Swatty: A Story of Real Boys

“Say! if they get a divorce and Bony goes away we can’t learn bicycle riding on his bicycle!”

We hadn’t thought of that before and right away we forgot about whether Bony was feeling sick or not. We hadn’t stopped to think that a divorce Bony’s folks were getting would make a big difference like that to me and Swatty. It kind of brought us right into the divorce ourselves. Swatty looked frightened.

“Garsh! that’s so!” he said. “We can’t learn to ride on a bicycle that’s in another town.”

“And, say!” I said, frightened, “if Herb hears about it, and how married folks fight and get divorces over hat-bills and things he’s going to be scared to marry Fan, because hat-bills are the things father scolds Fan most about. He’ll ask Fan if she has hat-bills – ”

“Garsh!” said Swatty again, “we’ve got to stop the divorce,” only he said “diworce,” because that was how he talked.

I thought so, too. If Bony’s folks got one and Herb heard about it and got scared of marrying Fan, then Swatty wouldn’t have the tricycle and I couldn’t take Mamie Little riding on it and make fat, old Toady Williams look sick. So I thought like Swatty did, but I said:

“Well, how are you going to stop it?”

“If Bony was to get the diphtheria, and get it bad, that would stop it,” he said.

I saw that was so. If Bony got the diphtheria, and got it bad, they wouldn’t let him travel on the train, and so his mother couldn’t go to his grandmother’s and that would stop it. So I said:

“Yes, and while he was sick we could use his bicycle all the time. How’s he going to get diphtheria?”

“Why, as easy as pie,” Swatty said. “They’ve got it down at Markses. All he’s got to do is to go down there and sneak in and stand around in Billy Markses bedroom until he gets it. Diphtheria is one of the easiest things you can get. Anybody can get it!”

It looked like a mighty good plan to me. Me and Swatty went on talking about it and the more we talked the better it was. We talked about how long it would be after Bony got exposed to it before he would really have it and Swatty said that wouldn’t matter. All Bony would have to do would be to go right down to Markses and get exposed and then hurry home and tell his mother. The divorce would stop right away and wouldn’t have to wait until he was sick in bed before it stopped. So then I said that, anyway, Bony’s father would send for the bicycle right away, because fathers always hurry up to get things when their boys are good and sick. It was all bully and fine and me and Swatty felt pretty good about it, but Bony spoke up.

“I ain’t going to get diphtheria!” he said.

Well, that’s the way some fellows are! You go and work your brains all to pieces thinking up things to help them out of their troubles and then they say something like that. We saw it wasn’t any use to coax him. If we wanted to stop the divorce we would have to do it another way. I said:

“I know the preacher that Bony’s mother goes to the church of.”

“Well, what’s that got to do with it?” Swatty asked.

“Well, couldn’t we tell him about it and get him to stop the divorce? When Jim Carter wouldn’t marry our cook my father told the Catholic priest and he made Jim Carter marry her as easy as pie.”

“That’s no good,” Swatty said. “That was marrying. That’s what priests and preachers are for – marrying folks together – they ain’t for diworcing them apart again. If it was somebody I wanted to have married together of course I’d have thought of a preacher right away. You don’t think I’m so dumb as not to have thought of that, do you? But this ain’t marrying them together, it’s keeping them married together; it’s keeping them from diworcing apart.” Then, all at once he said, “Garsh!”

“What are you garshing about?” I asked him.

“Garsh!” he said again. “I guess I am dumb! I guess I ought to let a mule kick me! I ought to have thought of it right off!”

“Thought of what, Swatty?”

“Why, the judge! You, talking about preachers and priests and all them and not thinking of the judge! It’s a judge that always diworces people apart, ain’t it? Well, what we’ve got to do is see the judge and tell him not to diworce Bony’s folks apart!”

“Come on! We’ll go see the judge and tell him not to diworce Bony’s folks apart.”

Well, I guess we didn’t think when we started how we would do it. We just started.

