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Show Car Baseball Butch and Fenn Stories 47 all right. We were sleeping out that night and by the time we ran around the house, all we could see was the house standing on those two legs in Budd's greasy trousers. We watched Budd stuff the elephant and the quilt back into the room and then lean a broken piece of raingutter against the place. Satisfied with his repairs, he kicked through the debris toward the back door. It's a pretty neat hole, big enough for Butch to sneak out of. In the winter Karen stuffs it with blankets, and in the summer it gapes at the world like a sad mouth, shocked that people could live this way. And every few days Tiny sneaks through and slithers through the house eating everybody's candy. I choke up as the next pitch slaps-off-the-house ^nd falls toward me: a swing and a miss, strike two. "No problem!" Fenn calls back to Butch, but Butch won't answer and give himself away. "I don't care where you are, Butch! I'm going to hit this over Quail's sheds!" Fenn winds and pitches, another slow drop. I time it and step close to the house, swinging almost straight up as the ball falls: Contact! The black ball rips back up the wall popping high into shallow center. It should be an easy play, but who knows where Butch is? I tear for the porch and see him as he breaks through the four foot brambles, dives, tassles of weed litter flying from his hair, and he makes the catch, narrating all the time: " . . .off his shoestrings, ladies and |