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Show Why We Cry Butch and Fenn Stories 166 spits at me. He comes at me in a stance that would only be effective if he had a club in his hands. I step into his charge, just like it was a slow pitch, and I swing my right fist into his mouth as hard as I can. From then on I lose track. I hit him seven or eight times straight, including at least three times after he'd gone down. I fall on him and stroke him three times with my left fist while I hold his filthy hair in my right hand. When I hear myself crying, I stop hitting him and go over and lean against the slippery slide. Neither one of us has said a word. The girls are gone. Linda has left her tennis racket in the sand and I pick it up. Cling puts his hand in front of his face, thinking I'm going to hit him with it. I consider it for a minute, just one solid forehand to the nose, but he's all bloody, and it's not my racket. 3 It must have been during the long, heady run along the river, across the junior high schoolyard, over the walkbridge to Linda's house that I became an adolescent, because as I lean the racket against her front door and skip back into the cool darkness I don't know what is going on, what has been going on, or what I am going to do next. Yet, unlike all the confusions I've ever felt, this one comes in a rush, a wonderful rush of welling happiness and black despair. I can feel it in my arms |