When we got down to the court-house, where the judge stays, I didn’t feel so much like doing it and Bony didn’t feel like doing it at all. It was different when we got down there than it was when we were sitting on the grass under my apple tree. All along the front edge of the front porch of the court-house were big pillars and each pillar was as big around as twenty boys standing in a lump would be. So me and Bony we sort of peeked into the hall and went out on the porch again, but Swatty went right inside. So we sort of frowned at Swatty and shouted in a whisper: “Aw! come on, Swatty! Let’s go home.”

But Swatty spoke right out, as if he wasn’t afraid of the court-house at all.

“Aw, come on!” he said. “What are you afraid of?”

I wouldn’t have talked out loud like that for anything. His voice came back in echoes: “Aw-waw-come-um-um-on-non-non!” Like that. Every word he said said itself over and over that way.

But Swatty, when we didn’t come, went down the hall and when he found an open door he went right in. He asked for the judge. We looked into the hall and we saw Swatty come out of the door he had gone in at and we saw him go up the wide stairs and push open the green door at the head of the stairs and go in. After a while he came out again and came downstairs and out on the porch.

“Did you see him?” I asked.

“No,” he said. “I’d ought to have remembered that this was Saturday. Judges don’t have court on Saturday; they go fishing.”

So then Bony began to cry. He leaned against one of the big pillars and began to snigger like a little kid that’s lost, and then he turned his face to the pillar and I guess he bawled to himself. I guess he had sort of thought Swatty would have everything fixed so there wouldn’t be any divorce when he came from the judge’s room and it disappointed him. So Swatty said: “Aw! shut up your bellerin’! We ain’t going to let your folks get diworced, are we? You make me sick, acting like we was. I guess me and George knows what we are going to do, don’t we, George?” So I says, “Yes; what is it?”

Well, Swatty knew just what we were going to do; and so did I, after he told me. We were going to go to the judge where he was fishing and tell him not to divorce Bony’s folks. And that was all right because Bony’s mother was afraid of the water and wouldn’t ride in a rowboat and so even if she wanted to get divorced quick she couldn’t be until the judge came back from fishing. So then I said:

“Aw! there ain’t no fishing when the water is so high in the river!”

“Aw! who told you so much?” Swatty said. “You think you know all the kinds of fishing there is, don’t you? Well, I guess you don’t! I guess me and the judge knows more kinds of fishing than you do.”

So we walked down to the river and Swatty told us. It was buffalo fishing you do with a pitchfork. I guess you know what kind of a fish a buffalo is. At first nobody ate buffalo fish but niggers, and they ate dogfish, too, but pretty soon the fishmarket men got so they shipped buffalo fish to Chicago and everywhere just like they shipped catfish. But nobody in our town ate them but niggers, because they tasted of mud. Maybe the Chicago people liked to taste mud.

Well, anyway, the buffalo fish eat grass or roots or something and in the spring, when the river is high and up over the bottoms, the buffalo fish swim up to wherever the edge of the river has gone in the grass and weeds and sometimes they swim in so close that their backs stick out of water and they sort of swim on their bellies in the mud – dozens and hundreds of them, big fat fellows. So then the farmer can’t plough yet, because it is too muddy in the fields, and they get their farm wagons and some pitchforks and drive down to the river. Then they separate apart and wade out and come together again when’ they are out about waist deep and they wade in toward shore and the buffalo fish are between them and the shore. Then the farmers go with a rush and the buffalo fish get scared. Some of them get so scared they try to swim right up on shore on their bellies, and some try to swim out into deep water, but whatever they try to do the farmers just pitchfork them up onto shore. Wagon loads of them! So, before the Chicago folks got to like buffalo fish, the farmers chopped the buffalo fish into bits and ploughed them into the ground to make things grow better, but now they mostly hauled them to town and sold them to the fishmarket men for one and one half cents a pound. So that was where the judge was. He was over to a farmer’s named Shebberd, in Illinois, because he had never pitchforked buffalo fish before and he wanted to do it once and see what it was like.

Me and Swatty and Bony knew where Shebberd’s was, because when you were over in Illinois you could get a drink of water there.

