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Show Why We Cry Butch and Fenn Stories 124 few yards by his feet as if they are going to eat him, and they throw his shoes at the plane, laughing. Keith is pleading pretty hard, but they dump him out of his pants, and Lannie runs over and tosses them up on the little league scoreboard. That's when I see my brother Bobby up there, where he's been watching our practice. I hate for my brother to see this stuff. Now Keith is crying. Nobody's going near him until Lannie and Cling decide to leave. He just lies there curled on the grass in his shorts, crying into his fists. Butch is there, of course, observing. When Lannie and Cling walk by us, we don't move. It is better to stand your ground than to show any fear. Besides they remember us from the rock fight. Cling slinks by in his best humanoid manner. God, I'm scared of him. Lannie pauses and smiles, "Nice hats, boys." He laughs down in his throat and moves on, toward the swings and more mayhem. In all the vast possibilities of summertime, those two guys are the only terror I know. Everytime I see them, my "stomach flickers, because I know that sooner or later I'm going to have to fight Cling. Sooner or later, he's going to bother Bobby, and I'm going to have to fight him. My father told me one night over the dinner table that the one time a person had to fight was to defend his brothers. He told me that because I'd been picking on Bobby, and he told me to save it for any hoodlum who bothered my brother. And everytime I see Bobby |
