Read Harlan's Race for Free Online Page B

really loves you.”
    ‘Vince isn’t my type. We’d drive each other nuts.”
    She shrugged. “And supposing I want a lover? I’m getting ready for the butch of my dreams to take me home.” “We can both have lovers.”
    “Great idea on paper .. . complicated in real life. Especially if the media hears about it.”
    “Sure you won’t consider it, Bets?”
    “No,” she said flatly.
    Sliding from under the quilt, she carried Falcon toward the baby room. He rode quietly under her shirt, asleep now. “Eveiy kid needs a father,” I said to her retreating back. At the door to the hallway, she turned and stared at
    me.
    “Bullshit,” she stated. “Your father wasn’t there for you. And neither was mine, when he beat me up and threw me out. And neither of us had any trouble figuring out who we are.”
    While she put the baby down to sleep, I sat staring at the fire, feeling myself at a crossroads. Okay, my plan to disappear for the summer was definitely a “go”.
    Betsy came back, and picked up the lesbian magazine Ladder.
    “Listen,” she said suddenly, “you’re not going to try to take him away from me, are you? I mean ... I agreed to give him to you and Billy. But we never signed any written agreement, and —•”
    “What kind of a heartless S.O.B. do you think I am?” She seemed to relax a little.
    “Just wondering,” she said. “Seems like all I do is worry about John ... okay, Falcon. Now that you’re back, I hope somebody doesn’t fire-bomb the house, or... shoot through the window ... or something.”
    “Don’t worry. In a few days, I’ll be out of sight, and gone.” Had anybody bugged her house, and heard us talking about the baby? But Billy’s killer was in prison, and it was all over, wasn’t it?
    The depression that came over me was so heavy, I almost couldn’t get up off the sofa.
    FOUR
    June 1978
    My clam-boat had her blunt prow into a light breeze, and she rose and fell gently on the swell. In the silence, the noise of the water slapping and gurgling along her sides was almost music.
    Holding a nautical chart of the Great South Bay, I leaned against the boat’s cabin, trying hard to feel the magic of teeming life all around me. Down in the clean green water, silver-gray shapes of sea trout swarmed past. Half a mile away, where a fisherman was hauling in a full gill net, hundreds of sea gulls wheeled in the air. I’d always seen my runners as birds, free of flight, running the gauntlet of hunters’ guns. Billy was down, floating dead in the water. Vince struggled to spread his magnificent wings. I was a bird too, driving my wings desperately, feeling the gun barrel leading on me.
    The hour was past noon. I’d just cut the engine here, to try a new spot.
    South of me, along the horizon, the low, tan silhouette of Fire Island ran from east to west, disappearing into haze at either end. Locals called it “the Beach”. North was the green skyline of Long Island’s South Shore. Fewer clam-boats were out than two hours ago. Most everybody had his catch on, and was going home. Only a few pleasure boats dotted the distance, and the tiny ferry heading for the South Shore
    port of Patchogue. So far, my rake had come up empty.
    But I wasn’t worried. The main thing was — I was finally alone.
    Past visits to Fire Island had given me a look at the clammers who’d worked these waters for centuries. They were loners, independent as cowboys. Some were dropouts from elsewhere. Putting into practice some tricks I learned from Chino and Harry, I’d surfaced on the South Shore with no name, a beard, longer hair, the right kind of sunglasses and old clothes and rubber boots and fish knife, and an old truck. A classified ad led me to a Bellport boatyard, and a good boat that a clammer had left to be sold. She was old and weatherbeaten, built broad and flat-bottomed to stand the chop, with a cabin just big enough to stand in. For a month I’d been staying in Patchogue at a rundown motel