Which amazed her, the whole thing, beginning to end. That the government, the federal government, the FDA, Sandoz, whoever, would want to prevent people from exercising their right to the Fifth Freedom—their right to absolve themselves, become one with creation and maybe even look on the face of God—was simply beyond comprehension. Harvard had turned on them. The Mexicans. The press. Everybody seemed to be against them—and for no other reason but ignorance. As Tim said, they were like the mental midgets of Galileo’s day who refused to look through the telescope when the evidence was right there staring them in the face.

But then there was Dick, the shining light in all this—he had all these revelatory facets about him, each one illuminating the other, right down to the core, which was as resilient as the core of a golf ball and would just bounce all the higher the harder you hit it. Dick the professor, Dick the advocate of mind expansion, Dick the guru and housekeeper who was more a father—and mother—to Suzie and Jackie than Tim was himself. And he was a pilot on top of it? He was. And that was all it took. Dick. In his plane. And after that?—the party was on.

All four of the older boys, Corey included, dressed as hoboes. This had the virtue of being simple—old clothes from the Salvation Army in Poughkeepsie and a few strokes of eyebrow pencil for whiskers—and it enabled them to present a group front as they went trick-or-treating in town. Bobby, the youngest, had his heart set on being Tigger, from the Winnie-the-Pooh books, so she helped Susannah sew him a playsuit out of an orange-and-black-striped pattern they found on the top of the back shelf at the fabric shop. She herself dressed as Jackie Kennedy, in a white skirt, white top, white gloves and a black pillbox hat perched on top of her sprayed-up hair as if it had floated down from the sky. Everybody had an early dinner—a dunch, as Fitz called it—and by the time it got dark and the kids trooped up the long drive and down into town to ring doorbells and smash pumpkins, Tim went around to each of the adults and delivered the sacrament, LSD-25, in 250-microgram doses.