Harlan's Race

of black stains like that, but I think he read my mind.
    ‘We’ll talk about it tomorrow,” I whispered. “I need to be alone.”
    Chino went into the next room, sliding his glance over everybody, checking out the rest of “his own”. Betsy sat in a wing chair, staring at the turned-off TV. She and Billy had been as close friends as lesbians and gay men ever get, and she was in shock.
    Hunkering down by her, Chino took her small hand in his, and started talking to her. Betsy eyed him warily — she was another fey liberal.
    I showered to get the smell off me — changed clothes, roamed the room in helpless numbness. Desperate for some consolation, I picked up my Bible. Through years of struggling to hold onto my faith, I had doted on the few passages about love. They bloomed like wildflowers among all those thistles of hate that seemed to crowd scripture everywhere.
    This time, however, the dog-eared book fell open to Ezekiel 28: 6-7.
    Because thou hast set thine heart as the heart of God,
    Behold, therefore I will bring strangers upon thee, the terrible of the nations:
    And they shall draw their swords against the beauty of thy wisdom,
    And they shall defile thy brightness.
    Was it God who sent Richard Mech and his partner against me and Billy? Or was it h um an fanatics, drawing their sword?
    Angrily I slammed the Bible down on the dresser. From across the street, bright-lit offices of a glass tower stared into my window. If the spotter was hiding over there, he could study me with an infrared scope. I yanked the curtains shut, made sure the door to the corridor was locked. The next room was quiet, but Chino and Harry were there. They were buddies, not lovers, but they stayed tight.
    Billy had run his race. Was this my race, from now on? Would I have to live behind barred doors, hiring guns to protect my family — in the land of the free and the home of the brave?
    Long after that distant church bell tolled 2 a.m., I finally surrendered to exhaustion, and crawled into that cold bed. On the pillows, I could still smell the faint fragrance of Billy’s after-shave.
    Dreams swallowed me. Vince was hovering there, asking if he could sleep in my bed for the night. He looked so young, like a kid who’d been scared by a horror movie he’d seen and wanted to bunk with Dad for the night. He crawled in beside me, wearing sweaty jeans and T-shirt. Around him was a feeling of pot, poppers, unwashed sex, and all the wild partying since his own running career was destroyed. That sweaty, desperate nestling against me was strange — his body was a man’s, not a child’s.
    Then Vince was swept away by a storm of cheers and curses.
    THREE
    Twenty months later May 1978
    The voices hammered my ears as microphones were thrust in my face. Flashbulbs winked off. Conservative U.S. and Canadian media had soft-pedaled the murder trial, but today the sentence had come down, and restraint was out the window.
    “Hey, Harlan, do you think justice was done?”
    “Har! Hey, Har! Give us a photo angle.”
    “Vince! This way!”
    ‘You should be locked up!” one man bawled. “Not the hero!”
    To the reporters who called me “Har,” I snapped, “It’s mister to you.”
    Richard Mech, now 44, had just heard his sentence in the Montreal courtroom, and his braced neck was disappearing down another marble corridor as Canadian marshals escorted him to prison. With Harry just ahead of us, and Chino just behind, Vince, John Sive and I strode down the main hallway toward the entrance. Once again our two vets were unarmed, by police order. All of us wore vests made of Kevlar, the new miracle fabric used for body armor.
    John, 54 now, burying the loss of Billy in his work, looked dreadfully tired, trudging with his heavy briefcase.
    We were being dragged down by a pack of yammering wild dogs.
    “Mr. Brown, what are your plans?”
    “Harlan! Hey, Har!”
    “Mr. Brown, why do you think the Canadian and U.S. governments aren’t interested in the conspiracy theory on this case?”
    Outside, there were cars, buses, squad cars, Royal Canadian mounted police, riot police, demonstrators, media and spectators. Lovers of justice in both countries knew that the verdict was a litmus test on the future. Were governments and peoples willing to honor the lives of their gay citizens? Canada had its own gay-rights movement — indeed, Billy’s slaughter had been seen on TV all over the world, and jarred gay men and lesbians everywhere.