Swatty: A Story of Real Boys

“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.