The street sweeper buzzes along the night streets like it knows where it is going. The crash of closing-time, the violent spewing-up of the bottle bin’s contents into the wheelie bins behind the pub are now well past. This town has become a ghost town; it has washed away the detritus of humanity.

But through these streets which have no name at this time in the morning, passes a solitary figure. His high-visibility vest makes him appear as part of the clean-up operation. Rick is also a creature of the liminal late night/early morning world. He moves past the chubby little street sweeper vehicle, his legs whirring cogs providing him with constant motion as though he too has a job to do.

Nobody gives him a second glance these days. Not even the rats, the first of which are now starting to emerge from the cracks in the pavement. These nocturnal scouts burrow and work at their dark early morning goings-on, and they don’t even twitch as Rick races past them.

The CCTV camera responds to his movements, sweeping in an arc as he passes the hotel. The stray dog which can usually be found trotting purposefully down Jamaica Street to the river gives him a run for his money for a while, but nobody can catch Rick Rodgers, not when he’s on his home territory. He has made the slumbering city his stadium, the faraway, inexplicable hum of traffic is his crowd.

He runs with what looks like the kind of freedom that children do; his arms describe jerky, circular movements by his side, his head bobs like he’s answering an eternal ‘yes’. But he swallows up the slick pavements, he drinks in the coming dawn and he just runs. There are still miles to burn on his clock, missing miles from yesterday’s race. He is compelled to compensate for what he failed to do.

‘You could run forever, Rick,’ his coach once said to him. And Rick smiled, tucked into a few more laps and prayed that for once, he could exhaust that restless energy and that voice in his head which told him that he was letting himself down, letting Glasgow down.

His face is now expressionless, numb with the knowledge that he’s as bad as those boxers that take the money to fall in the third. Sport was supposed to be his pay-cheque, but it was supposed to be his pay-cheque because he won. Which sports fans decorate their walls with the pictures of men that don’t take risks, men who prefer to make a nice easy living for themselves and their family? Who will laud Rick Rodgers because he accepted what he had and never strove for more? He took the money and ran, and then stopped and let himself withdraw from the race.

Rick is now by the side of the Clyde. He can see the long necks of the giraffe-cranes which have now stopped safariing in the shipyards where his father broke his back and now build the flats for people like him, people who take the easy money.

‘A Pacemaker?’ his father had said, flashing him that slow-burn look of disapproval. ‘Isn’t that just like someone who steps in and does the foreplay before someone else steps in and does the proper shagging?’

Rick tended to agree with his father these days. As a keen follower of all sports, he’d read all about how racehorses stud. They get in these other horses first, just to get the mare all frisky, before Red Rum or whoever, stepped in and sired the heir. His job was just like that; set the pace, get the crowd excited before quietly stepping off the track and allowing the Bigger Guns to swagger into the business end of the races.

On the Waterfront, he couldn’t help but be reminded of the fact that he could have been a contender. He could have been so much more than he actually was. But the fact of the matter was he’d signed up for that one way ticket to palookaville when he’d declined to change his running-style. Some part of him knows, deep down, that his predicament couldn’t be blamed on anybody else, no matter how many times his feet drum his hard-luck story into the hard streets.

Back in the glory days, when he’d still had time on his side, he could have changed. But it is too late now. He winces at the memory of the victory dinner after his All British Schools time-trials. He’d been presented with his gold-leaf medal by a former Olympic Champion amid the snap and fizz of the expectant press. The Champion placed the ribband around Rick’s neck and then whispered something like: ‘you’re good, boy, but you’ll have to change that style of yours if you’re ever gonna reach the next level. And mark my words, the Olympic Committee frowns upon deviations from the accepted technique.’

Of course, head exploding with the praise he’d already received, Rick had only really paid attention to the first few words of the Champion’s aside and steadfastly refused to do anything different. Even when his coach started to bring it up more and more often in their debrief sessions after races, Rick managed to ignore the problem. Coach would say: ‘Even the best golfers from time to time need to alter their swing. And this means forgetting everything they’ve done, everything they’ve ever achieved and simply starting from scratch. But you can do it, Rick, if you do it now.’ Of course Rick, who was streets ahead of the rest of his age group, didn’t want to lose any advantage that he had, and he certainly couldn’t imagine a future in which he’d even need to change his style.

