A mismatched band of musicians is stationed in front of the food stands. The lead singer looks as if she’s been teleported straight from Carnaby Street circa 1965. A thick hair piece falls asymmetrically over one ear. Her lower body is shoe-horned into a red mini skirt and as she stamps from one chubby white leg to the other she croons ‘Take Me to the River’ with great gusto. Her guitarist strums away, apparently on a different hit, while an even funkier-looking back-up singer, with a lopsided afro and fuzzy sideburns, swings his hips not entirely in time to either beat.

I clutch the hands of the children and look around for Chavez. There are faces I recognize in the crowd. Sue, Jack’s teacher, some children and parents from school, the arts and crafts lady from Ague. It’s only eleven-thirty but people are already eating at trestle tables piled high with food. Catfish hoagies, quesadillas, curly fries, hamburgers, buffalo wings. A couple of benign-looking old-timers are selling cobs of roasted corn which get spat, blisteringly hot, out of a huge tombola-style grill. At a funnel cake stand, an Indian woman dunks patties of batter into boiling oil. Next to her a fit-looking Navajo, wearing a baseball hat emblazoned ‘Desert Storm’, sprinkles the golden pillow with icing sugar and hands it to Jack in a crenellated box. The air is so clogged with the smell of fried food I think that if I can ever bring myself to leave this place, this will be the scent I’ll have to bottle for nostalgia.

Chavez is sitting with one of the cowboys from the town hall meeting. He’s a tall gangling man, his shirt starched to attention and a grey felt hat pulled low over his face. Chavez beckons us over. ‘Alice, Jack, Emmy! Come and say hi to Moss Adams.’

‘Ma’am.’ The cowboy touches his hat creakily, then places an enormous chapped hand on top of Emmy’s head. ‘Now you’re a fine little lady. What are you going to be when you grow up?’

‘A hit man,’ she says.

The cowboy looks taken aback, then grips his knees and wheezes out a laugh revealing three ochre-coloured teeth staked precariously in his gums like loose fenceposts.