<<< Back Table of Contents Next >>> 5 Psychic Rangers Anton was ambitious. He wanted to create music that was so pure it hurt. He would stir people up, tell stories that were true. He would appeal to mutant savages, the seeds of an alien race. He would speak out for destroyed teens everywhere. In his heart he was doing it for Timmins, who wasn't there, and to prove to Becky he was worth something. There were musicians at the squat that he could use for background, but only Blake had the talent to be in a real band. He played like every note mattered, and Anton loved that commitment. Such discipline was rare among rock musicians, who liked to cultivate weird behavior as proof of their artistic temperament. He was grateful for Blake's more mature attitude, which would help to get things done. Blake told him about a friend of his named Vince who lived outside the squat. "He's the most brilliant drummer I know—radical, insane—but he lives with his girlfriend in an apartment by the highway. On account of the neighbors, he can't play." "What's up with that?" "Well, for one thing, he's lazy—no that's not it, he's too aristocratic to work. He's never been able to hold down a job, so his girlfriend works for them both. They can only afford those two small rooms, so he has no place to play. It's an excuse, really. He could come here to live, but he won't do it for political reasons." "Political reasons?" "He says it's because of his record collection, but it goes deeper than that. He's afraid all that rare vinyl will get damaged. But the truth is, he isn't comfortable with us. It's like we're a rival gang almost. 'Movements scare me, especially artistic movements. Movements are for people who can't think for themselves. Artists are supposed to know better.'" "Hmm, maybe he's right." Anton tried to think of a movement that didn't manipulate people, but he couldn't. All he could come up with were Jim Jones and the Moonies, or right-wing militias in the woods. "Vince isn't the easiest guy to deal with," Blake told him, "but once he's behind the drums, there's nothing but drums. He's like a force of nature, an earthquake, a volcano. He can go on like that for hours, he doesn't care." "Can he be subtle?" "Oh, yeah, he can be subtle." "Then if he's good enough, we can deal with the rest. We just have to make sure he stays behind the drums." "Exactly." They went to see Vince. The apartment he shared with his girlfriend Diane was on a hill that rose sharply beneath a highway overpass. Because the concrete structure was a few feet outside their window, the rooms were dark and noisy throughout the day. They found him slouched in an armchair with a book in his lap, a candle propped over it in one hand. Seeing them he stretched, grinned, and set the candle on an endtable already burdened with books, a bong and piles of pistachio nuts. When he opened his mouth, Anton could see that he was missing a couple of teeth. Still watching from his chair, he ran his hands through his blond dreadlocks and gestured them to a seat. "Sit down. Pardon the mess. My studies are going well, thanks for asking." They cleared CD cases, coins and wadded-up T-shirts from the second-hand furniture. Vince packed the bong and looked at them questioningly. "We're starting a band," Blake said. "We were hoping you'll come play with us." Vince wagged a finger at him. "You've started bands before, Blake." Blake reddened. "Not like this. It's not even my band." Vince took a hit and passed the bong to Anton. The smoke was still swirling inside. "And you are...?" Anton held the bong with one hand, gripping Vince's hand with the other. "Anton Dupree. From Iowa." He exhaled the pungent smoke. "We're serious about this. We're starting a real band. Think of it as a tryout session." He passed the bong to Blake. Vince cocked an eyebrow. "And so far you've got...?" "Just Blake and me, but we're good together." He glanced at Blake, who nodded. "I do bass and vocals. Blake plays guitar. We need a drummer who's on our level." "If it's not Blake's band, it's yours then?" "That depends on what people do with it. How about you, do you write songs?" Vince laughed. "I'm a drummer. I do drum riffs. I take it Blake's told you about me?" He refilled the bong for another round. "I've got a reputation as a problem case. I had a chemical imbalance as a child, but now I correct it with self-medication." "We need a drummer. Someone who'll put the band before everything else. Blake said you're the one." "I'm flattered. I have the highest admiration, too, for my friend Blake. Only I haven't seen him much these past few months, since he joined the squat. He wanted me to go there, but I said no. It's too eccentric for me, and a bore besides. Are you from the squat?" Anton shifted uneasily. "I just moved there. Like I said, I'm from Iowa." "I suppose you want me to move there too?" "That's not necessary." "I'll have to leave my drum set there, at least. I can't be lugging it back and forth on the city bus." "Our equipment's there, too." "So how safe is a squat? You could be busted." "Do you have a better idea for a place? Somewhere we could rehearse for free, whenever we want?" Seeing that Vince had no answer, he went on. "We all take a risk, I admit. What isn't risky that's worth doing? The