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Show Car Baseball Butch and Fenn Stories 50 Parley is going steady with Carol Wilkes these days. All year he walks her down the alley, holding her hand when he isn't waving his arms around describing his history and his future to her as if he is spelling out the words in the air. He's a wildman. Sometimes they'll walk right through the center of a game of Cup Baseball, and we'll have to stop and watch them. They don't even see us. Carol is hypnotized, as are most people who know Parley, but even so, I sat in front of her all last year and she walks by with him and never even says hi to me. They move through the yard and down the alley very slowly, occasionally falling together in an ambling embrace. But when they come to the cross streets, Arapahoe, Concord, and Emery, Parley stops while Carol marches across as if alone. Then Parley checks all the traffic, even the parked cars, and sprints over after her. He can take a street in three steps. Every once in a while, if Parley breezes through and he is alone he will cadge us out of a hit or two. We'll be playing Strike Out against the back of the house and he'll say, "Come on, boys: one hit." So, we'll let Butch throw, because he can really burn them in, and Parley, who hasn't had a broomstick in his hands in a month will step and swing and tap the only ball we have all the way over Quail's sheds - and once clear over Indiana Avenue. On Quail's sheds in Strike Out is an automatic round trip. So, Parley will toss the broom back to me like a baton and trot away. Since the Wilkes' thing, he |