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Show Why We Cry Butch and Fenn Stories 169 Now, suddenly, the ache runs electric in my crotch and I reach down to cup myself with the other hand, arching against the limb to ease the strange burning, and when I do the waving pain breaks in a fire there, so brightly, and the limb explodes like a gunshot, and I am falling now for real, flying backwards, down, down to the night glass of the river. I smack the river and its bottom simultaneously, it seems. Is it only this deep? Plunging one foot in the mud, leaving the shoe, I kick upward still holding onto my pennant, the bra. I break the surface and climb ashore, flabbergasted, as my mother would say. I stand up and then sit down and breath and breath. I know what it is: I've jacked off. I'm trembling. "Here," I say aloud, and I wave the bra and throw it in the river. "Here." I've jacked off. What a fakeout. I didn't know this would happen. Nobody said anything about being in trees. From the walkbridge I look down at the changing broad slip of the river. The huge shadow of the junior high reaches out in the starlight. It is my new school. There is a nice chill in the air, and many groups of early leaves float by, under me. The wind sucks a little at my wet shirt. I peel it off and wring it out, something all wet adolescents should do. More leaves blow past, forming little fleets on the water. My eyes well up for no reason. I hike down to Butch's like Walter Brennan, one shoe on, one shoe lost. My mind races as I think of what I am going to tell my mother, what'd you do with that shoe? Nothing, none |