Swatty: A Story of Real Boys

“What?” Swatty asked.

“Pshaw, no!” I said. “It ain’t no use. We couldn’t get any. It ain’t time for them yet.”

“Aw! what are you talking about?” Swatty asked. “What ain’t it time for?”

“Water-lilies,” I said. “If it was time for waterlilies we could row up to the water-lily pond and get some water-lilies.”

So then Swatty he talked up.

“Well, we could row up the river anyway, couldn’t we?” he said – only he said “rowr” instead of “row,” like he always does. “We could rowr up the river and get some pond-lily roots and sell them.”

“Aw! who would buy old pond-lily roots?” Bony wanted to know.

Well, I thought at first that the reason Swatty said we could sell pond-lily roots was because once I had told him about a man or somebody who had made money getting pond-lily roots and selling them to people who wanted to raise pond-lilies in a tub in their gardens. But that was n’t why he said it.

“Why, garsh! plenty of people would want to buy them,” Swatty said. “I guess I ought to know. I guess I’ve got an uncle in Derlingport, ain’t I? I guess he ought to know about pond-lily roots, oughtn’t he?”

It looked like that ought to be so, because Derlingport is three times as big as Riverbank, and Swatty’s uncle was older than any of us. But Bony said: “Aw! what does your old uncle know about pond-lily roots, anyway?”

“I guess he knows plenty about them,” Swatty said. “I guess if you went up to Derlingport to visit him you’d see whether he knows anything about them or not! I bet my uncle is the richest man in Derlingport, and the reason he is is because once, when I was out pond-lilying, I sent him a pond-lily root and he grew it in a tub, and when folks saw it they wanted to grow some too. So my uncle he rowred up the river to a pond-lily pond, and he got some roots and sold them. First orff he only got a few and sold them; but pretty soon he had a hundred men getting pond-lily roots for him, and he had to build a pond-lily root elevator, like the grain elevator down on the levee, but ten times bigger.”

“Gee-my-nentily!” Bony said. “Ten times bigger! Gee!”

“Ho! that ain’t nothing!” Swatty said. “That was when he was just beginning to start out. He’s got ten of them elevators now, and – he’s got almost ten trillion-billion pond-lily roots in them. He’s got a railway switch and a steamboat dock to each elevator, and when he ships pond-lily roots he ships them by the trainload. Only, when he sells them in Dubuque or Keorkuk, he ships them by the boatload.”

“Gee-my-nentily!” said Bony again. “Come on! Let’s – ”

“Well, I guess so!” said Swatty. “I guess it’s no wonder he’s the richest man in Derlingport! And I can just go and visit him any time I want to. I can go visit him and take a bath right in his china bathtub.”

“Aw! go on!” I said. “He ain’t got a china bathtub!”

“Yes, sir! just like a tea-cup.”

“Gosh!” Bony said. “Did you take a bath in it?”

“Garsh, no!” said Swatty. “Do you think I’d go taking bath-tub baths when I didn’t have to? When I visit him my uncle lets me do just what I want to. I don’t have to wash my feet, or take a bath, or go for a cow, or fetch in wood – ”

“Who fetches in the wood?” Bony asked.

“Nobody,” Swatty said. “My uncle don’t burn sawmill slabs or cord wood. He burns coal.”

“Well, somebody has to fetch in the coal, don’t he?” I wanted to know.

“Well, I guess not!” said Swatty. “He – he has a – a bridge built right over the top of his house, so he can run a railroad over it, and he has a big iron box on top of his house under the bridge, and the railroad hawrls the cars of coal right up on top of the roof and dumps the coal into the iron box, and it runs down the chimbleys right into the stove.” Well, me and Bony didn’t say nothing. We just sat there and thought what we thought.

“And he’s got a road scooped out under his house for a railroad to run on,” Swatty said, “and there is a train of cars under the house, and when my uncle, or anybody, shakes the grate the ashes fall right down an iron pipe into the cars.”

“Come on!” I said. “Come on! Let’s go somewhere.”

So Swatty looked at me; but I hadn’t said he was a liar or anything, so there was nothing to fight about. If I had wanted to I could have said I had an uncle somewhere that didn’t bother with dirty old coal and ashes at all, but had his own natural gas well and used natural gas; but my nose was sore yet from the last time Swatty had pushed it into my face, so I didn’t say it.

