"You're mine now." "Andy got two weeks in the hole for that little stunt." "On your feet." " Hey, look who's here." " Maestro!" "You couldn't play something good, huh?" "Like Hank Williams?" "They broke the door down before I could take requests." " Was it worth two weeks?" " Easiest time I ever did." " No such thing as easy time in the hole." " A week in the hole is like a year." " Damn straight." " I had Mr. Mozart to keep me company." "So they let you tote that record player down there, huh?" "It was in here." "In here." "That's the beauty of music." "They can't get that from you." "Haven't you ever felt that way about music?" "Well, I played a mean harmonica as a younger man." "Lost interest in it, though." "Didn't make much sense in here." "Here's where it makes the most sense." "You need it so you don't forget." "Forget?" "Forget that there are places in the world that aren't made out of stone." "There's something inside that they can't get to that they can't touch." "That's yours." "What are you talking about?" "Hope." "Hope." "Let me tell you something, my friend." "Hope is a dangerous thing." "Hope can drive a man insane." "It's got no use on the inside." "You'd better get used to that idea." "Like Brooks did?" "Sit down." "Says here that you've served 30 years of a life sentence." "You feel you've been rehabilitated?" "Oh, yes, sir." "Without a doubt." "I can honestly say I'm a changed man." "No danger to society here." "God's honest truth." "Absolutely rehabilitated." "Thirty years." "Jesus, when you say it like that..." "You wonder where it went." "I wonder where 10 years went." "Here." "A little parole rejection present." "Go ahead and open it." "Went through one of your competitors." "I hope you don't mind." "I wanted it to be a surprise." "It's very pretty." "Thank you." "You going to play it?" "No." "Not right now." "Roll in!" "Lights out!" "Andy was as good as his word." "He wrote two letters a week instead of one." "In 1959, the state senate finally clued in to the fact they couldn't buy him off with just a $ 200 check." "Appropriations Committee voted an annual payment of $500 just to shut him up." "And you'd be amazed how far Andy could stretch it." "He made deals with book clubs, charity groups." "He bought remaindered books by the pound..." "Treasure Island." "Robert Louis..." "Stevenson." "Fiction, adventure." "What's next?" "I got here Auto Repair and Soap Carving." "Trade skills and hobbies." "Under "Educational," behind you." "Count of Monte Crisco." "That's "Cristo," you dumb shit." "By Alexandree Dum-ass." "Dumb ass." "Dumb ass?" "Dumas." "IKnow what that's about?" "You'd like it." "It's about a prison break." "We ought to file that under "Educational" too, oughtn't we?" "The rest of us did our best to pitch in when and where we could." "By the year Kennedy was shot Andy had transformed a storage room smelling of turpentine into the best prison library in New England..." "That was also when Warden Norton instituted his famous "Inside Out" program." "You may remember reading about it." "It made the papers and got his picture in Look magazine." "It's no free ride but rather a genuine progressive advance in corrections and rehabilitation." "Our inmates, properly supervised will be put to work outside these walls performing all manner of public service." "These men can learn the value of an honest day's labor and provide a service to the community at a bare minimum of expense to Mr. And Mrs. John Q. Taxpayer." "Of course he didn't tell the press that "bare minimum of expense" is a fairly loose term." "There are 100 different ways to skim off the top." "Men, materials, you name it." "And oh, my Lord, how the money rolled in!" "At this rate, you'll put me out of business." "With this pool of slave labor, you can underbid any contractor in town." "We're providing a valuable community service." "That's fine for the papers, but I've got a family to feed." "We go back a long way." "I need this highway contract." "I don't get it and I go under." "That's a fact." "You have some of this fine pie my missus made for you." "You think about that." "I wouldn't worry too much about this contract." "I already got my boys committed elsewhere." "You be sure and thank Maisie for this fine pie." "And behind every shady deal behind every dollar earned there was Andy, keeping the books." "Two deposits." "Maine National and New England First." "Night drops as always, sir." "Get my stuff to the laundry." "Two suits for dry-clean and a bag of whatnot." "If they over-starch my