“I don't know what he saw, but I'm going to see what he saw,” Swatty said.
Swatty was always like that. If anybody saw anything he wanted to see it too.
“I ain't afraid to see it,” he said.
“Well, I ain't afraid if you ain't afraid,” I said.
So we climbed up on the deck of the shanty house again. We climbed up careful and went to the door and peeked in.
As soon as I had the first peek I turned, and jumped off the deck and started to run, but Swatty just stood and looked. I hollered at him. I guess I was crying, too.
“Swatty! Swatty, come on! Oh, Swatty, come on, Swatty!” I hollered.
He turned his head and looked at me and then he looked back into the shanty boat. All he said to me was, “Shut up!”
I guess you know what we saw when we looked into the shanty boat. There was almost a whole page about it in the paper later on. He—the man—was lying there on the floor of the shanty boat in the broken bottles and straw and the dry mud that had sifted in when the river was high. He was lying on his face with his feet to the door and he was sort of crumpled up with one hand stretched out. He was dead. One side of his face was up and there was blood from the place in his forehead where he had been shot. It was on the floor.
I didn't dare run away without Swatty, because I guess I was as scared as Bony had been, and I didn't dare go back to the shanty boat, so I just stood, and all at once I began to shake all over, the same as a wet kitten shakes in cold weather. I couldn't help shaking. I felt pretty sick. But most of all I was scared.