| OCR Text |
Show Car Baseball Butch and Fenn Stories 61 away to the dump. He wants to be outside, burning it so that the smoke can rise through this neighborhood like a warning: DON'T TOUCH MY DAUGHTER. And: I'M GOING TO KILL YOUNG PARLEY. He rakes and rakes in the smouldering dusk. At dinner in my house, we are asked to account for our day. My brothers being six and three are not asked to account for their day. My mother serves the dinner: potatoes and peas, which my brothers don't have to eat if they don't want, and some kind of meat, and she sits down. My mother and father talk to each other in an easy way. My mother speaks of the events of the day happily, her voice arch and wry as she goes over my brothers' flub-ups. I know my parents will talk for a while and then one of them will turn to me and ask me to account for my day. I try to fill my mouth slowly and completely as my mother is wrapping up her report, so that I can chew until the topic passes, which it has done at times. But I know I am not going to avoid my turn tonight. I chew and chew and try to think of what to say- I am not going to mention losing another of Butch's mother's cups in the rain gutter, or that Butch beat his sister up with a weed, or that Butch threw a rock right through his bathroom window today - on purpose - or even that I sat in a ditch or, and this is the worst, that I was in a rock fight. "Played ball," I say. "All day?" |
