Toward

a Common Bond

lief johansen

The city lay still in the hot summer evening, as if waiting for the first stir of

a cool breeze off the ocean. On a park bench under the dim light of a street lamp, I sat eating a pint of chocolate ice cream for supper. People sauntered by now and then, their rumpled, damp look a reminder of the day's blistering sunshine.

A pair coming up the lake path caught my eyes at a distance, for their bearing contrasted oddly with that of the others. One, a tall, uniformed policeman, strode purposefully, his face a mask, his mouth a study in grim self-righteousness. Half a step behind him stumbled a thin, pimply-faced boy in ill-fitting levis, his head swinging slightly on the slender stem of his neck. They seemed so mismatched that the handcuffs which joined them came as no surprise. A blob of half-melted ice cream slipped off the wooden spoon in my hand onto the ground. The officer's eyes and mine met for a moment, but the boy kept staring at his feet. "Police decoy" and "entrapment" would have been meaningless phrases to me then, but somehow I knew why this boy had been arrested. The rush of blood to my head was charged with anger and helplessness. I lectured myself, "Don't be a fool; there's nothing you can do anyway. Just be glad you're not so obvious as that kid. Besides, he's no concern of yours." The handcuffed pair passed into the shadows. My ice cream had lost its savor. I threw the rest into a trash can.

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