They chase me. I don't know why. They already killed me. They carried out my sentence, but they still won’t let me be. I’m not a nice man, but I don’t deserve this.
The other fellas on death row, they told me, "Just don't fall asleep. Don't give in and don't close your eyes and you can survive the injection." They said, "If anyone can do it, Big Johnny, it's you." I think they were counting on me to give them hope. To show them that someone can escape. I’m the first one in the state to be killed like this, with a needle instead of the Chair. Those jokers had no idea what would happen, how long it would take or how much to give me. God, I’m hoping it was too little to do the job on a guy like me. The other guys waiting their turn told me, "Just make it through one more day and as long as your heart keeps pumping the poison will work its way out of your system."
As I run, I tell myself I’m a juggernaut, even though I know I’m exactly the opposite. I’m a big candle with a weak flame, unsure of when I’ll drown in my own melted wax.
So I still run and they still chase me. The poison courses faster through my veins.
I didn't do it. I didn't murder that guy or his family. It was their own fault. I tried to hook up their stove for them. I would have done it right. There wouldn't have been no gas leak and there wouldn't have been no burnt bodies.
Sure he was a jerk. Sure I wanted to kill him. But I didn't. They just said I did.
There's a irrigation ditch ahead. Maybe I can rest there. I hear the bloodhounds howling along my trail, but I need to rest. It's a short jump down. God damn it! It's muddy. The legs of my orange prison jump suit are soaked. I don't think I'm going to get that rubber flip flop out of the mud. Fuck it. I don't need it. I just need to rest.
So tired. I feel my heart pumping under my chest. Heavy and arrhythmic. Just have to close my eyes. So drowsy. I have to...
NO!
Like the boys on death row said, I just have to stay awake. Just keep moving.
Those howls are coming closer. Maybe if I follow along this muddy ditch they won't see me. Maybe the mud will absorb my scent. God damn, it's hard to run through his slop!
Stupid! Stupid! Stupid! I shouldn't have ever jumped in this ditch. I hear them even closer now. They're going to get me, and when they do they'll tie me down, I'll nod off, and that will be it. I'll sleep forever. No way. I got to keep going.
Shit! There is a dog standing over the lip of the ditch. He hasn’t spotted me yet. I must be up-wind. The guards will be right after that damn dog, and they'll see me. Only one choice I got, really.
Into the mud.
It's deep. Deep enough to swallow me whole. The whiskey-colored water is the flavor of dogshit, but it hides me. I just have to hold me breath and stay under.
Down here, everything is black and warm. I imagine it's like a womb. There's only the muffled noise of the water jostling around me. My eyes are already closed. I feel like I'm drunk at midnight. Nevermind it's nine in the morning. Nine in the morning of my last day.
Fuck all that last meal bullshit. My last request was for a key to the front gate. Turns out I didn't need it. Broke through the door to where the witnesses sat to watch me die. They don't lock the innocent people in. I charged right through the screaming crowd, right out to the unfenced parking lot and out of sharpshooter range before they knew what was up.
So quiet down here in the mud. I let memories of my life flow over me like the stinking water, memories of jobs I quit or got fired from, of all the little crimes I was guilty of but never got caught, of a couple ex-wives I’d rather not remember. Never had kids, none that I know of anyway. They’ll be better off not knowing me, I suppose. The memories wash over me and from me. I feel drunk. It's so peaceful.
Fuck that! This mud is a fucking coffin. I kick like I'm fighting off blankets mid-nightmare. I got to stay awake. Got to keep moving. If I sleep, I die.
I rise out of the mud and gasp for air and for life. I cough out the stink of dirt and filth. I wipe my eyes clean. As the liquid runs out of my ears, I can hear the barks of the dogs and the commands of the guards. Their footprints go down into the ditch and then back up on the other side.
They passed me by.
My orange clothes are now black. My human scent is now layered in earth. If I can put enough distance between myself and the execution chamber, and if I can keep my consciousness I just might make it.
I run further down the ditch. I keep moving my legs, no matter how hot my muscles burn. I figure if I keep moving, I can't fall asleep, and if I don't fall asleep, I can't die. It's strange being this close to death. I found out what really matters most to me. Apparently what matters most is being alive.