We went down to the boat-house and hired a skiff and rowed up the river to the pond-lily pond. The river was pretty low and it was muddy on the bank of the river – over knee-deep in mud. Swatty got out over the bow of the skiff to pull it up on the mud, so the wash from any steamboat would n’t send it adrift, and he went in over the knees of his pants, so we thought we had better undress in the skiff, and we did. It felt bully to be undressed outdoors again.

I guess you know how the lily-pond is. On one side is the railroad and on the other side is the river; but between the pond and the river is narrow sand, with willows on it – bush willows. It makes a bank all around the lower end of the pond-lily pond and ends at the railroad. So me and Bony and Swatty talked it over, and thought we’d better not leave our clothes in the skiff, because somebody might steal them. First we thought we’d hide them in the willows, and then we thought we’d carry them around by the sand spit to the railroad, because the pond-lily roots were over by the railroad more. So we did. We walked around to the railroad and left our clothes there, and waded in. Swatty went first.

It was pretty tough. You went into the mud pretty deep, and there were plants that had scratch-els on them, and the lily plants and the arrow-leaf plants were so thick you could hardly wade. They were all around the shore for two or three rods, and you couldn’t see over them. They rustled like corn when we pushed through them. But we knew there was a big clear place in the middle of the pond, so we waded on out to it. It was the place where I learned to swim. It wasn’t over head anywhere.

Well, Swatty came to the open place first, and he stopped and said:

“There’s somebody out there.”

Me and Bony peeked, and there was. Right off we saw who it was – it was Scratch-Cat. She was in where the water was under-arm deep, and she was sort of crying, she was so mad. Then we saw what she was trying to do – she was trying to learn herself to swim. It was enough to make anybody laugh.

It looked like she had been at it a long time, for she was so cold she was shivering. We were near enough to her to see that the black spot on her arm was a mole and not a leaf or a vaccination, and we could see her shiver as plain as could be. The way she was learning herself to swim was this: she put her hands out in front of her and sort of jumped off her feet and then kicked and pounded the water and went down under. I guess you know how that feels. You can’t get your head above water when you are that deep unless you stand up; so you paw in the mud, and get scared because you can’t get to your feet. Dell Brown would come up scared to death, and spit and blow, and sort of cry, and shiver, and then she would do it all again.

I guess it was pretty tough. Every time she went down she must have got scratched up by the weeds with scratchels on them – some kind of smartweed – and she was scared and chilly. It was mighty funny. I guess I laughed out aloud.

Anyway, all at once she saw Swatty and us. She ducked like a shot, until only her head was out of water, and me and Bony laughed. But Swatty didn’t. He pushed me and Bony back and said: “Hey! Scratch-Cat! Wait; I’ll show you how to swim.” Only, he said, “I’ll showr you how to swim,” the way he always says “show.”

So he slid his hands out on the water and turned on his side and swam towards where she was. He didn’t mean nothing. All he meant was to show her how to swim, because she would never learn the way she was trying. But Scratch-Cat turned and held her arms straight out in front of her and hurried for the shore, pushing the weeds away with her hands.

Swatty kept telling her to wait, and once he came up to her, and she turned and hammered him with her fists, crazy mad, and he let her go on. The weeds must have scratched her pretty bad, ripping through them that way; but she got to the railway track and began putting her clothes on fast. So Swatty said: “Garsh! I bet she gets our clothes and hides them or something!”

So me and Swatty and Bony hurried to where our clothes were and dressed. We got most of our duds on and were putting on the rest, when we heard somebody yelling. It was a woman, and she was over on the river road, across a cornfield from where we were, and she was yelling like she was being murdered. I was mighty scared. All I thought of was that whoever was murdering her would murder her and then come over and murder us.

I guess Bony thought the same thing, for he got white and started to run down the railway bank toward our skiff. So I started after him. But Swatty he started to run the other way, down the bank to the cornfield, towards where the woman was screaming. He rolled under the bob-wire fence and started down between the com rows as hard as he could go. Me and Bony stopped and looked, and then we went after him, only slower. When we got deep into the com we got more scared. We didn’t like to be so far from where Swatty was, with a woman screaming like that and being murdered. So I hurried up, and Bony came along, blubbering. I told him to shut up.

