August 24, 1967
Title: August 24, 1967
Author: Manchester
Rating: FR15
Crossover: The Shawshank Redemption
Disclaimer: I own nothing. All Buffy the Vampire Slayer and The Shawshank Redemption characters are the property of their original owners.
Summary: The story wasn’t quite over with when Red finally met Andy on the beach at Zihuatanejo.
Andy and Red had been talking for hours about their lives since the last time they’d seen each other. The two men finally became silent to watch together the Technicolor sunset happened in front of them both relaxing in their chairs on the sand.
When it was all over with, the gaudy yellow-orange-red orb disappearing from sight far out in the Pacific Ocean beyond the pair of former convicts, Andy observed with some puzzlement at how Red then warily glanced around in the descending darkness. His mystification only increased further at his friend’s next offhand remark, “Andy, you remember the rock you used to mark your cache in that field back at Buxton?”
“Uh, what?!” was the best a startled Andy could manage, completely thrown for a loop by this unexpected question.
Red nodded his grizzled head. “Yeah, that one. What I want to know is, was it made out of some weird stuff like, uh, those things they use in atom bombs? So that if it gets pounded hard against something, it goes off like nitro?”
Andy now stared in his utter disbelief at the man sitting next to him. After a few more moments of out-and-out perplexity, the escapee from Shawshank Prison then stated, “Absolutely not, Red! That rock’s just a piece of natural glass called obsidian, something I picked up as a souvenir a long time ago. Why the hell are you asking this for in the first place? I mean, because you’re here, you obviously didn’t have any trouble finding--”
“Saw it right away lying there at that stone wall,” agreed Red, interrupting the other man. He went on in the face of Andy’s evident confusion, “No, it was what happened later on that made me wonder all the rest of my trip. Let me just tell you the whole story, okay?”
At Andy’s cautious half-shrug of acceptance, Red settled back into his chair. He began, “Like I said, I didn’t have a problem with missing where you’d put the rock, what with it being all black and shiny. Anyway, I got it out and found the money and letter you left for me in the hollow behind the rock. When I was walking out of the field, though, besides that stuff put away in my coat pockets, I also had the rock in there.”
“Why?” asked a fascinated Andy.
Red sent a faint smile at his friend. “No real reason, Andy. Just sort of thought it wouldn’t do to toss it away, like I did with the little box what you hid there to hold the other stuff. Now, as I told you before, I also left everything back in Maine: my parole officer, the crappy job he got me, and all the rest of my old life without a second thought. Made a few hops around the area to cover my tracks before taking a cross-country bus, all without any trouble. Though, there was one damn tight spot for me, which happened on the first night out.”
Andy straightened up in his chair to gaze in sudden worry at Red himself looking blankly off at the ocean horizon now almost totally dark. Starting to speak in a flat monotone, Red continued, “It was at the bus layover, some place just before Philadelphia. I got a single room at a two-bit motel, went to sleep and then woke up a while on from a nightmare where I was back at Shawshank and wasn’t ever gonna do anything but die in there.”
Andy winced with real sympathy. Nevertheless, he listened to the following terse narration, “Got out of bed, got dressed, took out your money I was keeping safe under the mattress, and headed to the front desk. I asked the guy at the desk if there was any place open close by for a cup of coffee and a slice of pie to clear my head. He told me about an all-night diner a few blocks away, so I got my coat from my room, and went looking for that diner. Found it, had some okay pie, and then on the way back to the motel, I got mugged.”
A disbelieving snort erupted from Andy at that point, which in turn brought forth a supremely cynical quirk of Red’s lips. “Yeah, ain’t that some shit? A forty-year con gets yanked into some alley and threatened for his wallet, like I was nothing more than a candy-ass member of the public? Hell, if I’d heard about it from someone else sharing our cellblock, I’d have laughed my head off!”
Red then had his sardonic mood abruptly change into actual apprehension at remembering it all over again. “But right then and there, I was instead just barely keeping from pissing my drawers. See, it wasn’t some ordinary mugging, and whoever just grabbed me, he wasn’t some ordinary goon, either. I got tipped off ‘bout that when I was manhandled without the least bit of trouble, Andy. I’m talking here, and you can believe me or not, over getting snatched off the sidewalk into the alley, and then lifted up and slammed hard into the wall by the guy using just his one hand!”
Ignoring how Andy was gaping at him, Red shivered. “Things soon turned even more outlandish. I got a nasty crack at the back of my head from hitting the wall, and maybe that might’ve explained the rest of it. I really, really hope so. Because when I looked down at the guy who was still holding me up without any problem, he was wearing one hell of a convincing monster mask with ugly skin, glowing yellow eyes, and a mouthful of fangs. He also didn’t have no problem talking through all that, what with him telling me in some funny accent his name was Spike, but I didn't have to bother with remembering that 'cause he was gonna drain me dry and then dump my dead body in the alley!”
