Harlan's Race

“What’re you looking at?” she said, blushing a little. “Oh ... you and Falcon.”
    Shyly, she pulled her T-shirt farther down over the baby.
    I shook my head. ‘You act like I’m going to grab your tit.” “Now and then I catch this vibe from you,” she said, coloring.
    “Some guys never touch women. I wasn’t one of those.” “Oooooo, the Neanderthal is talking bi.”
    Now I was running backwards, trying to lighten things up. “I’m not going to chase you.”
    ‘You couldn’t run a hundred miles anyway,” she leered puckishly.
    The subject needed changing.
    “How much were you with guys, anyway?” I asked. Betsy shrugged. “Oh ... a couple of times, in high school. But it wasn’t home.”
    “There’s all kinds of home.”
    “What do you mean?”
    “It might be a good idea if we got married.”
    Mouth open, she stared at me. “What?”
    ‘You heard me.”
    She touched the gold ring on my hand. ‘You’re already married.”
    “More safety for you and Falcon. Legally, socially. And just on general principles. Unless you want to live with your own bodyguard.”
    “But nobody knows he’s Billy’s kid. I always let on that I don’t know who the father is.”
    “Supposing people find out? Like that guy who writes the hate letters?”
    “So ... you’re proposing a passing marriage? No sex?” ‘Yeah. Strictly camouflage.”
    “What about you and Vince?” she asked.
    “I’ll have to decide. I have a bad feeling about Vince.” “He really loves you.”
    ‘Vince isn’t my type. We’d drive each other nuts.”
    She shrugged. “And supposing I want a lover? I’m getting ready for the butch of my dreams to take me home.” “We can both have lovers.”
    “Great idea on paper .. . complicated in real life. Especially if the media hears about it.”
    “Sure you won’t consider it, Bets?”
    “No,” she said flatly.
    Sliding from under the quilt, she carried Falcon toward the baby room. He rode quietly under her shirt, asleep now. “Eveiy kid needs a father,” I said to her retreating back. At the door to the hallway, she turned and stared at
    me.
    “Bullshit,” she stated. “Your father wasn’t there for you. And neither was mine, when he beat me up and threw me out. And neither of us had any trouble figuring out who we are.”
    While she put the baby down to sleep, I sat staring at the fire, feeling myself at a crossroads. Okay, my plan to disappear for the summer was definitely a “go”.
    Betsy came back, and picked up the lesbian magazine Ladder.
    “Listen,” she said suddenly, “you’re not going to try to take him away from me, are you? I mean ... I agreed to give him to you and Billy. But we never signed any written agreement, and —•”
    “What kind of a heartless S.O.B. do you think I am?” She seemed to relax a little.
    “Just wondering,” she said. “Seems like all I do is worry about John ... okay, Falcon. Now that you’re back, I hope somebody doesn’t fire-bomb the house, or... shoot through the window ... or something.”
    “Don’t worry. In a few days, I’ll be out of sight, and gone.” Had anybody bugged her house, and heard us talking about the baby? But Billy’s killer was in prison, and it was all over, wasn’t it?
    The depression that came over me was so heavy, I almost couldn’t get up off the sofa.
    FOUR
    June 1978
    My clam-boat had her blunt prow into a light breeze, and she rose and fell gently on the swell. In the silence, the noise of the water slapping and gurgling along her sides was almost music.
    Holding a nautical chart of the Great South Bay, I leaned against the boat’s cabin, trying hard to feel the magic of teeming life all around me. Down in the clean green water, silver-gray shapes of sea trout swarmed past. Half a mile away, where a fisherman was hauling in a full gill net, hundreds of sea gulls wheeled in the air. I’d always seen my runners as birds, free of flight, running the gauntlet of hunters’ guns. Billy was down, floating dead in the water. Vince struggled to spread his magnificent wings. I was a bird too, driving my wings desperately, feeling the gun barrel leading on me.
    The hour was past noon. I’d just cut the engine here, to try a new spot.
    South of me, along the horizon, the low, tan silhouette of Fire Island ran from east to west, disappearing into haze at either end. Locals called it “the Beach”. North was the green skyline of Long Island’s South Shore. Fewer clam-boats were