Harlan's Race

someday.”
    “Are you guys crazy?” I exploded.
    “No,” said Harry patiently. “We’re saner than you are. He’s set his mind, Harlan. You can’t force him to change it.”
    “We know how you feel about him,” Chino added. “But you’re acting like some parent, trying to pry your kid out of a student radical group.”
    “Most important,” said Harry, “the plan buys time. Some time for him to cool down.”
    A battered monarch butterfly had lit on Chino’s arm. We all watched as it fanned its wings with slow and dying dignity. I could see the logic of their plan, but I was feeling a deep panic.
    “Let Vince be his own man,” Harry insisted. “Make his own decision whether he wants to go to the end of the limb.”
    “Because there’s still the big question,” added Chino. ‘Vince talks loco. But can he pull the trigger? None of us know till we go to do it.”
    There was a dreadful palpitation in my stomach. ‘You’re playing with people’s lives,” I said.
    “They’re playing with our lives,” Chino said.
    ‘You got a better plan?” Harry challenged.
    “What if Vince gets itchy for action before three years is up?” I asked. ‘What if he goes out of control?”
    Chino looked directly into my eyes.
    “If things go FUBAR,” he said, “you won’t want to know.” The message was clear. They might hijack Vince for one last try at turning him, and they’d be kind, if possible. Failing that — if the safety of the gay community hung in the balance — Vince would have a “mysterious accident”. I didn’t doubt their ruthlessness, or their ability to get away with it. It was a horrible, gut-wrenching moment.
    Harry was looking tired. He rubbed his hands over his face, and turned away.
    Chino read my mind. He said quietly, “Trust us, Harlan.”
    He raised his arm, and the butterfly wavered off and landed in the water. A gull scooped it up.
    The next day — our last day on the Beach, maybe our last day forever — Vince and I went out in the clam-boat. We found a good spot in the east end of the bay, with no other boats near. The work was an excuse to be alone. I was filled with dread and desire and tenderness — the pain of not having him near. Naked to the waist, our torsos tanned almost black by now, we alternated raking and culling. Nobody worried much about skin cancer in those days. A few oysters came up in the rake, and we ate them right there — sucked them alive out of the half-shell, juice running down our chins.
    Vince was silent, bringing me coffee, hovering close. He’d been struggling not to smoke, and he smelled clean. Several times, between grabs, we stripped and dove overboard to swim. I fondled him in the water — whorls drifting around his thighs like a salmon’s milt. Hauling ourselves out, we lay naked in the wet gritty bottom of the boat, on an old army blanket, where nobody could see us. You never knew if a clammer a quarter mile away had binoculars.
    “Oh God,” he whispered, his face against my belly, “I can’t get enough of you.”
    “Stay with me at the college.” I was caressing his neck. “Please don’t ask.”
    “Why?” I asked.
    “Because going back to Prescott is a defeat. I’ve gotta ... like . .. move ahead. You know? Commit to something. I’m 26 ... no future, no money.” His warm breath between my thighs, his lips searching. “You called me a whore ...
    I am a fucking whore. Even with you, it’s been putting out to have a place to sleep. I feel so lost.”
    Closing my eyes, I nodded and let my head fall back. His mouth took me, and the sun poured down on us. I held his head with both hands, feeling his hunger and
    heartbreak draw my entrails, knowing there was no detour between his age and mine. And was I so wise? Instead, I gave him food more alive than the oyster broth we’d sucked. Afterward he slid up along me, our damp bodies pressing together every way they could, and with eyes closed, he gave me his warm spermy lips and tongue in a long, long kiss. He smelled and tasted like the sea. For a moment, my numbness melted and I was skin to skin with a real person, no image of beauty, but a man whose heat and life were all the more precious to me because I couldn’t do anything to protect him. If he died, it would be violently, and far away from me, and I might not ever know how it happened.
    Chino and Harry were right. I had to let him go.
    He opened his eyes, those amber eyes of a wolf, and looked into mine with a