There’s nothing like the odor of gasoline to clear out the cobwebs. Milton is pacing around my room. I can count on one hand the number of times I’ve seen him this wound up. (Most have been this summer.) But what he’s just told me is mind-boggling: ten minutes ago he threw a Molotov cocktail at the home of New York State Supreme Court justice Leopold R. Wagner.

If it weren’t for the sirens, I’d think either I heard him incorrectly or he and I have a different understanding of what a Molotov cocktail is. To me, it’s a bottle filled with gasoline and a rag sticking out of the neck. You light the rag and throw the bottle at the target. The bottle breaks and the gasoline ignites in a violent explosion. The target goes up in flames.

The sirens appear to confirm that that is what Milton thinks a Molotov cocktail is, too. A few days ago, the gun, and now this? Has his mind been taken over by malignant spirits? The SDS? Che Guevara?

“Did anyone get hurt?” I ask.

He shakes his head. “It hit the front walk.” He lifts his sleeve close to his face, sniffs, and wrinkles his nose.

It’s understandable if I can’t quite believe this, right? If Milton gets caught, he’s not getting up in the morning and going back to learning COBOL. He’s probably not going back to MIT in the fall.

If I go to prison, we could be cell mates.

“Why?” I ask.

“Yesterday that douchebag put five draft-card burners in prison because they burned pieces of paper.”

I raise my hands, gesturing for him to lower his voice.

“They got two and a half years in jail for what?” Milton goes on. “Disagreeing with a government that’s responsible for the deaths of nearly a thousand American soldiers every month? And nearly four thousand Vietnamese soldiers and civilians? It’s a violation of their human rights. It’s a violation of their freedom of speech. They burned pieces of paper, Lucas.”

It’s coming back to me. “That’s the judge your father plays chess with?”

“Probably not anymore,” Milton says ruefully. He resumes pacing, then absently picks up the album cover of Fresh Cream, looks at it, puts it back down.

“Why go underground?” I ask.

“Someone saw me.” Milton explains that the first two times he threw the Molotov cocktail, it landed on the Wagners’ lawn and went out. Twice he had to retrieve it, relight it, and try again. “Damn thing wouldn’t break. I won’t use a Welch’s jelly jar next time — that’s for sure.”

“Next time, Milton?”

He lifts his hands and drops them in a gesture of frustration.

“Who saw you?” I ask.