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Show Car Baseball Butch and Fenn Stories 42 "Look," I point down the alley two blocks. We can see the white grey smoke cross the sky down there. "Old man Wilkes is starting early." "That guy's a menace." The summer hangs above us like the exploding billows of the trees along the alley. Every single thing is growing. All the green in this little world of four blocks, three streets, two alleys, one park, the river, and Butch's yard, grows its own wild way, spearing through asphalt, eating fences, and leaping into the bright air like a jungle on fire. And the air itself swims with fifty million mingling smells. Walking buoyantly down the alley with my two friends, I take a deep breath and love the summer. This is as good as it gets. We find Tiny in his favorite burrow in Butch's yard. Laid out like a cheap dog rug, he looks dead. The "B-U-T-C-H" in smudged white letters is still legible on his side where Butch wrote it with chemicals earlier this summer. In his mouth, jailed behind the four rotten fangs, is the tennis ball. "Get the ball, Fenn." "He's your dog." "It's your ball." I lift the deadweight of Tiny's head and try to pry his jaws apart. No way. I peel back the black lips until a line of pink shows inside each slimy gum. Tiny looks at me as if he is not involved in this. His breath smells like things we have turned over down at the river. |