The Illegal (15 page)

He hated running a single additional step after finishing a race, but he did what he had been trained to do, breaking into a slow jog back out in the direction of the oncoming runners, although none were approaching yet. He ran just outside the fence sealing off the race route, south on a street named Avenue Road. Was it named merely to confuse people who had no business being in the country? Back in Zantoroland, anyone proposing such a street name would be laughed out of the room. Keita could imagine the chuckles:
Yes, of course, and let’s name another one Boulevard Road.

The second-place finisher came into view. The one named Smart. He had a choppy gait; his right knee turned in when he ran.
Had to be a decent fellow. He was the one who had told the name-caller to back off.

“Way to go,” Keita said, and the man acknowledged him with a nod as he ran painfully toward the finish.

Smart was coming in at a shade over 2:14. In Zantoroland one-legged runners could hop that fast.

Heading south along Avenue Road, Keita jogged for a minute and turned. By the time he got back, the third runner was finishing in 2:17. There was still no sight of the name-caller.

With the exception of a handful of runners, the five thousand joggers were all still pushing through the marathon, cheered on by marching bands and rock bands and thousands of spectators, pitching like enthusiastic penguins toward the finish line. Recreational joggers in Freedom State carried their life possessions. And the farther back they were in the race, the more they carried. Baseball caps. Water bottles, digital cameras, key chains laden with keys, iPods. Wallet-sized watches with GPS systems. They did this willingly. They found this entertaining in Freedom State.

Keita had chosen a good country in which to hide. It had many cities and a good transportation system. It had one of the best hospital networks in the world. Unless he was hit by a bus, struck by lightning or caught and deported, he had a greater statistical likelihood of staying alive here than where he had come from. That was as much as he could reasonably desire. And there was another benefit to living in this country: after a marathon, they gave out bagfuls of food and offered a free massage.

Keita headed to the food area to collect bagels, bananas, apples and energy bars. He shoved them in a bag. Later, he’d be hungry. This food could last for days. Keita gulped down two bottles of water and one sports drink, but his lips were cracking and still he felt thirsty. His hamstring cramped suddenly, just like it had in the Boston Marathon. What was wrong with him? Was he just nervous? There was no sign of anyone looking for him. No sign of Anton Hamm. He should eat something. Maybe it would make him feel
better. He found a firm banana. It made him think of home. It made him think of women on their way to market, carrying platters of bananas on their heads. He and Charity used to try to balance trays on their heads and see how far they could go. Not far. Especially not on bumpy terrain. Charity . . . Still no word from her. Perhaps she had gone travelling somewhere and was simply out of touch by email and phone. If that was the case, Keita hoped desperately that she would return home soon, or at least contact him.

Just then, a black, bald woman rolled up to him in a wheelchair. She looked his age—mid-twenties. Her arms were thick and ripped, like those of a wrestler. She had full lips, dimpled cheeks and eyes that bore right into him. A decal was stuck on the side of her chair:
I dig dykes on wheels
. Back home, gays and lesbians had to be secretive. If they were outed, they were killed. The woman slapped on the brakes, clicked a button on a tape recorder, whipped out a microphone on a yardstick and thrust it toward his mouth.

“Viola Hill, the
Telegram
,” she said.

“I saw you training recently,” he said. “You were in a racing chair. On Ten-Mile Inlet, in Clarkson. Early morning.”

“So that was you,” she said. “Well, I’m with the newspaper in Clarkson.”

He looked again at her bizarre bumper sticker.

“Could I get your name?” she said.

“Roger Bannister,” Keita told her. His gaze fell back on her sign.

“Mister, you got a problem with dykes?”

Keita hesitated. “I have no such problem,” he said slowly. “I was just wondering if you could get in trouble for outing yourself.”

“Not here, mister. Not from the government, anyway. But thanks for the concern. Your thoughts on the race?”

“The hill in the second half was tough,” he said.

“I heard what that guy said to you on the hill,” the reporter said.

“What guy?” Keita said. He didn’t want any fuss.

“The number-one-ranked ten-thousand-metre runner in this country. Billy Deeds. He called you a nigger. Called you other things too.”

“I didn’t hear that,” Keita said.

“I’ve yet to meet a black person who is deaf to that word,” Viola said.

