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The Rastas stood around or sat on the back bumper of Killy's Volks, polite and friendly conversation was made; they invited us to come back and see them sometime. Right. Eventually, without any true goodbyes, there was kind of a mutual semi-embarrassed separation, as they went back inside and we prepared to get in our cars. It was at this point that we discovered one of our party was missing. Peter Simon was still in the house. Nobody seemed particularly inclined to go in after him, so we just sort of stood around until some of them brought him out, stoned and beaming and holding hands with them like a brother to the world. Killy then told us that he had to take some members of the band home in his car, and we would all have to ride back in Stephen Davis’ Toyota, plus we could drive home Chinna, the lead guitarist. Killy also said that he needed gas, produced a hose, and siphoned an indeterminate quantity out of the Toyota and into the Volks. He left us with instructions on how to get out of this neighborhood, said that in any case we had Chinna to guide us, and drove off. Now we had to squeeze seven people into the Toyota—Gonzo, Hayes, Wooly and myself, three of whom are around six feet tall and in other respects large, into the backseat; in the front seat Stephen Davis driving, Peter Simon straddling the two front seats with his arm around the back of the seat where Chinna rode shotgun. No one spoke to Chinna; in fact, once out on a main road several of us began laughing like maniacs, and I still wonder what he must have been thinking. But some sort of pressure was off, and also the only way four of us could fit in the backseat was for one of Wooly's legs to hang out the window. Stephen Davis almost ran off the road the first time he saw a human foot bobbing up by his window. We drove for miles, followed Chinna's instructions until we arrived at what looked like a suburban 1950s American tract home, except that there were fields around it. It wasn’t bad for Jamaica. As Chinna took his guitar through the front door, Gonzo cracked: “I’ll bet he's saying, ‘Hi, honey, I’m home!’” We wondered if Ras Michael and the rest had left in Killy's Volks for equally middle-class abodes, and Gonzo also revealed that Killy had burned him for the four dollars worth of dope he’d copped for him on the way to the Grounation. He had rolled part of it up into about four joints which he’d passed to us while the band was playing, but when Gonzo asked him for the rest of it at the end he said that we (I and I, Ethiopians and ofays) had smoked it all up. Proving, declared Gonzo, that the Rastas were not Righteous, after all.

Back at the hotel, Tom Hayes, Gonzo and I closed the bar. I had Courvoisier with Heineken chasers. Gonzo said, “Yes, tonight we have been where few white men have dared venture!” Hayes remarked that Peter Simon did not know how lucky he was to be alive.

Stephen Davis, Peter Simon, Wooly, and I are driving to Harry J.'s studio. Harry (Johnson) is another prolific island (and Island) producer; Marley has recorded at his studio a lot, and in fact when we get there Wooly sees a car that looks like Marley's BMW and for some reason gets nervous. It seems implicit that if Bob is there visiting Harry J. for any reason, we will have to turn around and go back to the hotel, and it occurs to me that it's a wonder Marley keeps any perspective at all with everybody treating him like this. But it's not his car, after all; we go inside.

In the car all morning Wooly has been saying “Jah Rastafari” and singing Ras Michael's “None a Jah Jah Children No Cry;” the night before, as we stood beside the door, I had asked him if Island was thinking of signing Ras Michael, and he had said no, but that after what we had just seen it might be a good idea. Now he has offered to make me a copy (a dub!) of his tape of Ras Michael's performance, and I tell him I’ve gotta have a cassette, and that if he can’t make one easily not to go