8بخش

Dufresne

You’re mine now

Andy got two weeks in the hole for that little stunt

On your feet

Hey, look who’s here Maestro

YY-You couldn’t play something good, huh Hank Williams or something

They broke the door down before I could take requests

Was it worth it, two weeks in the hole

Easiest time I ever did

Bullshit There’s no such thing as easy time in the hole

A week in the hole is like a year

I had Mr Mozart to keep me company

So, they let you tote that record player down there, huh

It was in here

And 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

that there’s a

there’s something inside that they can’t get to that they can’t touch

It’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

It says here that you’ve served 30 years of a life sentence

You feel you’ve been rehabilitated

Oh, yes, sir

Without a doubt

And I can honestly say I’m a changed man

No danger to society here

God’s honest truth

Absolutely rehabilitated

30 years

Jesus, when they say it like that

You wonder where it went

I wonder where ten years went

Here

Little parole rejection present

Go ahead and open it

I had to go through one of your competitors

I hope you don’t mind

I wanted it to be a surprise

It’s very pretty, Andy

Thank you

Are you going to play it

No

Not right now

Fall 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 into 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 Goes under Educational

The stack behind you

The Count Of Monte Crisco

That’s Cristo, you dumb shit

By AlexandreeDumass

Dumb-ass

Dumas You know what that’s about

Uh-uh

You’ll 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 rat turds and turpentine

into the best prison library in New England,

complete with a fine selection of Hank Williams

That was also the year Warden Norton instituted his famous Inside Out program

You may remember reading about it

It made all the papers and got his picture in Look Magazine

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, while providing a valuable service to the community and at a bare minimum of expense to Mr and Mrs John Q Taxpayer

Of course, Norton failed to mention to the press that “bare minimum of expense” is a fairly loose term

There are a hundred different ways to skim off the top

Men, materials, you name it

And, oh, my Lord, how the money rolled in

If this keeps up, you’ll put me out of business

Ned

This pool of slave labor you’ve got,

you can underbid any contractor in town

Ned, we’re providing a valuable community service here

Well, that’s fine for the papers

but I’ve got a family to feed

Sam

Sam, we go back a long way

I need this new highway contract

I don’t get it, and I go under

That’s a fact

You just have some of this fine pie

my missus made especially for you,

and you think about that

Ned, I wouldn’t worry too much about this contract

It seems to me 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