“How did you--” came from an awed Andy.
This was broken into by Red’s implacable voice, “Just let me get it out in one go, all right? I gave the other guy a pretty feeble kick, which didn’t do nothing except make him grin even nastier at me and watch to see what I did next. Well, there was only one thing left to try, so I reached into my coat pocket and grabbed onto your rock there, which I’d never taken out ever on the bus or at the motel. I had a real firm hold on it, so I yanked it out and as fast as I could, I smacked it awfully hard against the side of his head like a set of brass knuckles.”
Red paused a moment to take a deep breath. “All I expected was maybe for that to put the mugger out cold. It wouldn’t have bothered me a bit if it’d been permanent. Instead, me and him, we got a hell of a shock. When that rock walloped my mugger, the damn thing went off like a big firecracker, all white light and an almighty bang! Strangest of all, I didn’t feel anything in my hand holding the rock, no blast or heat which should’ve blown off every one of my fingers.”
Another inhalation was taken by the former Maine inmate. “Him, on the other hand, his hair lit right up like a bonfire. I got straightaway let go by that mugger, who started trying to smother his burning head with both bare hands, along with running off deeper into the alley. This came with him yelling fit to kill all the while. Once I was back up on my feet from where I’d been dumped, I made tracks of my own. Didn’t bother to check out of the motel; instead, I ran to the bus station and took the first available one there. Stayed awake the rest of the night and barely slept a wink the next night, all while riding the buses. Along the way, I found out I’d probably lost the rock back in the alley; I sure as hell didn’t have it anymore. It wasn’t until I got to the border that I finally felt safe.”
At the finish of his incredible story, Red sent a gimlet eye at where Andy now had his own mouth hanging open. “So, what the fuck was that damn rock?”
Andy sputtered for several moments while waving his hands helplessly, “I don’t-- That couldn’t--”
Eventually, he took a deep breath of his own to come out with in a very careful tone, “Listen, Red, whatever else happened to you, that rock couldn’t have been any part of it!”
A very skeptical glance from his friend greeted this information, causing Andy to argue further, “The only reason I used that piece of obsidian is because it was so unique and couldn’t be mistaken for anything else. Unless you knew it had no business being there, it’d otherwise be ignored by anyone who looked at the stone wall. I told you a few minutes ago it was a souvenir, and that’s the honest truth. On our honeymoon trip before the war, my wife and I went to Hawaii, and we visited a nature park out in the country consisting of a lava field, with parts of it still flowing like a molten river. That rock was a solid lump of cooled lava I found there.”
Andy smirked towards Red. “You know quite well I’m interested in geology, and I was back then too.”
Despite his irritation at not being taken seriously, Red had to grin at what Andy just said. That other man’s amazing escape from Shawshank had been successful due in great measure to the banker falsely convicted of the murder of his wife and her lover possessing a side hobby consisting of the study of rocks and minerals.
Red leaned back in his chair, listening to Andy talk. “The rock you found and took from Buxton, I did the same thing in Hawaii, really. It came back home with us in our luggage, and I kept it around the house as a fine example of volcanic glass. When I was preparing for the worse during my trial, it went into the safe deposit box my lawyer set up for me under an assumed name. After my escape, I removed the rock from there and used it to mark what I left for you in that field. Now, throughout all that, the rock wasn’t different in any way from what it was in the almost thirty years I had it, or in all the possibly thousands or even millions of years it existed in Hawaii, just like all the other rocks still there. Which, I have to say again, don’t ever behave the way you described it doing when you hit the mugger with it!”
“Huh,” thoughtfully commented Red, adding, “You mean, you can’t think of any reasonable answer to the whole weird thing?”
Andy just shrugged in real sympathy. “I’m afraid so, Red. Unless we ever find out anything more, it looks like it’ll stay a complete mystery. Just count yourself lucky--”
For the next few moments, there was only the low crash of the surf while a surprised Red regarded how Andy had suddenly developed a very astonished expression right after cutting himself off in mid-sentence. At last becoming impatient, Red prompted, “What’s up, Andy? You figured it out now?”
