Frank Runs Away (Fiction)


So, you want to hear my story? Well, there is some time till the boat arrives from up river, and my feet are sore from walking. If you fetch me a black beer from the vender in the shack over there by that tree I’ll split some of this papaya and rice with you, it’s a good trade. Anyway, my story. Sorry to sound like such a prick about it, but it is a good tale, I can assure you.
Anyway, so I was eight when I ran away from home. I’ve heard that a lot of kids this age do something like that. They leave their houses and hide in the garden or down the street, returning two hours later in the hope that their parents will appreciate them more. In part I was like them, I grabbed a strange collection of things I presumed I would need and stuffed them into my schoolbag: Two oranges, an apple, a banana, some colouring pencils and paper, also my older brothers Discman and a family photo in a black frame. I even managed to steal a wad of ten-pound notes and my passport from my fathers desk. Then, like the other children I set off down the street wearing my best raincoat on my back.
Me though, I never turned back. When I reached Poland and was cold, wet and hungry for much of my tenth year I thought about it a lot but I never did. It was tempting for a while, when I sent postcards back home, to ask them to fly out and pick me up, but I never gave in to that temptation. Instead I kept going, racking up cities, countries, regions, and continents till the soles of my wellington boots fell apart and I had to scrounge a spare pare (two sizes too large) from a building fire escape in Prague. My hair got long and body got taller, I grew from small boy into gangly teenager, drinking a Starbucks coffee on the train to Beijing from Ulaanbaatar and Moscow before that, the open road my only home.

As a reader you’ll ask why and I wouldn’t blame you. People expect answers these days, I read from pieces of magazines I find that scientists are trying to make some machine underneath Switzerland that will smash and bump a bunch of stuff we cant see together and somehow explain what makes everything in the world. Anyway, that’s a tangent but people do seem to want answers, they can’t just be content with the idea that my parents were normal. They seem to insist against everything I say that my Mum and Dad were somehow bad, that I was abused, that my family werecrack heads that left me in a gutter to fend for myself. The truth is much more mundane but people can’t seem to accept that.

My parents were perfectly normal and quite boring. My father was an insurance salesmen or something like that, my mother worked in an office before I was born and occasionally afterwards. They were nice people, what I remember of them, my father smelling of cologne and my mother with her hair tied back as she listened to the radio and made me dinner. They didn’t drink really and when they did were never drunk, hardly argued about anything and even went to bed at a reasonable hour. My brother, five years older than I, was “wild” in that he smoked the odd cigarette and drank cans of Strongbow underage but that’s hardly a crime any more. They were nice people, they cared for me, clothed me, fed me and put up with all the priggishness a child can offer their family.

In the end I guess it was just destiny that led me to the road. I was bored. I got home one day from school, mum went out to do some errands and so I turned on the T.V. There was a program about Easter Island on BBC showing the huge stone heads sitting there with the sea and the sun and something in me just clicked. I wanted to leave the grey drudgery of Britain, the monotony of primary school, the playgrounds with their health and safety, their stifling political correctness that didn’t even make sense… I wanted to see things, countries, experience the world… I couldn’t articulate all this of course, but that’s how I felt. So, I wrote a brief note to my parents in green crayon that read:

“DEaR, Mumm and Dad, Thanksyou for bing good parANTS but I am borred and am going to run away. I LOVE YOU AND SIMON MY BROTHER AND THE KAT. KISSES, FraNk xoxx
P.S. I am taking MY dog.

Oh, I havn’t even got round to writing about Pip, have I? Well, Pip was the puppy spaniel my parents had given me for Christmas that year, all fur and boisterousness and I adored him more than anything else. Well, I put a piece of long garden twine around his little neck and he came with me. Together we walked out of the house and down the road, got on a train and for some reason nobody stopped me! Perhaps the attendant was tired or ill, maybe I just looked confident enough that people presumed I knew what I was doing. Whatever, I made it to London and took a few days seeing the sights before I moved on. Even then I was smart enough to dodge peoples questions, when they asked me “where are your parents” I’d simply point in a spurious direction and then say, and this I was proud of, “Mummy says I shouldn’t talk with strangers” and run away, Pip bounding behind me.

Using the above skills and utilizing a lot of luck I somehow made it across the Channel on a ferry and into France five days after running away. I remember standing by the boat rail with Pip licking my face and looking out backwards at a choppy sea as we left England. Amazingly, and some don’t believe this, I hid Pip under my coat and just ran through a crowd of peoples legs and through immigration. Believe it or not, I made it to France and mainland Europe.
I love Europe. So many antiquated small villages in France and especially Spain even now, where if you avoid the mopeds and German tourists you can find peasant-like women living in total Franconian 1950’s style. Some gave me food and looked after me for a few days, very few called the police and those that did were rewarded by the sight of me and Pip bolting down the street away from them and out of sight. Those were good days, that first year of learning to survive. I ate tomato and mozzarella salad in a old grandmothers house while her ancient husband puffed on strong smelling cigarettes and cut my hair, showing me how to trim Pip’s ears and even going so far as gifting me a pair of scissors for that purpose. I avoided two police cars when I was drinking a hot chocolate in café outside Barcelona by running along the street and jumping into the town river, Pip complaining as we rocketed down stream. I saw true beauty in the Mediterranean, brightly coloured Latin sail boats off the coast, groves full of olive trees where I’d find somewhere to stay among the hay of an abandoned stable.