I don't deserve the injection they gave me. That guy? He called me an idiot while I installed his stove. Called me a mongoloid, whatever that means. Retarded, I guess. So sure, I didn't finish the job. I throttled him around the neck and bounced his skull off his fridge. He had it coming, but he was still breathing when I left. He was the one who finished the install job, botched the gas line connection and burnt his house and family to matchsticks.
That’s funny. A botched gas line got me into this mess. Maybe a botched IV line will get me out.
I keep running. I hear sirens all around. When I come up to a gravel road, I duck inside the culvert as sheriff cars race over my head.
Even during this short pause, while I try to catch my breath, I’m woozy and sleepy. Little air bubbles pop in front of my vision. I think I might puke. Keep going, Johnny. You're a big boy. If anyone can live through this poison, if anyone can break out of the death chamber and out of the prison, if anyone can lose the bloodhounds and find freedom, it's me.
I leave the culvert and keep moving along the irrigation ditch. I'm hidden down here. I'm camouflaged and determined to reach the horizon. There's another road up ahead. No. Better than another road. A set of train tracks. And there's a train coming. I see it coming from the north, from the direction of town. It's just crawling along now, but picking up speed. If I'm fast enough, I might be able to catch the end of it.
The ditch is drying up. I can run faster. My feet are bare against the clay. My toes find purchase like claws on a cat. God am I tired. My heart is hurting, like someone put a shank through my sternum. I don't know if it's the poison or the lactic acid searing my muscles like a steak. I wheeze and hack. I almost pass out right there in the ditch. I'm not going to make it.
The front of the train is already crossing the ditch a quarter mile ahead. It's moving much faster now. If I can just put a hand on it, it will carry me out of this place. Here I'm a murderer with less than a day to live. Somewhere else, maybe at the end of this train line, I can be somebody else. I can be a different Big Johnny, a guy just looking for a cheap place to live and a job where I can work outside. I can live out my years.
Come on, Johnny. Keep those legs pumping. Keep your god-forsaken eyes open. The train is halfway past. I'm close enough to read the graffiti on the oil tankers. Almost there. I see the culvert the train is passing over. It's the juggernaut I wish I was. There's only maybe a quarter of the train left to pass over me. I'm there, at the culvert below the tracks. I'm going to make it.
Oh god, the embankment is steep and greased with mud. I climb and watch rail car after rail car roll by. Almost up. The last of the cars are coming down the track. As I pull myself on my belly out of the ditch I see the last car. I scramble, as fast as I can. I lunge, my arm down to my finger stretched as long as I can make them.
My palm meets the handrail at the end of the last oil tanker. My fingers clutch around the steel. My arm is almost ripped out of socket and my whole body is yanked along the tracks. My shoulder is set on fire. My right foot bounces off a wooden tie. Bones break. I don't care. I grab the rail with both hands and pull myself up.
My hips find the little platform on the back of the last car of the last train out of town on my last day. I pull my feet up, one broken and bloody. I curl up on the diamond mesh platform and watch the horizon as the train carries me away.
It's loud, so I don't hear myself sob and cry. My face is painted with mud so I don't notice the wet. I just notice my blurred vision. My shoulder feels like it has a thousand needles working into the meat. My right foot is so mauled all I feel is fire from the calf down. It isn't the pain that breaks me down. It’s the hope.
I just have to hide here and let the train carry me away. I'd get off in some other town in some other state as some other man. Some other man, but with this same life. Oh, thank god.
The train rolls on. It brings me through farm fields and pastures, then through forests and a town. Then more forests and more towns. I am still awake as it carries me over a river cut deep into the lay of the land. It is a brief sight that lasts maybe five or ten seconds, but I drink it in like it's my whole life. Like it's the last thing I'll see.
The sandy cliffs of the terraces are steep and void of houses. There is a single wooden dock half-rotted and collapsed into the water. The river surface is smooth and wide. The water moves slow. I don't see one, but I guess that some kids could tie a rope to one of those trees hanging over the water and spend endless days swimming. A luxury all the richer for their ignorance. Just as the train carries me on, the river carries on, twisting for miles and miles until it dumps into some unknown gulf.