Bringing his attention back to the beach, Andy sent a most rueful smile towards his friend. “Not the way you think, Red. Just an odd thought, about something I read in the prison library a few years ago. I came across an article in a travel magazine donated there, about the same Hawaiian park where I found and took home that piece of obsidian. It seems over the decades, a lot of other visitors did the same thing, and the natives weren’t happy about it at all. They claimed that Pelé, the local goddess of volcanoes, put a curse of serious misfortune against anyone who stole her rocks. The really bizarre part of the article was that some of the tourists definitely had enough bad luck so that they either brought back in person their lava rocks to the park, or mailed them to the local post office to have these stones returned to their proper place.”
Red stared in disbelief at where Andy was sheepishly meeting his incredulous gaze. The black man blurted out, “And you actually think that rock was cursed?”
Andy then gave Red a truly deadpan look. “Most people would consider an innocent man being sent to prison for twenty years and then nearly kill himself breaking out of there to be the most perfect example possible of bad luck, Red.”
Rolling his eyes, Red inwardly conceded Andy had a really good point. Still, if he was going along with Andy’s wild idea, something needed to be mentioned. “What about me? I didn’t take that damn rock from where you said you lifted it. So, how come I nearly got murdered by that bastard mugger?”
Andy sent a truly wicked grin towards the man he’d come to consider the best friend this former banker ever had in his whole life. “It could be argued that since you were bringing the rock both back to me and nearer to its former home in Hawaii, you weren’t actually under Pelé’s curse. No, the guy who threatened you, he got the full force of the jinx. Plus, since it’s also his fault you lost the rock so that Pelé will have to wait even longer to get it back, it’s likely he’ll be plagued with a lot more hard luck in the future, won’t he?”
Thinking this over, Red’s contemplation was interrupted by seeing from out the corner of his eye Andy’s twitching mouth. A second later, unable to hold it back any more, the ex-banker started laughing out loud over the fine joke he’d just pulled on his buddy to ease that other man’s recent bad memories. At first, this realization of Andy’s teasing made Red feel actual outrage, until it occurred to him that for the first time since the attack, he wasn’t all that much bothered by remembering this.
White teeth flashing in the darkness, Red affectionately said, “Andy, you’re a first-rate asshole.”
“Takes one to know one,” snickered Andy. He rose from his chair, extending a hand to Red. “C’mon, let’s head to my shack and turn in. I’ll show you around the beach tomorrow, and we can find you a place of your own.”
Taking Andy’s calloused hand, Red got up, and as the two men left the ocean behind, he amiably ended their conversation, “Sounds good to me, Andy.”
Author: Manchester
Rating: FR15
Crossover: The Shawshank Redemption
Disclaimer: I own nothing. All Buffy the Vampire Slayer and The Shawshank Redemption characters are the property of their original owners.
Summary: The story wasn’t quite over with when Red finally met Andy on the beach at Zihuatanejo.
Andy and Red had been talking for hours about their lives since the last time they’d seen each other. The two men finally became silent to watch together the Technicolor sunset happened in front of them both relaxing in their chairs on the sand.
When it was all over with, the gaudy yellow-orange-red orb disappearing from sight far out in the Pacific Ocean beyond the pair of former convicts, Andy observed with some puzzlement at how Red then warily glanced around in the descending darkness. His mystification only increased further at his friend’s next offhand remark, “Andy, you remember the rock you used to mark your cache in that field back at Buxton?”
“Uh, what?!” was the best a startled Andy could manage, completely thrown for a loop by this unexpected question.
Red nodded his grizzled head. “Yeah, that one. What I want to know is, was it made out of some weird stuff like, uh, those things they use in atom bombs? So that if it gets pounded hard against something, it goes off like nitro?”
Andy now stared in his utter disbelief at the man sitting next to him. After a few more moments of out-and-out perplexity, the escapee from Shawshank Prison then stated, “Absolutely not, Red! That rock’s just a piece of natural glass called obsidian, something I picked up as a souvenir a long time ago. Why the hell are you asking this for in the first place? I mean, because you’re here, you obviously didn’t have any trouble finding--”
“Saw it right away lying there at that stone wall,” agreed Red, interrupting the other man. He went on in the face of Andy’s evident confusion, “No, it was what happened later on that made me wonder all the rest of my trip. Let me just tell you the whole story, okay?”
At Andy’s cautious half-shrug of acceptance, Red settled back into his chair. He began, “Like I said, I didn’t have a problem with missing where you’d put the rock, what with it being all black and shiny. Anyway, I got it out and found the money and letter you left for me in the hollow behind the rock. When I was walking out of the field, though, besides that stuff put away in my coat pockets, I also had the rock in there.”
“Why?” asked a fascinated Andy.
