Andy Dufresne escaped from Shawshank prison in 1966. All they found of him was a bar of soap, a muddy set of prison clothes, and an old rock hammer, worn down to the nub. I remember thinking it would take six hundred years to tunnel through the wall with that hammer. Andy did it in less than twenty. 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.
As I said, a man will do most anything to keep his mind occupied in prison. Andy’s favorite hobby was totin’ his wall out a handful at a time into the exercise yard. I guess after Tommy was killed, Andy decided he’d been here long enough. He did like he was told, buffed those shoes to a high shine mirror. The guards didn’t notice and neither did I… I mean, seriously, how often do you really look at a mans shoes? Andy crawled to freedom through five hundred yards of shit-smelling foulness. I can’t even imagine it, 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.
