Swatty: A Story of Real Boys

“You just dare!” I started for her, but she skipped off.

“Mamie,” she shouted, “you’ll be mad when I tell you! Georgie Porgie is an anti-prohibition!” Mamie just stood and looked at me, because I’d said I’d always be a prohibition.

“Are you?” she asked.

If Swatty hadn’t been right there I would have changed back to a prohibition again and it would have been all right, but he was there and I wasn’t going to have him think I would change just on account of a girl. So I said:

“Uh, huh!”

“All right for you, Mr. Georgie! You needn’t ever speak to me again as long as you live!” she said.

I felt pretty cheap. I tried to say something, and I couldn’t think of anything to say, so I made a face at her and she made one at me, and then we were mad at each other and she went away. She went toward down-town, and Lucy skipped across the street and ran and went with her. And that was one reason Mamie was glad that Toady Williams had her for his girl when he came to town. She guessed I did not like it. And I didn’t.

Mr. Schwartz said Mamie could have the fashion plate as soon as he was through with it, which would be at the end of the season when he got a new one. Lucy let me know that, all right! I guess it was on account of Lucy he promised to let Mamie have the fashion plate, because he was awful fond of Lucy.

Anyway, Mamie was mighty pleased to know she was going to have a good father.

When she played paper dolls with Lucy I used to sort of go over where they were and maybe stand there to see if Mamie was mad at me still. About all she said was how glad she’d be when she had a good father. I guess I heard her say it a hundred times, but she never let on she knew I was there at all. Sometimes I’d sort of drop an apple or something so it would fall where she could reach it, but she never paid any attention. The most she would do would be to pick up a one-legged father and say:

“‘Where are you going, Mr. Reginald de Vere?’ ‘I’m going down-town to vote a while if you do not need me to take care of the baby.’ ‘Not at all, but I do hope you will show folks you are a prohibition. If I ever heard you were an anti-prohibition I would cut you up into mincemeat.’”

So then I most generally went away.

I got kind of sick of girls. I made up my mind they were no good anyway, and that I’d never have another one if I lived to be a million years old, and when I wrote notes to Mamie in school it wasn’t any use because she always tore them up without reading them. It made me feel awful to have her so mean. Because she wasn’t mean to Toady.

Well, it came to examination time and we began to be examined. Swatty and Bony and I didn’t have to be examined in arithmetic until Thursday afternoon and neither did Lucy or Mamie, so Swatty and Bony and I thought we might as well go fishing that morning. We got our poles and some bait and started, and we went down Third Street and when we came to the railway track we cut across through Burman’s lumber yard toward the river because that was the quickest way.

Burman’s sawmill was the biggest one in Riverbank then. I guess you know how big those sawmills were. Great big red buildings with gravel roofs where they sawed the logs that came down the river in rafts, and where they made shingles, and the row of sheds where they dried the lumber with steam, and another big one where the planers were. There were hundreds and hundreds of piles of lumber, each one as tall as a house, and all the ground was made of sawdust and rattlings, because it was filled ground.

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.”