Harlan's Race

irrigation ditches, snowy egrets stalked for frogs — reminding me of Vince. Vibrating with excitement, I wanted to come out of this visit with Betsy’s concession that I could somehow be closer to Billy’s child.
    East of the 1-5, near the town of Colusa, we found the wildlife refuge.
    It was several thousand acres of rushes and ponds, once part of a vast swamp that was now rice-lands. From a distance, the water was white with snow geese, resting and feeding in their spring migration. As we stopped in the small parking lot, a pheasant ducked away into some grass. Half an hour late, the two women drove up. Marla was driving. I remembered Betsy’s wish for the butch who’d take her home, and was expecting a big strong woman who looked like a trucker. Marla was a surprise — a dancer, longnecked and graceful as a heron, with leg-warmers on her legs, and hair in a bun.
    Betsy looked fit and buff — bright in California colors. But she wasn’t happy to see Chino with me.
    “Are you sure it’s safe?” she asked him, frowning through the passenger window of the battered compact car.
    “Everything looks okay,” he shrugged.
    “Then why are you two iron warriors together?”
    “Misery loves company,” I said.
    I was looking past her, at my spirit son, strapped in his car seat. Billy’s boy stared back with sharp, suspicious eyes. He was three now, comically broad-shouldered. And his hair was still dark. He didn’t look like Billy at all. He felt like a baby cowbird who’d hatched in a songbird’s nest. Did Doc Jacobs get the damn semen samples mixed up with somebody else’s?
    The two women got out of the car. Falcon was tugging at their hands like a balloon ready to soar. Maybe his home was all female, but he clearly knew he was a male, and a rowdy one at that.
    “Falkie, you remember Uncle Harlan? Say ‘hi’.”
    Falcon was silent, staring up at me.
    “And this is ... Uncle Chino.”
    Falcon stared at Chino, then jerked loose and ran off. His mother sprinted after him in a 1-second, 5-yard dash.
    “Well, you’re in shape,” I said as she dragged him back.
    “We can hardly wait for him to start driving,” she said dryly.
    Subtle tensions surrounded us, as we sat at a picnic table by a nearby rice-field. We ate some homemade apple cobbler that the women had brought. Falcon didn’t want to be held, though he climbed briefly into my lap, only to decide that Chino was more interesting because he had a long ponytail to yank.
    Meanwhile, Betsy and Marla chattered about their lives. Betsy was proud of regional NCAA wins for her women’s track team. Marla taught modern dance at nearby Sutter Community College — she was divorced, no children. They were having to be discreet, pretending to be just roommates. Strong biases against gay teachers had been kicked up in some California schools by the 1978 Briggs Initiative.
    Falcon jumped off Chino’s knees, swooped around, gave a heart attack to a pheasant or two in the grass. Marla grabbed him when he got too near the water.
    “Still go to church?” I asked Betsy.
    ‘There’s no gay church in Marysville. Marla and I met at the rice festival... I went to the temple in Marysville to pray to the Rice Goddess,” Betsy grinned.
    “Now and then we go to straight church,” Marla added. “If only they’d take half the time they blah blah blah about money and Male, and talk about Female. Don’t they get it? They offer nothing for women to identify with...”
    There we were — two unhappy men, and two happy women.
    I was touched by the two of them — sunlight on their hair, heads bending together over Falcon. The feeling between them was very strong, and clean, and fiery-bright. My fading moon-glow was able to see how beautiful they were together. What did it feel like to give pleasure to another woman? I loved giving pleasure to a man — whether it was making Vince faint, or the one little grunt I’d squeezed out of Chino last night. But I’d never given a thing to a woman. Was I too busy worrying about performing? What the hell did two women feel like together? I’d never asked myself.
    Marla was Betsy’s opposite in every way — talkative, sunny, openly affectionate. Now and then they burst into uproarious laughter — some lesbian in-group joke that went over the heads of us men. Had they found the golden romance that Vince talked about?
    While Marla and Chino took Falcon for a short walk, Betsy and I talked privately.
    “Are you happy,