Swatty: A Story of Real Boys

There were railway sidings here, and there were flat cars and box cars being loaded.

Burman’s sawmill and lumber yards were just under the bluff. Once there had been a brickyard there, and the bluff was cut down steep where they had dug clay. Across the street there was still a brickyard, with hundreds and hundreds of cords of wood, ready to be used to burn brick, and with the kilns loosely roofed over. Back toward the town was a sash and door factory, a pretty big building, and then some houses, and then the stores began. About the fifth store on one side was Swatty’s father’s tailor shop. It was a building all by itself, and it was one story high and frame, and it had a false front above the first story, with Swatty’s father’s name on it, and there was one window on the street.

Well, Swatty and Bony and me went through the lumber yard to the place where Burman’s oil shed was.

The oil shed was right up against the bluff, almost at the railway, and it was up on stakes, so that it was safer. It was about as big as a kitchen, and was painted red and the floor and part of the and part of the stakes were soaked with oil, and the grass underneath was withered and oily because the oil had dripped and killed it.

Just as we got there we saw Slim Finnegan, who was in our class at school but ever so much older than we were, and he was under the oil shed smoking a corncob pipe. His coat was on the grass beside him, and just as we got there he jumped up and began slamming at the grass with his coat, for the grass was afire. Before we could guess what happened, the flames seemed to run up the stakes like live animals, and all at once the whole bottom of the floor of the oil shed was afire.

Slim Finnegan gave one look at it, and tucked his coat under his arm and ran. There were piles and piles of lumber right there and he jumped in among them, and I guess he hid. We didn’t see him any more.

Swatty ran for the sawmill. He shouted to the first man he saw before he was halfway to the sawmill, and the man hollered “Fire!” and ran for a hose wagon they had under a shed and began jerking it out, and Swatty ran on, shouting “Fire!”

It wasn’t a second before all the men began piling out of the sawmill and came running from the lumber yards, and the mill whistle began blowing as hard as it could. It almost made you deaf when you were that close. Right away the whole place seemed to fill up with men, and they all had axes or hooks or whatever they ought to have had.

The mill whistle kept blowing without stopping, and in a minute the whistle on the sash and door factory joined in, and then the regular fire whistle on the waterworks started up. The oil house was just one big red flame that went up in the air and turned into the blackest kind of smoke. We saw the men with the mill’s hose trying to throw water on the oil house, and every one was shouting at the tops of their voices. We saw men on top of the nearest lumber piles, but almost as soon as we saw them we saw them dodge away and climb down as quick as they could, and the next minute those lumber piles were afire on one side. They were red flames, and they climbed right up the sides of the piles and waved at the top.

Me and Swatty and Bony kept backing down the railway track as the fire got too hot for us. There were hundreds of people, but there were more than that in other parts of the neighborhood. Almost everybody in town came to the fire, because by this time dozens of lumber piles were afire, and the sawmill had set fire to the dry-sheds and the planer. You couldn’t see the bluff at all, because there was just one big wall of flame in front of it. Whole boards went sailing right up into the air, burning as they went, and the blue smoke that blew over the town was full of pine cinders and burning pieces of wood. There never was such a fire in Riverbank. The ground seemed to burn, too, and it did, because it was sawdust and rattlings.

The brickyard burned – everything that could burn – and the bluff of yellow clay, there and beside the sawmill, was burned red, like brick – and the flat cars and the box cars all burned. It was an awful fire! Wet lumber in the newest piles burned as if it was dry. The railway bridge and two other bridges burned. At noon it was like evening, because the smoke hid the sun.

Me and Swatty and Bony kept backing away as the fire came toward us. Sometimes we would turn, and run. We backed away as far as ten city blocks would be, I guess, before we were where we did not have to back away any more. We forgot all about school, and about fishing, and about everything. It was the kind of fire where nobody thinks of going home until it is all over.

It was about two o’clock when the people in front and the firemen in front of them gave a sort of roar, as if they were a lot of animals, and everybody crowded back. The firemen on top of the sash and door factory ran from one edge of the roof to the other, looking down. Two of them jumped off. They were killed, but the others got down the ladders, and the next minute the factory and its oil house were all afire at once – just sort of spouted fire from all the windows as if the fire had been all fixed to break out that way.

