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Show Car Baseball Butch and Fenn Stories 80 the Concord corner. It, too, is off the roadway. Wheels agoggle, the car heaves across, arched so high that we can see the undercarriage. A little fire rides along the muffler. It all passes us like a spaceship and is swallowed by blackness. My eyes can't take it. I close them and listen, but no crash comes. There is some hissing and then that dies, but no crash comes. It is as if nothing has come down. "Holy shit!" Fenn says. "What was that?" Butch flashes me a quick look. He sits down on his bag. I lie down on mine. "I don't know," I say to Fenn. "Old man Wilkes is still chasing him." I can't swallow and my eyes burn even closed. "11 Tooked~Tike that"to me~,"^Butch says real quietly. "What a night!" Fenn says. 12 "What is that?" I hear later. "Butch, what is that?" I wake knowing what it is: the acrid cinder smoke from Mr. Wilkes' garage fire. 1 roll over.-Across the field, the fire is starting again. "Have there been any cars?" "That guy has flipped right out." "Naw, he's not even there. You know what time it is? That fire started by itself." The sky has changed into something I've never seen before: not night, not day; too dark to see, too light not to try. And through everything: the heavy smell of smoke. |