I guess it was almost a mile across the river and then it was almost five miles back to Shebberd’s bottom land cornfield. We got a skiff at the boathouse and me and Swatty and Bony rowed across the river. The water was mighty high and the current was everywhere and not just in one place, and it was strong. Bony sat in the stem and me and Swatty rowed and we had to row almost straight up-stream. It was hard work. My wrists swelled up and got hot and tight but we kept thinking about the divorce we didn’t want Bony’s folks to get and we kept on rowing. Even with the boat pointed almost straight up-stream we were about half a mile below where we started, when we reached the Illinois side and rowed in among the trees. It was easier there; not so much current.

It was fine rowing through the trees, seeing everything, and nothing looking like it usually does. We came to the First Slough and it was just water – like a road of water between the trees – and we kept on rowing and came to the Second Slough and the Third Slough and they were like that, too, and then we came out of the trees and we were in a whale of a lot of water. Bony said, “Oh!” and Swatty looked over his shoulder and said, “Garsh!” and stopped rowing. It looked like miles and miles of water – water we had never seen before – and all at once you felt little and lost and sort of frightened.

“Garsh!” Swatty said. “I was never here before.”

“Where is it?” I asked.

Swatty looked all around.

“I don’t know,” he said. “I never heard of a place like this.”

“Swatty!” I said.

“What?”

“Let’s go home!”

I guess I sort of whined it, and so Bony began to cry. Swatty stood up and let his oars rest and looked all around. He looked anxious and when Swatty looked anxious it was time to be frightened. Anyway, I thought so.

When Swatty had looked all around and didn’t know any more than he did before, he sat down and looked over the edge of the boat at the water. So I did it.

“What do you see, Swatty?” I asked, because I was afraid he saw something to be frightened of. But what he saw was little flecks of leaves and things floating by in the water the way dust floats in the sunlight, and the reason he looked was so he could see which way the current was running, because no matter where we were we wanted to row up-stream. We had gone into the woods below the bottom road and when the water was as high as it was now the bottom road either made a dam across the bottom or the water came over it like a waterfall or rushed through in a rapids nobody could row up. So Swatty knew we couldn’t have passed the bottom road but must be below it somewhere and the place we wanted to be at was just where the bottom road hit the hill, so what we had to do – wherever we were then – was to row up-stream. So we rowed. We rowed I don’t know how far and all at once Bony said:

“Look out! you’re rowing into something!”

Me and Swatty backed water as quick as we could and looked over our shoulders. What we had nearly rowed into was a pile of sticks and a heap of dried grass. It was a good deal as if somebody had chucked a couple of forks full of hay on a lot of driftwood and set it adrift.

“There’s something alive in it!” Bony sort of shivered.

Swatty looked and I looked.

“Mush-rat’s house!” Swatty said right away, and it was. It was the kind the mush-rats make so that when a flood comes it will float and not sink, and there it was right out in the middle of the lake we were lost in.

Then all at once Swatty said: “Say!”

Gee, but he scared me!

“What, Swatty?” I asked.

“Say!” he said; “we’re floating away from that mush-rat house and it ain’t floating with us. I never heard of a mush-rat house out in the middle of a lake, with a current floating by, that didn’t float with the current!”

“Are you scared, Swatty?” I asked, for if he was scared I didn’t know what I would be.

“No, I ain’t scared,” he said, “but it ain’t right. It ain’t possible, that’s all! I bet this is a haunted lake. I bet there is a haunted house around here, or an ol’ witch, or something.”

“Come on, let’s get out of it, then. Let’s row!”

I said.

“You bet I’ll row!” Swatty said, and we did. We steered off to one side of the mush-rat’s house and rowed hard. We had a good double-ender skiff, rounded bottom and not flat bottom, and we made her hump! All of a sudden Swatty’s left oar came out of the oarlock and he nearly fell backwards into the bottom of the boat. He got up and slapped the oar back into the oarlock and we both rowed hard.

“We ain’t moving!”

