I glance back up the driveway. The garage door is open. The paterfamilias’s own classic two-seat convertible sports car, an MG TF 1500, is gone.

“Dig this, guys.” Arno pops the trunk of the GTO, a big, out-of-fashion muscle car that he clings to in the misguided belief that it projects an aura of powerful coolness.

In the trunk is a green caddie vest from Piping Rock, a nearby golf club. Also, a pair of grass-stained golf shoes and some tees and golf balls. Arno keeps this stuff so his parents will think that his money comes from caddying. But that isn’t why he’s opened the trunk. From a cardboard box, he pulls a metal contraption with a funnel and a hand crank. “Take a guess.” (He’s never outgrown the thrill of show-and-tell.)

Milton leans close, points at the funnel, and begins to think out loud. “The raw material goes in here. Probably like a wet . . . No, it has to be a powder or dry mix. Then you turn this crank. . . . But why would you . . . ? Oh, I get it. You’re compressing it. Right. . . . So, what comes out here . . . Uh, okay. The result is something small that’s been highly compressed.”

This takes about three seconds. The guy is scary smart. He chews the corner of his lip. “Hamster pellets?”

“For human hamsters.” Arno puts the thing back in the cardboard box and slams the trunk. “It’s a pill press. There’s gonna be something like ten thousand hippies at that music and art festival.”

“You’re . . . going to make pills?” Milton asks uncertainly.

“Aaa . . . cid.” Arno stretches the word. “Ows . . . ley. Two . . . thou . . . sand . . . hits. Three days of peace and music for a bunch of stupid hippies . . . and six thousand dollars . . . for Arno Exley Junior.”

Arno offers Milton a ride home, but he says he’d rather walk. As soon as the GTO roars off, Milton turns to me. “Monday night after dinner. We’ll go to the American Friends office together, okay?”

Not that he has any reason to see a draft counselor. Like all college students, he’s exempt from military service thanks to the vaunted 2-S student deferment. He’s just worried I’ll put it off.

“How’s Rudy doing?” I ask, since fleeing to Canada has suddenly become a possibility in my life as well.

Milton scuffs a tire-tread sandal (still no socks, thank God) against the sidewalk. “Shitty. He’s living with my uncle’s family in Saskatchewan, the middle of nowhere. Doesn’t know anyone. Doesn’t have a piano. And guess where my uncle works? Dow. How’s that for irony?”