shirts again, they'll hear from me." "How do I look?" " Very nice." " Big charity to-do up Portland way." "Governor will be there." "You want the rest of this?" "Woman can't bake worth shit." "Thank you, sir." "He's got his fingers in a lot of pies, from what I hear." "He's got scams you haven't even dreamed of." "IKickbacks on his kickbacks." "A river of dirty money running through here." "Sooner or later, he'll have to explain where it came from." "That's where I come in." "I channel it." "Filter it." "Funnel it." "Stocks, securities, tax-free municipals." "I send it out into the real world, and when it comes back..." " Clean as a virgin's honeypot, huh?" " Cleaner." "By the time Norton retires, I'll have made him a millionaire." "If they ever catch on, he'll wind up in here wearing a number himself." "I thought you had more faith in me than that." "I know you're good, but all that paper leaves a trail." "Now anybody gets curious, FBI, IRS whatever." "It'll lead to somebody." "Sure it is, but not to me, and certainly not to the warden." "All right, who?" "Randall Stevens." "Who?" "The "silent" silent partner." "He's the guilty one, the man with the bank accounts." "It's where the filtering process starts." "They trace anything, it'll just lead to him." "But who is he?" "He's a phantom, an apparition." "Second cousin to Harvey the Rabbit." "I conjured him out of thin air." "He doesn't exist, except on paper." "You can't just make a person up." "Sure you can, if you know how the system works." "It's amazing what you can accomplish by mail." "Mr. Stevens has a birth certificate driver's license, Social Security." "You're shitting me." "If they trace any accounts, they'll wind up chasing a figment of my imagination." "Well, I'll be damned!" "Did I say you were good?" "Shit, you are Rembrandt." "The funny thing is on the outside, I was an honest man, straight as an arrow." "I had to come to prison to be a crook." "Ever bother you?" "I don't run the scams." "I just process the profits." "A fine line, maybe but I also built that library and used it to help guys get their high school diploma." "Why do you think he lets me do all that?" "IKeep you happy and doing the laundry." "Money instead of sheets." "Well, I work cheap." "That's the tradeoff." "Tommy Williams came to Shawshank in 1965 on a two-year stretch for B and E." "That's breaking and entering to you." "Cops caught him sneaking TV sets out the back door of a JC Penney." "Young punk." "Mr. Rock 'n' Roll cocky as hell." "Come on, old boys." "Moving like molasses!" "Making me look bad." "We liked him immediately." "I'm backing out the door and I got the TV like this." "A big old thing." "I couldn't see shit." "Then I hear this voice." ""Freeze, kid, hands in the air."" "I was standing there, holding onto that TV." "Finally the voice says:" ""You hear what I said, boy?" I say, "Yes, sir." "I did." "But if I drop this, you get me on destruction of property too."" "You done some stretch in Cashman, right?" "Yeah, that was an easy piece of time, let me tell you." "Weekend furloughs." "Work programs." "Not like here." "Sounds like you done time all over." "I've been in and out since I was 13." "Name it, chances are I've been there." "Perhaps you should try a new profession." "What I mean is you're not a very good thief." "You should try something else." "Yeah, what the hell you know about it, Capone?" "What are you in for?" "Me?" "A lawyer fucked me." "Everybody's innocent in here." "Don't you know that?" "As it turned out, Tommy had himself a young wife and a new baby girl." "Maybe he thought of them on the streets or his child growing up not knowing her daddy." "Whatever it was something lit a fire under that boy's ass." "Thought I might try for my high school equivalency." "Hear you helped a couple of fellas with that." "I don't waste time with losers, Tommy." "I ain't no goddamn loser." " You mean that?" " Yeah." "You really mean that?" "Yes, sir, I do." "Good." "Because if we do this we do it all the way, a hundred percent, nothing half-assed." "Thing is, see I don't read so good." ""Well."" "You don't read so well." "We'll get to that." "So Andy took Tommy under his wing." "Started walking him through his ABC's." "Tommy took to it pretty well too." "Boy found brains he never knew he had." "Before long, Andy started him on his course requirements." "He really liked the kid." "Gave him a thrill to help a youngster crawl off the shit heap." "But that wasn't the only reason." "Prison time is slow time." "So you do what you can