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Show Car Baseball Butch and Fenn Stories 63 haul all that mess away with one load." He pushes me playfully, but I will not let him down. Outside, the smoke begins to merge with the first purple skies of the great never ending summer twilight. 7 I see Fenn straggle toward my house through the vacant lot. He is walking backwards, dragging his tattered sleeping bag, watching Mr. Wilkes. I don't know how Fenn can be here already; he must never get any dinner. It is a rumor that he can sleep out so much because his mother doesn't want him at home. Mornings he sure eats bowls and bowls of cereal. Fenn eats dinner with us too sometimes, but my father disapproves, not of sharing what we have with him, but of not giving Fenn's family a chance to share dinner with him. When we're in our yard at supper time, Dad will call: "Come in, boys," to my brothers and me. And to Fenn he will add: "And Fenn, you go home. Your mother just called, she's got a prize for you." Years ago, when he first started that, Fenn and Butch would fall for it and race away. Now it is just an announcement. Fenn doesn't fall down, and he crosses into our yard as I step out to meet him. "Old man Wilkes is a long term weirdo." Fenn is still looking over there. I know he can't see the dark figure of Mr. Wilkes; he must just be smelling the smoke. "If I grow up and |