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Show Why We.Cry Butch and Fenn Stories 151 doesn't look like anything is played out here. The yard is filling up with kids from Edison, but it still seems like such a waste, all that thick lawn. It's a hard yard to figure. I say hello to Mr. Aikens who looks pretty young to be somebody's father. He's got freckles on his forehead. "You guys all know each other?" he says to us and I say yes, we do. Lannie gives me a sly look. I'm mainly trying to do the three things my mother told me: stand straight up; not drink my soda in four gulps; not hang around the potato chips. Fenn is hanging around the potato chips. Evidently, his mother didn't talk to him, Then for a while, Mr. Aikens is serving everybody hotdogs and Mrs. Aikens is showing everybody the washing machine. Then Linda puts on a record, "Stagger Lee," a song I never could understand, and kids start dancing on the cement patio. It's mainly the bigger kids, Howell and Kidder, kids who aren't afraid of having girlfriends. I watch the group dance for a while and then between "Twenty-Six Miles" and "Who Wrote the Book of Love" I stand up and take my paper plate back into the kitchen. Though I made my soda last longer than any in the history of my life, it has been empty for half an hour. The bottle's warm. No one is in the kitchen except two girls who are leaning over the sink to look out the window at the dancers. Turning into the utility room, I bump into Mrs. Aikens. I show her the empty bottle and |