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Show Carlson Ferguson Lives 10 that he even calls his father by his first name, Budd; and that in a basement overgrown with foul junk, we are trying to discover the laws that make the world work, we are trying to make up a world. And^that I love his backyard, a lethal vacant lot full of hidden holes, most of which we dug. It is all a jungle. Finally, I say to my father: "Butch's pet alligator died. He's pretty upset." "Ferguson?" my brother Bob says. "Ferguson died?" Riding my bicycle down the three streets to Butch's house at twilight, I nearly sing with happiness and freedom. I swerve down the broad humped street, waving at families on porches. The trees, heavy with June's leaves, rise and bend above me. At the end of this tunnel of trees in the west, the sunset shows three tiers of brown, yellow, and purple being drawn down like a bruise being washed away. I love my life though I couldn't explain it to anybody. As I approach Butch's junkpile of a yard, I pump faster, teething wind, and as I lower a shoulder and swerve between the old Studebaker and the cracked back step, my eyes water against the fast air and I think: no one knows me, my heart; it is different than anyone knows. Fenn is helping Butch by the time I arrive. By the light of the desk lamp and one portable clamp bulb, they have stretched wires in a spider web across the room, each hooking into the television set. Butch has spliced his old model train transformer between the dials on the t.v. ^e sends me out back to get a washpan full of water. |