The Goodness of Mark Pauline

Heckert said that one night he was on the roof of Survival Research Laboratories, which is an extremely ugly sort of roof, rimmed with barbed wire, and covered with empty and broken beer-bottles, whose translucent brownness is reminiscent of dead Japanese beetles, and it was evening, and Heckert was in his bathrobe, and ten white punks from one of the Sunset gangs were facing him on the roof in what must be considered a threatening fashion, and one of the gang said, "Come on, you b*tch, let's go for it," and Heckert was thinking he was going to have to hit the guy really hard on the side of the head, when just then his buddy Mark jumped in, pushed Heckert out of the way, and gave the enemy a short burst with a flamethrower. The guy screamed. He was not seriously hurt, but his arm was burned and his shirt was on fire. --"Hey, man," he said. "I mean, you didn't have to flame me!"