Swatty: A Story of Real Boys

Swatty: A Story of Real Boys
Ellis Butler

Ellis Parker Butler

Swatty: A Story of Real Boys

I. THE BIG RIVER

I guess if teachers always knew how lickings were going to turn out they wouldn’t lick us fellows so much. I am thinking about Miss Murphy, the one that taught the room me and Swatty and Bony was in, and about the time she was going to lick Swatty. One of the times. There were plenty of others.

You see, me and Swatty and Bony is chums, and we go together mostly, but this was when we was in Miss Murphy’s room. She’s a good-looker, but she’s a tartar, too, when it comes to licking.

The way of it was this: My sister Fan was mushy over Swatty’s brother Herb and she didn’t care who knew it, because they were engaged, and Fan was fixing up her things to get married in, and she wished I was a girl so I could be her flower girl at the wedding, but she didn’t know what she’d do with me. She thought maybe she’d lock me in the cellar, she said, but she didn’t mean it. She was always codding me and Swatty. She’d cod us that way, and then she’d give us a dime or something. She was all right, and Swatty thought so too.

So then Fan and Herb had a fight, like girls and fellows always do have; but this was a good one. It was because Herb said maybe Fan would like to have Miss Murphy for a bridesmaid, and Fan got mad because Herb had gone with Miss Murphy once. So then Fan wouldn’t forgive Herb. Herb came over and fought for three evenings, and then Swatty brought a note from him to Fan, and I took one from Fan to Herb, and that was the end of it. The note I took had a ring in it, because I could feel it. Then Fan just moped around the house and cried some, and after a while Herb had to go and teach the eighth grade at school, because Professor Martin broke his leg on the ice the janitor ought to have scraped off the steps but didn’t. So right away Herb began to get thick with Miss Murphy, but that didn’t make any difference to me. As soon as a fellow hasn’t got one girl he has another one, anyway, and I didn’t blame Herb. I was just sorry for Fan. And I thought Herb was crazy to make up to a school-teacher, especially a tartar like Miss Murphy. She was an awful licker. She’d lick a fellow for anything.

Well, one day me and Swatty was going to school and we was talking at each other the way we always did, and I said he thought he was great, didn’t he, because his brother was Miss Murphy’s beau, and Miss Muiphy wouldn’t lick him when his brother was her beau. I didn’t mean anything, I just said it, but Swatty hauled off and hit me one and dared me to say that again. So I said it again, and all the fellows got around and yelled “Fight! Fight!” and I had to fight him. It would have been a pretty good fight if Miss Murphy hadn’t come along. She jumped right at us and grabbed us both.

“Who started this fight?” she asked, hopping mad.

“He did,” I said.

“Didn’t neither!” said Swatty. “He did.”

“Who struck the first blow?” says Miss Muiphy.

Well, everybody told her Swatty did, which was the truth, and she let me go.

“Just as I thought, you – you little bulldozer,” she said, shaking him. “You’ve been getting entirely too uppish of late, young man. You think you can take advantage of – of circumstances; but I’ll teach you a thing or two. Get into school there, and wash yourself, and see that you are in your seat when the bell rings.”

So Swatty did it. Me and the Bony Highlander stayed out till the bell rung, and then we went in, too, and as we went past Swatty’s desk he whispered, “She thinks she’s going to lick me, but she ain’t.”

“Bet she does, if she said so,” I says; and I bet she would, too. So did the Bony Highlander, because we knew she was the sort that would rather lick a fellow than not.

Well, that was in the morning, and they never lick at noon because the way some fellows wriggle and twist it takes a long time to lick them, and it would use up the noon hour. So they lick after school in the afternoon when there is plenty of time. So me and the Bony Highlander waited for Swatty, and we tried to scare him. We told him we bet Miss Murphy would make him holler, because she licked with a rawhide pony switch and whipped on the legs where the switch would wrap around and sting, but we couldn’t get Swatty to even pretend he might holler. He said no teacher in the world could make him holler. We all said it. Or, I don’t know whether the Bony Highlander said it or not. He’d never been licked in school. He wasn’t the kind that gets licked, somehow. But he was a pretty nice fellow, anyway. We liked him just as well, but not as well as Swatty and me liked each other of course, because me and Swatty was cow-cousins.

Me and Swatty was both raised on the milk of the same cow, but it was Schwartzes’ cow, and when I was being raised on it Herb Schwartz used to fetch the milk around, the way Swatty does now. I guess that’s how Herb got to know Fan. But the Bony Highlander was just a kid that moved into the neighborhood.

His name wasn’t really Bony Highlander, but we called him that because when he was reading a piece of poetry out of the Reader in school, and ought to have said “bonny Highlander,” he said “bony Highlander.” But we mostly called him Bony for short, like we called Schwartzy Swatty for short. He was all right, but he never started to do things; he just went along when we did them, and waited on the outside of the fence, and things like that.