When the police presence started hotting up with people looking for me I went east, and those times weren’t so good. Nobody gave a shit in Poland, Czech Republic, Slovakia or any of those countries of course, they didn’t care about me travelling alone with a dog, didn’t care that I looked like a street urchin with scruffy hair and dirty face. The problem was they mostly didn’t care if I was half-starved, coughing and blue, delirious with pain from when I fell off the back of a truck in Bratislava and almost killed myself. Somehow, and I really don’t understand how I did it, I survived and grew stronger. Pip made it too, just. A tramp once tried to eat him and I had to throw stones at the old man to make him go away.

Eventually I made it to Africa via Russia, the Caspian Sea and part of the Middle East before trucking down China and finally here. You might ask at this point if I was ever lonely, and the truth is I very seldom was without good company. The tramps that ride freight trains, the great unwashed of Eastern Europe housing estates, truck drivers, hitch-hikers, migrant workers, illegal immigrants and asylum seekers. These are among my friends. People from every country I’ve visited and of almost every background, profession sex and age bracket have accepted me at some point, and been a part of my journey. People either travel with me for a time or offer me help in some small way, often they do both.

People are kind. From a young female college student who saw me sitting next to her on a park bench in Berlin and gave me and Pip the sandwich she didn’t want to eat, to a group of rugby players on tour who paid for all the drinks at the French pub where I spent my fifteenth birthday, to the sweet Dutch whore in Amsterdam who took my virginity for free that same year while Pip slept in the corner, much of what I need to survive and be happy has been provided for in some way by total strangers, just out of love for humanity and maybe more than a little pity. As I got older I travelled more in groups, usually helping backpackers find their way around in exchange for company and maybe the odd travel expense and with this I came to appreciate the power of having friends.

It’s getting late. Soon I should think about catching the barge down river from here but there are some things I need to say first, some questions you will have that are yet unanswered. To start with, OF COURSE I have regrets, these even I cannot outrun though I’ve tried hard to do that before. Sometimes when it’s raining and I don’t have money or anything to barter I’ll manage to sneak into a cinema and curl up warm and snug on the seats. When the films are about “romance”, that’s when I get sad and think about my possibly misspent past. Seeing American actors hugging, kissing, standing on manicured lawns with perfect teeth, perfect families, perfect lawns. Who in my position wouldn’t be upset by all this seemingly accessible love? I sit there and I admit I cry a bit sometimes, eating popcorn and feeding the odd piece to Pip, who’s head is perched up through my jacket, which is how I smuggle him in to the theatre.

I miss my family. I think about them all the time but haven’t had the balls to contact them. Frankly, I wouldn’t know how. Would I pick up and say” Hey Mum and Dad, Its Frank… Long time no speak…”
No, I think the occasional post card is fine, it lets them know I’m alive at least. Please don’t judge me on this by the way… I consider also that I’ve always been conventionally single and , that a girlfriend, companion on my travels, would be a welcome relief. There are nights alone spent sleeping outside with Pip at my feet that I dream of familiar arms around me, somebody who can laugh at my jokes and understand my everyday struggles.

The question is, who would that be? What do I know of modern culture, of living a quote “normal” life that most would find appealing for more than a few nights? The women I have had, those nineteen year old backpacker girls yearning to get off the beaten track, to experience life at its fullest for a year, the bored Slovakians popping gum and drinking vodka from the bottle after sneaking me from their bedrooms, the subtle French girls drunk after a night clubbing and yearning the same thing as I (Proximity), what do they really mean to me? I meet them all the minute I stop for the night, and something about me attracts them, some invisible aura I seem to emit. We begin talking, and if they don’t believe me my story they leave without a backwards glance and if they do… Well then the female hand leads me to a warm bed for the night, and for me there is no greater luxury.

You may think me a chauvinist perhaps, but I’m not. Some of the most brightest, most amazing people I’ve met are women but what hope do I have with them, why would they want me for more than mere enjoyment? I have no home, no life other than Pip and the road, no future further than the next meal. As you could perhaps understand, it’s not a very appetizing situation for a single woman.

Moving from that painful subject I can say that there are times though, that cancel out my melancholy. When I’m on the road I’m happy, truly happy. The wind buffeting the Cambodian scarf I wear, the roar of cars, mopeds and trucks beside me, Pip barking merrily as we hitchhike together. Pip is getting old now, but he’s as good a pet as ever, brave and loving to me. We’ve experienced more together than most people would in several life times! You know I looked at a “1000 places to go before you die” book and saw that Pip and me have done well over half? That and many more that they’d never show in a book like that.

So, I guess that’s that I guess. I’ve told you a lot, and look! That’s the boat, that’ll take me right down the river and out to sea to some nice islands I heard about. I hope you liked the papaya and rice, and cheers for the beer! Help me with my backpack a second… That’s it, thanks! Come on Pip, time to go. Bye mate, take care… Oh, and to answer your earlier question I’m seventeen years old!