Shawshank Redemption: Ten Years On

If I have to spend one more night on this boat with Andy Dusfrane, I am going to kill him.

I know that’d mean going back to Shawshank for the rest of my life but, you know? I think it’d be worth it.

“Come down to Mexico,” he said, “the ocean has no memory,” he said.

What Andy didn’t tell me was that we’d end up living together on this boat. This tiny, broken, battered, going-nowhere goddamn boat.

Ten years ago. Ten years I came all the way down here after Andy flitted out of prison that night. Ten years ago I walked down this beach and saw Andy. Andy there, stripped to the waist and working on this boat.

I think, my god, Andy’s done so good. He’s got himself a boat. A real rich man’s boat.

“We’re going to fix this boat up, sell it on, and we’ll be rich,” that’s what he told me. Well, I thought, that’s going to be some sort of life for a couple of old ex-cons

But it comes down to it, and the man doesn’t know nothing about fixing up boats. Of course, he doesn’t know nothing about fixing up boats, the man’s a bank manager. Ten damn years and there’s still holes in this boat. There’s rocks on the beach that stand more chance of sailing than this boat ever does.

And where do we live? Where do we live now we’re free of years cramped up in our cold, dank, mean cells in Shawshank? And we could live anywhere on God’s great earth? We live on this damn boat together all cramped up together with each other’s farts and fancies.

You see, it turns out that, for a financial mastermind, Andy Dusfrane makes a damn fine boat repairman. All that money from Warden Norton? All gone. Andy Dusfrane, genius ex-bank manager, lost it in the crash in ’73. So, we got nothing left but the holes in this damn boat.

And Andy’s records. Andy’s stupid, screechy, can’t-understand-a-damn-word opera records. I swear, if I can live my life without hearing another opera record, I can die happy. I remember, back in Shawshank, he played that opera music and it sounded magical, majestic – soaring over all of us like it was music from heaven itself.

But it was only for three minutes. It turns out that three minutes of opera is about all the opera a man needs in his life.

I asked him what they were singing about and he said ‘well, Red, what you need to do is really feel the music and only then you’ll understand what they’re saying.’

I had to walk up the beach for the rest of the day. It was that or beat the man down with his own goddamn, stupid opera records.

Andy Dusfrane and his broken-ass boat and goddamn opera records.

And what kind of a name is Dusfrane anyway? You know, if you’re going to have a ‘s’ in your name, then say the ‘s’, otherwise don’t have any ‘s.’

And you know the worse thing of all? I still talk to myself like I’m some sort of crazy person.