question is, is the risk worthwhile?" "That's the question," Vince agreed. "So why not give it a shot? Jam with us and see what it's like. If it doesn't work for you, we'll find someone else. But I hope it is you, because we've got work to do. We want our music to be heard, and we aren't going to wait around to get noticed." Vince could see that Anton was ready to go all the way. He would hold the prize, no matter what. This appealed to Vince, but he was afraid of being let down. After all, Anton new in town and still unproven. He was asking Vince to sacrifice the laziness at the heart of his days, the luxury of not caring, for an uncertain future. But the offer pleased him, because it reminded him that he was young and could afford to hope. He stood up and stretched. "It's time for my afternoon nap. Just name a time and I'll be there." They made their arrangements and broke up. On the hill outside, Blake turned to Anton. "He was right to have doubts, you know. We tried this before—" Anton wasn't paying attention. He was studying a patch of sky through the closely spaced leaves of a tree he didn't recognize. "That's more of a bush than a tree," he was thinking. "What's next?" Blake asked after a while. "If this works out, we've got the core of our band. Versatility is the direction we should go in now, before we expand our group. If we need other instruments, we'll learn to play them ourselves. Still, a keyboard player would be nice. Someone who can work with samples." They took their request to Kliff, who told them about Travis whom he had met two summers before, during the legendary turf battles known as the Rollerboard Wars. Tensions had flared between skateboarders and rollerbladers over a stretch of riverfront favorable to both sports, and fighting spread throughout the city. At the time, Travis was a reporter for Hard Left Fashion, and Kliff was one of the instigators of the conflict, handing out psychedellic party favors to the skateboarders for each pair of rollerblades taken, and portable CD players to the rollerbladers for each skateboard captured. Travis was that rarity, an African-American born to a life of privilege. When his mother's family had come from Senegal in the 1890s, they were already rich. "We were never slaves, we were slave traders." His mother was a civil rights activist who had once held a post in the Carter Administration. His father, a bootstrap intellectual, was a former dockworker and revolutionary poet whose lyrical flow had dried up in the 1970s. Travis himself had attended the same schools as the Kennedys, and was now "slumming, hanging out with the unwashed children, doing my bit for bohemia to keep up the family name." He had the outsized ego to be in a rock band, and the desire to show off before a waiting world. Best of all, he had an impressive collection of electronic gear. He could create textures as versatile as any orchestra, and was a skilled technician who could teach Anton a great deal. "That is, if you're not afraid of being eclipsed by him," Kliff teased. "I don't do eclipses. I just get brighter and brighter. Tell me, if this guy's so good, why isn't he in a band already?" Now that he had a rehearsal space and a band at the level of his ambitions, Anton was free to devote all his energy to his music. Each morning, he pulled himself from his makeshift bed in one corner of the huge studio, and went down to the kitchen to fix himself some toast and coffee. By the time the other band members had arrived, he was already at work. He liked to have some time to himself to try out new ideas, or work through issues left over from the previous day's rehearsal. Even his dreams were filled with music, so that it no longer surprised him if the notes spilling from his fingers had once been the soundtrack to a dream. The only thing holding him back was the ability of his bandmates to keep up with him. To them, his hyperkinetic personality was always on the verge of flying into pieces, like an engine running at tremendous speed. He seemed to be holding himself together with the help of a mysterious, highly resilient psychic glue. It wasn't enough for him to have a better than average band, he wanted them to transcend themselves at each step. "If it was good enough yesterday," he liked to say, "it's not good enough today. Why repeat yourselves? That's not even interesting." Their rehearsals were open to everyone, but only committed musicians could survive the drill. The chaotic lifestyle of the squat meant frequent interruptions—drinking, bong hits, meal breaks and chatter—but there was discipline and focus to their days. Goaded on by Anton's intensity, they made rapid progress together. He took pride in their commitment to the music. Cynthia, the red-haired girl who had played the flute during his first visit, became their part-time chanteuse. She sang with them when she wasn't in the factory working on her scrap-metal sculptures. She came and went, voice like a mallet on steel, showering sparks. Anton always sang his own lyrics, but Cynthia's counterpoint added "a spark of melancholy passion," as he put it. They never asked her to join the band, but she was there when she wanted to be. For them it was a sign of favor. He was crucified on television, He was crucified