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Show Carlson Ferguson Lives 11 As I step cautiously back down the stairs, I ask: "Okay, Butch. What is it now? What are we making...dinner?" "We're going to save him." "Who, Fenn?" "Ferguson." "Ferguson, " I say, stopping onjthe bottom step, "Is dead." "Then, we're going to revive him." •You can't do that." I'm standing still. "You're spilling the water," Fenn notes. "Yeah. We can do it. I've thought it over." "He's dead, Butch." "Dead? Dead?" Butch says, taking the water and setting the pan inside the back of the old Admiral set. "Do you know what dead is? Do you? Who told you what dead is? I'd like to know." "Keith Sallis died," Fenn says from where he's watching our argument, sitting on a wooden barrel."No one revived him. Remember last summer. He drowned at Echo Reservoir. I saw him at the funeral, dead. No one revived him. At all." Butch doesn't answer, lifting Ferguson outof the violin case and slipping him right side up into the pan of water. "Well,"he says. "They should have." He stops and comes around to us. "I wasn't there, and I didn't go to the funeral. But I know that I know nothing about being dead. It's all hearsay; that's all we're getting." He shook his head. "You guys want to try this, or forget it?" |