to keep going." "Some fellas collect stamps." "Others build matchstick houses." "Andy built a library." "Now he needed a new project." "Tommy was it." "It was the same reason he spent years shaping and polishing those rocks." "The same reason he hung his fantasy girlies on the wall." "In prison a man will do most anything to keep his mind occupied." "By 1966, right about the time Tommy was getting ready to take his exams it was lovely Raquel." "Time." "Well?" "Well, it's for shit." "I wasted a whole year of my time with this bullshit." "It's probably not that bad." "I didn't get a thing right." "It might as well have been in Chinese." "Let's see how the score comes out." "I'll tell you how the goddamn score comes out." "Two points, right there!" "There's your goddamn score!" "Goddamn cats crawling up trees, 5 times 5 is 25..." "Fuck this place!" "Fuck it!" "I feel bad." "I let him down." "That's crap, kid." "He's proud of you." "We're old friends, I know him as good as anybody." "Smart fellow, ain't he?" "Smart as they come." "He was a banker on the outside." "What's he in here for anyway?" "Murder." "The hell, you say." "You wouldn't think it to look at the guy." "Caught his wife in bed with some golf pro." "Greased them both." "What?" "About four years ago I was in Thomaston on a two-to-three stretch." "I stole a car." "It was a dumb-fuck thing to do." "About six months left to go I get a new cellmate in." "Elmo Blatch." "Big, twitchy fucker." "IKind of roomie you pray you don't get." "You know what I'm saying?" "Six-to-twelve, armed burglary." "Said he pulled hundreds of jobs." "Hard to believe, high-strung as he was." "You cut a loud fart, he jumped three feet." "Talked all the time too." "That's the other thing." "He never shut up." "Places he'd been in jobs he'd pulled, women he fucked." "Even people he killed." "People who "gave him shit."" "That's how he put it." "So one night, like a joke I say to him, "Elmo, who did you kill?"" "So he says:" "I got me this job one time, busing tables at a country club so I could case all these big rich pricks that come in." "So I pick out this guy go in one night and do his place." "He wakes up and gives me shit." "So I killed him." "Him and this tasty bitch he was with." "And that's the best part." "She's fucking this prick, see this golf pro, but she's married to some other guy." "Some hotshot banker." "And he's the one they pinned it on." "I have to say that's the most amazing story I ever heard." "What amazes me most is you'd be taken in by it." "Sir?" "It's obvious this fellow Williams is impressed with you." "He hears your tale of woe and naturally wants to cheer you up." "He's young, not terribly bright." "It's not surprising he wouldn't know what a state he put you in." "Sir, he's telling the truth." "Let's say for the moment this Blatch does exist." "You think he'd just fall to his knees and cry, "Yes, I did it." "I confess." "By the way, add a life term to my sentence."" "With Tommy's testimony, I can get a new trial." "That's assuming Blatch is still there." "Chances are, he'd be released by now." "They'd have his last known address." "It's a chance, isn't it?" "How can you be so obtuse?" "What?" "What did you call me?" "Obtuse." "Is it deliberate?" "You're forgetting yourself." "The country club will have his old timecards." "Records, W-2s with his name on them." "If you want to indulge this fantasy, it's your business." "Don't make it mine." "This meeting is over." "If I got out, I'd never mention what happens here." "I'd be as indictable as you for laundering that money." "Don't ever mention money to me, you son of a bitch!" "Not in this office not anywhere." "Get in here, now!" "I just wanted to put you at ease, that's all." "Solitary." "A month." "What's wrong with you?" "Get him out of here." "This is my chance to get out!" "It's my life!" "Understand?" "!" "Get him out!" "A month in the hole." "That's the longest stretch I ever heard of." "It's all my fault." "Bullshit." "You didn't pull the trigger or convict him." "Are you saying Andy is innocent?" "I mean, for real innocent?" "It looks that way." "Sweet Jesus." "How long has he been here now?" "1947." "What is that?" "Nineteen years." " Williams, Thomas." " Yeah, over here." "What you got?" "Board of Education." "That son of a bitch mailed it." "You going to open it or stand there with your thumb up your butt?" "Thumb up my butt sounds better." "Skeets, come on." "Give me that, you shithead." "Floyd, come on." "Will you throw that away, please?" "Well, shit." "The