on TV. He said, "You know it's a big decision, A big thing in my life for me." Anton was jubilant and angry, full of fire and venom. • • • He'd been struggling for hours with a melody of Blake's that had no sense of direction, no recognizable form. Whatever he tried to do with it, he couldn't get it to hold its shape. Finally, he gave up in disgust. "Blake, you're a great guitar player and a thinking man's friend, but you don't know how to write songs. The world is in chaos, my mind reels. I can't express the chaos because I'm too much a part of it. But I know what works and what doesn't. You need energy to drive a band, and the stuff you come up with is like wading through Crisco." He unstrapped his bass and dragged it over to the amp. Feedback pierced the room as he unplugged it. The rest of them exchanged glances once he was gone. "He's so theatrical," said Travis. He flipped a number of switches on his equipment, and rolled the cart into a side room where it could be locked up. Vince tapped out a violent rhythm on his drums, ending with a burst that made the sticks fly from his hands. He'd just been getting warmed up. Blake hung his head. Vince collected his sticks and went over to him. "He can be a jerk sometimes." Blake nodded. "Let's go." As they crossed the coffee factory on the catwalk, they could see Cynthia below them with her welding torch. From where she worked, she could listen to their rehearsals overhead, joining in when she liked. Nothing they did was lost on her, they'd discovered. She lifted the visor from her face and lowered the torch. "What's up? You quit early." "Anton had a fit," Vince said. "He thought my song sucked," Blake added. "No, he didn't. He just didn't know what to do with it. He's angry at himself because he couldn't make it work." She said this matter-of-factly, replacing her visor. Sparks flew from her blowtorch as she shaped the iron. "Oh, that's it," Blake muttered. He started down the ladder. "She may be right," Travis said. "Of course she's right," Vince said. "Only—" "Only you wish he'd grow up, show some respect." They'd reached the factory floor. She turned off the torch and set it down. "Why did you guys stop playing?" They didn't know the answer. They stared at each other, confused. "You don't have to stop." She removed the visor from her head, releasing her long, fiery curls. A rich, spiraling note filled the vaulted room. Her voice soared into the metal beams, ricocheted and came down again. Each note blended with the echoes of those before. Vince, who carried his drumsticks everywhere, began tapping out an intricate pattern on the skin of a huge metal tank, punctuating it now and then with a blow from his foot. The emptiness within magnified the sound. The line of Cynthia's melody, chopped and staccato now, wove its way through his shifting rhythm. Blake ran upstairs to get his guitar. Travis wandered off, shaking his head, but came back a few minutes later with several people from the other end of the house. Drawn by the commotion, they joined in with instruments of their own. Some of them beat on the bins and chutes with sticks, using the whole room as their instrument. Vince borrowed a tall drum from Sasha and pounded it with his hands, while Cynthia pulled her flute from her back pocket. Blake's eerie notes swooped down from the catwalk, tingling their nerves and probing the darkest recesses of the building, which vibrated desperately as if struggling for breath. After a while they became aware of Anton's music mingling with their own. Once they spotted him, he moved into shadow, so that his face and hands were a blur. His bass line was pounding and insistent like the ocean; it was the foundation of their revel. It blended with their own notes until they lost track of it, then suddenly swelled up to remind them of its force. The next few hours were like an instant stretched, or like no time at all. They abandoned themselves to a feeling of inspired chaos, harmonizing together like a violin played by a weird genius. They sweated and danced, hung from the machinery, lit a bonfire in the center of the room. After a while there was a feeling of rebirth, like a phoenix that has survived its fiery passage. "Hallelujah!" the cry went up. "The Mothership has come!" Through it all there was the music, in flashes and pulses or in a broad undertone, like a glorious pain that wouldn't go away. Finally the windows near the ceiling turned pale, and it was dawn. Instruments had changed hands, people had come and gone, others were asleep in corners of the huge room. Someone was still playing the flute. Anton had learned something from this experience. Talented as he was, he needed the people around him. The rituals of their life together were as important to him as food and water. Alone, he was insignificant. The world would have been as diverse and strange without him. He would never get to taste everything, to know every angle, no matter how many lifetimes he was given. He was lucky to have his part to play. • • • Due to a remarkable stroke of luck, or due to his destiny unfolding perfectly, a frightening thought, Anton had fallen in with exactly the collaborators he needed at this point in his career. And it had all happened within a few months of his arrival in