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Show Why We Cry Butch and Fenn Stories 171 up and down my half wet clothing and focuses on my one barefoot. I know he won't ask me about it. "Well, how was the class party?" "What are you doing, Butch? You going for a new sleep-out record?" "You could say that," he says, climbing out of his sleeping bag. I'm glad to see him. It's a relief and makes me feel a little like my old self. "Look at this." He says that sentence the same old way, lost in the excitement of a new experiment. He extracts a roll of papers from a cardboard tube and spreads them on his sleeping bag, weighing down the corners with cans of pork and beans. "This is my house. See the school?" His finger traces the blue lines. "The river. Your house. The park; this is the bandstand. I've got the elevations too; the river is thirteen feet below where we stand right now." It is by far the prettiest map I've ever seen. He's drawn it all with a blue pencil, and it is thrilling just to look at it. A map. I sit back on my heels and fold my arms; I've kind of collapsed. My eyes burn faintly and I feel a sore above my right elbow. I must have hit something coming out of that tree. "Did you register for school?" I say to Butch. He rolls the map, taps the end straight, and inserts it in the tube. "You want to map the world or not?" |