“When you’re focused, you tune out the sounds.”

“So why were you singing? What’s that all about?”

“Sometimes I sing, as a way of locating my energy.”

“So when did you know you would win?” she asked.

“I pulled ahead on the hill at twenty-four kilometres and thought the race would be mine if my hamstrings didn’t seize up.”

She let out a laugh that sounded like a bark, or a starting pistol. “Right,” she said, “the thing about hamstrings is that they own you. Can’t run without their say-so.”

She knew a thing or two about running. “True enough,” he said.

“Cramps bother you often?”

“Usually it’s the threat of cramps.”

“Have you checked your potassium levels?”

He stifled a laugh. Potassium levels. Ridiculous. For a potassium count, you needed blood tests, laboratories, doctors. He had to get away from her. He knew exactly what was coming.

“You registered under the name Roger Bannister,” she said. “But what is your real name?”

“That’s it,” he said.

“Where are you from?”

Keita felt a pinch in his hamstring. The reporter sitting in front of him seemed blurry. He squinted to bring her into focus. He didn’t want to faint in front of her or anyone in this country. Fainting would attract attention and trouble. And now there was something else—a deep, emphatic voice in the distance. Anton Hamm.

“I have to go,” Keita said.

Keita looked in every direction but did not see Hamm. He shot an apologetic look at the reporter and turned to go. It now felt more tiring to walk than it had to run during the race. The cramping flared again in his hamstring. Keita limped into a massage tent marked with a sign Athletes Only. He needed to be alone. He needed to lie down. He needed to escape the inevitable questions.

Inside the massage tent, a young woman smiled at him.

“Could we close these?” he said.

“Sure,” she said, drawing the curtains fully around them. “Massage today?”

“Definitely,” he said.

The therapist had red hair and brown eyes. She shook his hand firmly.

“I’m Paula,” she said, then she stepped out of the curtains to allow him a moment of privacy. He slipped out of his shirt and socks, climbed onto the massage table and lay face down, letting his brow and cheekbones sink into the doughnut-shaped face rest. It was heated. So were the cotton sheets under his belly. The warmth soothed his ribcage and seeped through his body.

Paula returned, placed one hand on the small of his back and began to slide the heel of the other palm along his hamstring while covering the other half of his backside with a heating pad.

“Problems today?” Paula’s hands pressed down firmly on his neck, back, buttocks, hamstrings, calves and feet. In an instant, she located a knot in his left hamstring and placed some weight on it.

Keita tried to breathe through the pain. “I’m tired all over,” he said, “but you’ve already found one sore spot.”

“No wonder,” she said. “I hear you broke the course record.”

“Uh-huh.” Keita had wanted to set the record. Now all he had to do was collect his winnings and get out of town before anybody caught up with him. But after marathons, race officials took their time about handing out prize money. They wanted to have most of the runners across the finish line before they held the prize ceremony. For Keita, that would mean a two-hour wait. As much as Keita found the marathon a dance with death—an exploration of just how much pain a person could tolerate—the suffering lasted only a little more than two hours. He couldn’t understand how any recreational runner could keep going for four hours.

Paula leaned deeper into his upper leg. Keita groaned.

“You’ve got a sore ham,” she said.

As she massaged, Keita relaxed under the pressure of her hands. He thought of his mother and father and the last time he’d seen them together. They were having tea on the two chairs on the front porch, debating about whether plane trees were native to Zantoroland or a foreign species. Yoyo said he could spot an invader any day of the week. What did he know, his mother said, being a foreign interloper himself? Keita remembered the sound of their laughter. It was like a duet. The laugh they made together was Keita’s purest notion of home. Home had a door, and as it opened and Keita walked through it, he felt an ocean of tears welling inside him. So he walked back out and closed the door gently behind him, and he came back to Paula, who was talking still about the tightness in his hamstrings.

“The left is tighter than the right,” she said. He sank into the pressure and allowed her to cause him pain without tensing his muscles.

“When I run hard, it tightens up and starts to cramp,” he said.

Paula slicked her hands with massage oil. It sounded like people doing it in bed. He hadn’t been with a woman in ages. In this country, he wondered if he ever would. She slipped over to his other leg. The one that didn’t hurt.

“So are you on the national team?”

