"You think about it, there are very few good movies about children," Pellam said. "Sentiment, mostly. Or revisionism-directors trying to patch up their own childhood on celluloid. Or trying to put adult values on kids' shoulders. Cheap shots, you ask me. I'd like to see a movie about the ambivalence of being a child. That would be a good project."

"Why don't you suggest it to your studio?"

Former studio, he thought, and didn't answer. Meg jogged away quickly to keep Sam from climbing a fence.

Pellam found himself in front of a turkey shoot booth, where you could win stuffed birds, chocolate turkeys, and a fifteen-pound frozen one by plinking tiny sponge rubber ducks-painted to look like turkeys-with a battered Sears pump action.22. Pellam called Sam over to him.

"What do you want, son, one of those little stuffed turkeys or a candy one?"

Sam looked shyly at his mother, who said, "Tell Mr Pellam what you'd like." She looked up, grinning. "This, I've got to see."

"I guess chocolate, okay?" His eyes on Pellam.

Meg said, "If he can win it you can eat it."

"But maybe not all at once," Pellam said. "It looks pretty big."

The booth attendant took a dollar from Pellam, who asked, "How many to win one of those chocolate turkeys? The bigger one?"

The man loaded the skinny gun. "Six hits out of ten."

"Okay." Pellam leaned forward, resting on the chest-high bench, and fired four shots slowly. They all missed, kicking up dust in the sandbag bullet trap.

Sam laughed. Meg did too.

Pellam slowly stood up straight. "Think I've got the feel." He quickly lifted the stock to his cheek. Six shots-fast, short cracks, as fast as he could work the slide. Six ducks flew off the board.

"Holy shit," the booth man whispered. Then he blushed. "Oh, beg your pardon, Mrs Torrens."

Pellam handed the gun back, and Sam took the candy, staring at him. Eyes wide. "Wow."

"What do you say, Sam?"

"Holy…" the boy began slowly.

Meg warned, "Sam."

"… cow. Wow, thanks, Mr Pellam. That was like totally fresh. I mean, totally."

Meg said, "Sam…"

Sam said, "Mom thinks I don't speak English."

"I know fresh," Pellam said. He looked at the candy. "I hope that it is too."

Sam peeled back the foil and bit off the bird's head. "Wow," he said through a mouthful of chocolate and walked away, looking back every fourth or fifth step. Another story was about to circulate.

They wandered on. She said, "I thought all you knew was muzzleloaders."

"I drive the L.A. Freeway. You gotta know how to shoot."

"Where'd you learn?"

"My father," he said.

"Where'd you grow up?" she asked.

"Simmons."

She turned to him, "No! Not just across the river?" She nodded west.

"The very same."

"It's a lot like Cleary."

"Little poorer, little scruffier," Pellam said. "And we don't get the tourists for the leaves. It's mostly pine."

They walked in silence for a moment, kicking through the tall grass at the edge of the football field.

"Keith couldn't make it?"

"He'll be coming by later. He's at his company."

"It was good of him to help me the other day."

"He said somebody'd stolen what you were looking for."

"Yep. We got outflanked."

They walked for a few minutes then, as if Pellam had asked about her husband, Meg said, "Keith's changed. When his partner died, it affected him. He got an edge to him."

"Really? I didn't sense anything like that."

"I wasn't sure he'd help you. He doesn't like things that are out of his own, you know, orbit. I'm glad he did."

They were being examined-dozens of heads turned conspicuously away while eyes followed them.

After five minutes of looking at booths, he said, "Why did you leave Manhattan?"

"Keith got a job with a drug company up here. I wasn't getting modeling work and just couldn't break into acting. I had a baby. I always wanted a house."

"And you like Cleary?"

She gave a nervous laugh and looked away. "It's tough for me to give you an answer. And it won't matter if I live here for another twenty-five years. I'll never know the place well enough to talk about it. These places, towns like this, they're born into you. The roots go way back. You come any other way, you're just a houseguest. You may be the life of the party, you may even get yourself elected to the town council, but places like Cleary don't become part of you. It's in the genes or it isn't. It's not in mine."

Applause not far away. A new Miss Apple had been crowned. Pellam saw a couple of kids gravitating toward him and Meg. Word was out that the location scout could shoot out a sponge duck's eye at fifty feet. The boys kept their distance as Meg and Pellam circled the field. The ripe, rich scent of decomposing grass came to them.

"Your hair looks nice that way."

Her fingers reached toward her ponytail then she stopped the acknowledgment and lowered her hand. Her eyes fled from his and she concentrated on something on the horizon. They walked to the festival's zoo-a sad collection of cows, goats, geese, ducks and a pony-before she said, "Is that why you and your wife broke up?"

"Uh, why's that?"

"Sorry, I was just thinking about you traveling around."

"There were a lot of reasons. Sure, the job had a lot to do with it."

"You were away from home six months, eight months-"

"I didn't travel as much then."

"I'd love to travel," she said. "Maybe do some acting. Not be a star necessarily. Character acting maybe. I'd even like your job."

Even your job. Just a location scout. "I don't think you would."

She said, "Well, I love my house. I wouldn't give that up. But seeing all those new places…It's like going on vacation, but having a purpose. I think that'd be wonderful."

Women said that. My house. Never our house. He remembered his wife saying just those words. Of course, in the end, that was how it worked out. It did become her house. Self-fulfilling prophecy, he guessed.

"… I guess what I'd want is Sam to come with me for maybe a week or two at a time." After a moment, she said, "Keith too of course." She looked at him but he gave no reaction to the lapse. If a lapse it had been.

Pellam steered away from the domestic situation. He said, "I can't really tell you why I like it. The thing about scouting is, it's not the work itself-finding a spot that'll work for the film. I mean, that's fine, that's what they pay me for. But I like the being on the road…" He waved his arm. "Simmons is, what, less than a hundred miles from here? I grew up with colored leaves and Victorian houses. But I was real glad to get that call and hit the road, scout for towns like this." He waved to Sam. It seemed his fan club had grown to a half dozen.

"One March," he continued, "I'd been sitting home for a month. I got a call from a producer who wanted me to scout for a labour union film. I got in the camper and headed right out to the steel mills in Gary, Indiana. Ugly, cold, gray. Walking through slush. That place was as close to hell as any I'd ever been. But I was so glad to get that call."

She wrinkled her nose. "I'd only go to fun places. Rio, San Francisco, Hawaii…"

He laughed. "You wouldn't get many jobs."

"No, but I'd have a hell of a good time on the ones I got."

"They have beer around here?"

"Probably, but don't you want some cider? They make it fresh."

"No, I want a beer. I hate apples, remember?"

"Then I guess an apple festival doesn't have a lot for you."

"I wouldn't say that."

Meg ignored the flirt and they steered toward the food concession.

As his mother and Mr Pellam were walking through the farmyard zoo Sam ran off toward a bow and arrow shoot. He thought about returning to the rifle shoot and winning something for Mr Pellam, but he remembered seeing the bow and arrow game-where you shot at paper targets of deer. One of the prizes was a small plastic football and because Mr Pellam had played in school that's what Sam decided he was going to win.