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Show Carlson Ferguson Lives 7 He takes the shirt off and throws it up so it sticks in the pipes, and he puts on his old brown corduroy robe, his lab coat. "Sorry, Fenn," he says looking down to cinch the sash. "Yeah, oh yeah. Sorry. Sorry. Things are strange." Fenn says to me:"Crazy about the goddamned alligator." Butch turns to Fenn again, but I've turned him back, and we look at Ferguson together.* "Beat up Budd!" Fenn says. "Punch out your goddamned father. He killed the little bastard. I liked Ferguson!" Butch lifts the open violin case like a tray and Ferguson's belly flashes up at us, the only white thing in this world. "He's dead, Butch," I say, watching my friend. "It's okay. He's dead." "Yeah, maybe." Then I sit down by Fenn, because Butch is thinking it allthrough, whatever it is going to be. Fenn is really wincing at the small print on the advertisement page in Superboy. I know what he wants: X-Ray Glasses with which he could see through his hand. The tiny illustration shows somebody looking at the bones in a hand. Fenn is trying to figure a way the X-Ray Glasses would help him become a great hitter. Butch is starting to shuffle some of the gear, and so we'll have an answer soon. The television standing on the table looks like an altar or a rocket, so I figure we're going to have some kind of rites, but Butch isn't talking. "I gotta go to practice," Fenn says, folding the magazine into his back pocket and picking up his baseball bat. |