Red sent a faint smile at his friend. “No real reason, Andy. Just sort of thought it wouldn’t do to toss it away, like I did with the little box what you hid there to hold the other stuff. Now, as I told you before, I also left everything back in Maine: my parole officer, the crappy job he got me, and all the rest of my old life without a second thought. Made a few hops around the area to cover my tracks before taking a cross-country bus, all without any trouble. Though, there was one damn tight spot for me, which happened on the first night out.”
Andy straightened up in his chair to gaze in sudden worry at Red himself looking blankly off at the ocean horizon now almost totally dark. Starting to speak in a flat monotone, Red continued, “It was at the bus layover, some place just before Philadelphia. I got a single room at a two-bit motel, went to sleep and then woke up a while on from a nightmare where I was back at Shawshank and wasn’t ever gonna do anything but die in there.”
Andy winced with real sympathy. Nevertheless, he listened to the following terse narration, “Got out of bed, got dressed, took out your money I was keeping safe under the mattress, and headed to the front desk. I asked the guy at the desk if there was any place open close by for a cup of coffee and a slice of pie to clear my head. He told me about an all-night diner a few blocks away, so I got my coat from my room, and went looking for that diner. Found it, had some okay pie, and then on the way back to the motel, I got mugged.”
A disbelieving snort erupted from Andy at that point, which in turn brought forth a supremely cynical quirk of Red’s lips. “Yeah, ain’t that some shit? A forty-year con gets yanked into some alley and threatened for his wallet, like I was nothing more than a candy-ass member of the public? Hell, if I’d heard about it from someone else sharing our cellblock, I’d have laughed my head off!”
Red then had his sardonic mood abruptly change into actual apprehension at remembering it all over again. “But right then and there, I was instead just barely keeping from pissing my drawers. See, it wasn’t some ordinary mugging, and whoever just grabbed me, he wasn’t some ordinary goon, either. I got tipped off ‘bout that when I was manhandled without the least bit of trouble, Andy. I’m talking here, and you can believe me or not, over getting snatched off the sidewalk into the alley, and then lifted up and slammed hard into the wall by the guy using just his one hand!”
Ignoring how Andy was gaping at him, Red shivered. “Things soon turned even more outlandish. I got a nasty crack at the back of my head from hitting the wall, and maybe that might’ve explained the rest of it. I really, really hope so. Because when I looked down at the guy who was still holding me up without any problem, he was wearing one hell of a convincing monster mask with ugly skin, glowing yellow eyes, and a mouthful of fangs. He also didn’t have no problem talking through all that, what with him telling me in some funny accent his name was Spike, but I didn't have to bother with remembering that 'cause he was gonna drain me dry and then dump my dead body in the alley!”
“How did you--” came from an awed Andy.
This was broken into by Red’s implacable voice, “Just let me get it out in one go, all right? I gave the other guy a pretty feeble kick, which didn’t do nothing except make him grin even nastier at me and watch to see what I did next. Well, there was only one thing left to try, so I reached into my coat pocket and grabbed onto your rock there, which I’d never taken out ever on the bus or at the motel. I had a real firm hold on it, so I yanked it out and as fast as I could, I smacked it awfully hard against the side of his head like a set of brass knuckles.”
Red paused a moment to take a deep breath. “All I expected was maybe for that to put the mugger out cold. It wouldn’t have bothered me a bit if it’d been permanent. Instead, me and him, we got a hell of a shock. When that rock walloped my mugger, the damn thing went off like a big firecracker, all white light and an almighty bang! Strangest of all, I didn’t feel anything in my hand holding the rock, no blast or heat which should’ve blown off every one of my fingers.”
Another inhalation was taken by the former Maine inmate. “Him, on the other hand, his hair lit right up like a bonfire. I got straightaway let go by that mugger, who started trying to smother his burning head with both bare hands, along with running off deeper into the alley. This came with him yelling fit to kill all the while. Once I was back up on my feet from where I’d been dumped, I made tracks of my own. Didn’t bother to check out of the motel; instead, I ran to the bus station and took the first available one there. Stayed awake the rest of the night and barely slept a wink the next night, all while riding the buses. Along the way, I found out I’d probably lost the rock back in the alley; I sure as hell didn’t have it anymore. It wasn’t until I got to the border that I finally felt safe.”
At the finish of his incredible story, Red sent a gimlet eye at where Andy now had his own mouth hanging open. “So, what the fuck was that damn rock?”
Andy sputtered for several moments while waving his hands helplessly, “I don’t-- That couldn’t--”
Eventually, he took a deep breath of his own to come out with in a very careful tone, “Listen, Red, whatever else happened to you, that rock couldn’t have been any part of it!”
