Harlan's Race

them, his vertebrae crackled. The enormity of his life hanging by a thread was before my face — I felt a little short on profound wisdom.
    So I said, “How about a full-body massage ... loosen you up?”
    He considered it, hovering in the old edginess. Then he nodded, and undressed in the warm firelight. While I warmed ajar of almond oil, he stretched out on the bed, with a towel over his middle. He kept one arm over his eyes, showing the swatch of ebony hair in his strong armpit. His thighs were trembling — malaria and cold and sex and a sudden shyness, all at once. His ponytail lay flared across the sheet.
    My own body was feeling a deep trembling. Could I be dispassionate for once — do this for his healing? Or was I just grabbing at any human driftwood the sea carried in?
    With the kerosene lamp turned out, only firelight lit the room. Sitting on the edge of the bed, I took his feet in my hands. They were well-made, hard, calloused, with mutilated toe-nails and lingering dermatitis from old trench foot. The soles were scarred — he’d gone barefoot in the jungle. Ankles and calves were scarred by the few phosphorus burns, where flesh had grown back in. I flexed his stiff instep, tried to work some love into those hard toes.
    Chino stirred jumpily. His energies were fighting me.
    “Carajo ... I never knew my feet were so sensitive,” he murmured.
    As his physical scars passed under my fingers, I wished I could find the old spirit scars, and ease them. Feet done, I kneaded his calves and thighs, feeling holes in the muscles where shrapnel had punched. My cravings stirred, and I fought to be disciplined. He had to ask for intimacy — I wasn’t going to take advantage. Where was that place of deep prayer that always came over me in the boat? Alive, my hands said to him. Taking his right arm off his face, I tenderly worked that hand that had pulled triggers and cut throats and broken necks. Remembering about swollen lymph nodes, I contrived to feel his. They felt normal.
    Undoing his ponytail, I spread his long hair in my hands. It was clean, strong and heavy like horsehair, and glossy as a crow’s back. Working his tight scalp, I pulled locks of his hair slowly, gently through my fingers. Soon, enriched with the plant-oil from my fingers, his hair caught the firelight like it was golden foil. Alive, alive.
    He laughed a little, his strong stomach jerking. “Is playing with my hair part of the deal?”
    “Part of the deal,” I said softly.
    Right under his right breast, was the gnarled old scar
    — the pec muscle felt fossilized in a spasm. When I worked it gently, his whole body moved strangely, in sudden distress. Then, to my amazement, tears welled in his eyes. He put his hand over mine, and helped me rub the place.
    I bent over him. ‘Want to talk to me?”
    For a while, Chino stared up past me, at the firelit ceiling. The tears ran and ran — out of the corners of his eyes, down his temples, into his hair. He swallowed convulsively, his Adam’s apple working, and talked in a muffled voice.
    “Ever since I got out of the hospital, I thought... if I just deal with stuff... you know, the morphine addiction, the drinking, hold a job, get through school, do something with my life ... if I could just do that, I’d forget.”
    I had an idea what this was about. “How did he get it?” I asked.
    “Friendly fire. A sniper.”
    Chino clenched my hand so hard that it hurt.
    “The .50 caliber round blew off the whole front of his head. The back of his skull was left on his neck. It looked like a red dish. I can’t get it out of my mind. I dream about it, man. This red dish staring at me. But I can’t forget. What I did forget is what he really looked like.”
    ‘The sniper knew you were friendlies?”
    “I think somebody higher up knew about us.”
    “You get hit too? This?” I touched his chest.
    ‘Yeah. A smaller caliber round. I crawled to a stream, drifted down. A Navy patrol found me. The open wound in the water..
    Chino kept rubbing my hand on the old scar. His eyes asked me to say something. I was beginning to understand some things. His bonding with me after Billy’s death, his determination to get LEV.
    ‘You tried to find out later who the shooters were?”
    “I tried. Before I met Harry.”
    Suddenly I knew I didn’t want to know if he’d succeeded. “When you love that deep,” I said, “you don’t forget.”
    “I did.”
    “Stop punishing yourself—let it come