Before you could turn around and then look back, the sash and door factory was one big, hot flame, and then the houses began to go. First one and then another caught fire.

We got crowded back until we were in the street right opposite to Swatty’s father’s tailor shop, and Swatty’s father was on the front step of it shaking his hands in the air and shouting like a crazy man, but nobody paid any attention to him. He was a little man and he had gray hair, but he was mostly bald. He didn’t have a hat on and he looked pretty crazy standing there and shouting.

Well, we didn’t know until afterward what he was shouting about, but I know now, so I might as well tell it. There was a cellar under his shop and it was full of barrels of whiskey. When prohibition was elected the saloons thought they would have to stop for a while and that then they could go ahead again, so they hunted for some place to hide the whiskey they owned, where it would be safe for a while, and Mr. Schwartz’s cellar was one of the places they hid it in. What Swatty’s father was trying to shout was that if his shop caught fire all the whiskey in the cellar might explode and the people standing around might be killed and the whole town burn up. I don’t wonder he was sort of crazy about it. I guess Swatty felt sort of ashamed that his father was acting so crazy.

So then the house next to Swatty’s father’s shop caught fire, and the next minute the side of Swatty’s father’s shop began to smoke.

The policemen were sort of crowding us back all the time, but we would n’t go back much, and all at once Mamie Little started out of the crowd and began to run toward Swatty’s father’s shop. But when she was halfway there the fire marshal just caught her by the arm and gave her a sort of twist and slung her back, and then the policeman nearest us caught her and jammed her back against me and Swatty. She was crying all the time; she kept moaning, “My father! My father!”

So just then Swatty’s father ran out and grabbed the fire marshal by the arm and talked to him in German, because they were both German, and the fire marshal ran toward his firemen and shouted through his trumpet, and all the firemen up the street came running back, dragging all their hose and all shouting.

It was all wild and sort of crazy, and suddenly the fire marshal ran back to where the firemen were tugging at the heavy hose and shouting, and four firemen who were holding on to a nozzle pointed the stream into the air. It was worse than any rain you ever saw. It was just “whoosh!” and we were all soaked. So all the crowd hollered and screamed, and we all turned and ran, and all I knew was that I had hold of Mamie Little’s hand and was helping her run. I was awful sorry for her because she was crying and her father was going to burn.

So Swatty said: “What’s she crying for? Why don’t she shut up?”

He meant Mamie Little. So I said:

“She can cry if she wants to! I’d like to see you try to stop her! She’s crying because your father gave her his fashion plate and it’s going to be burned up, and if you say much I’ll lick you!”

So Swatty said: “If that’s all she’s crying for, come on. We’ll get her old fashion plate for her.” So I said to Mamie Little: “Stop being a baby and shut up, and we’ll get your old fashion plate for you.”

Swatty just cut in through the crowd, and me and Bony followed after him. He went up the side street, and we climbed over the fence into the yard of the corner house and cut across that yard and over another fence. That way we got to the back of Swatty’s father’s shop without any one stopping us. Bony kind of kept behind us.

It was mighty hot, because the house next door was all afire, but the firemen were keeping all their hose on the side of Swatty’s father’s shop, trying to keep it from burning. We crouched down and kept our backs to the fire so the heat wouldn’t shrivel us, and we got to the back door and it wasn’t locked. We went in. It was hot – like an oven – inside, and the noise of all the water on the side of the house was like thunder, only louder. The inside of the shop was like under a waterfall. You wouldn’t think anything so wet could burn, but it did. Before we were halfway to the front window the fire began to eat into the shop along the floor. The water on that side just turned to steam and dried as fast as it ran down.

Bony began to cry, but we hadn’t any time to stop. Swatty took him by the hand and jerked him along, and we got to the window and I grabbed the fashion plate. Then we couldn’t go back because the shop was mostly afire and we would have been burned up. So then Bony got real scared and ran to the front door and threw it open, and a stream from a hose caught him and sent him head over heels back into the shop where it was burning; he was knocked unconscious because his head hit a table leg.

