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Show Car Baseball Butch and Fenn Stories 73 Me: twenty seven runs, runners at first and third, no outs. We are all standing, fingers in the fence, on our toes, ready to push off and steal a step on the other two. Fenn holds his head in such a way that I can tell he is listening as hard as he is staring down Emery. Every so often, Butch rattles the fence, and we watch Fenn take off, springing four steps before he finds us not with him, and he stops, turns, and walks back with a kind of dignity. "Very funny," he says. We are ready to fly, when Fenn says: "Listen!" "What have you got, Fenn? A tank coming?" "Listen!" We stand and look at the ground, listening. I can hear-something and then it is clear in the night: Parley's voice. I can't hear all the words, but he sounds hurried, and if I didn't know better, scared. Then I can hear him say: "No! This way! . . .No, no!" Then a slam and then another greater slam as if a house has fallen over. There is a car coming, but Butch just sits on his sleep-ing bag, and so I sit down and let the car drive by. If you let a car pass, it's a strike. We don't hear anything more from across the lot, but we're staring. I see a shape move across a small light. "Look!" "What?" Fenn says, "Can you see him?" |