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Show Why We Cry Butch and Fenn Stories 96 When I lean my bike in the weeds, I hear screams, so there is a good chance Budd is home throwing the furniture at someone. I can tell from the high pitch that it's Roto, Butch's little brother, screaming. He stops. I count twelve. He screams. I count forty- Nothing. I reach one-hundred and go to the back door. The house is silent except for some scratching I recognize as Tiny, probably upstairs again standing on the kitchen table eating the butter. Then I hear Butch's voice down in the basement, and then Roto screams again, this time a good sharp scream with a little tail on it which means he's crying. I stand on the broken back step wondering if I might want to locate new friends after all; then I take my life in my hands and duck down the stairs into the dark and whisper: "Butch!" If they are being killed I guess I want to see it. I saw "Journey to the Center of the Earth" four times and it taught me to try these things. In the basement, I find Butch in the laboratory- Roto is sitting calmly on the table swinging his legs. Butch is writing something on a page in his clipboard. He shakes his head. "I don't know," he says. He puts down the pencil stub and picks up a greasy pair of pliers. "Left or right?" Roto says, bored. He sits on the table in the same blue cutoffs he's worn all summer, no shoes or shirt, and his hair, three colors of red, sticks out in one of Budd's special ten-second hair cuts. It makes his head look like a cheap soccer ball, lines and all. He is eight years old. |