``I'll ride it down,'' Simon said, ``you'll see.''
They were sitting on the sidewalk at the wrong end of Telegraph smoking a joint in the rain.
``I don't know what you mean,'' she said.
``You'll see.''
And in the years that followed she married Tom the pamphleteer who became a lawyer of renown. She lived in a house of outstanding architectural interest in Mill Valley and although she voted democrat and once seriously considered Nader the beliefs that had motivated her waking hours in those strange days were now mere shadows in her mind.
She rarely thought of Simon. She saw that the black power people she had known were now convicts and stockbrokers. She knew where Donna who bombed the police car lived out a peaceful life truck gardening. But she rarely thought of Simon.
Half a century passed since she had seen him. The world had a new population, new problems. The sixties seemed so quaint, so amusing to her grandchildren.
But then his face appeared on the evening news. His hawks nose, his crazy eyes. White beard straggled on his cheeks. Now he led a new band of revolutionaries marching dark streets to find a better world and she remembered then what he had said. ``I'll ride it down.'' and there he was, the last, the only of their people still fighting the good fight.
She rose gracefully from her chair and she kissed her husband's handsome bald head.
``I'm off to join the revolution,'' she said.