- - - -
I couldn’t sleep—not for the usual reasons, the noise and the uncomfortable mattress. I was anxious because in the morning I would run Badwater. How many times had I lain in bed like this watching the clock on the night before a big race? It was a familiar, welcome feeling—one I never expected to have in prison.
My watch alarm went off. Race day. After 5:00 a.m. count, I made myself three peanut-butter-and-jelly sandwiches—one for breakfast and two to take out to the track with me. I packed them into a mesh bag, along with granola bars, almonds, graham crackers, and two of the packets of Gatorade I had won in the three-point shooting contest. I had been acquiring these items and squirreling them away in the weeks before the run. I filled a small, leaky watercooler I had bought from another inmate for two stamps. I didn’t have any moisture-wicking shirts or compression socks, but I did have some awesome cutoff gray sweatpants with a drawstring, a nice white sleeveless undershirt, and a pair of dingy white socks—all cotton. In my vintage Nikes, I looked as if I’d just stepped out of a seventies catalog. All I needed was a terry-cloth sweatband around my head.
I packed an extra pair of socks and a hat, then slathered my body with sunscreen and Vaseline, both acquired in trades. Now I just had to wait for my unit to be called to breakfast. Finally, the call came over the loudspeaker. The guys in my unit pushed their way outside. The crowd went left toward the cafeteria, and I veered right toward the recreation area. A few guys called out to me that I was going the wrong direction. I just smiled and waved.
It was already warm—nothing like Death Valley, but I thought it would probably reach a respectable ninety degrees by midafternoon. I walked to the far end of the track, as far away from the buildings as possible, and set my stuff down at the base of a tall light pole. Then I gathered a handful of small rocks to use as a makeshift abacus. After every fourth lap, I would move a rock into a new pile. I set out my drinks and my food: my aid station was in order.
I studied the track. After the flat section where I was standing, the path dropped about ten feet over a stretch of forty yards and curved to the right. Then it leveled out between the bocce court and the horseshoe pit. Those areas would get busy later in the day, but they were empty now. The next curve took me between the basketball courts and the building that housed the library and the recreation office. The track turned again at the far end of the courts, then skirted the woods, where the postbreakfast smokers would soon be.
My plan was to get in as many miles as I could before the end of the day. I’d change direction every five miles. At some point during the morning, I’d have to hustle into the rec department to do my job. And I would have to make sure I was in my cell for the 4:00 p.m. count. Other than that, all I had to do was run. I looked at my watch: 6:15 a.m. There would be no starting gun, no cheering, no words of encouragement. I was off.
For maybe the first time since my arrest, I felt free.
I covered ten miles in about ninety minutes, probably a little faster than I should have gone out, but I couldn’t help myself. By 11:00 a.m., I had logged thirty miles. I was feeling good physically, but I was anxious about my job. If I didn’t get it done soon, I was afraid that the CO in charge of rec might come out and ask me what the hell I was doing. If he did, then my day—and my Badwater—could be over.
I threw my greens on over my sweaty running clothes and changed into my boots. I walked inside the indoor recreation area and casually went about cleaning the pool table. I walked by the CO’s office and saw him through the small window in the closed door. He looked up and gave me the slightest nod, which was all that I needed. I was in the clear. I had been seen and acknowledged. As soon as the door clicked behind me, I hurried back to the track, stripped down to my running clothes, changed my shoes, and grabbed a sandwich. Just like at Badwater, I would eat on the run.
As it closed in on 1:00 p.m., I thought about what was happening at the real Badwater. The starts were done in three waves, 6:00 a.m., 8:00 a.m., and 10:00 a.m. I had always been given the third start time. As I ran, I envisioned the racers lining up; I knew their pulse rates were jacked, their mouths were dry. At one o’clock sharp, 10:00 a.m. in California, the gun went off in my head. For some reason, I started to cry. I wasn’t sure if I was sad or angry, but for a few minutes I felt pathetic. I slowed to a jog. Who was I kidding? I was in prison running around in a circle like a zoo animal.
