The Front Runner

carefully, and had done a passable job on his head. But no, he didn't look like he was sleeping.
    The angel of death had cruised him. Death, that hustler, that last lover.
    Delphine had put a huge bouquet of white lilies on his body. He had tried hard to find hyacinths, but found to his surprise that hyacinths don't bloom in September. So he had settled for two weeks' groceries' worth of lilies, and their fragrance seemed to fill the church.
    The Prescott pro musica played some slow mournful Renaissance songs. Jacques had come, and blew into his recorder waveringly, sometimes breaking off.
    Father Moore stood up in the pulpit. The church was very quiet as he spoke.
    "Harlan Brown has asked me not to deliver a eulogy," he said. "And he's right. Billy's eulogy is written in thousands of hearts. Anything we could add would be superfluous. Instead, Harlan has asked me to read some passages from the Bible and from the teachings of Buddha that he and Billy read at their wedding."
    We all sat with sweat rolling down our bodies. Not a sound disturbed the silence of the church, except an occasional muffled sob from somebody. In his gentle, deep voice, the gay priest read those immortal words:
    " 'Let us live without hate among those who hate
    " 'Set me as a seal upon your heart, as a seal upon your arm, for love is strong as death ...'"
    Surely I'm going to cry now, I thought. Oh God, help me to cry. I don't even want to be comforted.
    But my eyes stayed dry and burning. With all its strength, my body denied his death. Yet in my mind, his death was so present that I couldn't even remember him. As the priest read those passages, I tried to recall how Billy had looked sitting on the grass in that brown velvet suit, with the spring sunshine bright on his hair. But the image was gone.
    The gay priest was saying, ". . . and I'll close this brief service with a contribution of my own. It's fitting,
    I think. It's A. E. Housman's poem 'To an Athlete Dying Young.'"
    As he read it, I tried to remember how Billy had looked running on the track in Montreal, just—it seemed—scant hours ago. But the image was gone.
    "'... And find unwithered on his curls/ That garland briefer than a girl's,' " Father Moore read, finishing the poem.
    Beside me, Vince bent over his knees, choking out loud. John sat very straight and silent, with the tears running down his cheeks. A wave of sobs went through the church.
    Even Father Moore was crying. He looked down at the coffin and said in a stifled voice, "Good-bye, Billy. One of the joys of paradise will be seeing your blithe spirit again. Good-bye."
    After the funeral, we took him to a Manhattan funeral home. The director, a gay, had offered his services free of charge. We watched the casket rolled away to the crematorium.
    A few of us stayed and waited. His death was before me. I had X-ray eyes and could see through the thick walls of the crematorium. I could hear the roar of the retort and feel the heat. The flaming coffin burst open, and the fire ravished that perfect body. It cramped into rictus, the curls ablaze, the velvet smoldering, the brain seething in the shattered forehead. Molten glass dripped from his eyes, and molten gold ran off his breast.
    He would not burn like other men. No fat there, only bone to char and muscle protein to carbonize. The lactate would still be in his blood from that last effort.
    Several hours later, the funeral-home director put in my hands a heavy tin canister labeled with Billy's name and the date, containing his ashes.
    The next day I departed from the group, and drove back up to Prescott alone. I had told everyone to stay strictly away from me for the next 48 hours, and they did.
    The house was just as we'd left it. The Irish setter ran to meet me—one of the campus maintenance men
    had been feeding him. He jumped and barked. Billy's bicycle stood on the porch. In the border, a few lilies, asters "and phlox were in bloom. Behind the house, the tomato plants were wilting a little from lack of water, but they had ripe tomatoes on them.
    Moving like an automaton, I put the sprinkler by them and turned the water on.
    In the house, a pair of his old Tigers, the ones he wore for everyday, lay dusty by the door. His typewriter on the table by the window, and the folders full of plans for the gay-studies program. In the kitchen, nuts and cereals on the shelf, and a few much-sprouted potatoes in the refrigerator. His belts and old jeans hanging in the closet. The