Klauser's Ampoules

Back in the 70's, I worked full-time playing in a bar band out of Pocatello, Idaho. We four band-mates lived in a rented house together, under the gravelly slopes of Scout Mountain rising behind the town. This was my home base for the several years that I had the interesting job of playing country-rock guitar, four or five nights a week in shabby clubs for hard drinkers, dancers, and fist fighters.
     There was a raggedy man who would occasionally come over to the house, and hang out while the band practiced. His name was Klauser, and we would give him a beer or two, or whatever was going. One time, it was a bowl of vegetable soup from the large pot that I had just made. Klauser took his bowl with a sort of reverence, and spooned it up with a look of rapture on his face. He said he hadn't eaten something like that, since his Mama used to make it for him.

    On another day, Klauser showed up with a small stout case, which contained several hundred little glass ampoules of morphine. He had lifted it somehow from a hospital, and he brought it over to share. Each ampoule was fitted with a needle, and was intended as a disposable cartridge to fit into a hypodermic fixture. He didn't have the fixture, but he would insert a small screw into the end of the cartridge, and use that to push down the plunger inside. Klauser asked us if we would like some. I don't remember why the others declined, but no one took up the offer, which seems strange, now. Drugs weren’t unheard of in our old house in that mountain town; neighborhood folks were always dropping over with assorted offerings, hanging out for the music, drinking beer and what not, wandering off again. I myself declined Klauser's offer, because of my dislike of needles; especially when administered by an unsteady, somewhat poxed and raggedy man, however kindly intentioned.
    So Klauser indulged in the morphine by himself, and relaxed in a chair while we rehearsed. Presently, he shot up another, and he got all dreamy; his lumpy red face a little redder, his thin straggly hair a little stragglier; the case of little glass capsules tucked comfortably next to him in the big chair. For old Klauser, life was very good, and would remain so for a certain stretch of days ahead.
    And the band played on.