Bony said that. He was hanging onto the sides of the skiff with both hands, looking scared and white, and you never heard anybody say anything the way he said that! It was like he had seen a ghost. Me and Swatty stopped rowing and looked. About twenty feet away from us was that old mush-rat house and we could see a little ripple of water on the upper side of it but it wasn’t moving and we weren’t floating away from it. There was the same kind of ripple against the bow of our boat.

We rowed again and we rowed hard and the skiff didn’t move! There we were, out in the middle of that haunted lake, or whatever it was, and no bottom that you could reach with an oar, and we couldn’t row up-stream and we didn’t float downstream. And over yonder was a mush-rat’s house just like we were. It sure looked like we were in a haunted lake and I didn’t blame Bony for being scared and crying. I was scared myself. It looked like we were in a haunted lake we could not row out of and that we might have to stay there forever.

“Well, garsh!” Swatty said, “we rowed up here, we ought to be good and able to row back where we come from.” So we swung the skiff around and rowed down-current. No good! We didn’t move at all. Or we just moved a foot or two.

It wasn’t like when you run up on a snag or a rock. It wasn’t stiff like that. We floated all right but we couldn’t go anywhere.

“Listen!” Swatty said.

Away off far we heard voices and splashing, sounding the way things sound when you hear them across water. Swatty shouted. “Hello!” he shouted, and his voice came back to him, “Lo-wo-wo!” in an echo, the way echoes do.

“All right!” he said. “Now we know where the Illinois hills are, anyway. That’s the way they echo back at you, so they must be over there. And I bet those men splashing in the water are after buffalo with pitchforks. So that’s where we want to row.” That was pretty fine, wasn’t it, when we couldn’t row at all? I told Swatty so. I said we’d better shout and have the men come and get us. Swatty said they’d just think it was kids shouting for fun; and I guess that’s what they did think, for we shouted and shouted, and when we quit we could still hear the men laughing and talking and splashing. So then Swatty sat down and put his head in his hands and thought. When we looked up he said:

“Do you believe in haunts and things?”

“I don’t know,” I said. “Do you?”

“I don’t know, either,” Swatty said. “Maybe I do and maybe I don’t, but I know one thing: I ain’t going to believe in them until I have to. I ain’t going to believe this boat is ‘witched here until I know it ain’t stuck here some other way. I’m going to find out.”

“How?” I asked.

“Well, if we’re stuck we’re stuck on something under the water and that’s sure, and I’m going to skin off my clothes and find out.”

So he did. I wouldn’t have done it for a million dollars and I tried to make him not, but he did it. He took off his clothes and lowered himself over the side of the boat and said, garsh! how cold it was! So then he edged himself along, holding onto the side of the boat and all at once he swore.

“What?” me and Bony both asked at once.

“Bob wire!” he said, and he let go with one hand and felt down into the water. Then he took hold of the boat with both hands and felt along under the boat with his feet. “It’s a post,” he said. “It’s a bob-wire fence.”

So that was what it was. There was a bob-wire fence and we had rowed right on top of one of the posts and stuck there, on a nail or something, and the post was loose in the mud and gave when we rowed, so we couldn’t wrench loose by rowing. And that was why the mush-rat house did not float downstream; it was caught on another post. So all at once Swatty said:

“I know where we are; we’re in Shebberd’s lower cornfield!” And that was where we were. The water had come up and covered it up to the tops of the bob-wire fence posts.

Well, Swatty’s teeth were chattering but he wouldn’t get right into the boat. He made me and Bony row while he was out, and I guess with the boat lighter it floated off the post easier, for it did float off. So then Swatty got in and dressed and we rowed toward the voices and the splashing.

It was Judge Hannan all right. He was pitch-forking buffalo fish with the Shebberds. He had on rubber hip boots and he was hot and having a good time. We rowed in close to where he was and watched them pitchfork awhile and then Swatty backwatered the skiff up to where the judge was standing and said:

“Say, mister judge!”

The judge leaned his hand on the stem of the boat and said:

“Yes, my lad, what is it?”

