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Show The Speed of Light Butch and Fenn Stories 4 "Cats, dogs, the animal kingdom," he says to me as we watch Linda and Carol play tennis. "Too many variables." His head looks like a bad world: the three long lines of stitches stretch like railroad tracks from his forehead way back over the horizon. "What do you want to do?" I say. "Something." Fenn thinks he has found something that works: eye massage. While we scour the river banks, taking samples of water at our set checkpoints, Fenn massages his eyes. With his fists always in his face, he could be weeping. "What are you crying about?" Butch says. "I'm not crying. This is going to work." Butch's mother frequently does the crying when she uncovers one of the mason jars containing our water samples in her basement, and a smell mushrooms forth, blue and green, forcing her from her own home. At odd times she suddenly appears in the yard, hanging onto the clothesline, coughing until all the laundry falls to the ground. We all watch her, even Fenn with his weird masky look, his face all pale, his sandy hair, and his eye sockets, red as blood from the rubbing. He looks like a snowman. "Can you see better?" I think so." |