Swatty: A Story of Real Boys

by Ellis Parker Butler

So, anyway, we didn't shoot in my yard any more, and that wasn't our fault but the fault of the city council. So that was one of the things we thought of after we killed the man; but it didn't seem to make us feel much better, like you'd think it would. I guess there wasn't anything could make us feel better. Nobody wants to be hanged unless he has to be, I guess.

Well, it was vacation time, anyway, and we didn't want to shoot all the time because part of the time we wanted to do something else. Only when we wanted to go rowing on the river we took the rifle along anyway, because sometimes we rowed up beyond the city limits and then it was all right to shoot if we wanted to.

So one day me and Swatty and Bony we went up the river in a skiff. We always hired a skiff from old Higgins because it was ten cents an hour or three hours for a quarter from him, and Rogers charged ten cents straight. So when we got into the skiff and Higgins gave us the oars he said, “Well, boys, have a good time, but don't shoot anybody with that cannon.” And we said, all right, we wouldn't. We took turns rowing, like we always did, and pretty soon we got to the Slough, and we rowed in and shot at turtles awhile, and then Bony said, “Gee! the mosquitoes are eating me up,” and they were eating all of us up, so we floated out onto the river and just floated. We threw the bailing can over and shot at it until it went down, and just about then we were going past the old shanty boat, and we began to shoot at that.

It was up on the mud and partly sunk into it and the hull was so rotten you could kick a hole in it, and it wasn't anybody's anyway. Everybody had thrown stones at the windows in the side and broken them and nobody cared, I guess; but nobody had broken all the windows in the end toward the river, because that end was toward the river, so we shot at the windows. At first we couldn't hit them and we drifted below, but we rowed back again and in closer and then we all hit them. We hit them a lot of times, until they were all smashed out, and we began to say who had hit the most times, and Swatty said, “Let's go ashore and see who is the best shot. I bet I am.” So we went.

So we shot at cans and things, and Swatty was the best shot, and then nobody said anything but we just thought we'd go on the shanty boat for fun. We climbed up on the little front deck, and Bony was first, and Swatty was next, and then I come. So Bony pushed the door open and looked in, and he stood there looking in and didn't move, and then, all at once he made a sound—well, I don't know what kind of sound it was. It was a frightened sound. I guess it was like the sound a rabbit makes when you step on it by mistake. And then he turned, and his face was so scary it frightened me and Swatty and we turned and jumped off the front deck onto the railroad bank; but Bony jumped sideways off the deck and landed on the cracked crust that was over the mud the shanty boat was stuck in. He went right through the crust and over his knees in the mud, but me and Swatty was so scared we started to run down the railroad track as fast as we could.

Pretty soon we stopped, because the sand between the ties was full of sandburs, and then we didn't know what we were running for, so we looked back. Bony was sort of swimming on top of the mud crust and he was crying as hard as he could cry, but not loud. He was trying to get away from the shanty boat as fast as he could, and every time he got a foot out of the mud and tried to step he broke through the crust again, so he sort of laid on the crust and bellied along. He looked like an alligator swimming in the mud, and he was crying like an alligator, too. Only I guess it is crocodiles that cry. Bony was trying to get to the skiff, and Swatty knew that if Bony got there before we did he would get in the skiff and go home and leave us. So we picked the sandburs out of our feet and tried to hurry, but Bony got to the skiff and got in and pushed off.

We ran and hollered, but he didn't stop. He was so frightened that the oars jumped out from between the pins almost every time he pulled on them, and he was crying hard; but he rowed the boat pretty fast because he was working his arms so hard. Swatty and me hollered at him and told him what we would do to him if he didn't come back, but it didn't do any good. He was too scared. All he wanted to do was to get away.

Well, we tried to throw stones at him, to bring him back, but we couldn't throw that far and we just stood and watched him row down-river as hard as he could.

“Say, what do you think he saw in there?” Swatty said after while.

“I don't know what he saw,” I said. “What do you think he saw?”