Sections Above and Below This Page:

week, standing tall above the seated crowd pointing his long outstretched arm and a stern finger at Governor George Romney, his face all on fire and his mouth shouting, "J'accuse! J'accuse!"

Emmett hadn't seen any of that because he drove away after leading the good governor and his first lady into the eye of the storm. He left them there alone because he felt he did all he could by delivering them to the Panhandle and, more important, because he had to complete the rest of his rounds to the customers of the Free Food Home Delivery Service.

The pressure that Emmett placed himself under as the Free Food delivery man remained constant, the agony growing more painful whenever his loneliness became almost unbearable and he had to face the fact that all of the psychological and physical punishment he suffered was self-inflicted. He knew it was going to be a hand of solitaire as soon as he picked up the cards and began dealing them to himself. But he never figured on the deck being stacked against him like it was.

There were moments of relief, but they were brief and few and far between. Natural Suzanne came back from El Rito, New Mexico, and set up a place for the both of them in the rear of a vacant storefront in the Mission district. It was good for Emmett to have someone to return to after a full day, driving through the streets of the entire city usually alone. Before Natural Suzanne had made it back to San Francisco, Emmett had been sleeping wherever he ended up on any given night. Those nights were sometimes almost as tiring as the days he spent on the road. So when she arrived, Emmett was very glad to see her and welcomed the chance to pick up where they left off.

The one other significant respite that occurred happened a few months later. Emmett was asked to come East by some people who were connected with San Francisco's Glide Church and some New York foundations who wanted to steer money into the Lower East Side and East Village communities. They wanted Emmett and the Free City Collective's advice on how such a project should be set up and what directions it should take.

Emmett leaped at the chance to get away from picking up, stealing, and delivering Free Food for a while. The women and one or two of the men, like Slim Minnaux, Butcher Brooks and Golden Gloves Davey came through and said that they would keep things going while he was gone. Nobody particularly cared to go East with him, though, because of the same, old, prevailin~ attitude among his [end page 454]