We came to the edge of the cornfield and stopped. It was Miss Carter, our teacher, and a tramp had her by the throat, trying to make her stop her yelling. And just then Swatty jumped on the tramp. He had a rock, and he lammed at the tramp with it and hit him on the arm. So then Miss Carter went limp and stopped yelling, and fell in a pile on the road, because the tramp let go of her and she fainted.

The road was all tramped up and covered with walked-on flowers Miss Carter had been getting; but the tramp reached around and grabbed Swatty and got him by the neck and began to pound his head. Me and Bony crouched down and looked between the boards of the cornfield fence, because we was too scared to run away.

Swatty done the best he could, but it wasn’t much use. He was getting killed, I guess. But all at once Scratch-Cat came a-sailing out of the cornfield and lit on the tramp with both hands.

When her eight claws came raking down his face he let loose of Swatty and grabbed for Scratch-Cat; but she wasn’t where he grabbed. She was standing away, with her hands clawed and her head sort of pointed at him, ready to jump again. So Swatty picked up the rock and slung it, and caught him in the back of the neck. He hollered like a bull and turned, and Scratch-Cat went at him and raked him on the side of his face. He lammed at her, and I guess he caught her on her brittle rib, because she hollered.

She didn’t care what happened, I guess, when he hit her brittle rib, so she went right at him, and Swatty made a dive for his legs and got a hold on them. The tramp fought good and hard. He went down, but he kept on fighting; and Swatty hollered for me to get a rock and whack the tramp on the head with it. Maybe I would have. I don’t know. Just then a top buggy came around the bend of the road, and the tramp showed all he was worth and beat off Swatty and Scratch-Cat and cut into the woods. We heard him cracking the brush as he scooted, and that was all we knew about him.

Well, the man in the top buggy was Herb Schwartz. So he got out and picked up Miss Carter and fetched her to, and Swatty told him what had happened. So Herb went to where Scratch-Cat was sitting on the side of the road, with her hand where her brittle rib had busted. So Swatty went over there too.

“Garsh! I’d of been killed if you hadn’t come!” he said. But she stood up and looked at him.

‘"What’d you come swimming at me when I was naked for?” she said, and she was as mad as hops. I guess her rib hurt her and made her sort of crazy mad, and Swatty was the first one that came near her, so she picked on him. “Why’d you dare?” she screeched at him. “I’ll show you not to!” – or something like that.

So she went for him. She didn’t scratch, either; she used her fists. She fought like crazy, and got her leg back of his, and threw him and piled on top of him. He had to fight as hard as he knew how to, and it was all right, because she wasn’t a girl – she was something crazy mad. It was a quick fight and a good one, and then Herb Schwartz grabbed Scratch-Cat by the shoulder and pulled her off Swatty; but that didn’t matter, because the fight was over anyhow. Swatty had said: “Enough! I won’t do it again!”

Well, as soon as Herb had stood Scratch-Cat up, she turned white and fell down. She had fainted. It was a good deal of a mess-up. Miss Carter had got hysterical, and was laughing and crying so she couldn’t put her hair up where it had fell down, and Scratch-Cat was stretched out fainted, and I guess Herb Schwartz was never so busy in his life before. He sent me and Bony and Swatty over to the pond-lily pond for a hatful of water, and while we were gone he hugged Miss Carter until she wasn’t hysterical, because I guess that was what she needed to cure her, and then he soused Scratch-Cat with the water and she came around all right. So he took Miss Carter and Scratch-Cat back to town in the top buggy, and me and Swatty and Bony went back to our skiff and rowed home.

Swatty was pretty quiet. I guess he thought Herb and Miss Carter would tell all over town how he had been licked by a girl; but he told me and Bony he would kill us if we told it, so we didn’t. But neither did Herb or Miss Carter. The reason was that Scratch-Cat told them not to tell she had been fighting. Herb told Swatty that Scratch-Cat had asked them not to.

After a while Scratch-Cat’s brittle rib healed up again and she didn’t have to stay in bed, and I was going down-town on an errand past her house, and I saw Swatty in her yard. They were playing mum-bledy-peg. So after that she played with me and Bony and Swatty, and pretty soon with Mamie Little and my sister and the other girls, and she was almost the one they liked best.

So one day Swatty said to me:

“Don’t you ever darst yell at me that Scratch-Cat is my girl!”

“Aw! I never yelled it!” I said.

“You better not!” he said. “Because she ain’t.” So then I knew she was.