kid passed." "C + average." "Thought you'd like to know." "Warden wants to talk." "Out here?" "That's what the man said." "Warden?" "I'm asking you to keep this conversation just between us." "I feel awkward enough as it is." "We got a situation here." "I think you can appreciate that." "Yes, sir." "I sure can." "I tell you, son, this thing really came along and knocked my wind out." "It's got me up nights." "That's the truth." "The right thing to do sometimes it's hard to know what that is." "Do you understand?" "I need your help, son." "If I'm going to move on this there can't be the least little shred of doubt." "I have to know if what you told Dufresne was the truth." "Yes, sir." "Absolutely." "Would you be willing to swear before a judge and jury with your hand on the Good Book and take an oath before Almighty God himself?" "Just give me that chance." "That's what I thought." "I'm sure by now you've heard." "Terrible thing." "A man that young less than a year to go, trying to escape." "Broke Captain Hadley's heart to shoot him." "Truly, it did." "We just have to put it behind us." "Move on." "I'm done." "Everything stops." "Get someone else to run your scams." "Nothing stops." "Nothing." "Or you will do the hardest time there is." "No more protection from the guards." "I'll pull you out of that 1 -bunk Hilton and cast you down with the sodomites." "You'll think you've been fucked by a train." "And the library?" "Gone." "Sealed off, brick by brick." "We'll have us a little book barbecue in the yard." "They'll see the flames for miles." "We'll dance around it like wild Injuns." "You understand me?" "Catching my drift?" "Or am I being obtuse?" "Give him another month to think about it." "My wife used to say I'm a hard man to know." "Like a closed book." "Complained about it all the time." "She was beautiful." "God, I loved her." "I didn't know how to show it, that's all." "I killed her, Red." "I didn't pull the trigger but I drove her away." "That's why she died, because of me the way I am." "That don't make you a murderer." "Bad husband, maybe." "Feel bad about it if you want, but you didn't pull the trigger." "No, I didn't." "Somebody else did." "And I wound up in here." "Bad luck, I guess." "It floats around." "It's got to land on somebody." "It was my turn, that's all." "I was in the path of the tornado." "I just didn't expect the storm would last as long as it has." "Think you'll ever get out of here?" "Me?" "Yeah." "One day, when I got a long, white beard and two or three marbles rolling around upstairs." "I tell you where I'd go." "Zihuatanejo." "Say what?" "Zihuatanejo." "It's in Mexico." "A little place on the Pacific Ocean." "You know what the Mexicans say about the Pacific?" "They say it has no memory." "That's where I want to live the rest of my life." "A warm place with no memory." "Open up a little hotel right on the beach." "Buy some worthless old boat and fix it up new." "Take my guests out charter fishing." "Zihuatanejo." "In a place like that, I could use a man that knows how to get things." "I don't think I could make it on the outside." "I been in here most of my life." "I'm an institutional man now." "Just like Brooks was." "You underestimate yourself." "I don't think so." "In here I'm the guy who can get things for you, sure, but outside all you need is the Yellow Pages." "Hell, I wouldn't know where to begin." "Pacific Ocean?" "Shit." "Scare me to death, something that big." "Not me." "I didn't shoot my wife, and I didn't shoot her lover." "Whatever mistakes I made, I've paid for them and then some." "That hotel, that boat..." "I don't think that's too much to ask." "You shouldn't be doing this to yourself." "This is just shitty pipe dreams." "Mexico is way down there and you're in here and that's the way it is." "Yeah, right." "That's the way it is." "It's down there and I'm in here." "I guess it comes down to a simple choice." "Get busy living or get busy dying." "If you ever get out of here, do me a favor." "Sure, Andy." "Anything." "There's a big hayfield up near Buxton." "You know where Buxton is?" " A lot of hayfields up there." " One in particular." "It's got a long rock wall with a big oak tree at the north end." "It's like something out of a Robert Frost poem." "It's where I asked my wife to marry me." "We went there for a picnic and made love under that oak and I asked and she said yes." "Promise me, Red." "If you ever get out find that spot." "At the base of that wall, there's a rock that has no earthly business in Maine." "Piece of