Portland. "What if I hadn't met Kliff?" he couldn't help wondering. "I might never have known about the squat, or met any of the members of my band." Of course it was no accident. Kliff had sought him out because he fit the profile, because "you're someone we can use." He was Kliff's meal ticket, his ride to the top, and Kliff was the same to him. He hated to rely on outside forces, even the talents of a streetwise kid like Kliff. But on his own, he could never have put together a band so well suited to him, so quickly—not through any combination of guile, inspiration or dumb luck. Though the band was still only known to a small circle, their fans were enthusiastic, plastering their logo on skateboards, stenciling it on bridge embankments, putting up flyers all over town. Their all-night jams attracted a diverse and sweaty crowd, giving the squat more visibility as a result. They were the public face of a movement that wanted to expand its free zone into all areas of daily life. "We will build nations without borders, an economy without money. Chaos is a tool for change." Once or twice a week the squat opened its doors for a concert, and just as often the band played out, seeking a fresh audience. They played in empty lots under the freeway, or in seedy bars near the bus station. The bars were dark, clammy affairs where aging derelicts spent their days, only to be chased out at night by the band's hangers-on, kids with flat bellies, tangled hair, studs in their navels, creatures beyond their comprehension. "The Castaway Crew," Anton called these mutant children. They were known as risk takers, talented musicians who were always a step ahead of everyone else. A network of DJs and musicians joined them for concerts at the squat, or threw parties at their own sites where Anton's band would play. They were the inspiration for techno-primitivism, a style for which Portland later became famous. It had its roots in their early performances at the squat or in converted warehouses around Zombieland. They experimented with each other's instruments, and invented new instruments of their own. Cynthia built metallic sculptures that made noise. One was a collection of pipes of assorted lengths and diameters, each sounding a different note. Another was made from a camshaft, with blocks of metal that rattled as the shaft turned. She called these her "infernal orchestra." Vince played them along with his drums. Travis spent hours collecting samples—eggs frying on the griddle, dogs barking, tires crunching in gravel—which he looped and layered using digital sequencers. He came up with a keyboard that produced all its notes from variations of the human voice—peals of laughter, solemn groans. They still didn't have a name for their band. Residents of the squat thought of them as "Anton's band" to distinguish them from Sasha's drum circle, the free-form jam session where Anton had first met Blake. The drum circle, which Sasha and his followers kept going around the clock in the part of the building where they had set up camp, gave the squat its tribal, nomad flavor. Outside the squat, people thought of them as "the Trashtown house band" after the squat itself, which called itself Trashtown on its fliers and promotional materials. "Visit Trashtown, home of the Angry Youth Cinema, the Art Mart Mall, Oregon's largest indoor skate park, and the world famous Trashtown House Jam." "World famous" came from a rumor that scenes from their house parties had been shown on Japanese TV. If this was true, it meant they had been filmed without their permission, since no one had noticed any camera crews at their events. This didn't bother most of the squatters, who took it as confirmation that they were becoming pop stars. "Paparazzi!" they said lovingly of these still-unconfirmed spies. Anton was convinced that the best way to radicalize people was through music. It was the main reason he'd become a musician. To reflect this, he wanted a band name with an angry edge. The names he came up with were like bricks tossed through the window of Middle America—Culture Virus, Spastic Beauty, Exploding Boy. But he could hear people back home complaining that he was being too negative. He wondered if they were right. After all, anger was just a means to an end. He picked a name more in line with his real goals. The Psychic Rangers would be the pathfinders of the spirit world, pioneers on the frontier between reality and illusion. They would explore what lay beyond the limits of human consciousness, gaining mastery and knowledge. They would map a territory that had previously been known only in death. By translating this new knowledge into music, they would be able to change the fabric of reality itself. He felt this was a noble ambition for a band. • • • The residents of Trashtown decided to take part in a protest against Ethan Frump, founder of Families First! and spokesman for the Clean Kids Initiative. Families First! was a group of environmental activists who had abandoned the Earth Goddess in favor of the Aryan Christ. They called Zombieland "Exhibit A of modern depravity," a case study in what would happen if God's Natural Law was disobeyed. "Those people mutate themselves on purpose. They use chemicals and demonic spells to do it. They even brag