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did some walking and talking. There was a screening of the very funny, personal film Bob made about one of the last times he took to the road, touring England as Dylan, the on-the-make kid in a mysterious, Hitchcockian train where nothing happened and no one was allowed more than a taste of anything. It was entitled Eat the Document, and Emmett laughed at what he felt had to be one of the most honestly hilarious movies any man ever had that special sense of humor to make, about whatever he once had been.

Then there was the Band, and listening to them play together and their "Big Pink" debut album, which was going to let everyone in on the well-kept secret that they were the best. Their music taught Emmett that if anything was ever going to be really good, it was going to be a long time coming; and that San Francisco was, by far, not the only place where something was happening.

Afterwards Al Grossman said, "Anytime," and he doesn't talk that way to many people. So Emmett answered, "Thanks," before he said, "Be seein' you," and ran to catch the plane that would take him to Chicago and another man from whom he would learn a few more things he had to know.

Fred Hampton was waiting for him at the Illinois Chapter headquarters of the Black Panther party on West Madison Street. The Panthers had just come above ground in Chicago, opening their office only a few days before, and Emmett was the first man who wasn't black or a Panther to walk up the steep, narrow staircase and into the long, barren room which the dozen sober faces who watched him move were willing to defend with their lives.

After Linda Fitzpatrick and Groovy were murdered in New York, a "hippie" detective squad had been assigned to circulate through the Lower East Side area in hippie clothes in an effort to protect the "East Village flower people" from the niggers and spics. This knowledge was just as common among Chicago's low-money people as it was among those in New York. That, plus his middle-of-theback-length hair and the stone-corny, fraudulent activity of the Yippies who had just made fools and suckers out of most of Chicago's hipsters, were more than enough reasons for the black men and women in that office to be cold-eyed wary of Emmett Grogan, no matter what sort of references the Party's Central Committee phoned in about him from Oakland.

So Emmett stood in the middle of the empty room alone, conscious of the glare of the surrounding eyes, but understanding why they felt that way toward him. He was waiting to meet the man he [end page 479]