scrambled for fielding.
He looked at me like a man with a lot on his mind, so I continued to explain. See, time was, a man would mark a game with every movement of the ball and the placement of every fielder. After awhile, a man learns to take some shortcuts, like simply counting how many squares he needs to get the ball back into second base. Once a man knows that, he simply rolls the dice and adds the minimums or, if he's lucky, the extra-distance throws and subtracts them from the number he knew. Do that long enough and you become an institutionalized man, like Brooksie. Poor soul couldn't handle the outside with his 1968 copy of the game, and he didn't wanna learn the new version ... so, when he went to that halfway house in Portland and he ... well, he started playing that *other* game ... poor Brooksie.
Andy's jaw clenched and those eyes again left a hint that something was amiss. "Red," he said, a touch of anger in his voice, "it's time for me to get busy playin', or get busy dyin' ..." He asked, should I ever be paroled, to visit a wall on some farm outside of Buxton; said I should look for an old SherCo box, buried beneath a rock under the crooked oak tree there. I promised him I would. When he meandered off across the yard, he had a slowness in his gait that spoke of a sadness inside him. For the first time in a long time, I had a sleepless night at Shawshank, worried about my friend.
When they discovered him missing the next morning, all they found was a pin-up of a ROSTER newsletter, covering the hole he'd dug in the wall to make his escape. The next morning, a man no one had ever laid eyes upon before visited a dozen banks in the Portland area. By the time he was done, he'd made off with $370,000 of Warden Norton's money, and a brand new copy of SherCo PLUS.
He sent me a postcard from where he'd crossed the border and a few weeks later, I finally received my release from Shawshank. Like Brooksie, I had a hard time adjusting to my dog-eared copy of SherCo and spotted a copy of that *other* game in the window of a pawn shop, laying next to a compass. I bought the compass and kept my promise to Andy, finally finding that crooked oak tree, flipping over the rock and finding that old SherCo box. Inside was an envelope with $1,000 in it and a small note:
"Dear Red. If you're reading this, you've gotten out. And if you've come this far, maybe you're willing to come a little further. You remember the name of the town, don't you?" I remembered; Zihuatanejo, and continued reading.
"I could use a good man to help me get my project on wheels. I'll keep an eye out for you and my new SherCo PLUS gameboard ready. Remember, Red, a K7/L (11-16) is a good thing, maybe the best of things, and no good thing ever dies. I will be hoping that this letter finds you, and finds you well. Your friend. Andy." So, I broke my parole, crossed at the border where he crossed. I find I'm so excited, I can barely sit still or hold a thought in my head. I think it's the excitement only a free man can feel, a free man at the start of a long journey whose starting rotation is uncertain. I hope I can make it across the border. I hope to see my friend and roll some dice. I hope SherCo PLUS is as awesome as it has been in my dreams. I hope. [With kind regrets to Mr. Frank Darabont, Mr. Morgan Freeman, and Mr. Tim Robbins for the appropriation of the story ... and note that some of the lines contained herein are copyright 1994 by Frank Darabont and Stephen King, original story is by Stephen King]