| OCR Text |
Show Why We Cry Butch and Fenn Stories 168 I look up. The barkless dead branches above me are round and smooth. I move up them surely, carefully, my arms and legs wrapped around each branch. From here I can see all the way back to the park. The tennis court lights are still on, but the courts are empty. I see a car two blocks away on Emery pull into a driveway and turn off its lights as if on command. From here the whole world I know resembles the late summer set for someone else's life. Using my knees, I pull upward to thinner branches, higher in the sky. When I move up here, the whole brittle section vibrates. It's like climbing in a skeleton. I reach for the bra, tug at the end, and lose my hold. For a second I am falling. My head swirls. I slip down and catch at a Y of branches. For several tremendous breaths I sit there like a scared cowboy and almost come to my senses, but it's too late. I have a real dizzy feeling that I have left them forever. I think: why do this? Scanning the planet turning quietly below me, I decide: there's an answer to that question; I just don't know it. Then I feel it. I've been groping this tree so intensely that my crotch feels strange, a little ache, a little heat. It feels like a bruise, but a friendly one. I climb back up, up on a limb as big as my arm, like a man on a flagpole, and grab the bra firmly in my fist. Right between the cups. The ache in my groin doubles. I pull at the bra, but it won't let go. |