And now, the unfinished races lie vomited up behind him, stinking out the place. No matter how much he makes up for it in these dead hours, he can still smell that aroma of defeat every time he opens his eyes at the sickening chirrup of his alarm clock. He runs in fun-size chunks, according to the local paper, but there is nothing fun in his running any more, not unless there is nobody but the rats watching.

Once he’d been a local hero. Not any more. Now, people look down on him. And this despite the fact that, in his eyes, Glasgow could most properly be described as a whopping great microwave oven which had frazzled fried Mars bars for people, due to the proliferation of sunbeds. The people are unfit and overcooked; they are battered in a film of filth and booze and grey cigarette smoke, and then dunked in the River Clyde for good measure. And yet, people look down on him, sneering over the tops of their tabloids at him, resting their pints of heavy on their shelf-like beer-bellies so they can wave their arms about in mockery of his frowned-upon running style.

Little did anyone know about the commitment which it took; the forcing himself out of bed at unearthly hours in the morning, the competing against people half of his age whilst knowing that he’d be letting them win anyway. Then there were the questioning looks in the showers afterwards, as though his fellow runners thought he was half a man or something. Nobody came too close, as though being a Pacemaker was a contagious disease. Within that sweltering well of testosterone, he was seen as a eunuch.

‘One day,’ he used to whisper, feet bouncing off the pavement, the words catching in his throat, ‘I’ll run properly. I’ll compete.’

But even the rats know that he is part of the rat-race now, and once you are in it, it is pretty much impossible to get out of it. Even if you are a Pacemaker.

Rick moves away from the riverside and follows the city’s American-style grid street pattern back into the centre. Despite, or perhaps in spite of the climb, he doesn’t alter his pace. He is still running away from that thing from which he can never escape, no matter how hard he pumps his elbows, no matter how much he strains his calf muscles; himself.

He drives forward along Sauchiehall Street, a place of burgeoning young life and hope. There are students still pouring themselves home from the nightclubs even at this hour. He has to run in the gutter so as to avoid their meandering steps and laughing self-assuredness. He hears them mutter about him as he passes. Is there no escape from this hell?

The first of the morning light begins to soak into Glasgow like melting butter. As though he is some vampire, afraid of the light, Rick’s face suddenly collapses into a grimace of pain. He has somehow developed a stitch. Maybe he took the hill too fast, maybe he’s just getting old, but whatever it is, he has never experienced one before and it worries him. Confusion is written into every deep furrow of his brow. His steps suddenly begin to falter; his running is now remarkably akin to the lurching step of the drunken students. Each time one of his feet hits the tarmac, he emits a tiny, agonised sigh.

Rick stops running near George Square, slumping into a defeated heap on the kerbstone. He rips at the Velcro which holds his feet into those too-tight running shoes and he throws the offending items into the middle of the road. His bent toes drink in the greasy air. He can’t feel the stitch any more but he doesn’t want to start running again. He suddenly feels comfortable in this new, still world. He can see clearly now, without that film of sweat which used to lend everything a sepia tint.

He finds that he is sitting at a bus stop, and when the first bus of the day pulls up, a slight smile plays at the corners of his mouth. He eases himself to his bare feet and climbs aboard, little caring where its destination will be. And the bus pulls away lackadaisically. It lumbers down the street, not caring that a line of cars are queuing up behind it, waiting for the right moment to rush past – work awaits. The bus is setting the pace, and it’s a sedate one.

ENDS

by A.J. Kirby

AJ Kirby is the award-winning author of four novels (Perfect World, 2011; Bully, 2009; The Magpie Trap, 2008; When Elephants Walk through the Gorbals, 2007), two novellas (Bed Peace, 2011, which is available for 86p on Amazon, and Call of the Sea, 2010), one novelette (The Black Book, 2011) and over forty short stories. He is also a sportswriter for the Professional Footballers’ Association and a reviewer for The Short Review and The New York Journal of Books. He welcomes emails and messages from readers and fellow authors at his website:www.andykirbythewriter.20m.com