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Show Why We Cry Butch and Fenn Stories 142 street to the Gem to see "Love Me Tender" again. We actually saw it twice in a row that afternoon, and the second time through, when Elvis gets shot and his face is superimposed over the scene of the little house, Fenn rose before the song was even over and said, "Well, that's enough of that." The next day he put on his new glasses. "Don't you want to look like Elvis anymore?" we had asked him. "It's all over. Rock and roll has six months to live. I'm going to save my money so that when I'm fifteen and a half, I can buy a car." "A car?" It was the first time anyone had mentioned a car that way to me. Ever. Later, Butch had said to me quietly: "Fenn's a goner." And he may be. Now, as we walk toward the class party, he seems a lot different from the blind kid I swindled all summer. He's wearing a red shirt, short sleeves, and chinos. I haven't seen him in a button shirt in my whole life. Linda Aikens lives just across the river from our new school: the junior high. It's a good walk because most of the way you can stay by the river and throw rocks at the passing debris. It's just getting dark when we step down the flagstone steps into the junior high school yard. The asphalt yard is criss-crossed by a complicated series of lines painted in yellow paint which has swollen from seventy coats and the |