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Show Why We Cry Butch and Fenn Stories 134 the second pitch is inside and I shear it off the handle between first and second base for a single. When you stand on first base in the last little league game of your life in what seems to be the last day of summer ever, and all the people you know are gathered in a group behind the fences as if to have their group picture taken, it all can make you feel quite old. I've stood in this spot on hot afternoons when there wasn't another person in the whole park, and I've stood here late at night when you couldn't even hear any traffic, and as I stand here now I feel as if first base is outer space and I am looking down from two hundred miles. I can't hear the crowd or see their faces. I don't see the next two kids strike out, or the crowd heave together one last time as our team gathers to cheer the victors, Holladay, or Fenn's mother gather him in the hug he's been waiting for all summer, maybe all his life, or the citizens of my world leave the park in groups, until I'm left standing way up here, alone, on first base. The first rain hits across the dry infield, ripping dust like a machine gun. The rain makes my uniform smell like wool which is a smell, if you think about it, which is a lot like the end of the season. I walk into the empty visitor's dugout. Butch is sitting down at the end in the dark. Around him like wallpaper print, the "VOTE FENN - ALL STARS" stencils stand out in the gloom. Butch has the bat in his hand and he's turning it like a baton to hear the click of the piston. |