Harlan's Race

later.”
    “Fucked up beyond all repair” was all he’d say about Vietnam.
    “Harlan, you writing a book too?” Chino asked.
    “He’s going to write about Billy,” Steve broke in. “Tell it with dignity, like I did.”
    “The hell I am,” I said.
    As the summer passed, Harry became the kid brother I’d never had. But Chino became a deeper kind of familia — my passionate sidekick.
    One day Steve and I were taking one of our long walks on the beach, where we talked about everything under the sun. Steve said, “You’re all sweaty over Vince right now. But you’re going to fall for Chino.”
    “Go on.”
    “Chino’s so crazy he’s sane ... and he’s pure gold.”
    I considered this. “He’s the first gay man I ever met who isn’t running after romance or fucks. And he’s twice as single-minded as Billy was. At least there was room in Billy’s mind for two things — love and running. With Chino it’s only one thing. Getting LEV.”
    “Feels good to have him and Harry around, though.” “Especially Harry, huh?” I couldn’t resist the dig, as I picked up a bit of beach glass.
    Steve ignored the dig. “The two of them confront me with something I’ve avoided thinking about. Jeez Louise, I remember laying awake nights, sweating, terrified that I’d get drafted for Korea.”
    “Yeah,” I said. “I promised myself I would never be a guy like my dad. I’ve had this child-like faith in courtrooms, like a lot of us do. We’ve been fighting back in the courtrooms. But whenever we win in court, they go to their guns. And you can’t beat guns unless you think like Chino and Hariy.”
    We were getting gloomier and gloomier.
    ‘Yeah,” said Steve. “I used to think we’d win by clicking our magic heels together. Who are we kidding? The straight world is not sending their*Dorothys to do us. They’re sending their own Chinos and Harrys.”
    I hurled the bit of glass back into the sea.
    Often as I fantasized how we’d apprehend LEV., I wondered why Chino had been so deeply affected by Billy’s death — why he tracked LEV. with his own lonely passion.
    Late in July, just as Steve had predicted, Vince came back. That morning, we were all on the front deck having coffee, when the boardwalk squeaked. Heads turned. My lover was walking up from the ferry, luggage over his shoulder. The cuts on his face had healed.
    “Hiya, Vince,” said Steve, trying to keep a straight face.
    The vets rose with polite handshakes. Their eyes said that they didn’t like Vince any better than before. They didn’t approve of my affair with him, and were too polite to say so.
    But his eyes, aglow with innocence, now rested on Chino and Harry with a shy new respect. Real fighters, he’d called them. It seemed like his thoughts had been moving along the same new groove that mine had. Except that, in his typical fashion, he was going to go off the deep end with it.
    Me, I was the paragon of common sense, wasn’t I?

NINE
    On the back deck, Vince and I had it out, sitting at the cable-drum table. His eyes noted the fortress air of the house, as he brazenly lit a joint right in front of me, then thoughtfully blew the smoke down-wind so it didn’t get in my face. I hated seeing him smoke dope, ruining his good lungs and — in my opinion — his brain cells. The Reader’s Digest would denounce my sexuality, yet they’d support me 100 percent in efforts to get my lover off weed.
    “How’s New York?” I asked.
    “I stayed with — you don’t want to know who. We, uh, did some brainstorming.”
    Had he slept with this man? I felt a dreadful loneliness.
    “I know what you’re thinking,” Vince said, taking a long deep hit on the joint.
    “You’re 26 and I’m 42, and you know what I’m thinking?”
    “Goddam flaky kid. Now we have to start over. New lab tests, new withdrawal ...”
    “Yeah, I was thinking that,” I admitted.
    “I didn’t run those mile times because I was a flake.”
    “True.”
    “I haven’t fucked around, I’ve been running a little, and I’ve stayed away from speed.”
    “You’re still hooked on pot.”
    “That doesn’t count.” He looked at me steadily. “Look
    — I want to have the summer with you. But then I have to go and do my thing. Get my life going.”
    I met his eyes. Was he hesitating in his rush to violence? Was this a cry for help? There had to be a way to get his brilliant but moth-holed brain in gear. I had to buy some time till I could think of