black, volcanic glass." "Something's buried under it I want you to have." "What, Andy?" "What's buried under there?" "You'll have to pry it up to see." "No, I'm telling you." "The guy is..." "He's talking funny." "I'm really worried about him." "Let's keep an eye on him." "That's fine during the day, but at night he's all alone." "Oh, Lord." "What?" "Andy come down to the loading dock today." "He asked me for a length of rope." "Rope?" "Six feet long." "And you gave it to him." "Sure." "Why wouldn't I?" "Jesus!" "Heywood." "How was I supposed to know?" "Remember Brooks Hatlen?" "Andy would never do that." "Never." "I don't know." "Every man has his breaking point." "Lickety-split." "Want to get home." "Just about finished, sir." "Three deposits tonight." "Get my stuff down to the laundry." "And shine my shoes." " I want them looking like mirrors." " Yes, sir." "It's good having you back." "Place wasn't the same without you." "Lights out!" "I've had some long nights in stir." "Alone in the dark with nothing but your thoughts time can draw out like a blade." "That was the longest night of my life." "Give me a count!" "Tier 3 south, clear!" "Man missing on tier 2, cell 245!" "Dufresne!" "Come out." "You're holding up the show!" "Don't make me come down or I'll thump your skull for you!" "Damn it, you're putting me behind!" "I got a schedule to keep." "You'd better be sick or dead in there." "I shit you not!" "You hear me?" "Oh, my Holy God." "I want every man on this cellblock questioned." " Start with that friend of his." " Who?" "Open 237." "What do you mean, "He just wasn't here"?" "Don't say that to me." "Don't tell me that again." "But sir, he wasn't." "I can see that, Haig!" "Think I'm blind?" "Is that what you're saying?" " Am I blind, Haig?" " No, sir!" "What about you." "You blind?" " Tell me what this is." " Last night's count." "You see Dufresne's name there?" "I sure do." "Right there." ""Dufresne."" "He was in his cell at lights out." "Reasonable he'd be here in the morning." "I want him found." "Not tomorrow, not after breakfast." "Now!" "Yes, sir." "Let's go." "Move your butts." "Stand." "Well?" "Well, what?" "I see you two all the time." "You're thick as thieves, you are." "He must have said something." "No, sir, Warden." "Not a word." "Lord, it's a miracle!" "Man vanished like a fart in the wind." "Nothing left but some damn rocks on a windowsill." "And that cupcake on the wall." "Let's ask her." "Maybe she knows." "What say there, fuzzy-britches?" "Feel like talking?" "Guess not." "Why should she be any different?" "This is a conspiracy." "That's what this is." "One big, damn conspiracy!" "And everyone's in on it!" "Including her!" "In 1966 Andy Dufresne escaped from Shawshank Prison." "All they found was a muddy set of prison clothes a bar of soap and an old rock hammer damn near worn down to the nub." "I had thought it'd take a man 600 years to tunnel through the wall with it." "Old Andy did it in less than 20." "Oh, Andy loved geology." "I imagine it appealed to his meticulous nature." "An ice age here million years of mountain building there." "Geology is the study of pressure and time." "That's all it takes, really." "Pressure and time." "That and a big goddamn poster." "Like I said in prison, a man will do anything to keep his mind occupied." "Seems Andy's favorite hobby was toting his wall out into the exercise yard a handful at a time." "I guess after Tommy was killed Andy decided he'd been here long enough." "Lickety-split." "I want to get home." "I'm just about finished, sir." "Three deposits tonight." "Andy did like he was told." "Buffed those shoes to a high mirror-shine." "The guards simply didn't notice." "Neither did I." "I mean, seriously how often do you really look at a man's shoes?" "Andy crawled to freedom through 500 yards of shit-smelling foulness I can't even imagine." "Or maybe I just don't want to." "Five hundred yards." "That's the length of five football fields." "Just shy of half a mile." "The next morning, right about the time Raquel was spilling her secret a man nobody ever laid eyes on before strolled into the Maine National Bank." "Until that moment, he didn't exist." " Except on paper." " May I help you?" "He had all the proper ID driver's license, birth certificate, Social Security card..." "And the signature was a spot-on match." "I must say I'm sorry to be losing your business." "I hope you'll enjoy living abroad." "Thank you." "I'm sure I will." "Here's your cashier's check, sir." "Will there be anything else?" "Please." "Would