So I didn’t know what to do. I guess I began to cry. I crouched down in the window because I couldn’t get out at the door on account of the stream of water that was coming in there a hundred miles a minute, and I couldn’t go back because the back of the shop was all afire now. But Swatty crawled on his hands and knees under the table where Bony was, where the fire was beginning to burn harder, and he grabbed Bony and yanked him along the floor back to the window. I guess I helped him jerk Bony onto the window shelf, but just then another stream of water busted the window in. The glass fell all around us and one piece cut Swatty on the hand, but he only said, “Jump! Jump!”

Maybe we would have jumped, but we didn’t. The firemen had got to the back of the building and had turned the hose in at the back window, and just when Swatty said, “Jump!” the stream of water hit us like a board. It took us as if we were pieces of paper and slammed us out of the broken window and halfway across the street, and threw us head over heels in the mud, and the fashion plate, with Mamie Little’s father, came flying with us.

So I crawled over to where the fashion plate was and took hold of it and began to drag it to where Mamie Little was. A policeman came and took me by the shoulder and lifted me up, but I couldn’t stand, and that was the first I knew my ankle was sprained. But Swatty got up himself and sassed the policeman that came to get him. He told him he had a right to go into his father’s own shop if he wanted to, and that if the policeman said much more he would go back again.

I guess the whiskey exploded all right. Three more houses burned before they stopped the fire, but we didn’t see that because Bony ran all the way home, and somebody carried me to a wagon, and drove home with me, and Swatty’s father got him and took him up the main street and waled him on the hotel corner with a half-burned shingle that had blown from the lumber fire.

The next day my ankle hurt pretty bad and I stayed in bed with linament on it and after school Lucy came up to see me. “Come on up in my room and play,” I told her.

“No,” she said, “I don’t want to. I want to go down and play with Mamie Little; we’re playing paper dolls. We’re having lots of fun.”

“Ho!” I said. “Paper dolls! They’re no fun.”

“They are, too,” Lucy said. “And we’ve got to cut out Mamie’s fathers. She’s got a whole fashion plate full.”

“Where’d she get them?” I asked, because I guessed right away what fashion plate it was.

“Why, Toady Williams gave them to her,” Lucy said. “He got them out of the fire or somewhere and gave them to her. He’s helping us cut them out.”

Gee! I felt sore!

III. THE “DIVORCE”

After I got out of bed and went back to school I fought Toady Williams a couple of times, but it wasn’t much good because he wouldn’t fight back. All the good it did was to make Mamie Little tell Lucy I was a mean, bad boy and that she would never speak to me again as long as she lived. Once I almost told her that it was me that got the father fashion plate out of the fire and that Toady Williams didn’t do anything but pick it up out of the mud after I had got it for her, but I didn’t tell her because then she would have thought I was sweet on her. That would have made me feel cheap.

It made me feel pretty mean, just the same, to see the way Toady Williams was playing with her all the time, when I had picked her out to be my secret girl. He gave her pencils and apples and everything and I guess she liked it. I wished I was grown up, so I could ride up on a bucking bronco and sling a lasso over Toady’s head and jerk him into the dust. Then Mamie Little would say, “Hello, Georgie! Can I get up and ride behind you over the wild plains, because I don’t want to have anything more to do with a ‘fraidy-cat like Toady.”

But it didn’t seem as if anything like that was going to happen. Not for years, anyway.

One day Swatty came over to my yard and he said, “Say!” so I said, “Say what?” and he said, “Say, you know Herb’s tricycle?” and I said I did. Herb was Swatty’s brother that wanted to marry my sister Fan and he had got the tricycle a couple of years ago, when all the bicycles were high-wheel bicycles. He had got it for him and Fan to ride on, and it was a two-seat one – side-by-side seats – and after a few times Fan wouldn’t ride on it because it made her as conspicuous as a pig on a flagpole. So Herb rode on it alone some, and with some other fellow some, but mostly he kept it chained up in Swatty’s barn and said he would scalp Swatty and skin him alive if Swatty ever touched it.

So this day Swatty came over and he said, “What do you think!” because Herb said when he was married to Fan, Swatty could have the tricycle. You bet Swatty was tickled. So I asked him who would ride on it with him.

“Well – you will,” he said. “And Bony. That’s when I ain’t taking somebody else.”

