Nevertheless, a Fairview police car arrived soon enough, and two cops stepped out. One was Hopley, the chief of police, a roughly handsome man of about forty. Some of the action stopped, and more mothers took the opportunity the lull afforded to recapture their fascinated children and bear them away. Some of the older ones protested, and Halleck observed that some of the younger ones were in tears.

Hopley began discussing the facts of life with the Gypsy who had been doing the juggling act (his Indian clubs, painted in jaunty red and blue stripes, were now scattered around his feet) and the older Gypsy in the Oshkosh biballs. Oshkosh said something. Hopley shook his head. Then the juggler said something and began to gesticulate. As the juggler spoke, he moved closer to the patrolman who had accompanied Hopley. Now the tableau began to remind Halleck of something, and after a moment it came. It was like watching baseball players argue with the umps over a close call in a game.

Oshkosh put a hand on Juggler's arm, pulling him back a step or two, and that enhanced the impression – the manager trying to keep the young hothead from getting the boot. The young man said something more. Hopley shook his head again. The young man began to shout, but the wind was wrong and Billy got only sounds, no words.

'What's happening, Mom?' Linda asked, frankly fascinated.

'Nothing, dear,' Heidi said. Suddenly she was busy wrapping things. 'Are you done eating?'

'Yes, please. Daddy, what's going on?'

For a moment it was on the tip of his tongue to say, You're watching a classic scene, Linda. It's right up there with the Rape of the Sabine Women. This one is called the Rousting of the Undesirables. But Heidi's eyes were on his face, her mouth was tight, and she obviously felt this was not a time for misplaced levity. 'Not much,' he said. 'A little difference of opinion.'

In truth, not much was the truth – no dogs were unleashed, there were no Swinging billy clubs, no Black Maria pulled up to the edge of the common. In an almost theatrical act of defiance, Juggler shook off Oshkosh's grip, picked up his Indian clubs, and began to juggle them again. Anger had screwed up his reflexes, however, and now it was a poor show. Two of them fell to the ground almost at once. One struck his foot and some kid laughed.

Hopley's partner moved forward impatiently. Hopley, not put out of countenance at all, restrained him much as Oshkosh had restrained Juggler. Hopley leaned back against an elm tree with his thumbs hooked into his wide belt, looking at nothing in particular. He said something to the other cop, and the patrolman produced a notebook from his hip pocket. He wet the ball of his thumb, opened the book, and strolled to the nearest car, a converted Cadillac hearse of early-sixties vintage. He began writing it up. He did this with great ostentation. When he had finished, he moved on to the VW microbus.

Oshkosh approached Hopley and began to speak urgently. Hopley shrugged and looked away. The patrolman moved on to an old Ford sedan. Oshkosh left Hopley and went to the young man. He spoke earnestly, his hands moving in the warm spring air. For Billy Halleck the scene was losing whatever small interest it had held for him. He was beginning not to see the Gypsies, who had made the mistake of stopping in Fairview on their way from Hoot to Holler.

Juggler abruptly turned and went back to the microbus, simply allowing his remaining Indian clubs to drop onto the grass (the microbus had been parked behind the pickup with the woman and the unicorn painted on the homemade camper cap). Oshkosh bent to retrieve them speaking anxiously to Hopley as he did so. Hopley shrugged again, and although Billy Halleck was in no way telepathic, he knew Hopley was enjoying this as well as he knew that he and Heidi and Linda would be having leftovers for supper.

The young woman who had been shooting ball bearings at the target tried to speak to Juggler, but he brushed by her angrily and stepped into the microbus. She stood for a moment looking at Oshkosh, whose arms were full of Indian clubs, and then she also went into the bus. Halleck could erase the others from his field of perception, but for a moment she was impossible not to see. Her hair was long and naturally wavy, not bound in any way. It fell to below her shoulder blades in a black, almost barbarous flood. Her print blouse and modestly kick-pleated skirt might have come from Sears or J. C. Penney's, but her body was exotic as that of some rare cat – a panther, a cheetah, a snow leopard. As she stepped into the van the pleat at the back of her skirt shifted for a moment and he saw the lovely line of her inner thigh. In that moment he wanted her utterly, and he saw himself on top of her in the blackest hour of the night. And that want felt very old. He looked back at Heidi and now her lips were pressed together so tightly they were white. Her eyes like dull coins. She had not seen his look, but she had seen the shift in the kick pleat, what it revealed, and understood it perfectly.

The cop with the notebook stood watching until the girl was gone. Then he closed his notebook, put it back in his pocket, and rejoined Hopley. The Gypsy women were shooing their children back to the caravan. Oshkosh, his arms full of Indian clubs, approached Hopley again and said something. Hopley shook his head with finality.

And that was it.

A second Fairview police cruiser pulled up, its flashers turning lazily. Oshkosh glanced at it, then glanced around at the Fairview town common with its expensive safetytested playground equipment and its band shell. Streamers of crepe still fluttered gaily from some of the budding trees; leftovers from the Easter-egg hunt the Sunday before.

Oshkosh went back to his own car, which was at the head of the line. As its motor roared into life, all the other motors did likewise. Most were loud and choppy; Halleck heard a lot of missing pistons and saw a lot of blue exhaust. Oshkosh's station wagon pulled out, bellowing and farting. The others fell into line, heedless of the local traffic bound past the common and toward downtown.

'They've all got their lights on!' Linda exclaimed. 'Gorry, it's like a funeral!'

'There's two Ring-Dings left,' Heidi said briskly. 'Have one.'

'I don't want one. I'm full Daddy, are those people -?'

'You'll never have a thirty-eight-inch bust if you don't eat,' Heidi told her.

'I've decided I don't want a thirty-eight-inch bust,' Linda said, doing one of her Great Lady bits. They always knocked Halleck out. 'Asses are in these days.'

'Linda Joan Halleck!'

'I'll have a Ring-Ding,' Halleck said.

Heidi looked at him briefly, coolly – Oh … is that what you'll have? – and then tossed it to him. She lit a Vantage 100. Billy ended up eating both of the Ring-Dings. Heidi smoked half a pack of cigarettes before the band concert was over, and ignored Billy's clumsy efforts to cheer her up. But she warmed up on the way home and the Gypsies were forgotten. At least, until that night.

When he went into Linda's room to kiss her good night, she asked him: 'Were the police running those guys out of town, Dad?'

Billy remembered looking at her carefully, feeling both annoyed and absurdly flattered by her question. She went to Heidi when she wanted to know how many calories were in a piece of German chocolate cake; she came to Billy for harder truths, and he sometimes felt this was not fair.

He sat on her bed, thinking that she was still very young and very sure she was on that side of the line where the good guys unquestionably stood. She could be hurt. A lie could avoid that hurt. But lies about the sort of thing that had happened that day on the Fairview common had a way of coming back to haunt the parents – Billy could very clearly remember his father telling him that masturbation would make him stutter. His father had been a good man in almost all ways, but Billy had never forgiven him that lie. Yet Linda had already run him a hard course – they had been through gays, oral sex, venereal disease, and the possibility that there was no God. It had taken having a child to teach him just how tiring honesty could be.