A very skeptical glance from his friend greeted this information, causing Andy to argue further, “The only reason I used that piece of obsidian is because it was so unique and couldn’t be mistaken for anything else. Unless you knew it had no business being there, it’d otherwise be ignored by anyone who looked at the stone wall. I told you a few minutes ago it was a souvenir, and that’s the honest truth. On our honeymoon trip before the war, my wife and I went to Hawaii, and we visited a nature park out in the country consisting of a lava field, with parts of it still flowing like a molten river. That rock was a solid lump of cooled lava I found there.”
Andy smirked towards Red. “You know quite well I’m interested in geology, and I was back then too.”
Despite his irritation at not being taken seriously, Red had to grin at what Andy just said. That other man’s amazing escape from Shawshank had been successful due in great measure to the banker falsely convicted of the murder of his wife and her lover possessing a side hobby consisting of the study of rocks and minerals.
Red leaned back in his chair, listening to Andy talk. “The rock you found and took from Buxton, I did the same thing in Hawaii, really. It came back home with us in our luggage, and I kept it around the house as a fine example of volcanic glass. When I was preparing for the worse during my trial, it went into the safe deposit box my lawyer set up for me under an assumed name. After my escape, I removed the rock from there and used it to mark what I left for you in that field. Now, throughout all that, the rock wasn’t different in any way from what it was in the almost thirty years I had it, or in all the possibly thousands or even millions of years it existed in Hawaii, just like all the other rocks still there. Which, I have to say again, don’t ever behave the way you described it doing when you hit the mugger with it!”
“Huh,” thoughtfully commented Red, adding, “You mean, you can’t think of any reasonable answer to the whole weird thing?”
Andy just shrugged in real sympathy. “I’m afraid so, Red. Unless we ever find out anything more, it looks like it’ll stay a complete mystery. Just count yourself lucky--”
For the next few moments, there was only the low crash of the surf while a surprised Red regarded how Andy had suddenly developed a very astonished expression right after cutting himself off in mid-sentence. At last becoming impatient, Red prompted, “What’s up, Andy? You figured it out now?”
Bringing his attention back to the beach, Andy sent a most rueful smile towards his friend. “Not the way you think, Red. Just an odd thought, about something I read in the prison library a few years ago. I came across an article in a travel magazine donated there, about the same Hawaiian park where I found and took home that piece of obsidian. It seems over the decades, a lot of other visitors did the same thing, and the natives weren’t happy about it at all. They claimed that Pelé, the local goddess of volcanoes, put a curse of serious misfortune against anyone who stole her rocks. The really bizarre part of the article was that some of the tourists definitely had enough bad luck so that they either brought back in person their lava rocks to the park, or mailed them to the local post office to have these stones returned to their proper place.”
Red stared in disbelief at where Andy was sheepishly meeting his incredulous gaze. The black man blurted out, “And you actually think that rock was cursed?”
Andy then gave Red a truly deadpan look. “Most people would consider an innocent man being sent to prison for twenty years and then nearly kill himself breaking out of there to be the most perfect example possible of bad luck, Red.”
Rolling his eyes, Red inwardly conceded Andy had a really good point. Still, if he was going along with Andy’s wild idea, something needed to be mentioned. “What about me? I didn’t take that damn rock from where you said you lifted it. So, how come I nearly got murdered by that bastard mugger?”
Andy sent a truly wicked grin towards the man he’d come to consider the best friend this former banker ever had in his whole life. “It could be argued that since you were bringing the rock both back to me and nearer to its former home in Hawaii, you weren’t actually under Pelé’s curse. No, the guy who threatened you, he got the full force of the jinx. Plus, since it’s also his fault you lost the rock so that Pelé will have to wait even longer to get it back, it’s likely he’ll be plagued with a lot more hard luck in the future, won’t he?”
Thinking this over, Red’s contemplation was interrupted by seeing from out the corner of his eye Andy’s twitching mouth. A second later, unable to hold it back any more, the ex-banker started laughing out loud over the fine joke he’d just pulled on his buddy to ease that other man’s recent bad memories. At first, this realization of Andy’s teasing made Red feel actual outrage, until it occurred to him that for the first time since the attack, he wasn’t all that much bothered by remembering this.
White teeth flashing in the darkness, Red affectionately said, “Andy, you’re a first-rate asshole.”
“Takes one to know one,” snickered Andy. He rose from his chair, extending a hand to Red. “C’mon, let’s head to my shack and turn in. I’ll show you around the beach tomorrow, and we can find you a place of your own.”
Taking Andy’s calloused hand, Red got up, and as the two men left the ocean behind, he amiably ended their conversation, “Sounds good to me, Andy.”