He didn’t say who else, but I knew, because I knew Swatty was having my sister Lucy for his secret girl.

“And part of the time,” I said, “I can have it alone, can’t I, Swatty?”

“It’s my tricycle – ” he started to say.

“It ain’t yet,” I told him, “and I guess if I go to work good and plenty it never will be, because if I want to I can think up how to make Fan mad at Herb again and then you wouldn’t get it. And, anyway, if Lucy went to ride on it she might fall off and get hurt, so I guess I’d tell my mother not to let Lucy ride on it. Unless I could take it sometimes and find out that it was safe.”

Because I guessed that if Mamie Little had a chance to ride on that tricycle with me she’d be pretty sick of that fat, old Toady Williams mighty quick. So me and Swatty fixed it up that way, that I was to have the tricycle part of the time and he was to have it part of the time. The only thing was to get Herb and Fan married off as soon as we could, and to look out that nothing turned up to scare them away from each other again like that Miss Murphy fuss did. It wasn’t going to take much to scare Herb away. I knew that.

Well, I guess grown folks don’t care whether they have a divorce or not, because they are always having them and so maybe they get used to having them and don’t think much about it and are not ashamed to have them, but I guess a kid is always kind of ashamed when his folks get them. We never had one in our family but we had babies and I guess a kid feels about the same way when there is a divorce in his family as he does when there is a baby. It makes him feel pretty sick and ashamed and miserable. It ain’t his fault but he feels like it was. He goes out the back gate and sneaks to school through the alley and when a kid sees him the kid says: “Ho! you had a baby at your house,” and the kid that had the baby come to his house wishes he could sneak into a crack in the sidewalk or die or something.

I guess that’s the way it is when you have a divorce at your house. It ain’t your fault but you feel like it was and you don’t have any of the fun of fighting and getting the divorce, like your folks do; you just have the feel-miserable part.

So one day about when the river began to fall again, only it was still mighty high, me and Swatty and Bony went up to Bony’s room in Bony’s house. It was muddy weather, in June, and I guess we had been wading in the mud or something so we knew Bony’s mother wouldn’t let us go upstairs to his room unless we washed our feet first, unless we sneaked it. So we sneaked it.

The reason we went up was so Bony could prove it that the Victor bicycle his father might maybe buy for him weighed only forty-five pounds. He had a catalogue to prove it with but it was up in his room, so we went up to get it. It proved it, all right. Swatty said that was pretty light for a bicycle to weigh, and I said it, too. So then we said a lot of more things about a lot of other things but mostly we talked about the bicycle, because Bony was going to let me and Swatty learn to ride on it if he got it. Swatty bet he could get right on it and ride right off as slick as a whistle because he had an uncle in Derlingport that had a dozen bicycles. So then Bony said he’d like to know why, if Swatty’s uncle had that many, he didn’t send Swatty one, and Swatty said maybe he would. We just kind of talked and let the mud dry on our feet and crack off onto the floor.

Well, in the floor in one place there was a hole and Bony showed us how he could look through it down into the dining-room and see what his mother was putting on the table for dinner whenever she was putting anything on. The hole was about as big around as a stovepipe and it had a tin business in it to keep the floor from catching afire because that was where the stovepipe from the dining-room stove came up through the floor to go into a drum to help heat Bony’s room when it was winter. So we all looked down into Bony’s stovepipe hole to see if it was like he said. And it was.

Just then Bony’s father came into the diningroom. He had his hat on but it wasn’t time for dinner or anything and he didn’t come into the dining-room as if he was coming for dinner. He came in fast and threw his hat on the floor and pounded on the table twice with his fist. The dishes jumped and a milk pitcher fell over on its side and spilled the milk.

“Mary! Mary!” he shouted.

So Bony’s mother came in from the kitchen. “Why, Henry!” she said; “what’s the matter?”

“Matter? Matter?” he shouted. “I’ll tell you what’s the matter! I’ll show you what’s the matter! Look at this! Look at this, will you!”

