Swatty: A Story of Real Boys

by Ellis Parker Butler

IX. THE MURDERERS

Well, when we came to find out about it the new babies at my and Bony's houses weren't near as hard to bear as we had thought they would be. One reason was because they came at vacation time, when we didn't have to go to school, and the other was that they didn't make us take them out in baby carriages like we was afraid they would. One thing was that they was too fresh yet, and the other was that they wouldn't trust them to such young hoodlums anyway.

At our house Fan spent most of her time loving the new kid, and Lucy and Mamie Little didn't do much but hang around and coax to hold the baby a minute, and Toady Williams just hung around and waited for Mamie Little to come out and play. I guessed that I would never have anything to do with Mamie Little again, but that when I got a new girl it would be a different kind, like Scratch-Cat. I wished I hadn't got religion, or anything that I'd got because of Mamie Little.

A lot of us got religion at once, because that's how you usually get it. It makes it easier and you don't feel so foolish going up front.

Well, they had this revival at our church the winter before the vacation I'm telling about. When they had it I was having Mamie Little for my secret girl and she went up in front, so I got religion and went up in front too. But you see I'd ought to have waited, because it made me feel a lot worse about murdering a man. Or maybe it didn't. I guess Swatty felt almost as bad as I did. We both felt awful bad. Swatty didn't go to our church, he went to the German Lutheran church, and nobody in that church ever got religion, they just had it. At our church we didn't have it until we got it, and mostly we got it when there was a revival meeting, and that was when I got it.

So, I guess it was a lot worse for me when the thing happened that I'm going to tell you, because I had religion and Swatty hadn't.

Well, the way it happened was this way: I'm awfully croupy. I don't know anybody that's as croupy as I am, so they rub hot goose grease on me when I get to honking and then make me swallow a lot out of a spoon, and that was all right when I was little enough so they could hold my nose, but after I got big Mother said she wouldn't struggle with me another time, and she changed and gave me a dime a spoonful. So I took the old stuff because if I hadn't took it Father would have licked me, and I'd have had to take it anyway. So I got a dime a spoonful. So I bought a target rifle with the money, when I had enough, and then the rifle got broke and I couldn't get it fixed until my mother gave me three dollars because I had been such a good boy when the new baby came.

So then all the kids were coming over to my yard to shoot all the time—Swatty and Bony and the whole lot of them—and we shot at tin cans and things against the barn, but we weren't any of us very good shooters. I guess Swatty was the best. Or maybe I was about as good as he was.

That was all right, and I guess nobody cared anything, only Mother was always putting her head out of the window and saying, “Boys, do be careful with that gun!” So one day Swatty come over, like he always does, and he says, “Say! we can't shoot the rifle any more!” And I says, “Why can't we?” And Swatty says, “They made a law that we can't.” And I says, “Who made a law that we can't?” And Swatty says, “The city council made a law that nobody can shoot inside the city limits.”

So I guessed they had, because that winter they had made a law we couldn't slide down Third Street hill, and if they made a law like that they might make almost any kind of a law. So Swatty says, “If we want to shoot we've got to go outside the city limits.” And I said—I don't know what I said but I guess I said that was so.