about it in their literature. Don't let this happen to your children! Support the Clean Kids Initiative." The Clean Kids Initiative was an agenda that began with school uniforms, a youth curfew and the scrubbing away of graffiti, and led to a ban on nearly all contact between kids and adults. If Families First! had their way, only carefully screened "youth professionals" and the child's own family would have access to the child, for purposes of moral instruction. Ethan Frump had been invited to speak at a Chamber of Commerce dinner in his honor, which meant that Portland's business community was endorsing the Families First! campaign. The squatters' goal was to provide maximum embarrassment to those in attendance. They would create a disturbance outside the speech, which would be held at a downtown hotel. They would picket the entrances, forcing those who went inside to run a gauntlet of angry, jeering faces. They would try to sneak a few supporters into the speech to disrupt it. If possible, they would prevent the audience from leaving until they had made a public statement denouncing the views of Ethan Frump. Their main goal, however, was to get themselves noticed by their opponents. Since Families First! was calling them demonic mutants, they would be happy to bring those fears to life. They assembled in the squat's dining room. Cynthia and Doreen held a banner attached to wooden poles they could use as weapons if the cops started swinging their clubs. Sasha wore a bulletproof vest under his flak jacket, but Blake told him to remove it. "If you're arrested with that thing on, it won't look good. They'll figure you're looking for trouble, and they'll give it to you." Sebastian, the crazy one, was already on acid, doing bird calls and putting on eye shadow. He wore a long black skirt and was handing out extra hits to anyone who would take them. Vince was there with Diane, standing with his arm around his pale bride. Sebastian offered him a tab of acid, but he waved it away, explaining that he never did acid during protests. He might get arrested, and he couldn't imagine anything worse than being thrown into a holding cell while tripping. They debated whether to throw rocks at the cops, but decided instead to take a bag of rotten kiwis that Sasha had found in an alley. That way, they would have ammunition if they needed any, but it wouldn't look as suspicious. When they arrived at the rally, they were disappointed to find that as usual, the cops had anticipated them. Metal barricades had been set up in front of the doors, guarded by a solid line of officers. Those who wanted to march in a picket line were welcome to do so, but they had to break their protest into two sections, one on each side of the main door. They greeted people they knew from previous demonstrations, and pointed out plainclothes officers in the crowd. "See that big guy in the lumberjack shirt? That's 'Cloneboy' Malone. When he arrested Cynthia at the May Day rally, he dragged her twenty feet by the hair, and smashed a cameraman's lens with his fist." They whispered plans about bringing their protest closer to the barricades until, at a certain moment, a signal would be given and they would surge forward, hoping to overwhelm the police and get a few people inside the building. Anton circled in the picket line with Doreen. They chanted sometimes, but mostly they just walked. He found it relaxing, like a stroll in the park. He wondered if he should put his arm around her, but decided not to bother. She told him she didn't like the policemen's faces. "Look at his big thick neck!" she said, puffing out her own neck. "Look at his squinty little eyes." A couple of punks singled out a black officer and began taunting him. "Don't you know that Families First! is a conspiracy against black people? They want white people to make babies, but they put black men in prison." The policeman responded with stonefaced contempt. The punks soon moved on to a more tempting target, a burly white cop with a handlebar mustache. "Rambo! Rambo!" they jeered, while Sebastian danced behind them in his skirt, working his hips like a stripper. The cop's face flushed red but he remained still. Only when the punks grabbed the barricade in front of him and started shaking it did he suddenly snap, pushing them away and yanking it back in place. The punks were thrown into the crowd, which caught them. There was a swell of angry voices as twenty or more people piled up at the scene of the conflict, shaking the barricade and yelling. Metal clattered against stone as the barrier was dragged a foot or so into the crowd. The police line tightened, their commander spoke over his radio, and a file of men in riot gear came around the corner of the building, batons drawn. Anton was in the middle of this with his friends, leaning over the barricade and shouting into the faces of the police. He admired the bravery of Sasha, whose veins stood out on his neck as he climbed onto the barrier, grappling with the cops who were trying to push him back down. There was a struggle as Anton and the rest tried to swarm over the barricade behind Sasha, and the police tried unsuccessfully to repel them. Suddenly the police changed their tactics, several of them grabbing Sasha's arms and legs