HADLEY

You better start making sense.

ANDY

If you want to keep that money, all of it, just give it to your wife. See, the IRS allows you a one-time-only gift to your spouse. It's good up to sixty thousand dollars.

HADLEY

Naw, that ain't right! Tax free?

ANDY

Tax free. IRS can't touch one cent.

The cons are pausing work, stunned by this business discussion.

HADLEY

You're the smart banker what shot his wife. Why should I believe a smart banker like you? So's I can wind up in here with you?

ANDY

It's perfectly legal. Go ask the IRS, they'll say the same thing. Actually, I feel silly telling you all this. I'm sure you would have investigated the matter yourself.

HADLEY

Fuckin'-A. I don't need no smart wife-killin' banker to show me where the bear shit in the buckwheat.

ANDY

Of course not. But you will need somebody to set up the tax-free gift, and that'll cost you. A lawyer, for example…

HADLEY

Ambulance-chaaing, highway-robbing cocksuckers!

ANDY

…or come to think of it, I suppose I could set it up for you. That would save you some money. I'll write down the forms you need, you can pick them up, and I'll prepare them for your signature… nearly free of charge.

(off Hadley's look)

I'd only ask three beers apiece for my co-workers, if that seems fair.

TROUT

(guffawing)

Co-workers! Get him! That's rich, ain't it? Co-workers…

Hadley freezes him with a look. Andy presses on:

ANDY

I think a nan working outdoors feels more like a man if he can have a bottle of suds. That's only my opinion.

The convicts stand gaping, all pretense of work gone. They look like they've been pole-axed. Hadley shoots them a look.

HADLEY

What are you jimmies starin' at? Back to work, goddamn it!

EXT -- LICENSE PLATE FACTORY -- DAY (1949)

As before, an object is hauled up the side of the building by rope -- only this time, it's a cooler of beer and ice.

RED (V.O.)

And that's how it came to pass, that on the second-to-last day of the job, the convict crew that tarred the plate factory roof in the spring of '49…

EXT -- ROOF -- SHORTLY LATER (1949)

The cons are taking the sun and drinking beer.

RED (V.O.)

…wound up sitting in a row at ten o'clock in the morning, drinking icy cold Black Label beer courtesy of the hardest screw that ever walked a turn at Shawshank State Prison.

HADLEY

Drink up, boys. While it's cold.

RED (V.O.)

The colossal prick even managed to sound magnanimous.

Red knocks back another sip, enjoying the bitter cold on his tongue and the warm sun on face.

RED (V.O.)

We sat and drank with the sun on our shoulders, and felt like free men. We could'a been tarring the roof of one of our own houses. We were the Lords of all Creation.

He glances over to Andy squatting apart from the others.