Follow Tomorrow
Eugene Findlay, guest of His Majesty’s, prisoner number NM9409, smuggled a pen into the security vehicle and punctured the guard’s forearm three times before wriggling free and slipping into the woods by the road.
I didn’t have time to worry about my colleague’s health, or the unlocked handcuffs, or where the prisoner hid that damn pen. Sitting up front with the driver all seemed well until we heard screaming and pounding on the partition. By then Eugene was gone and it was my job to run.
The trees ahead crackled. He was moving fast but left a trail. The forest darkened the morning sunlight, as though a curtain had been drawn, the transport left behind, communications lost. In the mayhem I’d forgotten my radio. I ran, settling into a rhythm of lung and limb, the baton swaying from my belt. Regulations stated we could hit only the legs and the arms but I planned on giving Eugene a sound, old-school braining.
I wondered if he knew where he was going, and what was going through his mind as he ran. What experience he had. Long distance running is a solitary pursuit. I was rusty but trusted myself. If he could run me off, he was welcome to his freedom.
My maternal grandfather taught me how to run, or how not to run, depending on circumstance. Running in itself doesn’t generally need teaching. But my grandfather taught me how to really run – by inhaling through the mouth and exhaling out the nostrils; by pacing yourself religiously and damn anyone else; by not glugging gallons of water unless you want a stitch; by visiting the bathroom before and not during. His methods were endless. In a competitive race, psychology surpasses the mechanics of putting one foot in front of the other, and my grandfather knew every scam and trick.
‘Jist aim fur the horizon and dinnae stop til ye get there.’
‘Cut a wee hole in yer pocket so ye can pee oot the side.’
‘It’s only a foul if sumbdy sees ye kickin’ the other fella’s heels.’
Of course, the hard part was getting within kicking distance in the first place.
Eugene crashed through the forest and into the daylight. For a moment I lost him, the trees a screen, his footfall quietened by the turf of a cow field. I ran harder, burst through the perimeter of branches. He had left a trail of deep footprints and broken foliage. And our eyes met.
He was a hundred feet away, breathing hard but not red in the face. I felt well myself, but I stumbled and held my stomach. Let him see the tired, unfit guard he hoped for. I fancied he smiled and mouthed a few derogatory words, and then was off again, running with tight elbows and straight spine, a proper military stride. I cursed aloud and gave chase. Sprinting until my chest ached, I settled into a rhythmic foot, foot, gasp, foot, foot, gasp. Ahead, the field merged into another and another. The landscape sunk like a basin, a gallery of mountains all around.
My eyes focused on Eugene’s sandpaper head, nodding above his yellow uniform, neither pulling away nor falling back. I breathed in long, cold waves. We crossed the field at a slow pace. The ground was uneven and sludgy, and the cows had a curious habit of standing nonchalantly in the way. Our tempo was so steady you could have tied a rope between us. I wasn’t sure how long I could run but I knew it would be longer than Eugene.
At school sports days I was always third in the sprint and first by an embarrassing margin in the 1000 metres. My scout leader nicknamed me ‘Lungs Eleven’ for my knack of carrying on long after the speedfreaks had got bored or collapsed. I couldn’t match a burst of acceleration, but when we ran distance – 1500 metres, cross country, half marathons – I would blitz the others and cross the finishing line with the field clear out of sight.
Of course, the standard wasn’t the highest. When I ran against other schools and scout brigades I was eclipsed on more than one occasion, by whippets who ran long and quick into the evening, dragging me in their shadow round tracks and across terrain.
I never looked an athlete, which made my success all the more remarkable to observers. At the starting line I would bounce from foot to foot, shorts too tight, shoelace undone. You can beat a fellow even then, provided he’s not a Clydeside Harrier, with just a few little tricks.
It may sound unsporting, but there was my grandfather’s bloodthirsty spirit rubbing off. Besides, it’s easy to cultivate complacency. Simply scratch your buttocks, belch and ask a few likely-looking competitors if they know what the weather’s to be like that afternoon. Hubris is a wonderful thing, used correctly.
I wouldn’t advise this for everyone. It was an approach that compensated for my lack of pace and technique. For I was not an attractive runner. I was cumbersome, all elbows and buttocks, prone to falling over and, for some unknown reason, could never find well-fitting attire no matter how hard I tried. My shorts would either fall around my knees or cling to my backside like a second skin.