VI. THE CARDINAL’S SIGNET RING

Well, for about a day I guess Bony thought he was about the smartest kid that ever lived. Anyhow, he acted that way and the reason was that his house had been burglared and mine and Swatty’s houses hadn’t been. But that wasn’t our fault.

Swatty didn’t say much because he thought maybe the burglar would come around and burglar his house and then he would be as good as Bony. But the burglar didn’t go to any more houses, and me and Swatty got pretty sick and tired of hearing Bony bragging about the burglar climbing right in at his window and almost falling over his bed, and about how – if he had wakened up – he would have gone into his father’s room and got his father’s shotgun and shot the burglar.

We got pretty sick of hearing about the reward Bony’s father had offered, and about how the policemen came to the house and looked at Bony’s bedroom window and everything and wrote it all down.

“Garsh!” Swatty said; “it ain’t nothing to brag about to be burglared! The way you talk you’d think nobody in the world could be burglared but you. If I wanted to I could write to my uncle in Derlingport and he’d send down a burglar to burglar my house in a minute. And he’d burglar Georgie’s house, too. And my uncle would send down a real burglar, too.”

That was a good one on Bony, because the newspaper said the policemen said the burglar that bur-glared Bony’s house wasn’t a real burglar but only “local talent.”

“Well – well – ” Bony said, “well, if your uncle can send down so many real burglars, why don’t he do it, and not leave you sitting there talking about what he can do all the time?”

“Aw! if you say much more about your old burglar I will write to my uncle to send some down,” Swatty said.

“Aw! and if you did he wouldn’t get nothing! What’d he get at your house? I bet he wouldn’t get any cardinal’s signet ring.”

Well, I guess that made Swatty pretty mad. I guess we had heard about all we wanted to hear about that old signet ring, so Swatty started to go away, and he said to me:

“Come on! he thinks there ain’t nothing in the world but that old signet ring. I bet it was brass, anyway.”

But the cardinal’s signet ring wasn’t brass, because it said in the newspaper it was gold.

I guess I knew plenty about that signet ring before the burglar ever got it, because once Bony told us about it when we were at his house and he would have showed it to us, only his mother would not let him.

It had been in the family from generation unto generation. So when Bony’s mother would not let us see it because her hands were in the dough and boys are too careless, Bony told us what it was like and said he guessed it was worth a million dollars, or maybe a hundred, anyway, because it was solid gold and had a red, carved stone in it, and the cardinal had given it to his son, and he had given it to his son, and it had always been in the family. So I said:

“Aw! ‘t ain’t so! Because cardinals couldn’t give anything to their sons; they don’t have any sons to give anything to.”

“Well, this cardinal gave this ring to his son, so he did,” Bony said. “This cardinal had a son.”

“No, he didn’t!” I said. “I guess I know about cardinals. They don’t have any sons. They can’t have sons. That’s the law.”

Well, Bony didn’t know what to say, because he knew I was right, because I read a lot of books and he don’t. So, if it hadn’t been for Swatty I don’t know what we would have done about it. I guess me and Bony would have been mad at each other forever, or had a fight or something, but Swatty had just been listening and spoke up.

“Aw!” he said; “that ain’t nothing to fight about. The cardinal’s signet ring could be an heirloom from generation to generation and the cardinal needn’t have any son either. He could give it to his grandson, couldn’t he?”

“Of course he could!” Bony said. “That’s what he did.”

“Sure he did!” said Swatty. “That’s how all cardinals do. When they want to start an heirloom going they look around for a son to give it to, and when they haven’t any sons they give the heirloom to their grandsons.”

Well, the burglary was about Monday of the last week of school, and about Tuesday we were sick and tired of it – me and Swatty was – but we didn’t know how to shut Bony up, because we couldn’t have burglars come to our houses just because we wished they would. So Tuesday after school when I went home my sister Fan was out in the side yard, where the vines grow on the porch, and she was down on her hands and knees.

Fan had been looking pretty sick for a good while and it was because Herb had gone back on her, or her on him. I felt mighty sorry for her, even if she was my sister, and mother said she was worried and that the only thing to cheer Fan up would be to send her somewhere, far from the scene. So Fan had said she would go.

So there she was on her knees in the grass and when she saw me she said, “Georgie!”

“What?” I said.

“Georgie,” she said, “I lost a ring here – one with just one diamond in it – ”

“I know. The ring Herb gave you.”

“Yes. If you find it for me, George,” she said, “I’ll give you – I’ll give you ten dollars.”

