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Show Why We Cry Butch and Fenn Stories 146 "The kid's got a problem," Fenn says. He's walked on ahead. "Butch is beyond help." I look at Fenn in his new glasses and that red shirt and I hardly know him. This kid used to be a friend of mine, I think. And now I spot another difference: this Fenn is two inches taller than I am. That wasn't true at the beginning of the summer. His face is different too in a way I can't describe except to say it seems to have more separate parts. And his eyebrows have grown together over his nose. On the walkbridge, we stop and lean on the rail and look upstream. Cling and some of his punky pals from the junior high are upriver swinging on a rope. We can see the orange stars of their cigarettes in the dark, and the ape-form Cling is outlined clearly against the river as he swings back and forth on the rope. Each time he swings back, his pals won't let him land, and eventually, he ends up, slower and slower, hanging there straight over the river. "You dirty bastards!" he says the twenty feet across to the group, and he drops into the water. We hear the splash, and I lean over the rail and fold "Understanding Puberty" in half again and again and then twist it into a fat cigar and release it over the river. It hits the water right along side a white quart bottle which glints once coming out from under the bridge, and we hurry and ramble after it along the ruined river trail, throwing rocks as fast as we |