When I turned eighteen a world of cigarettes and beer and girls opened up to me, and I gave running up. I stayed healthy enough to coast the fitness test of the prison service, but the days of pounding feet and desperate breath were well behind me. But I didn’t want Eugene cottoning onto that.
We ran for two hours. Scaling fences and ripping our crotches on barbed wire, stodging through marsh and doing our best to avoid divots. My temples thumped. Eugene, never much more or less than a hundred yards ahead, wouldn’t know the time elapsed. Prisoners were forbidden a wristwatch. Whether he could calculate time by studying the high, beating sun is another matter.
I worried how long this could last, as sweat ran down my neck and blisters formed on my toes. There would be a pack of police dogs sniffing out the distant forest floor by now. I guessed men could run for six or seven hours without water. But Eugene was running for freedom, something of a wildcard, difficult to quantify. I was running on the same inherent stubbornness as always, and not much more.
The baton was bruising my thigh. With my right hand I unhooked and gripped it, whistling through the air. The thought was in my mind that Eugene might settle for high ground, arm himself with whatever he could improvise, and fight it out. What kind of a farcical conflict that would be I didn’t like to speculate. Exhausted, dried out, swinging at one another’s heads. Not a pleasant prospect.
And not something I anticipated when I joined the prison service, jettisoning all the derision and guidance my grandfather had showered on me.
His lessons stuck though. The Governor of the prison was a fanatic for interdisciplinary sports, as he called them. Every year he ordered the Inmate’s Olympics, a multi-event, three-day spectacular that created enormous security risks and was taken seriously by everyone but the prisoners. There was also the Convict’s Cup, a bi-annual football match which habitually descended into a barbarous game of mutual comeuppance. Having avoided participation in these deathmatches (I was substitute goalie and official tea boy of the guards team), it was only a matter of course that the Governor should discover one of the county’s finest under-eighteen cross country runners working on his staff. I feared the ghastly schemes he would think up.
The news arrived in a memo stapled to the canteen notice-board. A muddling crowd of prisoners and guards read it and the message soon passed over the tables.
‘See there’s tae be a prison marafon.’
‘Wi aw the prisoners and guerds takin’ part at ra same time.’
‘Ach, I cannae run a bliddy marafon, no at my age.’
‘You’re twenty eight, ya fat bass.’
‘Sez ye huv tae, unless ye’ve got medical grounds.’
I kept my own counsel. Clearly I had to run; there was no reason not to. When the day came, I won by default more than anything. I was one of only six guards who finished the vile course plotted out by the Governor, winding several times around the perimeter of the prison complex, cutting through the chaplaincy and nearly dying on a steep incline in the car park.
Whether the rest got lost or passed out, I never did learn. There were rumours that some of the guards had retired with injuries sustained in suspicious tripping incidents with apologetic inmates. The Governor greeted me at the finishing line. He squeezed my hand and stuffed nougat between my modest lips, crying out that I’d spanked the whole field, by Jove, good show.
This was sadly accurate. An hour and ten minutes later, the runner-up appeared, a crimson-faced, trembling inmate. He collapsed on the tarmac and was relayed direct to the infirmary. Through the night, stragglers arrived, death on their breath, crawling on hands and knees. The Governor reprised his enthusiasm every time another body swung zigzagging round the corner, crying out, waving his hands, coaxing them forward like a new owner with a hesitant dog.
The upshot was that the majority of the guards, shamefully unfit, had to attend physical education seminars, while I was crowned HMP Marathon Champion and endured several weeks of withering glares. And from then I was on duty whenever we had a prisoner transfer to conduct, with the inference being that if an inmate escaped the escort and took flight, I could run him down. It was never clarified what I was to do if I caught the runaway.
Four hours passed. We skirted a loch. Eugene was glancing backwards more and more, limping. Tiring. As was I, with a vicious pain in my skull and a chronically dry tongue. My eyes stayed fixed on the runaway, my mind blinkered everything except the next step and the step after that. Foot, foot, gasp, foot, foot, gasp. And then Eugene, in his luminous outfit, stopped dead in his tracks.
I paused and gasped, nearly doubling over as my lungs contracted. I wished Eugene would collapse there and then, but he turned round, held his hands out, and shouted. The echo strained through the air, reaching me a moment after his lips moved.
