The Illegal by Lawrence Hill

lifted the stroller back to the far side of the sidewalk. The woman had dropped a bag of groceries. He retrieved cans and bags, bending and straightening until he had stored them all in the stroller. The mother spoke to him reverently. It was hard to believe that such kindness could come from a mouth that moments ago had been so harsh.
    “That is so sweet of you,” she said.
    “No worries.” The runner then saw Ivernia. Looked straight at her. “Ma’am, are you all right?”
    “Yes, quite.” But she wasn’t all right at all, and he could see it in her eyes.
    “Why don’t you sit down?” he said.
    There was a bench at the edge of the sidewalk, in front of the Lox and Bagel. He led her to it, resting his fingertips on her shoulder. She tried to remember the last time anyone had touched any part of her body in a kind, solicitous way.
    “Everything is going to be okay. Nobody is hurt, right?”
    She nodded. He straightened, went to her car door, pulled out her purse and car keys and returned with them.
    “Sit here. You will need your things. Are you okay, ma’am? Breathe a little.”
    Ivernia stared at him with glassy eyes. The earbuds were strung over his shoulder. From them, she detected the tinny sound of country music.
    “I heard you singing, back there,” she said.
    He smiled. “I sing when I train,” he said.
    Train, she thought. What an interesting verb. It must have been inspired by the noun. To train . Meaning, to put oneself in motion, just like a train. She heard a siren. She looked up and saw the police vehicle two blocks away.
    He said, “God bless, must run, take care. Don’t worry. Everything will be okay.”
    Once more he touched her shoulder. Ivernia felt the calm spread through her body. Nobody was hurt. What was the worst that could happen?
    “Wait,” she said. “What is your name?”
    He hesitated, smiled once more and said, “Roger Bannister. Goodbye and good luck.” He set off running again, southbound on Aberdeen Road in the direction of Ruddings Park.
    “Roger Bannister,” she mumbled to herself. She knew that name. The British runner. The first one to break the four-minute mile. He did it on May 6, 1954. Sixty-four years ago. She remembered. She was twenty-one years old, and it was the day that she and Ernie married. She wished that she had had time to tell that to the runner.
    A hand was on her shoulder, a firm hand.
    “Ma’am. Ma’am. Were you involved in the accident? Are you the owner of that Oldsmobile?”
    She looked into the eyes of a square-jawed police officer whose expression seemed to say, You’ve gone and ruined my perfectly good day . Perhaps Ivernia should have waited for a lawyer. Or fought the charge. Or sought to plea bargain. She knew all about these things. But she was an old woman, and she had no mind for subtleties, so she just looked at him and said, “It all comes down to one thing, Officer. I screwed up. So can we get on with it?”
    It was a day later now, and her licence was temporarily suspended, her car impounded, and she was feeling entirely suffocated in the meeting room of the Office for Independent Living. She was bursting with impatience. She wanted out. Whatever they weregoing to do to her, she wanted it to be over. So here she was telling her three inquisitors one more time that she realized the gravity of the situation but did not want a lawyer.
    “Could we just get this done?” she asked, keeping her hands under the table so the three inquisitors could not see them shaking. When you reached the age of eighty-five, hands were simply not to be trusted. Ivernia tried to calm herself by thinking of the gentle face of the runner. The one who had stopped to help everybody, herself included. The runner was the only person who had said a kind word to her that entire day. She wondered where he was from. Zantoroland? From what Ivernia had read in the papers, the country was a mess. There were reports that the Zantoroland government had been