Harlan's Race

clothes.
    “Dear ... heaven ..Marian murmured, hands over her eyes.
    She threw her arms around Betsy, who simply uttered Billy’s name drawn out to a terrible wordless shriek.
    The panicky crowd had us trapped near the stadium entrance. Chino and Harry had planted themselves in front of us. Then camera flashes started blinking off in our faces. Images of our bloodstained little clan would be flashed around the world — by those media who had stalked Billy and me since our relationship was publicized in a tabloid newspaper last spring. An ABC-TV female interviewer pushed briskly toward us, with her mike. A cameraman followed, equipment on his shoulder.
    Marian was our media liaison. She moved up beside Chino, and barked, “Be a little kind. Statements later.”
    “Mr. Brown,” the interviewer called to me. “Mr. Brown, would you — Mr. Brown, as Billy Sive’s coach, can you tell us how you felt when —”
    Now spectators yelled down on our heads, from the tiers above.
    “Billy lives!”
    “Serves him right!”
    And a loud woman’s voice trumpeted, “Homos deserve to die! I hope they shoot you aaaaallll!”
    Late that night, in our downtown hotel, the family managed to shut the world out. Everybody sprawled exhausted in beds or on chairs, or bathed swollen eyes in the bathrooms. Footsteps and voices shook the corridor outside, where Harry’s voice could be heard barking, “Keep the bribe, buddy. Press conference in the lobby tomorrow morning at 8.”
    So Harry and Chino were returning from the stadium. I wondered what they’d found out.
    I was standing at the window, staring out at the glowing skyline of that French-Canadian city. Church spires cut across the city lights. Somewhere, a church bell was tolling midnight.
    The bedroom had sheltered Billy and me, on the two nights he left the Olympic Village. It was stuffy, as hotel rooms were in those days when everybody still smoked so much. On the dresser, beside my old Bible, lay the gold medal that he’d won in the 10,000-meter run. His T-shirt was draped over a chair with kid forgetfulness — I could still see him pulling it off, eager to make love, baring his lean torso that rippled with life, like water. The double bed, so disordered after we finally lay quiet, was neat now, under its worn chenille spread. Just an hour ago, I had seen that torso inert under glaring lights in the city morgue. They’d verified a gunshot wound as cause of death. His dad had identified him and authorized shipment of the body home. I was jostled aside. Officially, I did not exist.
    Now, barely looking at myself in the mirror, a 41-year-old man who’d lost the only lover he ever had, I noticed something. The bloodstained suit. It was still on me.
    From the adjoining room came a TV newscaster’s voice. Moving in a numb quest to understand what had happened, I opened the connecting door.
    The room was Harry’s and Chino’s. But right now, Vince, Steve, Marian and Bruce Cayton were in there, hunched amid blue layers of cigarette smoke, watching the screen. Bruce was an old-school, chain-smoking, skirt-chasing journalist I’d known for years, who by some miracle of sympathy had become one of our staunchest media supporters. Mike Stella was there too, a teammate of Billy’s.
    “... of Richard Mech’s confession to the shooting,” said the newscaster somberly.
    News-clips slid before our eyes. A pan-shot of the stands beside the straightaway, as Billy was pulling ahead of Finnish runner Armas Sepponan. The killer had taken advantage of the uproar — people standing up and screaming wildly for or against the queer. A slow-motion zoom showed the dark puff in the air by Billy’s head.
    Cut to police escorting Richard Mech. It was my first look at my lover’s murderer. Mech was about my age, clean-cut. By tonight, police and media already knew from his confession that Mech was an Idaho country boy and an Army sniper in Vietnam.
    A guy like me, I thought, did this to us.
    Steve, sitting beside me, wordlessly put his arm across my shoulders.
    . . U.S. authorities demanding that Mech be extradited back to the U. S. to stand trial,” the newscaster went on. “Meanwhile, there are reactions from Canadian and American church leaders, who ...”
    Mike Stella wordlessly squeezed my arm and left. I trudged back to my room. Vince followed, and shut the door. His eyes were bleary, and his handsome face tear-stained. He leaned against the faded wallpaper with Billy’s shoe