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made her way to the front door.
    "All right! All right!" she scolded, opening
the door to let in the first man to get up in Montvale. He looked
like a scarecrow, all pieces of angle thrust out this way and that,
and as skinny as straw. He came flapping in like a blackbird that
had just seen a scarecrow come to life.
    "Barney, you calm down," Emily Poundridge
said.
    "Got to see the mayor, Emily," Barney Bates
said. His face was nearly as flushed as the red baseball cap he
held tight in his hand.
    "You just sit down, or at least stand still,
and I'll see he gets up." She looked at him sideways. "What's wrong
with you, anyway?"
    "Got to see the mayor, that's all."
    "All right, you just stay there." She moved
off, taking a last look at him.
    The mayor produced himself five minutes
later, rubbing sleep from his eyes. From the back of the house the
smell of coffee leaked in. The mayor shuffled around behind his
desk and sat down in his chair, yawning.
    "Morning, Barney," he said.
    Barney Bates fluttered up in front of him
like that blackbird taking flight again. "Mayor, you got to do
something about it."
    "Can't do nothing about it till you tell me
what it is, Barney."
    "You got to do something about the park."
    "What's that?" Poundridge was still not truly
awake.
    "The park that sprung up outside my back
window last night. The one you gave a permit to last month."
    "Barney," Mayor Poundridge said, waking up at
last, "slow down and tell me again what you want."
    Barney Bates looked like he would burst a
vein. "Goddammit, Mayor, they got a whole goddam park out
there!"
    "First of all," the mayor replied, his voice
turning stern, "I won't hardly abide swearing in my house. And this
being a Sunday, I won't abide it at all. And second, Barney," the
mayor said, his face reddening a little in frustration, "what in
blazes are you talking about?"
    "Didn't you sell that old patch of land, that
old Scott family land, to them carnival people last month?"
    "You were at the meeting, Barney. Everybody
voted on it."
    "Well, it's up."
    " What? "
    "The whole amusement park. It's all
there."
    "Now, Barney," the mayor began, laying a hand
on Bates' shoulder.
    "You can see it from your top window," Barney
said. "Come on, Mayor, you can see it from your window."
    Shaking his head, Mayor Poundridge led the
way to the top floor.
    The smell of coffee was very strong in the
house now. Jonathan Poundridge was fully awake, and he looked
forward to that coffee.
    "You'd better not be fooling with me,
Barney," he said, realizing that it was entirely possible that
Barney Bates was seeing things. It had happened before, and it
wouldn't be the first time that Barney would have to be put away
with a fit of the DTs. It had been a while, though, and as
Poundridge turned to regard Barney when they reached the top of the
stairs, he could smell no liquor on his breath. Still . . . .
    "There, just like I told you," Barney said,
pointing.
    A July chill went through Mayor Poundridge as
he looked out the small window. There behind the Bates' place was
the "park" Barney had been yelling about. It was there in a
thousand shades of tent canvas. It twisted and looped and spread
itself out over the old Scott land like a lion after a gorging
meal. Banners, long lengths of lights, and balloons and streamers
formed its perimeters, within which lay a circus array of roller
coasters, rides, games and a broad, paved midway waiting to be
filled with people. A year's worth of work had been dropped on the
town in one night. It looked new, but the rides and tents were in
the style of at least a hundred years ago. The carousel, one
corner of which the mayor could just see, appeared antique. The
highest curve of the Ferris wheel edged up to hang even with the
top of the church spire.
    "I just don't get it, Barney," the mayor
said. He felt suddenly chilled again.
    "You're damn right you don't get it," Barney
said, "and I don't get it neither. Can they build like that, with
all that stuff