I stopped to take a drink and compose myself. I removed my $6 commissary sunglasses and wiped my face and my eyes.
Don’t be such a fucking pussy, I said to myself. Nobody gives a shit if you do this or not. But you will know the truth, and that’s all that matters.
I walked a little and then started to run, mentally tucking myself into the middle of the pack in Death Valley. Fifteen minutes later, I hit the forty-mile mark. When I came around the first corner at the basketball courts, I noticed Whitey, my old cellmate, standing by the side of the track with his arms crossed. This was not good.
I slowed to a stop. “Hey, man.”
“Hey. What the hell ya doin’?”
“Walk with me.” He fell into step next to me. “I’m just going to run all day.”
“All day? Why?”
“I want to see how many miles I can do.”
“You’re fucked-up.”
I snorted.
“Really fucked-up.”
“You may be right. Keep it quiet, though, will you, man?”
I knew Whitey liked to gossip. I knew the odds were slim that he wouldn’t run and tell the first dozen people he saw what I was doing. We walked in silence around the far end of the track.
“You need anything?” Whitey finally said.
I was shocked. I had learned that in prison any act of kindness came with strings attached—anything from doing an inmate’s laundry to doing an inmate, with his pants down around his ankles in a bathroom stall. I had managed to avoid—and was committed to avoiding—both of those fates.
“Yeah. Actually, I could really go for a Coke. Would you get me a Coke? With ice?” I only drank sodas during races, and I had been thinking for the last two hours about how good an ice-cold Coke would taste.
“Yeah. I can do that. No problem.”
Whitey headed to the housing unit. Fifteen minutes later, I saw him coming back with a can of Coke in one hand and a plastic cup filled with ice in the other. I couldn’t believe he had done it.
The first cold swallow was wonderful. “Ahhhh.” I let out a satisfied belch. “Fantastic. Thanks.”
“Okay. Cool.” He turned and started to walk way. Then he looked back at me. “Good luck, man.”
I felt strong and reenergized. I realized I felt something else: I felt happy. I didn’t think that could happen here. But at this moment on this day, I was perfectly happy. I was doing what I loved, even if I was doing it behind prison walls. At about three thirty, I knew my time outside was getting short. I’d have to head in for count soon. In three more laps, I would have completed fifty-four miles.
“The compound is closed, return to your housing units . . . now.” Beckley announcements always had an aggressive edge, but this one felt threatening.
Screw them. I was going to finish my fifty-four miles. I picked up the pace and peeled off the last lap as the recreation area emptied. Then I gathered my stuff and hurried to my unit. I got to my cell and pulled on my greens. It was exactly 4:00 p.m. I tucked in my shirt just before the guard yelled, “Count time.” Sweat streamed down my face. I couldn’t leave the housing unit again until dinner was called at 5:00 p.m. I hated waiting, but I tried to use my downtime wisely, just as I would during a race. I ate a honey bun and another sandwich, then got comfortable in my bunk and elevated my feet.
At 5:05 p.m., Evergreen was called to dinner. Once again, everyone went left and I went right. I got situated and started to run again. My body was feeling good and my mind was running free.
I had four hours left; I thought I might get in a total of eighty miles. I was in that rare zone that every runner knows, the one where it feels effortless and easy. I had been running for enough years to be grateful for this feeling—and to know that it could disappear in an instant. I said a prayer out loud, giving thanks to my higher power for giving me a body that could endure and asking for the strength to continue, and to do my best. I also acknowledged the runners doing the official Badwater in Death Valley because I knew the pain they were in at that moment. I asked that I be allowed to suffer like that in order to learn more about myself.
At about 7:00 p.m., a couple of other runners came out to the track.
One of them trotted up next to me and stayed at my pace. I knew him as Stick. “I hear you are running a hundred miles today. Is that true?”
“Where did you hear that bullshit?”
He laughed. “Everybody knows.”