I feel the pain in my shoulder and in my foot. The mud and clay have turned to dry grit between my fingers and toes and in the cracks of my face. My clothes smell like sweat and soil. I focus on the sensations to keep myself awake. I'm so tired now. It's maybe noon but the sun is baking me dry and drowsy. The sway of the train and the rumble on the tracks calms me like a baby in a nursery. I don't know if I'm tired from the chase or the poison. I should be too terrified to sleep, but somehow it doesn't work like that. Maybe I’m destined to die this day and my body knows it. This is the dusk of my life and all the cumulative years have brought me here to finally sputter out on the back of this train.
Maybe I'll finally go as the train crosses another river. My fingers will lose their grip on the handrail and I'll roll off the train and trusses into the water and the river can carry me out to the ocean. That wouldn't be so bad.
I jerk my head up. I realize I was nodding off, only a few slow heartbeats away from death. I fight for life and force the old ticker to keep pumping. I just have to make it through this one day. I just have to work the poison out of my system. I just have to keep living.
I think about those boys that died. The two boys in the burnt down house they showed me and the jury at trial. It wasn't my fault they died. I wanted to hook up the gas line right. It was their angry impatient father who did them in. But he was dead too and wasn't around for the jury to sentence to a second death. So they picked me.
I think about those boys. They should be alive now, maybe swinging from a rope over some river. They'll never get a chance to do that now. They were robbed of the luxury of endless days for forever.
I regret what happened. Maybe I deserve to die for the part I played in it. Maybe I was supposed to stay in the execution booth and let the poison stop my heart, but I didn't and I can't change that now. All I can do now is live. I'd be satisfied to die, but life is too rich to surrender. Maybe I'll live for those boys. Let their memory carry on through me. Maybe I can make my life worth a fraction of what theirs were worth. Maybe there will be some justice there.
If I can make it through the day. If my fingers can keep their strength and grip on the steel rail. If I can keep my eyes open and my heart ticking. If...
The other fellas on death row, they told me, "Just don't fall asleep. Don't give in and don't close your eyes and you can survive the injection." They said, "If anyone can do it, Big Johnny, it's you." I think they were counting on me to give them hope. To show them that someone can escape. I’m the first one in the state to be killed like this, with a needle instead of the Chair. Those jokers had no idea what would happen, how long it would take or how much to give me. God, I’m hoping it was too little to do the job on a guy like me. The other guys waiting their turn told me, "Just make it through one more day and as long as your heart keeps pumping the poison will work its way out of your system."
As I run, I tell myself I’m a juggernaut, even though I know I’m exactly the opposite. I’m a big candle with a weak flame, unsure of when I’ll drown in my own melted wax.
So I still run and they still chase me. The poison courses faster through my veins.
I didn't do it. I didn't murder that guy or his family. It was their own fault. I tried to hook up their stove for them. I would have done it right. There wouldn't have been no gas leak and there wouldn't have been no burnt bodies.
Sure he was a jerk. Sure I wanted to kill him. But I didn't. They just said I did.
There's a irrigation ditch ahead. Maybe I can rest there. I hear the bloodhounds howling along my trail, but I need to rest. It's a short jump down. God damn it! It's muddy. The legs of my orange prison jump suit are soaked. I don't think I'm going to get that rubber flip flop out of the mud. Fuck it. I don't need it. I just need to rest.
So tired. I feel my heart pumping under my chest. Heavy and arrhythmic. Just have to close my eyes. So drowsy. I have to...
NO!
Like the boys on death row said, I just have to stay awake. Just keep moving.
Those howls are coming closer. Maybe if I follow along this muddy ditch they won't see me. Maybe the mud will absorb my scent. God damn, it's hard to run through his slop!
Stupid! Stupid! Stupid! I shouldn't have ever jumped in this ditch. I hear them even closer now. They're going to get me, and when they do they'll tie me down, I'll nod off, and that will be it. I'll sleep forever. No way. I got to keep going.