to pull him into their ranks and place him under arrest. When Anton saw what was happening, he put his arms around Sasha's waist and braced himself against the barricade, throwing his whole weight back into the crowd. Sasha became the object of a tug of war between the protesters and the police, with Sasha struggling to get back to his friends. But the cops had a better grip on him, and before long he was dragged to a clear space behind police lines, where he was handled roughly. Being directly behind Sasha when he was grabbed, Anton was nearly taken himself, and only escaped to the safety of the crowd when one of the other protesters pulled him back by the waist of his jeans. There was a lot of anger in the crowd after that, and movement in the police lines as Sasha was taken inside the building, but the two groups were separated and stood glaring at each other. As Anton caught his breath and looked around him, he realized that Doreen was gone. Scanning the crowd, he spotted Vince and Diane standing some distance away. They had been in the picket line earlier, but once the shouting started, they had moved back to where the Revolutionary Youth Brigade, in black leather jackets and red bandannas, was handing out tracts. They looked like idlers who had stopped by out of simple curiosity. Vince was nodding in response to an older radical in dark glasses who, Anton was sure, was also his drug connection. Vince sometimes came to demonstrations when his friends were involved, but he liked to stay out of the action. He felt that most protesters were only in it for the style, anyway. They wanted to say they'd spent their youth at the barricades, bandanas over their faces to keep out the gas, running through the streets with eyes of flame. Anton agreed, but he didn't mind if people came to demonstrations for the thrill of it. What mattered was that they were learning to smash through barriers, to overcome their fear of disobedience. Vince was rolling a cigarette as Anton came up. He offered Anton the pouch. "I saw your little brush with the law." He trimmed the ends of his cigarette with his teeth, spitting out the remains. Anton took the pouch. "They got Sasha and a few others." "That's what happens when you pick a fight with the cops. My advice to you is, watch your back when you leave here. They've got their eye on you now." The older radical stared past them with a steely expression. He seemed to be scrutinizing Anton without focusing on him directly. He was sniffing Anton out, reading his chemistry at close range. This made Anton uneasy. "Where's Doreen, have you seen her?" Vince turned to Diane. "Honey, when was the last time we saw Doreen?" "She went off with Sebastian when the fighting started. She was crying, wasn't she, Vince?" "No way!" Anton said. "Where did they go?" "Someplace quiet. You know, like the park." Diane seemed downcast, hands bunched in front of her plain cotton dress. Anton thanked them and set off. He didn't like the idea of Doreen roaming the park on a night like this. Sebastian might make a scene, as he often did while tripping. Besides, he had acid with him, and everyone from the rally was in danger of being tracked by the cops. The nighttime clouds were coming in low off the river, filling the streets with cool mist. Anton could feel it clinging to his hair and coat as he moved past the fashionable shops, closed now for the night, that sold items too expensive for him to even look at. He was worried about the squat, which was in danger of becoming too exposed, too popular. Just a week before, he'd given an interview to a young reporter for the Portland Oregonian. She'd met him at the Clarion Cafe near the squat. Fresh out of college, she was impressed to be meeting one of the leaders of the new movement she had heard so much about. Trashtown had become the focus for pirate culture in the city. They were best known for their concerts by the Psychic Rangers, whose all-night jam sessions were legendary among the initiated. But they also had a reputation as a punk circus, an alternative Disneyland. They had poetry slams, graffiti art, ramps for skateboarding, an anarchist newsletter, screenings of films in progress. "Everything you don't see on TV," was their motto. Most of the people coming to the squat had no idea of its politics, or that it was a community trying to survive through music and art. Their first supporters had been skate punks and club kids, Zombieland hangers on, artists at the margins like themselves. The newcomers, on the other hand, thought that Trashtown existed to entertain them, the children of the elite. They were the ones Blake called tourists. For them Trashtown was a curiosity, something quaint on the horizon of their privileged existence. They came for a night or two of adventure, grew bored and returned home. Anton was worried that things had gotten out of hand. What had once been a good thing for him and his friends was becoming common knowledge. It was wonderful to see the community get so much exposure, but with their newfound notoriety, he was afraid the authorities would feel obliged to do something. He imagined Trashtown after a raid, their furniture and equipment spread out on the sidewalk. What would they do then? <<< Back Table of Contents Next >>>