Now I knew that Whitey must have spread the word. Stick ran with me until about 8:00 p.m. Butterbean and Cody were both out walking on the track. Every time I passed them, they razzed me:
“Pick your knees up, Engle.”
“My mama runs faster than that—and she’s got one leg!”
The rec yard was filled with inmates. On a nice evening, plenty of guys were always outside, sitting in the bleachers or playing hoops. But this seemed different. I heard someone say, “Go, Running Man,” as I ran past the basketball courts. As I went by the smokers, I was shocked to hear, “Good job, Engle.” I kept moving.
At eight thirty, I heard an inmate whistle, a signal used to tell everyone within earshot that danger was coming. In this case, danger was a CO riding on a John Deere four-wheeler out to the track—probably hoping to catch smokers or looking for anything out of place. I knew this CO. He was a decent guy. He pulled up next to me and motored along at my pace. I was trying to be nonchalant, pretending that I was just out for an evening jog.
“Is it true you ran a hundred miles today, Engle?”
“Where’d you hear that? No, I did not run a hundred miles.”
“Figured that was bullshit. Nobody can run that far.”
That hit a nerve. I couldn’t stop myself from saying, “I only ran eighty miles today.” I should have kept quiet but my ego got the best of me.
“That’s the craziest shit I ever heard.” He motored away from me. I didn’t know what he was going to do with this information.
The compound closed for the night at nine thirty. I had run eighty-one miles—324 loops around this misshapen track. I was exhausted and starving, and now I was worried. I hated the feeling of not knowing if I would be allowed to continue. I was mad at myself for my big mouth. But beneath it all, I was deeply satisfied. And I also had a secret that made me feel better. As I stood in my cell waiting for the 10:00 p.m. count and lights-out, I smiled. If they wouldn’t let me continue on the track tomorrow, I could finish my Badwater right here in this cell—running in place.
I showered, ate whatever I could scrounge up, and climbed into my bunk. I stared at the ceiling, exhausted but too jazzed to sleep. I knew this feeling well. I was scraped clean, made new, fully open. People asked me why I ran. I wish I could let them feel this way for just a few minutes; then they would know. I loved this feeling of being raw more than anything else. Even in prison; maybe especially in prison.
At 5:00 a.m., I got up and made my preparations for another day on the track. Breakfast was called, and I veered off to the yard. I heard a couple of guys say, “Good luck, man.”
I felt old and creaky as I started up again. My body hurt. I was sunburned and had some chafing in my crotch and under my arms. I needed to distract myself. I had a small radio with me, which picked up both kinds of popular West Virginia music, country and western. I opted for NPR instead. I tuned in to Fresh Air. I started to feel better as my body loosened up. The radio weather forecast called for afternoon thunderstorms. That could be a problem. If they were really bad, the compound would be closed and I would have to go inside. But for now, I was running well.
At about 11:00 a.m., I went in to the rec department to do my job. The CO was not in his office, so I quickly cleaned the pool table and headed back outside. When I got back to the track, I saw the rec CO standing next to my pile of stuff near the base of the light pole.
“You know you’re not supposed to leave things out here unattended,” he said when I got close to him.
I nodded. There was a long pause. I was afraid that my Badwater was over.
“I hear you’re running some long distance?”
“That’s right.”
He looked me in the eyes. “Well, get on with it.”
Midafternoon, I had to use the bathroom, and when I finished, a rush of men pushed their way into the unit. “Storm’s coming!” Whitey shouted when he saw me.
I shoved past the crowd and made my way outside. It was only raining lightly, but a platoon of dark clouds was rolling in from the west, and the afternoon light had taken on a strange green pallor. I heard distant thunder. By the time I reached the track, the rain was coming down hard.
It was two forty-five and I was running in a kind of panic, desperate to get finished. The rain had flooded the low spots in the track, and I splashed through the pools. Staccato lightning bursts illuminated the yard and the basketball courts and the woods along the track. I was alone; even the smokers were gone. I could not remember the last time I had been by myself.