you add this to your outgoing mail?" "I'd be happy to." "Good day, sir." "Mr. Stevens visited nearly a dozen banks in the Portland area that morning." "All told, he blew town with better than $370,000 of Warden Norton's money." "Severance pay for 19 years." "Good morning, Portland Daily Bugle." "Byron Hadley?" "You have the right to remain silent." "If you give up this right, anything you say can be held against you in court." "I wasn't there to see, but I hear Byron Hadley sobbed like a girl when they took him away." "Norton had no intention of going that quietly." "Samuel Norton." "We have a warrant for your arrest." "Open up." "Open the door." "I'm not sure which key." "Make it easy on yourself, Norton!" "I like to think the last thing that went through his head other than that bullet was to wonder how the hell Andy Dufresne ever got the best of him." "Not long after the warden deprived us of his company I got a postcard in the mail." "It was blank, but the postmark said Fort Hancock, Texas." "Fort Hancock right on the border." "That's where Andy crossed." "When I picture him heading south in his own car with the top down it always makes me laugh." "Andy Dufresne who crawled through a river of shit and came out clean on the other side." "Andy Dufresne headed for the Pacific." "Hadley's got him by the throat, right?" "He says, "I believe this boy's about to have himself an accident."" "Those of us who knew him best talk about him often." "I swear, the stuff he pulled..." ""My friends could use a couple of beers."" "And he got it!" "Sometimes it makes me sad, though Andy being gone." "I have to remind myself that some birds aren't meant to be caged." "Their feathers are just too bright." "And when they fly away the part of you that knows it was a sin to lock them up does rejoice." "But still the place you live in is that much more drab and empty that they're gone." "I guess I just miss my friend." "Please sit down." "Ellis Boyd Redding your files say you've served 40 years of a life sentence." "You feel you've been rehabilitated?" "Rehabilitated?" "Well, now, let me see." "I don't have any idea what that means." "It means you're ready to rejoin society..." "I know what you think it means, sonny." "To me it's just a made-up word." "A politician's word so that young fellas like yourself can wear a suit and a tie and have a job." "What do you really want to know?" "Am I sorry for what I did?" "Well, are you?" "There's not a day goes by I don't feel regret." "Not because I'm in here or because you think I should." "I look back on the way I was then a young stupid kid who committed that terrible crime." "I want to talk to him." "I want to try and talk some sense to him." "Tell him the way things are." "But I can't." "That kid's long gone and this old man is all that's left." "I got to live with that." "Rehabilitated?" "It's just a bullshit word." "So you go on and stamp your forms, sonny, and stop wasting my time." "Because to tell you the truth I don't give a shit." "Here you go, miss." "Restroom break?" "You don't need to ask me every time you need to go take a piss." "Just go." "Forty years I've been asking permission to piss." "I can't squeeze a drop without say-so." "There's a harsh truth to face." "No way I'm going to make it on the outside." "All I do anymore is think of ways to break my parole so maybe they'd send me back." "Terrible thing, to live in fear." "Brooks Hatlen knew it." "Knew it all too well." "All I want is to be back where things make sense." "Where I won't have to be afraid all the time." "Only one thing stops me." "A promise I made to Andy." "There it is." "Much obliged, sir." "Dear Red:" "If you're reading this, you've gotten out and if you've come this far, maybe you'd come a bit further." "You remember the name of the town, don't you?" "Zihuatanejo." "I could use a good man to help me get my project on wheels." "I'll keep an eye out for you, and the chessboard ready." "Remember, Red hope 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." ""Get busy living or get busy dying."" "That's goddamn right." "For the second time in my life I'm guilty of committing a crime." "Parole violation." "Of course I doubt they'll toss up any roadblocks for that." "Not for an old crook like me." "Fort Hancock, Texas, please." "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 conclusion is uncertain." "I hope I can make it across the border." "I hope to see my friend and shake his hand." "I hope the Pacific is as blue as it has been in my dreams." "I hope."