He left the Last Chance and I stayed and visited for a while with Glen and Miriam until they left. I scribbled a story for the ARMADILLO TIMES in my notebook - the latest about the court martials in Pronghorn, pretty much what I had written for the GUARIDAN. That evening most of the personalities in the Organization chapter who hadn’t left for the summer passed through the Last Chance drinking coffee, eating mummified tamales and enchiladas and holding marathon left-wing discussions. I caught up on all the local chapter news. As much as I liked Glen and Miriam Medard, I felt much more relaxed around a lot of these people who weren’t in anybody’s Party or Vanguard. I found myself telling them more than I would tell the Medards. 
     At night fall, I walked over to Les’s apartment. He shared the second floor of a beautiful old Victorian house with four other men, all in their late teens or early twenties. In those days there were many antique mansions with cheap apartments in that city. Most of the second floor was one large room with beds and couches lined along the walls, kept very neat and clean. A door led into a closed-off bedroom used only when someone’s girl friend visited. Another door led to a shabby roofed balcony where Les slept on a fold-out bed wrapped in a heavy blanket in the mild but misty summer nights. Late night in that city was always misty and gentle drizzles started anytime day or night. 
     Les had taken off the bush jacket now that he had sold his match boxes. He had on a light weight black shirt, a black vest and black denim pants stuffed into his boots. His sleeves were rolled up showing tracks - lines of sores from shooting speed. The other four young men all had tracks too. Les looked healthier than the others. They had the faces of children who had acquired lines of aging suddenly. One of them had blackish, bruise-like spots near his eyes showing how the speed had taken his energy. They greeted me politely, but without much enthusiasm. Les raised his arm and beckoned to me to go out on the balcony with him. 
The first thing he wanted to say was always his first subject, "Hey, did you know I got to see Jeanette and the baby two weeks ago?" 
     He had gotten Jeanette pregnant when he was sixteen and she was twenty-one. He was so tall and his face so mature-looking she hadn’t known he was only sixteen until the week before their wedding. Their marriage fell apart as soon as their son Nathan was born. Now the main thing for Les, at age seventeen, was his chances to see Jeanette and Nathan, who was still not a year old. 
     After his latest visit with Jeanette and Nathan was covered, I said,      "Say, man, you know I saw Bump lately?" 
     He brightened up, "You did? Wow, what a gas!" 
     I told how Bump came to see the G.I. movement starting at Fort Clay. Less seemed really interested. "I sell a lot of my match boxes to G.I.’s from Fort Holden," he said. "I know how they feel about the war." 
     "Well, I wrote a story for the ARMADILLO TIMES about what’s going on with the G.I.’s," I said, "and I want to go over to Drake’s tonight to do it on his electric typewriter." 
     "I’m going over there too," Les said, grinning and pulling a small bottle of yellow pills out of a paper sack beside his folding bed. 
     "Drake buys these from me all the time, to stay up and write for the ARMADILLO TIMES," he said, opening the bottle and pouring some into an envelope which he folded up into his vest pocket. 
     "They’re Desoxyns - legal. I have a prescription for them," he went on, "been taking them ever since I was fourteen. My parents got me a prescription for them because I have narcolepsy, means I fall asleep all the time. I never heard the word speed until six months ago when I met up with Rollo Zane and his crystal meth, but I’ve been strung out since I was fourteen - only now it helps pay my rent." 
     We went downstairs and out onto the street. In this city, live oaks were the main trees and we walked among the strange, twisted shadows their branches cast. We went up to Drake’s house and rang the bell. Drake opened the door. He was wearing only a T-shirt and a pair of pajama bottoms. Without the jeans jacket on, he was very slender. His wife, Suze, a beautiful woman with long wavy black hair, was standing beside him. As always, I noticed the really fine folk crafts from Mexico ad Guatemala in his living room - wood carvings, basket work, pottery, feather paintings. 
     "Where did you get all this stuff?" I asked? 
     "We travel down there a lot," he said. "I’ve been fascinated by everything Latin American all my life. Our family name Loupess was originally Lopez. One of my ancestors tried to swindle the US government out of a million dollars. He forged an old Spanish grant that he said gave him title to most of the state of Missouri and demanded compensation." 