Shit! There is a dog standing over the lip of the ditch. He hasn’t spotted me yet. I must be up-wind. The guards will be right after that damn dog, and they'll see me. Only one choice I got, really.
Into the mud.
It's deep. Deep enough to swallow me whole. The whiskey-colored water is the flavor of dogshit, but it hides me. I just have to hold me breath and stay under.
Down here, everything is black and warm. I imagine it's like a womb. There's only the muffled noise of the water jostling around me. My eyes are already closed. I feel like I'm drunk at midnight. Nevermind it's nine in the morning. Nine in the morning of my last day.
Fuck all that last meal bullshit. My last request was for a key to the front gate. Turns out I didn't need it. Broke through the door to where the witnesses sat to watch me die. They don't lock the innocent people in. I charged right through the screaming crowd, right out to the unfenced parking lot and out of sharpshooter range before they knew what was up.
So quiet down here in the mud. I let memories of my life flow over me like the stinking water, memories of jobs I quit or got fired from, of all the little crimes I was guilty of but never got caught, of a couple ex-wives I’d rather not remember. Never had kids, none that I know of anyway. They’ll be better off not knowing me, I suppose. The memories wash over me and from me. I feel drunk. It's so peaceful.
Fuck that! This mud is a fucking coffin. I kick like I'm fighting off blankets mid-nightmare. I got to stay awake. Got to keep moving. If I sleep, I die.
I rise out of the mud and gasp for air and for life. I cough out the stink of dirt and filth. I wipe my eyes clean. As the liquid runs out of my ears, I can hear the barks of the dogs and the commands of the guards. Their footprints go down into the ditch and then back up on the other side.
They passed me by.
My orange clothes are now black. My human scent is now layered in earth. If I can put enough distance between myself and the execution chamber, and if I can keep my consciousness I just might make it.
I run further down the ditch. I keep moving my legs, no matter how hot my muscles burn. I figure if I keep moving, I can't fall asleep, and if I don't fall asleep, I can't die. It's strange being this close to death. I found out what really matters most to me. Apparently what matters most is being alive.
I don't deserve the injection they gave me. That guy? He called me an idiot while I installed his stove. Called me a mongoloid, whatever that means. Retarded, I guess. So sure, I didn't finish the job. I throttled him around the neck and bounced his skull off his fridge. He had it coming, but he was still breathing when I left. He was the one who finished the install job, botched the gas line connection and burnt his house and family to matchsticks.
That’s funny. A botched gas line got me into this mess. Maybe a botched IV line will get me out.
I keep running. I hear sirens all around. When I come up to a gravel road, I duck inside the culvert as sheriff cars race over my head.
Even during this short pause, while I try to catch my breath, I’m woozy and sleepy. Little air bubbles pop in front of my vision. I think I might puke. Keep going, Johnny. You're a big boy. If anyone can live through this poison, if anyone can break out of the death chamber and out of the prison, if anyone can lose the bloodhounds and find freedom, it's me.
I leave the culvert and keep moving along the irrigation ditch. I'm hidden down here. I'm camouflaged and determined to reach the horizon. There's another road up ahead. No. Better than another road. A set of train tracks. And there's a train coming. I see it coming from the north, from the direction of town. It's just crawling along now, but picking up speed. If I'm fast enough, I might be able to catch the end of it.
The ditch is drying up. I can run faster. My feet are bare against the clay. My toes find purchase like claws on a cat. God am I tired. My heart is hurting, like someone put a shank through my sternum. I don't know if it's the poison or the lactic acid searing my muscles like a steak. I wheeze and hack. I almost pass out right there in the ditch. I'm not going to make it.
The front of the train is already crossing the ditch a quarter mile ahead. It's moving much faster now. If I can just put a hand on it, it will carry me out of this place. Here I'm a murderer with less than a day to live. Somewhere else, maybe at the end of this train line, I can be somebody else. I can be a different Big Johnny, a guy just looking for a cheap place to live and a job where I can work outside. I can live out my years.
