By DR754

Today is Sunday, August 7, 1967.

Blasting through empty stretches of Wyoming just after daybreak, I plotted my next move. This whole “escaped convict” thing is a little more complicated than I thought. It’s not like I regret my decision to run, but I can’t just keep running forever – my only hope is to find somewhere to run to.

Deep in my soul, a shred of conscience took the opportunity to be heard.

Come on now, you’re smarter than all this. Do you really think they won’t catch up with you? You could just pull into the nearest sheriff’s office and give yourself up, you know. End this madness now. You might still have a chance to cop a plea. Tell them you were scared, say you just snapped and went insane at the thought of going to prison. They can’t hang you for that, can they?

I briefly contemplated the thought. But my mind kept returning to what I knew awaited me at the Idaho State Penitentiary. Even if I escaped the gallows, what would I get for almost killing a cop? Another 10 to 30? Plus, what, five years for escape?

At that point I’m just doing life on the installment plan.

For the rest of my days, my world would be reduced to five acres inside the seventeen-foot walls, and my home would be a cage of concrete and steel featuring a couple bunks, a stool, a toilet (if I was lucky… a bucket if I wasn’t), and nothing more. With my sodomy conviction, I knew they’d put me on the “queer tier” – a row set aside in the oldest cellblock to segregate fags like me, so we wouldn’t pollute Idaho’s respectable thieves, murderers, and rapists with our sexual perversion. Insult to injury: the only place queers are allowed to work is the prison laundry. I’d spend the rest of my life washing other convicts’ cum-stained sheets.

I glanced in the rear-view mirror, and in the reflection I saw a vision of my future – shaved head, denim uniform, hopeless expression.

No. I won’t do it. I can’t go to prison. I’ve got to have hope.

Alright, then I’ve got to keep going. But where? Heading for my home in South Dakota would be suicide, I reasoned – it was a lead-pipe cinch for an FBI stakeout. But my wallet was nearly empty, and the turbo drinks high-test like it’s going out of style. What to do?

Well, I’m not exactly an expert on life as a fugitive from justice, but even I knew the Mounties don’t cotton to fleeing felons – so Canada’s right out, as convenient as it would be. That leaves… Mexico, or so the movies said. It’s a long way from here to there, though, and I’m gonna need some cash to make it all the way. And the feds are sure to be watching the border, at least for a while. I realized that I needed to fall off the front pages of the papers before I try to stroll into Juarez.

What if I kept going east? Stopping at a roadside picnic area, I pulled out a map.

Highway 16 wound over the Bighorn Mountains, through the Black Hills, across miles and miles of Dakota prairie into southern Minnesota… where it intersected Highway 65, slashing south toward Louisiana through a series of small-print Iowa towns I’d never heard of – Northwood, Manly, Sheffield, Hampton.

They’d never look for an Idaho escapee in Iowa, would they? It’s a thousand miles in the wrong direction.

Sure, there’s got to be a million little cornfield towns where I could hide. What if I got off the main road, holed up in some sleepy burg for a week or so until the heat was off, then made a dash for the border? I could find ways of getting money, couldn’t I? It’s not the worst idea I’ve ever had.

Yeah, that’s the ticket.

So I pointed the nose of my sleek grey machine into the Bighorns and headed for the Hawkeye State. It may be a forlorn hope… but better a forlorn hope than none at all.

To be continued…