Swatty: A Story of Real Boys

“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:

“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.