‘Cin ye no just bugger aff and go hame?’ He pointed over my head, in the direction we’d come from. ‘Go on, ya evil dobber. Jist leave me be!’
I shook my head and gestured with open palms. I couldn’t leave him be. He knew as well as I did.
‘But ah’m dyin’ a ra thirst, sir.’
The formality surprised me. Well, I was still in uniform. And in complete agreement. I could have run on to narrow his lead, but I knew I’d be on fumes and didn’t want to rile him. I nodded. Eugene fell onto his hands and knees, and crawled to the water’s edge. I did too, drinking like a dog, sucking and lapping at the waves, swallowing with a real and grateful thirst; but not too much, grandfather.
We ran again, vigour renewed. Ahead, Eugene’s body shape tightened, galloping uphill. I wondered if he might fight it out now, but no longer expected it. Eugene didn’t seem the type.
I considered my aches and niggles: lungs and knees working fine, headache subsided. Foot, foot, gasp. My shins ached from impact and my bowels were tight. The constant up and down motion was causing discomfort of the most inappropriate kind. I couldn’t stop again. That was unthinkable. Eugene would skip out of sight before I could unbuckle and find a private corner to squat down.
Just then, an odour hit my nostrils. I thought it was manure, or fertiliser, or whatever makes the country smell. But no. It was underfoot, splattered fresh on the grass, spread out in Eugene’s wake. He had opted to just go as he ran.
Almost instantly, I followed suit. A wet warmth splattered between my thighs and ran down my legs. I gagged and farted. The aroma and shame were staggering. It slipped into my socks and left a filthy trail behind me.
I began to chase Eugene, rather than just follow him. I chased him angrily in soiled trousers.
But he was a fine cross country runner, and as I picked up my pace he did too. I knew what motivated him. Family, friends, and freedom. His conviction was for attempted manslaughter – something to do with his daughter’s boyfriend. His reputation among the guards was as a frustrated man. But it was never our duty to question the decision of the courts. This was one of the Governor’s mandates.
He would hate me, Eugene, hate me for chasing him and for not letting him live his life. Only escape me and he’d be free. It’d be easy enough to disappear into the countryside, change clothes, arrange to be hidden away. But he had to get rid of me first.
He continued uphill. I began to toil and as my joints and hips burned I admired Eugene all the more for his guts. If he had no history or pedigree of cross country running I’d be stunned. I couldn’t remember another runner dragging me so hard. The imaginary rope between us was stretching, taut and strained.
The ground was deceptive and sodden. Once or twice I stumbled and ran doubled over, regaining my poise, and on another occasion my heel caught in the mud and I slid, skating madly on the sole of one shoe, arms flailing and control lost, but managed to stay upright. I had seen Eugene struggle also. And then, silently, he went down.
Both feet embedded. He dropped to his knees, and then to his face. He pushed himself up and tried to go, but his legs were spent. He howled and rolled onto his back, chest heaving.
I slowed. For a moment I thought I’d crumple too, but my grandfather’s voice was there, cajoling and sledging me. I jogged to within twenty feet, baton in my grip, wary of an ambush. The birdsong and light breeze mingled with our rasping breath. Eugene lay horizontal.
He looked up, eyes pink and wide. Shook his head. I wasn’t sure which he disapproved of most – himself for not making a triumphant getaway, or me for not letting him.
The countryside was blissful; blue skies, purple heather, ice-cream sheep. And in the middle, two men. One down and defenceless, the other wielding a hardwood baton. I could see us both, as from a height, either side of the finishing line.
I turned my back on the runaway and left him alone. I could rehydrate and clean up at the loch, and from there head back to the road. I’d be empty-handed and the Governor would be enraged, but when he saw the blood in my boots he would know that a great battle had taken place, which for him was consolation of a sort.
I was moving downhill again when a voice sounded. I turned and saw Eugene on his feet again, following me.
‘Oi! Hud oan, sir. Hud on. Jist waitaminnit.’ He rubbed his sunburnt scalp. ‘Ah’ll come wi ye.’ He held his hands out, wrists together, radiant in his uniform.
By day, Alan Gillespie works for a slightly evil global corporation. By night, he studies part-time at Glasgow University. He likes sweetcorn and penguins.