When I got to the light pole, I peeled off my wet shirt, which was most definitely not allowed, and let the rain pound my bare skin. I dropped the shirt and ran. Lap after lap, I ran. I was not an inmate or a number. I was a skinny kid from North Carolina. I was a runner.
With two laps to go, the announcement came that the compound was being closed for weather. It was also nearly time for the 4:00 p.m. count. I struggled to go faster and willed myself to roll into a sprint. My legs were dead but I was going to finish. I was going to finish this thing even if it meant missing count and getting sent to the hole.
I passed the marker for the final time at 3:47 p.m. I had done it.
Thunder cracked and the rain came at me in sheets, but I didn’t care. This past year had taken so much out of me, from me. Running my Beckley Badwater had replaced some of what had been lost.
- - - -
As summer rolled on, I continued to send Facebook and Twitter posts to Chip so he could put them on my accounts. Mullins pulled me aside several times and strongly suggested that I stop sending them. Some of my e-mails to Chip started to disappear from the secure e-mail system, so I resorted to mailing them to him instead. By law, the prison was not allowed to open outgoing mail, although Howell was certain they sometimes did it anyway. I wasn’t really afraid of Ms. Mullins. No rule prohibited having my friend and website manager post things on my Facebook. I wasn’t telling people how to smuggle in contraband or escape. I was talking about my running and my diet and the people I was hanging with and my family, all the same boring stuff everybody else posts on Facebook.
Sometimes I asked Chip to send me books, ones that had been reviewed on NPR or in Vanity Fair. He’d put the request on Facebook, and the books—The Art of Fielding or So Much for That or Cutting for Stone, The Sense of an Ending, Three Day Road, Freedom, The Alchemist, King Leopold’s Ghost—would magically show up, sent by friends and strangers. Before long, I had so many books in my personal library that I could barely close my locker. I shared them with Cody and with my workout group and eventually with anyone who wanted to check one out from me. I only had one rule: return the book within a week.
- - - -
Meanwhile, my running group swelled to more than twenty guys. I didn’t charge for coaching them: the satisfaction of watching their progress was payment enough—but they found ways to thank me. Thursday was Grapefruit Day. Everyone knew I loved grapefruit. I would sit at my table and guys would
come by and put their half grapefruit on my tray. I felt like the Grapefruit Godfather.
In August, with Howell’s help, I filed my appeal using a rule that allowed for judgments to be reversed in cases where there had been blunders, fraud, incompetence, or misrepresentation. Howell had done a brilliant job, spelling out the new evidence we had discovered and the things that had been hidden by the prosecution. The motion was filed in my judge’s court in Norfolk. Unfortunately, he had recently retired, and the new judge, for whatever reason, declined to make a ruling.
My motion was sent back with the instruction that if I wanted to pursue the matter, I would need to recharacterize the filing as a writ of habeas corpus. To argue for this, we had to show that I was being held in prison illegally because I had been wrongfully convicted in violation of my constitutional rights. I didn’t understand the legal jargon, but Howell did. This motion was met with the same swift dismissal. There was no ruling on its substance—only a rejection of the manner of the filing. Howell was incensed and swore he had followed the letter of the law, but we could do nothing.
I sent all of the materials we had put together to my dad, who was not ready to give up. He said he was going to hire another attorney. I was getting tired of riding this roller coaster, but I couldn’t bring myself to say no. We talked on the phone every few days. While he raged at the justice system and Nordlander, I cringed, knowing my calls were being monitored. When I tried to get him to tone it down, he ramped up. He even told me he had hired a private investigator to dig into Nordlander’s past.
“The guy ran for city council before he joined the IRS. You know what his platform was? Abolish the gay pride parade! He compared homosexuals to murderers, pedophiles, and rapists!”
I understood Dad desperately wanted to be heard. It was tough for him, but it was even tougher for me. I was the one getting the warnings from Mullins about my conversations; I was the one who would suffer the consequences.
In October, a producer from NBC contacted me and said that Rock Center, a news show, wanted to do an investigative story about my case. I told her that the warden would not allow any cameras or recording equipment into the prison.
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