Harlan's Race

breakers moved in slowly like mountain-ranges, with spume blowing off their peaks. They crashed right at the foot of the barrier dune. We sat on the dune, bathed in blowing mist and thunder, our intimacy coiled between us, like the sound in a conch shell. The newness and youngness, like a scent of bruised willows, trembled around us both. We looked at each other’s transfigured faces. His eyes were still red from crying. I was glad to see a little color in his skin, a fragile light in his eyes. As he slid his arm around my waist, I slid mine over his shoulders, shelteringly, and pressed him against my side. He leaned into me, our unshaven cheeks grating together.
    “Did you dream?” I asked, loud enough to be heard.
    “Nada. But I slept good.”
    “Keep trying.”
    He laughed a little.
    “My muscles are so fucking sore,” he said, “it feels like you took that stick of yours and beat me all over.”
    With a comb from my pocket, I was smoothing his mist-wet hair, till it shone like a cormorant wing again.
    “The pain is lactic acid in your muscles,” I said. “If you jog a little, that’ll help flush it out.”
    I was twisting a lock around his hair, to make a ponytail, when suddenly Chino turned his head. Two dark-blue figures were striding along the boardwalk. Even through the noise, Chino had heard that loose board squeak.
    Without saying a word, we agreed that to hell with the cops, we would keep our arms around each other’s waists. I could feel the old barrio hatred of Anglo police surging inside my friend, but he kept his cool. The two cops walked up, with their own brief glow of Anglo bay-man edginess about brown-skinned Spanish-speakers.
    “Sergeant Lance Shirley, Suffolk County Police ... Bob Enger ...” I made introductions.
    Everybody shook hands. Lance and Bob took their reading on the lithe hard-eyed man before them, and decided to be very cool.
    “You guys are the only people on the Beach besides us,” Lance shouted over the roar. “No waves topping the dune yet, right?”
    ‘We’re watching it. Thanks for checking on us,” Chino said.
    To defuse the tension, I said, “If you two don’t have cold burgers coming over from Patchogue, why don’t you join us for turkey tonight? We promise not to recruit you.”
    After the cops left, Chino and I started stuffing the turkey. “So what’s your new angle on LEV.?” I was washing the bird in the sink.
    He was chopping onions. “We’ve been running up the wrong trail.”
    My stomach plunged. “How do you know?”
    Chino rubbed an onion-tear off his cheek, and tossed me a letter from the backpack. The familiar generic envelope was addressed to Vincent Matti, at Valhalla Productions. The familiar paste-up letter unfolded. It was identical to the one I’d just received.
    BAD BOY — RUNNING AGAIN — HAVEN’T YOU LEARNED TO FEAR — SPORTS ARE HOLY
    — OFF LIMITS TO FAG SCUM — DESIST OR I’LL WHIP YOU.
    Chino said, ‘Vince got this after the Advocate interviewed him about next year’s Memorial. You didn’t see the story?” “I haven’t read a gay paper in months.” I shut off the water.
    “The story was about how he’s involved in the race promotion ... training seriously. He’s going to run the Memorial, to launch his comeback in track.”
    Why this sudden dedication? Vince had dropped the sport for years.
    “So LEV. tracks the gay press,” I said. “And it ticked him off.”
    “I’ve got a feeling this is our first break. One of those things that you wonder why you missed it before.”
    Out of the backpack, Chino took a paper bag and emptied it noisily on the table beside a few unpeeled onions. Out came baggies containing the rocks, and the .22 hollow-point casing fired at the Prescott track meet. With his brown finger, Chino lined them out on the table. “Look at the pattern,” he said. “First, the bullet at Montreal. Then the rock through the window. Then the bullet at Prescott. Then a rock... a rock ... another rock. Why no more bullets? Why did he switch?” I stared into his eyes.
    “Think about where he fired these two kinds of projectiles,” said Chino.
    “The rounds were at athletic events. The rocks weren’t.” “No shit, mate. But why?”
    ‘We were good boys and stayed away from track.” “You’re missing my fucking point,” Chino barked at me. “All this time, LEV. has never fired a shot at you. Only at your lovers competing. Or guys he believed were your lovers. He shot at Jacques