“No.”

“Well, you beat all of them today. Just exactly where are you—?”

“Kintermore,” he lied. Kintermore was located one hour to the west. Whenever people asked where he was from, he named a different city in Freedom State—but never Clarkson.

“Kintermore? And before that?”

“It’s a long story,” he said.

“We’ve got time,” she said, but he did not reply. She spent a few minutes working on his good hamstring and then asked if he wanted her to return to the sore leg.

“Sure,” he said. He could feel her palm digging into a knot at the top of his thigh.

“So, have you been saved?” she said.

“Mmm,” he moaned. Keita wondered if Paula would be interested in seeing him later that day.

Miraculously, she asked, “Are you free this evening?”

“I believe so,” Keita said. He had been planning to leave town on the eastbound intercity bus leaving that night, but if luck smiled down on him, he could always leave in the morning.

Her hands slid down to his calves. “This calf is quite loose,” she said. “Amazing, after a marathon. You should see the calves I meet up with.”

“Only the hamstrings cause me trouble.”

“There is a solution,” she said.

“And that is?”

“Are you ready to take Jesus into your heart?”

Keita flipped over on the table and looked straight at Paula. She was smiling and confident. Just behind her was a large poster on a stand. He had missed it earlier:
Christian Massage Centre
.

“Pardon me?”

“Are you ready for Jesus? There’s a gathering at the Church of the Redeemer tonight.”

His twitching hamstring escalated into a full-blown cramp. He was low on liquids. That was the problem. Dehydrated. As they said in this country, short on electrolytes. He swung his legs off the table and put his weight on the cramping leg.

“I just came for the massage,” he said. “I didn’t see your sign.”

Her mouth collapsed into a frown.

“Is Roger Bannister in there?” A loud male voice announced itself outside the curtain.

It startled Keita, but at least it was not the voice he had been fearing.

“Is that you?” Paula asked him.

Before Keita could answer, the voice continued. “The race winner. I want the race winner. Is he in there?”

“He’ll be out in a jiffy,” Paula said.

Keita would leave on the night bus, after all. “Thanks for the massage,” he said.

Paula pulled back the curtain.

T
HE RACE DIRECTOR HAD LONG GREY HAIR AND WORE JEANS
and sandals. He was slim, tanned and wrinkled. The word “hippie” came to mind. When he was a boy, Keita had heard from Yoyo that hippies were long-haired, anti-war Americans and Canadians who in the 1960s and 1970s ditched their jobs, took drugs, listened to electric music and believed in “free love.” Hitchcock directed Keita to his tent nearby and offered a chair. But sitting would pitch his hamstring into a full-fledged revolt. Keita couldn’t afford to fall. Someone might call an ambulance. And then there would be questions: Who was he? Where were his papers?

“Could I have a drink with fruit, sugar, something with . . .”

“Electrolytes,” Hitchcock said.

“Exactly,” Keita said. “My hamstring is revolting.”

“Hamstring revolting, is it?” Hitchcock chuckled. “Right, then.” He ripped open his tent flap and shouted for his aide to bring him three bottles of electrolytes. They came in a minute. Hitchcock put one bottle in Keita’s hand, but Keita hesitated, so Hitchcock took the bottle, unscrewed the cap and handed it back. “Drink, man,” he said. “And sit down.”

Hitchcock studied Keita intently. He reached forward. Keita flinched as if he were expecting to be hit and dropped the bottle.

“Take it easy there. I couldn’t hurt a flea,” Hitchcock said. “Steady. I’m going to help you.” He opened another bottle of the drink, placed it in Keita’s hand and brought it gently but firmly to Keita’s mouth. Tipping the bottle up, he told him to drink.

Keita felt hot. He felt cold. He couldn’t control the trembling. His vision was blurry.

“We’ve got one or two angry people outside,” Hitchcock said. “Because you swept in and scooped up the prize money. But it’s a free country. Prize goes to the fittest, and you were that today. The second-place finisher is the third-ranked marathoner in this country. Ran in the last Olympic Games. The guy who finished
fourth, Billy Deeds—he was the one bad-mouthing you up the big hill—is the best ten-thousand-metre runner in this country. He’s one helluva runner, but he blew a gasket today. What did you do to him out there?”