Well, I tried to divide three into ten, and you can’t do it, so I said:

“Maybe I can find it for fifteen dollars,” because that would be five dollars apiece for me and Swatty and Bony.

Fan looked at me, and then said, “Very well, find it if you can, please.”

And that wasn’t like Fan, because what she would mostly say, would be, “You little imp, you know where that ring is! You get it this instant or father will attend to you.”

So I knew she was pretty sick about Herb.

Well, as soon as Fan said that I skipped out the back way, over to Swatty’s, and asked him for the ring, because we had had it in pardnership, and I had let him have it awhile. I told him what I wanted it for and he said:

“I ain’t got it. I thought you or Bony had it; I gave it to Bony.”

So we went over to Bony’s house, and the minute we said “ring” he was scared stiff. “It was stole,” he said. “The burglar stole it out of my pants pocket, but I didn’t say nothing because I guessed the police would get it back again.” So that was a nice one, wasn’t it? So me and Swatty were mad at Bony and we wouldn’t talk to him or let him play with us unless we got the ring back, and none of the policemen caught Bony’s burglar. Bony’s father printed a reward of fifty dollars in the newspaper, but my father said that whoever caught the burglar would n’t be half as lucky if he caught him as he would if he ever got fifty dollars out of Bony’s father, because my father would be blessed if he believed Bony’s father had ever seen fifty dollars at one time. So maybe the policemen knew that. Anyway, they did not catch the burglar. I guess folks thought he would never be caught, and he never would have been if it hadn’t been for me and Swatty and Mamie Little. I guess he would never have been caught if Mamie Little had known how to spell “sulphur.”

The burglar got plenty of other things from Bony’s house, too, but the signet ring is the thing I’m telling about because it was the signet ring that helped Swatty to catch the burglar. That and Mamie Little, only Mamie Little didn’t know she helped until I told her, and then she didn’t understand any better than she did about the sulphur bag. I guess nobody will know unless I tell it. So I’ll tell it.

Thursday afternoon I went past Mamie Little’s yard about five o’clock and she was trying to fix up a couple of old boxes to make a playhouse and I leaned on the fence and was glad I was there, because nobody else was there to see me. So I said: “Aw! that’s no way to make a playhouse out of boxes!”

“Oh, dear!” she said. “I know it ain’t. I want this one on top of the other one but I can’t lift it.”

“I bet I could lift it!” I said.

“I know you could,” she said. “Boys are stronger than girls.”

“If you don’t tell anybody,” I said, “I’ll come in and lift it for you.”

So I went in and lifted it, and she was glad. She said it made a dandy upstairs for her playhouse, and she said boys were fine, because they were so strong. So I felt pretty good. So she took a hammer and began to nail some nails, to make shelves and things, and I told her girls didn’t know how to nail, and she said she knew they didn’t.

So I took the hammer, and just then I saw Swatty coming. So I threw down the hammer mighty quick and said:

“I got to go now. My mother wants me, but if you want me to I’ll come over Saturday and we’ll fix up the playhouse nice.”

So she did want me to; and I said I’d come and I felt gladder than I had ever felt before, and I dodged behind the lilac bushes and got out of her yard the back way, and Swatty did not see me. So that was all right.

Well, I guess there was diphtheria or scarlet fever or something in town then and, anyway, my mother and lots of the kids’ mothers made us wear sulphur bags. That was so we wouldn’t catch it, whatever it was. They were little bags about as big as a watch, and there was sulphur in them and aseophidity, or asophedeta, or asofiditty, or whatever you spell it.

It smells pretty rank but it keeps away whatever you might catch.

Well, going to school Swatty met me and he said:

“Say, let’s go fishing down the Slough, tomorrow.”

“I can’t, Swatty,” I said, because I wanted to do what I had said I would do for Mamie Little, only I didn’t want to tell Swatty that, so I said: “I’ve got to stay home and work.”

“Pshaw!” Swatty said, only he said it “Pshawr!” like he always does. “If you can’t go I won’t go, either! If you can’t go I’m going to stay home and split the wood I ought to split.”

“Well, I can’t go,” I said. So we went into the schoolhouse and into our room. Mamie Little was there. She had just hung up her hat and she was standing by her desk, nearly across the room, and she looked fine, her cheeks were so red and her eyes were kind of sparkly. There were only one or two there besides us.