Runaway
by Claire Splan
My feet hit the asphalt road in a steady beat. The old, battered Nikes do little to absorb the hammering shock of each step but I don’t let that slow me. My toes curl slightly, cramped in the dingy, too-small shoes. They were a bad fit even when they were new but I kept them because … I don’t really know why I kept them. I guess I’m just not good at letting go of things.
It is barely daybreak and the sky is lit orange and a fiery red. I’m not used to being up at this hour and every limb is protesting, but I can’t stop and rest, can’t even slow down. So I pound on down the dry, dead road that takes me away, because away is all that’s left.
There’s no one else on the road at this hour but my ears are tuned for the sound of a car behind me. If I can make it into town without anyone stopping me, I can make my way to the bus station and catch a bus, any bus. There is a worn leather wallet in my zippered jacket pocket. It is not my wallet and I’m not sure exactly how much money is in it, but it will have to be enough for a bus ticket somewhere, anywhere.
If I have a choice, I’ll head north, maybe to Washington. We went to Neah Bay once, back when things were good, and I’d like to see it again. It feels like you’re on the edge of the world there, with nothing but emerald waters in front of you and ragged, tree-lined cliffs behind you. I could camp there or get a cabin. But then I remember that it is on tribal land and you have to get a permit to camp and that might not be smart.
I start to feel a stitch in my right side, a cramping that forces me to stop and bend over, gasping for breath. I put my hand to my side and it hurts, but I can’t tell where the pain from the cramping ends and the pain in my hand starts. My knuckles are swollen and bruises are starting to color, while my palm feels pulpy and tender to the touch. Later today I’ll need to find some ice to put on it, but for now it doesn’t matter.
As I crouch on the side of the road, buckled in pain, I notice splashes of blood on my shoes. The shoes are so dirty that the blood stains are not obvious, thank god. But then I spot dark rims of dried blood on my cuticles and under my fingernails. I’ll have to remember to go to the restroom to wash my hands again before I go to the ticket window. I wonder if there is more blood on me that I can’t see. Is it on my face? In my hair? I imagine I can taste it on my tongue, an ugly metallic taste.
I force myself to breathe through the cramp until it subsides and I start to run again. I wish I could have taken the car, but I didn’t dare. Too easy to track. But the bicycle! It just now occurs to me that I could have taken the bike. It would have been faster and easy enough to ditch. No one would have noticed it gone from the back of the garage. Not with the bloody mess I left behind at the front of the garage.
Too late now, so I just keep running.
And suddenly I hear a car coming up behind me. I swerve to the side of the road but keep my pace, not speeding up, not slowing down. I try to look like just another runner out for a morning run, so I throw back my shoulders and lift my chin, fix my eyes on the horizon ahead of me. The absence of a siren is disorienting and I fixate on the sound of the engine growing closer. I want to hold my breath, but instead I puff out my cheeks with each exhalation, one steady blow after another.
A black Dodge Ram that’s seen better days passes me by without slowing and I keep up my pace until it is well out of eyesight and then I fold up like a worn-out lawn chair on the side of the road, gasping with fear and relief and more fear. It is full daylight now and if I don’t get going, there will be more cars on the road, more chances of being seen. So I pick myself up and start again, walking first, then quickening into a grinding run.
I run like a person who no longer knows if they’re chasing something or being chased. Like a person who can’t remember who started the fight but knows all too well who finished it. Like a person who is sorry, but more than sorry, who is relieved. Sorrow and regret and shame—they’re like lead weights dragging at my heels. But relief—that’s what gives me wings, what makes it possible for me to fly down this dusty road, what helps me to believe, even if only for a few minutes at a time, that something better awaits me at the end of it.
And then I hear the siren.
Claire Splan is a writer living in Alameda, California. Claire is the author of California Fruit & VegetableGardening and California Month-by-Month Gardening (both published by Cool Springs Press) and her previous work has appeared in Waxing & Waning, Rosebud, San DiegoUnion-Tribune, San Francisco Chronicle, and Firsts: The Book Collectors Magazine. She can be reached at CASplan@sbcglobal.net and you can follow her on Twitter @ClaireSplan.