Les shook Drake gently on the shoulder and got him to go over in a corner where they whispered to one another. Les poured three of the yellow pills out of the envelope into Drake’s hand. Drake swallowed them and handed Les a five dollar bill. 
     "I’ve got his story on the anti-war G.I.’s at Fort Clay for the ARRMADILLO TIMES that I’d like to get typed," I said. 
     "Sure," Drake said. "Come in the work room. I’ve got a lot to talk to you about." 
     All four of us went into a room with a mimeograph machine, an electric typewriter and high stacks of left-wing publications and leaflets. On the walls were bright colored revolutionary posters, mostly from Cuba ad China. But over the typewriter was a big poster - a photo of a little blonde girl with a dirty face, in a soiled dress standing in front of a shack, probably in Appalachia. This poster was put out by the most zealous of black civil rights youth organizations, which Drake and I had both worked for. Under the little girl’s photo, the poster said in large letters: FOR FOOD, FOR FREEDOM. 
     We got my G.I. story into a form where it could be photo copied for the ARMADILLO TIMES offset press. Drake and his wife started a long rap, some of which I had heard before, but I had never heard it put together completely as I summarize it here: 
     Drake ad Suze got married in 1964, their freshman year. At that time they were young fundamentalists, giving out Bible leaflets to win souls. "I was the state Miss Youth for Christ," Suze said. Then the Vietnam war came. Drake and Suze became radical pacifists. Drake tried to block the entrance to a Marine recruiting office. He got beaten up by some ROTC students (led by Rollo Zane, who later became a self proclaimed ‘revolutionary’). 
     Then Drake and Suze had decided to join the civil rights movement. This was in the late summer of 1966 and almost all the white civil rights workers, including myself, had left. The black staff leaders didn’t want any more whites. They were not making any more posters of hungry little blonde children. Drake got arrested a week after he found a black community willing to accept him. When Suze went to the civil rights staff regional office, they didn’t have the money or the will to bail Drake out. She called Drake’s father, a small-town newspaper editor who had supported Goldwater in 1964. He was a very conventional man, unlike his con-man ancestor who had tried to get a million dollars for Missouri. He wouldn’t help at all. 
     Then Suze called the GUARDIAN. In those days the GUARDIAN was willing to help any movement people out to the extent they could, unlike some, both black and white, who were beginning to play a more militant-than-thou game. They sent her a little money (when did they ever have more than a little money?) and they called my old friend attorney Ben Markovitz, who came over from the next state and got Drake out. 
When Drake and Suze got back home they no longer believed in non-violence. They joined the IWW - Industrial Workers of the World and pushed its revolutionary anarcho-syndicalist ideas to the local Organization. But just a week ago, Randy Mezarosh had come through town speaking for the Vanguard about the G.I. movement. Randy sold a big stack of WEEKLY VANGUARDS to Drake and Suze and they were giving them away to whoever would take them (an easy thing to do - Leftists were always eager to read someone else’s literature). 
     "Now," Drake said, his eyes burning from depths behind his thick eyebrows as he talked his thoughts with his hands, "you’ve worked with Vanguard people on this G.I. thing ad you know what they’re like. Tell me - what do you think of the Vanguard? There’s just gotta be something more than the Organization!" 
     I tried to go through all the pros and cons but Drake kept interrupting out of sheer excitement and three hits of speed. He didn’t want a balanced presentation. If he was going to push the WEEKLY VANGUARD, he wanted it to be like the pocket New Testament he had pulled out at people when he was a freshman. 
     Les got into the discussion with me and Drake and Suze. He and I had taken a couple of hits each of his speed, but he wasn’t just speed-rapping. He had a number of intelligent questions and comments. He knew more about this sort of stuff than most of the street youth on College Avenue. Finally Suze got tired and went to bed, but our discussion went on far past midnight. At last the speed energy was wearing off. The talk got more and more incoherent. From the bedroom, Suze called, "Drake, quack-quack!" 
Drake looked up at us with an embarrassed smile. "I’m, starting to crash bad," he said. "I don’t know if I’ll be able to fulfill my martial duties." 
Les handed him another hit of speed. "It’s free," he said. Drake shook our hands vigorously and we left. 
