Harlan's Race

was sitting there holding my hand again.
    “I respect him for going that far,” Chino said. “I went to Vietnam sick inside about a lot of things, and I did pull the trigger. And it wasn’t more gutsy than what Vince did. Not many people ever make a real decision. He did, and he’s a changed man.”
    “I suppose I can meet a certain person now,” I croaked.
    Chino knew I meant Julius. “Cool out for a while,” he said.
    A nurse came bustling in with a little paper cup of pills. “This is your medication that Doctor ordered,” she said. As I swallowed down the pills, Chino asked:
    “So ... you gonna live?”
    “Why not? Things can only get better.”
    “No shit. So far, LEV. has made a fool of us. We’re stuck in a pattern. It’s gotta change.”
    ‘You going back to California?”
    “I’ll stay a few days. Michael and Astarte are going to help me keep an eye on you. A hospital is an easy place to get somebody.”
    Suddenly, for no reason and every reason I could think of, I was the one who was sobbing now. What had I done to deserve a friend like this? I turned my face away from pure shame. Chino didn’t say anything. As the horrible sobs racked my sick lungs, his hand was still rubbing mine gently.
    Every day, the nurse brought the drugs with mysterious names — isoniazid, rifampin, pyrazinamide. Sitting up, I stared out the window, where Vince’s tear-streaks still showed — at the depressing vista of power-plant smokestacks and bridges. The hospital air was a recycled miasma of other people’s breath, medicines, body fluids, despair and suffocating pain. I had time to think how the losing race had impacted my own immune system.
    Terrible dreams hounded me. I found Billy’s body laying forgotten on a gurney, in some empty corridor. The corpse was tied up in green garbage bags, with twine wrapped around it. I remembered trying to wrestle it into the seat of my old pickup, and failing. The limp corpse had a will of its own — one long sinewy leg kept sliding out, blocking the door. Then, all of a sudden, the corpse got away from me and ran off down a rainy street. I was chasing it, trying to throw a kick. “Stop! You’re mine!” I was yelling at it. But it stayed ahead of me, not turning its shattered head, powering along with jerky bounds.
    I woke into the hot silence, with nurses rustling down the corridor outside, and was afraid to sleep.
    As the days passed, my beard and hair grew long again. One day, when Michael brought my mail, there was a homemade get-well card and a letter from LEV. — the longest one yet. He must have spent days clipping and pasting.
    APOLOGIES FOR NEGLECTING YOU ... I HAVE BEEN AWAY . . . NICE TO SEE YOU RIGHT WHERE I WANT YOU ... HOW DOES IT FEEL TO HAVE YOUR LIFE GOING NOWHERE ... LIKE MINE DID ... FEAR THE STRONGER MEDICINE ... I AM CLOSE ... SO CLOSE LOVE, LEV.
    “God,” said Michael, reading it. “He knows you’re here.” “This is so creepy.” Astarte shivered.
    Chino read it. “Definitely someone who knew you.”
    “He could be anybody... an orderly right in this hospital,” Michael added.
    “Did Julius ever finish running through the list of old grudges?” I asked.
    ‘Yeah. Of the 19 men on the list who are your age or younger, 4 of them are veterans. Including your friend Denny Falks. But... maybe our guy isn’t a vet. So far, Julius hasn’t connected any of them with Richard Mech.”
    I sighed, as Chino put the letter in his jacket pocket. The same batch of mail brought a sad letter from Jacques. Their second baby had died at six months, of a stubborn ear infection. Eileen was flat on her back from exhaustion.
    Russell came down from Westchester, bearing a book for me to read. It felt like an apology about the photographs.
    “When you get out, come recuperate at my place in Puerto Vallarta,” he said.
    To my surprise, Vince called from L.A. I had the oxygen mask off now, and talked with him while propped on pillows. It was surprising how distant I felt.
    “Are you okay?” I asked.
    “Yeah, I am.”
    He was putting on a good front — trying to sound like the cocky old Vince.
    “Fve paid H-C back—got a place of my own.” By his tone, he was anxious to show me how responsible he was being. “And I’ve finally got a job in films. It’s a dy-no-mite job.” “How’d you manage that? Find a camouflage casting couch?”
    Vince ignored my barb. “I start next week at Valhalla Productions.”
    “Never heard of them.”
    “If