Come on, Johnny. Keep those legs pumping. Keep your god-forsaken eyes open. The train is halfway past. I'm close enough to read the graffiti on the oil tankers. Almost there. I see the culvert the train is passing over. It's the juggernaut I wish I was. There's only maybe a quarter of the train left to pass over me. I'm there, at the culvert below the tracks. I'm going to make it.
Oh god, the embankment is steep and greased with mud. I climb and watch rail car after rail car roll by. Almost up. The last of the cars are coming down the track. As I pull myself on my belly out of the ditch I see the last car. I scramble, as fast as I can. I lunge, my arm down to my finger stretched as long as I can make them.
My palm meets the handrail at the end of the last oil tanker. My fingers clutch around the steel. My arm is almost ripped out of socket and my whole body is yanked along the tracks. My shoulder is set on fire. My right foot bounces off a wooden tie. Bones break. I don't care. I grab the rail with both hands and pull myself up.
My hips find the little platform on the back of the last car of the last train out of town on my last day. I pull my feet up, one broken and bloody. I curl up on the diamond mesh platform and watch the horizon as the train carries me away.
It's loud, so I don't hear myself sob and cry. My face is painted with mud so I don't notice the wet. I just notice my blurred vision. My shoulder feels like it has a thousand needles working into the meat. My right foot is so mauled all I feel is fire from the calf down. It isn't the pain that breaks me down. It’s the hope.
I just have to hide here and let the train carry me away. I'd get off in some other town in some other state as some other man. Some other man, but with this same life. Oh, thank god.
The train rolls on. It brings me through farm fields and pastures, then through forests and a town. Then more forests and more towns. I am still awake as it carries me over a river cut deep into the lay of the land. It is a brief sight that lasts maybe five or ten seconds, but I drink it in like it's my whole life. Like it's the last thing I'll see.
The sandy cliffs of the terraces are steep and void of houses. There is a single wooden dock half-rotted and collapsed into the water. The river surface is smooth and wide. The water moves slow. I don't see one, but I guess that some kids could tie a rope to one of those trees hanging over the water and spend endless days swimming. A luxury all the richer for their ignorance. Just as the train carries me on, the river carries on, twisting for miles and miles until it dumps into some unknown gulf.
I feel the pain in my shoulder and in my foot. The mud and clay have turned to dry grit between my fingers and toes and in the cracks of my face. My clothes smell like sweat and soil. I focus on the sensations to keep myself awake. I'm so tired now. It's maybe noon but the sun is baking me dry and drowsy. The sway of the train and the rumble on the tracks calms me like a baby in a nursery. I don't know if I'm tired from the chase or the poison. I should be too terrified to sleep, but somehow it doesn't work like that. Maybe I’m destined to die this day and my body knows it. This is the dusk of my life and all the cumulative years have brought me here to finally sputter out on the back of this train.
Maybe I'll finally go as the train crosses another river. My fingers will lose their grip on the handrail and I'll roll off the train and trusses into the water and the river can carry me out to the ocean. That wouldn't be so bad.
I jerk my head up. I realize I was nodding off, only a few slow heartbeats away from death. I fight for life and force the old ticker to keep pumping. I just have to make it through this one day. I just have to work the poison out of my system. I just have to keep living.
I think about those boys that died. The two boys in the burnt down house they showed me and the jury at trial. It wasn't my fault they died. I wanted to hook up the gas line right. It was their angry impatient father who did them in. But he was dead too and wasn't around for the jury to sentence to a second death. So they picked me.
I think about those boys. They should be alive now, maybe swinging from a rope over some river. They'll never get a chance to do that now. They were robbed of the luxury of endless days for forever.
I regret what happened. Maybe I deserve to die for the part I played in it. Maybe I was supposed to stay in the execution booth and let the poison stop my heart, but I didn't and I can't change that now. All I can do now is live. I'd be satisfied to die, but life is too rich to surrender. Maybe I'll live for those boys. Let their memory carry on through me. Maybe I can make my life worth a fraction of what theirs were worth. Maybe there will be some justice there.
If I can make it through the day. If my fingers can keep their strength and grip on the steel rail. If I can keep my eyes open and my heart ticking. If...