One team charged up the stairs. Another guarded the steps from below. Still another kept watch for a possible escape through the window. They were prepared to break down the door. They’d practiced it. They were eager.

Jaz was lucky. Their clomping feet on the wooden steps roused him from his sleep. He rose up and opened the door before they could knock it down.

Still, they grabbed him. They threw him to the floor. They cuffed his hands behind his back. Tight. They searched the dresser, the closet, the bookshelves, his record collection. They banged on the walls and tapped the floor, testing for the hollow sounds that would reveal hidey holes.

But all that The Men from U.R.G.E.N.T. found were seeds and stems.

It was the Youth of Woodstock. They’d watched the watchers watching Jaz. They warned him of what was coming. Jaz cleaned house. Well, as best as an old stoner could. It was good enough to keep him out of felony territory, but, sadly, left enough cannabis detritus for a misdemeanor or two.

—

That’s why I stopped and listened when the kid who watched me enter the hardware store gave me a kind of half wave when I was on my way out.

I knew him slightly. He was about fourteen and probably should have been in school. I recalled that his name was Sly. Not a nickname.

A lot of people in Woodstock have stories. Mini-legends that buffer their arrival and trail along behind him. His reached back to his grandmother, Cindy Lou Citronella, a true God Child of the Sixties, who had been particularly enamored with Sly and the Family Stone. One might even say obsessed. Cindy Lou had three daughters. She gave each of them names related to members of that group, however tenuously. Cynthia Moon Goddess, Verbena, and Cinnamon Girl Rose. She had no sons. When Verbena gave birth to a boy, Grandma Cindy Lou claimed naming rights, and that’s how, it was said, Sly got his name.

Sly had curly, light brown hair. His eyes were green. They didn’t rove around as most people’s do, they seemed to fixate, lock on whatever he was looking at, move abruptly, then fixate again. He said, “Hey,” and called me by name. He mentioned my son’s name, then said, “You’re his dad, right?”

I said, “Yes.” Why go into to it that my boy was dead? Sly probably knew that. The kids in town know everything. He said my son and his older sister had been friends and she said I was an OK person.

I thanked him.

Having explained why I qualified to be spoken with, he said, “There’s a narc watching you.”

“You sure?”

“Yeah.”

“How do you know?”