     When we got back we found a man sitting in the big room playing a guitar, skillfully, surrounded by Les’s four roommates. This was a handsome clean-shaven man about 25 with short black hair so heavily promanded it looked like it had been squeezed out of a tube onto his head. He was in slacks and a sports shirt - informal fraternity-type wear. He had a beautiful golden-brown guitar and he was playing all kinds of fancy licks that I could only dream of being able to figure out. 
     "OH-hello, I’m Dale," I said and extended my hand. 
     He didn’t stop playing. He looked up at me briefly with a smile. His teeth glowed with sincerity. The mockery was in his eyes. Then he turned his head to look at his guitar’s finger board. He began to chat in a smooth mellow voice: 
          "Well, you’re DALE! 
          I could already TELL! 
          Cause you’re just THERE! 
          Hangin’ in the AIR! 
          Makes no difference to ME! 
          Cause I’m a revolutionaREE!" 
     Les said, "Dale-uh, this is Rollo Zane," and that was the last contact I felt with Les for an hour. The muscles of his face locked his eyes up into a fixed stare and he walked over and joined the others. I felt I did not exist for anybody else in the room. 
     Ever so often Rollo would stop playing and start into what struck me as a weird parody of every left-wing rap I had ever heard. Les would say, "OK, OK, where the fucking crystal?" 
     But Rollo said, "Wait, I got more to say," and he would launch into more rap or songs - like one making fun of all the hippies taking acid and how bourgeois they were. Les’s roommates would make noises of agreement with Rollo’s pseudo-left raps. They laughed at his jokes. 
     "Are you part of my revolutionary army?" he would ask. 
     "Yeah, sure," they said. But Les never did. He just kept asking,      "Where’s the crystal meth?" 
     Finally they were all impatient. One of them screamed, "Rollo, you bastard!" and the others said similar sentiments, but they were really begging him. Les came over to me and said, "Dale, go downstairs for a while." 
     I went down to the front yard and sat under a magnolia tree with big fragrant white blossoms. The air was beginning to get misty. I could hear voices arguing the price of the crystal from the doorway behind the balcony. Everyone’s voice got loud and angry except Rollo’s. His voice was always low and calm. Finally he came out of the house walking rapidly past me. He didn’t say a word to me or even look in my direction. 
I went back upstairs. There was a little kitchen next to the big room. They were all in there cooking their hits of crystal. Each one took a turn. As they got it melted down in a spoon over a stove, they mixed it with water and loaded it in a hypodermic needle.  Each one got one of the others to pull a necktie tight around his forearm to make the veins stand out while he shot up. Then they fell on their backs on the couches and beds and gasped. 
     Les said, "Come out on the balcony with me." He had his hypodermic all loaded and a necktie. He held the tie out to me, "Here, take it and pull it tight around my arm." 
     "I’ve never done it before. Why don’t you get one of those other guys to do it?" 
     "I want you to do it!" 
     "I don’t think it’s right," I said. 
     He focused his gray eyes on me and his mouth set hard and determined, "Look," he said, "you’ve trusted me to do your things and I did them for you - which is more than I have for most people. Now I want you to do something for me. I don’t trust those guys. I used to before we got into this, but now - well, I trust you." 
     I sat on the bed and tied him off and he shot up. He went into a spasm for about thirty seconds with his lips and eyelids trembling. Then he gave a relieved gasp. Pretty soon he seemed  back to normal. 
     "What do you think of Rollo’s revolutionary army rap?" I asked. 
     "Oh, he’s an asshole! I wouldn’t believe a word he said. I just want the meth. I believe people like you and Miriam and Glen and Bump," he said. 
     "Bump told me he hit up crystal just once," I said. "He said that it was sweet-so sweet he would never do it again." 
     All of a sudden I just felt dizzy and worn out. The energy I had from the Desoxyns pills was gone. My head fell almost to my knees. Les went to a closet in the big room and got a blanket. 
     "Here, take this," he said and threw it to me. "Go crash on the floor." 
When I woke up the next morning, Les was writing a long letter to his ex-wife Jeanette. We hugged and I walked several miles to get out of town to a place where it would be easy to hitch back home. I just let the wind along the highway clean out my head as I hitched north.