LEE ELIOT PRESENTS

RADLEY GATE PRODUCTIONS

MR. STEVENS

Note: I do not own "The Shawshank Redemption", but we all wish we were Darabont or King sometimes.

There's an easy way about me.

Someone told me once, I know it now.

I wonder how I look to the passing ambler.

I must look strange, I've decided,

the hands-in-denim-pockets type,

a funny sort of gentleman who's been to Hell and back due to a little mix-up

and doesn't mind a bit,

thinks himself the better for it.

I laugh out loud.

I'm a fugitive, how absurd.

I'm a renegade now, without a single crime to show for it.

Doesn't anyone else find that amusing?

Red would get it.

I wonder how he's doing.

Every now and again I think I see him

(in my peripheral vision, which isn't very good)

and when I turn around, it's not Ellis Redding,

the only guilty man in Shawshank,

Ellis Redding, the only friend I ever knew.

I'm patient, though,

and if he's as sharp as I gave him credit for,

he knows where to find me.

There's something about him that's different,

the reason I took a liking to him and not to Heywood or Floyd.

When I figure out what it is, I'll write it down and let him know as soon as he gets here.

By here, I mean where I'm going.

I've nearly reached the border now, and I'll send him a postcard.

Old Red will get a kick out of that.

And it's not just Red I think I see sometimes, either.

Last night

(upon leaving my hotel, for I'm Mr. Stevens now, you remember)

I nearly knocked over a stately man in wire-rim glasses with cold eyes

and an iron jaw.

He stomped off before I could apologize.

I must have looked something awful, I'd seen a ghost, after all.

Don't worry, Andy,

I tell myself,

The papers say he won't bother you anymore.

You're a free man now, Andy Dufresne, they say,

and whatever happened in that horrible place is history.

You've done it, Andy, he can't touch you.

Funny the things you notice are missing when they're gone,

I wonder how many packs of smokes Red won

when the old warden up and shot himself.

Good old Red.