Well, we waited on the corner for Swatty that afternoon until the bell rung but he didn’t come, so we went along, and he was at school already, and after he had stayed in to be licked and Miss Murphy let him out, he told us why he went early. He knew where she kept her rawhide, in the closet at the end of the room on the shelf where the chalk boxes were, and he went early at noon and took his pocket-knife and cut the rawhide into little pieces about an inch long. He laid them all out on the shelf in a row, and he said he nearly died laughing when she went to pick it up and it was all in pieces. So Miss Murphy went to get another rawhide from another teacher, but everybody had gone home, and she told Swatty she would tend to him to-morrow.

“I’d rather have been licked to-day and then I’d be done with it,” I said, but Swatty didn’t say so.

“If you’ve got a licking,” he said, “you’ve got it, and you can’t ever un-get it, but I ain’t ever going to get this one. I’ll run away first.”

“Ah, I bet you get it to-morrow,” I said, and the Bony Highlander said so too.

“Bet I don’t!” said Swatty. So we made a bet. I bet him my clay pipe against a nigger-shooter rubber he had.

So the next day was when we’d know, and at noon Swatty came over to my barn to get some oilcloth we had in the barn to put in his pants so the licking wouldn’t hurt so much, and I guessed I would win the bet. But he couldn’t fix the oilcloth so it would do any good and let him sit down. He thought Miss Murphy would be onto it if he couldn’t sit down. So he gave that up. So we went to school.

When school was nearly out Swatty got up and started to walk down his aisle and up the next, like he was going out for a drink, but Miss Murphy, who was doing an example on the blackboard for the B class, turned around and saw him.

“Where are you going?” she asked, like tacks in a bottle.

“Just to get a drink,” said Swatty.

“You take your seat this instant!” said Miss Murphy, and when she said it, Swatty started to run; but she got there first and headed him off and grabbed him by the arm. He kicked at her shins, but she gave him a shake that made him see stars and marched him back to the end of the room. I thought she was going to take him to his seat, but she didn’t.

Our schoolhouse has four rooms on a floor – two in front and two in back – and the hall comes in the middle, but it don’t run all the way from front to back. In the middle in front on the second floor there is a little room with some books in it, and they call it the library room.

It has a window and three doors – one into the hall and one into our room, and one into the room across the hall. So Miss Murphy yanked Swatty into that room and locked all three doors. So she had him safe until she got ready to lick him. Then she was going to unlock the door and bring him out and do a good job, because she had a new rawhide all ready. I guess she made up her mind she’d lick him until he hollered that time.

So Swatty waited until school was out. Then he had to wait until Miss Murphy got rid of the ones she had kept in to write their names five hundred times, and things like that, but he didn’t wait. He opened the window and looked out, and right below him was the peak roof of the porch. It wasn’t very big, and it was slated, and if he slipped he’d be a goner and break a leg or something, but he got onto the window sill and hung down with his hands on the sill, and dropped. He dropped straddle of the roof and hung on the best way he could.

He said the only thing he thought about was what a fool he had been not to shut the window, but it was J une and most of the windows were wide open anyway, and I guess Miss Murphy didn’t notice. She unlocked the door and looked into the room and Swatty wasn’t there. Then I guess she thought maybe somebody had come to the library room for a book and had let Swatty out. She never put her head out of the window at all. So she was beaten that time, and she went home.

So Swatty waited until the janitor had swept all the rooms and started to sweep the walk and he hollered to him. It is none of the janitor’s business who gets licked or who don’t, so he came up to the room and helped Swatty get in the window. He just laughed about it.

So the next day Swatty went to school just the same as always, but at noon he came over to my barn and Bony came with him. They generally came because I had to feed my rabbits at noon. This time Swatty sort of poked at the sawdust that was the floor of our barn and didn’t say much. He most generally wore his hat on the back of his head, but this time he had it pulled down over his eyes and that was the way he did when he was getting ready to fight a fellow.

After a while he looked up.

“Are you fellows going to school this afternoon?” he asked.

“Yes,” I said. “Ain’t you?”

“Go and get licked? I guess not!” he said. “I’m going down to the river.”

“What are you going to do down at the river?” Bony asked.

“Going to look at it; what you think I’m going to do?” said Swatty.

Well, looking at it wasn’t a bad thing to do, because the river was away up, and when the Mississippi is up it is worth looking at. It looks twice as big and sort of rounded up in the middle, and all sorts of things floating down it – dead trees, and boxes, and logs, and dead pigs, and sometimes sheds and things. It generally gets up in June, and we always go down on Saturdays to see how she’s getting along.

“She’s higher than she ever was,” said Swatty.

“Well, I guess she’ll be mighty high by Saturday,” said Bony.

“No, she won’t,” said Swatty, “because she’s going to begin falling to-day, the paper says. Why don’t you come along down with me?”

“Yes, and get licked for staying out of school!” I said.

“All right for you fellows, then!” said Swatty. “I’ll be mad at you for good. If you were going to get licked I’d just want to do something so I could get licked too. Don’t I always stick by you fellows? And when I’m going to get licked you go back on me. You’re ‘fraid-cats.”

“Who’s a ‘fraid-cat?” I asked, for I don’t let anybody call me that.

“You are!” said Swatty. “And so’s Bony. You’re afraid to stay out of school one afternoon. You’re afraid to stay out the day the river hits high-water mark. You’ll look nice, won’t you, with just you and Bony and a lot of girls in school!”