Me and Swatty looked but Bony kind of drew back from the hole and his mother didn’t look. I guess she didn’t have to. I guess she knew what it was without looking. It was a bill, all right. Me and Swatty could see that but we didn’t know what it was for – whether it was for a hat or a dress or what. So Bony’s father threw the bill on the table and stood with one fist on the edge of the table and the other fist opening and shutting. Bony’s mother had been paring potatoes or something, I guess. She wiped her hands on her apron but she didn’t pick up the bill.

“Well?” she said.

“Of all the useless, idiotic, ill-timed, outrageous, unheard-of extravagance ever incurred by any brainless, gad-about, senseless, vain peacock of a woman – ” Bony’s father said.

“Henry! Stop right there!” Bony’s mother said. “This time I will not listen to your abuse. Year after year I have put up with this browbeating. I go in rags, and if I so much as buy – ”

“Rags!” Bony’s father shouted. “Rags! You in rags? You dare taunt me with that, when you crowd enough on your back to support a dozen families? Rags? When from year’s end to year’s end I do nothing but struggle to pay your eternal bills!” Well, maybe I haven’t got what Bony’s father and mother said just the way they said it, but it was like that. So they had a good start and they went right on and pretty soon Bony’s father was walking up and down the room, talking loud and pounding the table every time he passed it, and Bony’s mother was sitting with a corner of her apron in each hand and the hands pressed to her cheeks. Her eyes were big and scary. So then Bony’s father stopped in front of her and said a lot and she didn’t talk back. So that made him mad and he took the tablecloth and jerked it and all the dishes fell on the floor and broke.

Bony just went to the bed and lay on his face and squeezed his hands into his ears. I guess he felt pretty mean. He was crying, but we didn’t know that then. We found it out afterward.

So then, when all the dishes broke, Bony’s mother sort of yelled and jumped up. Swatty said:

“Garsh! What’s she going to do?”

But she didn’t do anything like we thought she was going to. She bent down and picked up a dish that wasn’t all smashed to pieces and put it on the table as easy as could be and then she untied her apron and folded it up and laid it over the back of a chair as neat as a pin. She looked at herself in the mirror in the sideboard and then walked around Bony’s father and went toward the door into the hall.

“Where are you going?” Bony’s father asked.

“Going?” she said, or something like that. “I’m going to see if I can’t put a stop to this sort of thing. I have had enough years of it. I’m going to see Mr. Rascop.”

Well, we knew who he was; he was a lawyer.

“Very well,” said Bony’s father, “go! I assure you you cannot get a divorce too quickly to suit me!”

I guess that when the loud noise stopped Bony thought the fight was over and listened again. Anyway he was listening now and he heard what they said.

“I thought that,” said Bony’s mother. “This is not the first time, by many, that I have thought it. You will be glad to be rid of me and I of you. My mother will be glad enough to have me with her. I shall, of course, take the boy.”

“As you like!” said Bony’s father.

“The boy” was Bony, so he began to blubber worse than ever. He was pretty much ashamed and when his folks began to talk quiet-like, without shouting, me and Swatty began to be ashamed, too. We felt the way you feel when there’s just been a baby at your house – as if we hadn’t ought to be there. So Swatty picked up his hat.

“Come on!” he said. “Let’s go. It ain’t no fun up here in Bony’s room.”

“Wait!” Bony whispered, like he was scared to be left there alone, so we waited. He came along with us.

We tiptoed downstairs and outdoors and I tell you it was good to get outside where there wasn’t any divorce but just good spring mud and things. So Swatty whistled at a kid down the street but it was a kid Swatty had said he would lick if he caught him, so the kid ran.

Well, we sat down on the grass under the tree and me and Swatty talked pretty loud and fighty because Bony wasn’t saying anything at all and was looking so earnest it made us feel sort of ashamed. He was thinking of the divorce. So me and Swatty talked fighty to each other to try and make Bony forget.

But Bony didn’t laugh. He didn’t even smile. So Swatty took some mud and stuck it on his nose and pretended it was medicine or something; to make Bony laugh. But Bony didn’t laugh. I guess he felt pretty bad. Maybe a kid always feels that way when his folks are going to get divorced. So then Swatty said:

“Hey, George! this is the way I’ll ride on Bony’s bicycle when he gets it!”

So he pretended he was on a bicycle and he pretended to fall off all sorts of ways and to run into a tree and everything. Then I thought of something. I said: