Swatty: A Story of Real Boys

It might have been a snake. It might have been anything, for all Swatty knew, but he bent down and felt it with his hand. I wouldn’t have done it for a million dollars, and Bony wouldn’t have done it for ten million dollars! No, sir! So at first Swatty thought it was an old scythe blade somebody had left there, and he was mighty glad anyway, because it would do to pry the boards off a window and let us out, but when he tried to pick it up it was held onto.

Well, I guess I might as well say it right out. It was a sword, and it was Mrs. Groogs’s sword, and it was old Mrs. Groogs that was holding onto the other end of the sword and lying there and groaning and breathing! It was her son’s sword, and he had been killed in the war Grant and Lincoln and Swatty’s father had been in, and when she ran away from the Poor Farm and they couldn’t find out where she had gone, that was all she took and that was where she went to die – there in the attic of the Haunted House. She went there because she was kind of crazy and thought the mother of a son that had died for his country oughtn’t to die in the Poor House. But she didn’t die in it, either, because the Woman’s Relief Corps rented a room for her and the city gave her Outside Support again.

So if it hadn’t been for us Mrs. Groogs would have starved to death in the Haunted House, and if it hadn’t been for her and her sword maybe we would have starved to death in it. So I guess it was all right.

So that time none of us got licked when we got home. Swatty didn’t because his father was a G.A.R. and Mrs. Groogs was a G.A.R. – ess, and I didn’t because my folks were glad I hadn’t been struck by lightning, and Bony didn’t because his folks were moral suasion. They jawed him.

VIII. WASTED EFFORT

Well, a good many things happened that vacation. Fan stayed over at Chicago and Herb Schwartz began studying to be a lawyer in Judge Hannan’s law office. Miss Carter went off to a school somewhere but I don’t know whether she was teaching or learning. Mamie Little was down at Betzville, on a farm, and Lucy never did tag along with us anyway, so it looked as if me and Swatty and Bony was going to have one of the best vacations we ever had. We used to go up to our cave and work on it. Scratch-Cat went with us mostly, but we didn’t count her for a girl. So it looked pretty good.

Me and Swatty and Bony liked vacation because we never did have time to do all we wanted to do when school kept. What we wanted to do most was to finish up our cave in the clay bank up Squaw Creek. The Graveyard Gang had chased us away from it, but that was all right when vacation came because the Graveyard Gang kids all have to go to work when school is over. Some of them work for the farmers on the Island, and some work in the sawmills. So we went up and looked at the cave.

The cave was all right. The Graveyard Gang had fixed up the door and made it look better, and the stove was there, and they had made another room to the cave, in behind, only it wasn’t all dug out yet. So me and Swatty and Bony and Scratch-Cat thought we would finish digging the new room and then, maybe, we would get a Gatling gun or something and put it in the cave, so we could hold the fort when school began again and the Graveyard Gang tried to chase us out again. Swatty said maybe his uncle would give him a Gatling gun for his birthday if he wrote to Derlingport and asked him. So me and Bony thought that sounded good, and we went ahead and dug at the cave.

Well, it looked like we was going to have the best vacation we ever had. I guess we ought to have known that when everything looked so bully something was going to spoil it all. It was too good to be right. Swatty’s mother’s cow went dry, and Swatty didn’t have to go home early to get her from the pasture so he could deliver the milk around to the neighbors, and that was too good to be right; and Bony sort of stopped bawling at every little thing, and that wasn’t like him. We ought to have knowed something was going to happen.

It was too nice. Most always, in vacation, my mother made me and my sister wash and wipe the dinner dishes at noon, and it didn’t do any good to drop plates and break them, or whine, or get a bad headache all of a sudden; I had to wipe. There ought to be a law so boys couldn’t wipe dishes, but there ain’t; so about all I could ever do was to wipe them as mean as I could and leave the butter between the tines of the forks when my sister didn’t wash it all out.

Well, when this vacation came I thought I’d have to start in wiping the doggone dishes again; but I didn’t. My mother got back the hired girl we had off and on. Her name was Annie Dombacher and she was a strong girl and a happy one, and she didn’t care any more for work than shucks. She could wash and wipe dishes and enjoy it, so maybe she was crazy; but what did I care if she was? She pitched in and even carried in her own wood, and made a jar of cookies every two days. I thought it was bully. I ought to have knowed better. I ought to have knowed that mothers don’t get hired girls that will carry in the wood and everything unless they’ve got something mean they are going to do to a fellow pretty soon.

The first thing that happened was Bony. Me and Swatty had got so we didn’t hardly think of Bony as a cry-baby any more, and here all at once he was different. He used to come yelling and “yoo-ooing” to meet us, and then one noon he come sort of sneaking, like a dog you’ve told to go home and thrown a stone at. He come up to us, mighty quiet and looking pretty sick, and didn’t say nothing.

“What’s the matter, Bony?” Swatty asked.

“Nothing. You ‘tend your own business, can’t you?” he answered back.

But it wasn’t scrappy the way he said it; it was whiny.

So I started to say something, but Swatty stopped me.

“Aw! let him be!” he said. “If he wants to be a whine-cat let him be one. What do we care?”

So we let him. He came along to the cave with us and dug; but he didn’t seem to have no fun. It wouldn’t have taken much to make him blubber. He acted ashamed, that’s what!

Well, that was one day, and the next morning he was just as bad. We teased him some that morning, but he took it and never jawed back. Then he went down to the creek to get a drink, and me and Swatty talked about him. Bony’s father and mother fought a good deal with their jaws sometimes, like when we thought Bony’s father was going across the river to kill himself and we went to keep him from it, and me and Swatty decided there must be a big fight going on at Bony’s house, because that always makes a fellow feel cheap and mean. So we said we wouldn’t tease him about it. So Bony came back and we dug awhile and went home to dinner.

And the next thing was that Mamie Little came back from Betzville and began playing with Lucy and Toady Williams again, and that made me feel mean. And then Fan came back from Chicago.

So, one day after dinner I had to go for an errand for my mother, and when I came back Swatty and Bony hadn’t come yet, but Mamie Little was at our house waiting for my sister. She was on the front terrace braiding the grass where it was long. So I picked some grass and made a ball of it and threw it at her and she said to stop, and I got some more and was going to throw it at her, and I felt pretty good, because she said: “Oh, George! now don’t!” but just then my father came out of the house, so I stopped. I had thought he had gone already. I stood and didn’t do anything until he went by, and then I happened to think I had left my nigger-shooter on my bureau in my room and I went to get it.

I went into the house and up the stairs on the jump and busted into my room, and then stopped mighty short because my mother was in my room. She was at my bureau and had a drawer pulled out and was taking out some of my clothes. So I grabbed my nigger-shooter off the bureau and was going to go mighty quick, because mothers always think of something for you to do when they see you.

“George,” she said, “you are going over to your Aunt Nell’s to stay a week or two. I’ll get your clothes all ready, and I want you to be a good boy while you’re there and be as little trouble as possible.”

“Aw, gee!” I said. “What do I have to go over there for?”

It made me sick, because Aunt Nell is always trying to do right by me when I’m over there and combing my hair and making me wash my feet before I go to bed and everything. So I said:

“Aw, gee! I don’t want to!”

My mother went right on taking clothes out of my bureau.

“I’m going to tell you something, Georgie, and then perhaps you will be more reasonable. You and Lucy are going to Aunt Nell’s because there is a little new baby coming here. Now, will you be a good boy and say nothing more?”

“Yes’m,” I said, and I got out of the room pretty quick. I tiptoed down the stairs and stood at the bottom. I didn’t know whether to go out or not. Bony and Swatty were out there now, and Mamie Little and Scratch-Cat, and I didn’t know how I would dare talk to them. I sort of felt like they would see it in my face. If they did I would feel so mean I’d die.

I guess you know how a fellow feels about it. Any fellow would almost rather go to jail than have a baby come to his house. The fellows yell at him, “Aw, Georgie, you got a baby at your house.” And he knows it is so and he can’t tell them they’re liars.

But just then my mother came out of my room and said: “Georgie!”

So I got out of the front door in a hurry. I was afraid she was going to say something about it again. Women don’t know any better; they’ll say anything right out and think it is all right and don’t care how a fellow feels sick to hear it. So I skipped. I went down to the front gate, and Swatty and Bony and Mamie Little and Scratch-Cat were there. Bony was off to one side, looking sick, and Swatty was “Awing” at Mamie Little about something, but I felt too mean and cheap to “Aw!” back at him, like I ought to have done. I let him “Aw!” I got as far away from Mamie Little as I could and went over and sat by Bony and Scratch-Cat.

Well, all at once I guessed maybe I knew what was the matter with Bony, because I felt just like the way he had been acting. So I said:

“Say, Bony, are you going to have a baby at your house?”

He got sort of red and didn’t dare look at me. Then he began to cry, mad-like.

“I don’t care!” he blubbered out. “If you tell anybody I’ll lick you, I will, I don’t care who you are! I’ll – I’ll shoot you. I’ll kill you!” Scratch-Cat didn’t laugh. She just said, “Oh!” So I knew that was it. So just then Mamie Little called out, “Oh, Georgie.” But I just hollered, “Aw, shut up!” So I said: “Aw, come on, Swatty, let’s go up to the cave.”

Well, just then my sister came out of the house. She had on a clean dress, and she came hippety-hopping down the walk as happy as could be and happier. She came right down to where Swatty was teasing Mamie Little, and she said:

“Mamie! Mamie! What do you think? We’re going to have a little new baby!”

Well, I got up and climbed over the fence and ran. I don’t know how I ever got over a fence so quick – pickets and all – but I did, and I ran up the street with my hands over my ears. I knew Swatty knew and Mamie Little knew and that they were thinking: “Ho! Georgie is going to have a new baby at his house.” And I was trying to run away. When I came to the corner I dodged behind it, and stopped.

Almost right away Bony came and Swatty came right after him, and Scratch-Cat after Swatty, but we made her go back again. We didn’t want any girls around at all. Swatty was almost as sore as me and Bony was. He just threw himself down on the grass and said, “Garsh!”

“Well, you don’t need to go and blame me,” I said. “I ain’t the only one. Bony’s going to have one at his house, too.”

So then Swatty sat up.

“Aw, garsh!” he said. “You and Bony’s always spoiling all our fun. I ought to have knowed what was the matter with him, and now you ‘ll be the same way. You bet I don’t have no babies coming to my house, making everybody grouchy. But you and Bony don’t care; you don’t care how you spoil the fun.”

Bony didn’t say anything, but it made me mad. “Well, it ain’t my fault, is it?” I asked. “I don’t want no baby to come to my house, do I? I didn’t order it from the doctor, did I?”

“What doctor?” Swatty asked. “What has a doctor got to do with it?”

“Well, a doctor brings it, don’t he?” I asked.

“No, he don’t!” Swatty said. “A stork brings it.”

“My mother told me so a million times, and I guess she knows, don’t she?”

“Aw! That’s in Germany,” I said. “I know that, I guess. In Germany a stork brings it, but how can it in the United States where there ain’t no storks? Did you ever see a stork in the United States?”

“Well, no,” Swatty had to say, because he didn’t. “Well, you’ve seen plenty of doctors in the United States, haven’t you?” I asked.

“Yes,” Swatty had to say, because he had. He saw Doctor Miller almost every day, starting out or coming back with his old gray mare. He was our doctor and Bony’s folks’ doctor, but Swatty’s folks had Doctor Benz, because they were German and water-curers. Doctor Miller was a big-piller. So Swatty had to say yes.

“Well,” I said, “don’t that prove it?” Of course it did. Swatty had to say it did. So he said:

“Well, garsh! if doctors bring them in the United States I guess I would n’t be sitting around whining if I was you and Bony. I know what I’d do!”

“What would you do?” I asked.

“I wouldn’t let a doctor bring any, that’s what I wouldn’t do,” said Swatty. “I’d find out what doctor was going to bring it, and I’d fix him all right, you bet your boots!”

“Well, Doctor Miller is going to bring them, if anybody does,” I said. “He’s our doctor and he’s Bony’s doctor, ain’t he? What can me and Bony do, I’d like to know?”

“Well, I could help you, couldn’t I?” Swatty wanted to know. “I would n’t have to go back on you just because Doctor Miller isn’t our doctor, would I?”

“Well, what would we do, then?” I asked, but you bet I felt a whole lot better; if Swatty was willing to help us it was different. He was a good helper. Bony looked better, too.

Swatty pulled a handful of grass and fooled with it and I could see he was thinking mighty hard.

“We’ve got the cave, ain’t we?” he said after while. “Well, then, all we’ve got to do is to get Doctor Miller and put him in the cave and keep him there, and then he can’t do anything about it, can he?”

Of course that was so. I wouldn’t have thought of it, and Bony would n’t, but Swatty thought of it in less than a minute. But right away I thought of how hard it would be to do. If Doctor Miller had been a kid it would have been easy, but he was a man and he was a mighty big man, too. He was bigger around than any man in town, I guess, and almost as tall.

I asked Swatty, and he said of course we couldn’t grab Doctor Miller and push him a mile or so out to the cave and boost him up the clay bank and into the cave.

“We’ve got to think out a plan,” he said, only he said “plam,” like he always does, and “gart,” instead of “got.” So we thought, and it wasn’t any use. So Swatty said we might as well go out to the cave and do some work and think out there. So we went.

The more I thought the more I couldn’t think of anything. All I could think of was how big Doctor Miller was, and I guess Bony thought the same thing. I thought of his whiskers, too.

You ‘re always kind of scared of a doctor, almost like you’re scared of a minister. They ain’t like common folks. Common folks are just men, except when they are your fathers; but ministers and doctors are men and something else, and Doctor Miller was more doctory than any other doctor in town. That was why so many folks had him. He had red-brown whiskers and nothing on his chin or upper lip, and his whiskers were not stiff and tough like whiskers generally are, but smooth and silky and fluffy. He laughed a lot, too, and was always smiling, but he knew all about your insides better than you did. It is creepy to see a man smiling so much and feel that he knows more about you than you do yourself. And so you were mighty scared of him.

Well, we didn’t think of anything, and I went home feeling pretty mean and went in the alley way and my mother was keeping supper for me and had my things and sister’s all ready for us to go over to Aunt Nell’s and after supper she kissed us and we went. She gave me a dollar and she gave Sis fifty cents, and she hugged us a long time before she let us go.

The next morning Aunt Nell started right in on me. She made me go upstairs and brush my hair again and looked at my finger nails and in my ears, and then said I didn’t look as well as usual and wanted to know if I slept well. I got away as soon as I could and went up to the cave. Swatty and Bony was there already, digging at the roof of the back room of the cave.

“What you doing that for?” I asked. “If you dig up there much more the roof will bust through.”

“Well, ain’t that what we want it to do?” Swatty asked.

“Why do we?” I asked back.

“You come on and help us work,” he said, “and I’ll tell you why.”

So I helped them work and Swatty told me he had thought of a bully plan. I wouldn’t have thought of it in a thousand years. I had stayed awake all night – or anyway almost half an hour – trying to think how we could get Doctor Miller into the cave, and all I could think of was grabbing him somehow and tying ropes to him and yanking him up to the door of the cave, and I knew we couldn’t do it, because we weren’t strong enough. But Swatty had thought it all out, like he always does. I might have known he would.

We went ahead and dug at the roof of the cave, and pretty soon we dug through to daylight. It took us all day and the dirt we got we spaded into the tunnel between the two rooms and filled it up good and solid, except a short way out of the front room. The next day we worked hard, too. We dug out more of the roof of the back room, and then worked on the door of the cave so we could fasten it up sound and quick when we got the doctor in it. We took the stove out and everything else he could use to dig with, and when we had to go home for supper we had it all ready. Swatty said so.

Well, all of us knew Jake Hines, the doctor’s hired man, and he was foreman of Fearless Hose Company No. 2, and every night he went over to the hose-house and played cards after he got his work done at the doctor’s. I went to bed about nine o’clock, but I left my clothes on, and when I thought it was midnight I got up and went downstairs and went out into the alley. Swatty was there already, sitting in the shadow of Doc Miller’s manure box, but Bony hadn’t come, so we guessed he was a ‘fraid-cat and didn’t dare. So we went ahead without him.

The doctor’s old gray mare was standing with her head at the little square window, and Swatty got on the manure box and climbed in. He opened the stable door and I went in after him. The old mare looked around at us, but she didn’t make any trouble, and Swatty untied the halter strap and we led her out into the alley. We led her across the public square, and down into the creek and then up the creek to where our cave was. She came right along as easy as anything and we got her up the bank and to where we had caved in the roof of the back cave. She didn’t want to go down there. I guess she thought it was kind of funny to be taken into a hole like that, but a doctor’s horse is used to being out at night and to going into all sorts of places, and at last she set her front feet and slid down. It was pretty steep, but she went down easy. Swatty tied the halter strap to one of her front feet and we left her there.

We went back home and I went to bed. I was pretty scared. I thought the doctor would get up in the morning and see his mare was gone and would get a lot of people and police and there would be crowds hunting the mare. I had pretty bad dreams. I dreamed I was hung about eight times for horse stealing.

When I got up in the morning I was mighty sick of it, you bet. I made up my mind I wouldn’t do any more, no matter how many babies the doctor brought to our house. I would stay at Aunt Nell’s and let on I didn’t know anything about gray mares or anything. I was through.

So about nine o’clock, Swatty came to Aunt Nell’s to get me, and he was just hopping, he was so tickled.

“Garsh!” he said. “It’s better than I ever thort it would be. I came through the alley and Jake Hines was sitting on the manure box waiting for the mare to come home. And what do you think?”

“What?” I asked.

“He said he would give me a quarter if I found the mare,” Swatty said. “He said he guessed he had left the stable door open and she had wandered away and maybe she would come back, but if I hunted around and found her and brought her back he would give me a quarter. So I’m hunting around for her.”

Well, I didn’t feel so bad. Bony came and said it wasn’t because he was scared that he didn’t come out last night, but because he had gone to sleep and hadn’t waked up. So Swatty talked some more and we all felt fine. We seen it was bully. So I took my dollar, like we had fixed it for me to do, and I bought some bread and some butter and some things to eat while Swatty and Bony went out to the cave. We didn’t want Doctor Miller to starve to death while we had him locked in the cave because that would be murder. So I took what I had bought to the cave and we put it where the doctor could see it, and then we went down to the doctor’s house. It was about ten o’clock. We went to the front door and rung the bell and Mrs. Miller came to the door.

“Is Doctor Miller at home?” Swatty asked.

She said he was, and Swatty told her we had found his horse, and she said she would tell him. He came right out. He looked sort of jolly and he said: “Well, boys, I suppose you are looking for a reward. Did you bring old Jenny home?”

“No, sir,” Swatty said. “We would of but we couldn’t. We couldn’t get her out of the hole.”

So he wanted to know what hole and Swatty told him. He told him we had a cave up the creek and that it looked like the old mare had walked on top of the cave and fell through. He asked if she was hurt and we said she wasn’t, we guessed, but she wouldn’t come out for us. He got his hat.

“Come on,” he said; “I’ll see about it.”

Well, he took us out the back way to the stable and yelled for Jake, and Jake came.

“Jake,” he said, “these boys have found Jenny, and she’s fallen into a hole and they can’t get her out.”

“All right,” Jake said; “I’ll go with them.”

You could have knocked me over with a feather. We hadn’t thought of that. The doctor started to go back to the house. Then he stopped.

“Just wait a minute,” he said. “I think I’ll go with you. If the mare is hurt, I may be able to attend to her right there.”

When the doctor came out with his medicine case we started, and me and Swatty pretended to be eager to hurry up. Bony sort of held back behind. The doctor talked to us a lot. He was sort of happy and good-natured about it, like fat men are, and joked some how far it was. We took him out the Graveyard Road and down into the creek bottom and showed him the mouth of our cave up the bank.

“Well, well,” he said. “This is mountain climbing indeed! If I had much of this to do I’d be a smaller and a better man.”

He made me carry his medicine case so he could use both hands, and I went first. Then Jake came and then the doctor, and then Swatty and then Bony. When we got to the door of the cave I stopped and Jake looked in.

“Where’s the mare?” he said. “I don’t see no mare.”

He turned to look back and the doctor was just behind him, panting pretty hard.

“What?” the doctor asked, and he stepped up. I started to say it was the back cave the mare was in, but just then the doctor bumped against me and went sort of down on his knees. It was as dark as pitch. Swatty had slammed the door shut against the doctor and jolted him into the cave, and me and Jake with him. I heard Swatty fastening the cave door, and there we were – me and the doctor and Jake. We were locked in the cave.

I was the first one to know what Swatty had done, and I pounded on the door and hollered for them to let us out, but they didn’t do it. Jake was just standing and saying:

“I’ll be dumed! I’ll be dumed!”

“What does this mean?” Doctor Miller asked.

I didn’t know what to say, I was so scared. But I didn’t have to say anything. Jake said it.