Martin LaRoche, 18-Roach to his friends-is a cab driving car lover, a longhaired hippie freak, peacenik, street fighter and wannabe poet and musician working his way through college, supposedly. But in the summer of '74 he prefers lying in the sun at Barton Springs, playing guitar, writing poems, trying to make it with girls, drinking beer and smoking lots of pot. One night he hauls an Iranian oilman and a drunk blind guy on a double-load from a dive bar, and the next day the cops are interrogating him because he was the last person to see the blind drunk alive. Through Roach the cops connect the Iranian to the office of the Lieutenant Governor, turns out the blind guy worked for the EPA which is in a dispute with the Texas Air Control Board. When an aide to the Lieutenant Governor and later the Iranian turn up dead, the cops try to pin the murders on Roach. As Watergate boils over, the war rages on, and Texas files suit against the EPA, Roche learns that even the most poetic soul must face the stark demands nature and society place upon us.