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 wanna talk to him. I wanna try and talk some sense to him, tell him the way things are. But I can't. That kid's long gone. This old man is all that's left. I gotta live with that. Rehabilitated? It's just a bullshit word.
Everybody in here's innocent. Didn't you know that?
— You know what that's about?
— No.
— You'll like it. It's about a prison break.
— We ought to file that under Educational, too, oughtn't we?
The first night's the toughest. No doubt about it. They march you in, naked as the day you were born, skin burning and half-blind from that delousing shit they throw on you. And when they put you in that cell, and those bars slam home... that's when you know it's for real. Old life blown away in the blink of an eye. Nothing left, but all the time in the world to think about it.
— Feel bad about it if you want to, but you didn't pull the trigger.
— No, I didn't. Somebody else did. And I wound up in here. Bad luck, I guess. Yeah. 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.
"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 something...inside that they can't get to...that they can't touch. It's yours."
"What are you talking about?"
"Hope."
I have no idea to this day what those two Italian ladies were singing about. Truth is, I don't want to know. Some things are best left unsaid. I like to think it was something so beautiful... it can't be expressed in words and makes your heart ache because of it. I tell you, those voices soared... higher and farther than anybody in a gray place dares to dream. It was like a beautiful bird flapped into our drab cage and made those walls dissolve away. And for the briefest of moments every last man at Shawshank felt free.
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