“Are you the judge that gives diworces?”

“I’m the one that don’t give them unless I have to, son,” the judge laughed. “Looking for one? You don’t look as if you had reached that age and state yet.”

“It ain’t mine,” Swatty said. “It’s Bony’s folkses. They’re having a fight and they’re going to get a diworce and me and Georgie and Bony don’t want them to. So we rowed over to tell you not to give them one.”

The judge felt in his pocket and got out his spectacles and put them on and looked at us. He asked which was Bony and then he knew who Bony was and that he knew Bony’s folks. He said he did.

“And you don’t want any divorces in your family, hey?” he said. “Why not?”

Bony didn’t say anything, so Swatty started to tell about the bicycle, but before he got very far Bony just doubled over and put his head on his knees and began to beller like a real baby. So the judge stopped Swatty.

“Son,” he said to Swatty, “I guess you’ve mistooken the proper legal grounds for not giving divorces. The desire of a youth to learn to ride one of the condemned things when he is related to the separating parties only by neighborhood is not sufficient to sway the court. But you, son,” he said to Bony, “have got exactly the right idea. You’ve swayed this old, bald-headed court right down to the mud he’s standing in and, so help me John Joseph Rogers! if those two parents of yours get a divorce it will only be over my dead body! Hey, Sheb! can these kids go up to your house and get some buttermilk?”

So I said I didn’t like buttermilk and the judge said: “Caesar’s ghost! I didn’t mean get it for you; I meant get it for us!”

So we got it. So Bony’s folks didn’t get a divorce. Anyway, if they did they didn’t separate apart from each other and that was all me and Swatty cared for because Herb Schwartz wouldn’t be scared to marry Fan, and maybe we could hurry up the wedding and get the tricycle sooner.

IV. THE STUMP

Well, you never can tell how things are going to go in this world, I guess. I don’t mean that I spent all my time thinking how getting the tricycle with two seats would make Mamie Little think more of me than she thought of Toady Williams, because I didn’t. I had school and my chores and me and Swatty and Bony was building a capstan in our side yard, to pull up stumps and move houses if we wanted to, but once in a while I did think how I would ride up to Mamie Little’s front gate on the tricycle and say, “Say! wanta take a ride?”

It looked as if it wouldn’t be long before Herb and Fan got married, because they hadn’t fought for a long while and Fan was embroidering towels by day and by night. One reason it all looked good was that Miss Murphy, who was my teacher and had had Herb for a while, had gone away for a while and Miss Carter was substituting for her in our room. So Fan needn’t be jealous of Miss Murphy any more.

So I felt pretty good mostly but I was feeling pretty mean this day, because Swatty and Bony had been let out on time and Miss Carter had kept me in after school. I was feeling mean because they would be working on the capstan, and it was the day we thought we would get it finished and begin capstaning things with it, and I wouldn’t be home when they got it done. I wanted to be there when they started to use it. So that made me feel mean one way, and teacher made me feel meaner, another way.

I liked Miss Carter better than any teacher I ever had. So all I did was not know my geography-lesson, or my arithmetic-lesson or my grammar-lesson, or my history, and I missed in spelling. I guess maybe I read all right, because she didn’t say I didn’t, but maybe she forgot to talk about that because she was so busy saying my deportment was bad and it was certainly an outrage that my copy-book was so poorly kept. So she kept me in to study, and it was four o’clock pretty soon, and she put her papers in her desk and shut down the lid and came back to my seat. Everybody else had gone home. I was sort of scared. I thought she was going to say her patience was exhausted and then whale me with the rawhide she kept in the closet.

But she didn’t. She came back to where I was, and when she got to my seat she sat down in it beside me and I had to move over so she would have room. I guess I ought to have put my hands in my pockets, but of course I didn’t know what she was going to do, and the first thing she did was to put her left hand on top of my hand and hold it, like that, on top of my desk. So I tried to pull it away, but she held on. So then she put her arm – her right arm – along the desk back of me, and I felt mighty mean. A boy don’t like to be armed around that way, or his hand held like that.

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