Swatty: A Story of Real Boys

by Ellis Parker Butler

Well, we started off. We didn't talk much—even Swatty didn't. We went past his barn, and he went in to say good-bye to his dog, but we didn't dare take him along, because somebody might know us by him, so he whined and cried when we went away. We didn't say anything much until we got to the city limits and then Swatty said, “Well, anyway, now the town police can't touch us, because we are out of town, and they can't touch anybody out of town”, and Bony began to cry.

But he didn't cry loud—he just sort of sniggered to himself and wiped his eyes with the back of his hand. I guess maybe I cried, too, but not very loud, either.

If it hadn't been for being hung I would have gone back, and I would have told the minister all about killing the man, because I kept thinking about Mamie Little and that some other boy would play with her and grow up and marry her, and maybe I'd never see her again, even if he didn't marry her. Swatty was the only one that didn't cry a little. He didn't have to, because he let on to be mad at us for being mushies, and he swore instead. He swore at me and Bony, and I could have kept from crying, too, if I could have swore, but I couldn't because I gave it up when I got religion.

After we got beyond the houses that are beyond the city limits we went across the vacant lots and across the old fair grounds and down over the hill. We got down to the river road and climbed over the fence and got under the bob-wire fence on the other side of the road and went through the cornfield. We forgot about our footprints.

When we got to the edge of the cornfield Bony wouldn't go any farther. He was scared to go any nearer the dead man. Swatty and me crawled under the wires and went across the railroad track, and before we were across them we dodged back into the cut alongside the track, and Swatty dropped flat in the weeds. So I dropped flat, too. The reason was that there were eight or ten men on the front deck of the shanty house, and I don't know how many more inside.

They had found the man we had murdered.

We just lay there and held our breath. I couldn't think of anything, I was so scared again. I just remembered how “murder will out,” and how a murderer will always come back to where he murdered anybody, and that there we were, and that as soon as they saw us they'd know we were the murderers, because we had come back. I don't know what Swatty was doing, and I didn't know what I was doing, but I guess as soon as I was able I-started to try to dig a hole in the railroad embankment with my finger nails, to crawl into and hide, because that was what I was doing when I heard the men come up the other side of the embankment.

They were coming up from the shanty boat, and one of the men was saying, “Steady now! Keep that door level, can't you?” So I couldn't dig any more. My fingers wouldn't work. My arms and legs felt as if they were full of cold ice water, and I couldn't lift up my hands to put my hat on tighter, which I wanted to do because I could feel my hair lifting up and lifting my hat up. I didn't think about being hung or anything, but just how awful it would be if the men let the door tip and rolled the murdered man down on top of us. I guess I ought to have thought of how innocent I was, but I didn't. I didn't even think of being religious. I just felt my backbone creep and my hair lift up and my arms and legs get colder and colder.

We heard the men carrying the dead man away. I couldn't move, and I guess I would never have dared to move again if it hadn't been for Swatty. As soon as we couldn't hear the men any more Swatty lifted his head and crawled up the embankment and looked. I wouldn't have done it for a million billion quadrillion dollars. He looked, and when he saw they weren't thinking of us, but were all looking at the dead man on the door and going away from us down the railroad track he scrabbled up the rest of the embankment and scrabbled across the track and down the other side. He was back right away, with the target rifle, and then he told me to get up and get away from there, but I couldn't get up. So he kicked me two or three times hard, and when he kicked me on my hip bone I got mad and forgot to be so scared and got up. We ran through the cornfield and got Bony, and all three of us got across the road and ran up the hillside into the woods as hard as we could run.

I don't know how many miles we ran. We ran until we had to fall down because our legs wouldn't work any more. We sat in the bushes awhile and rested, and then we went on, but we walked mostly. We only ran once in a while. We came to a road we didn't know, but it went sort of west; and we went on down that road a long way and that night we slept in a haystack—not because it was cold but to be hid. The next morning we went on again, and before noon we were mighty hungry. Bony was hungriest, and he cried a lot, and I cried a little, but Swatty was willing to fight us whenever we wanted to stop and rest too long, because it wasn't safe yet. We were a long way from Arizona or Montana or wherever we were going, and it was just about the time the sheriff and everybody would start out to find us if they thought we were the murderers. We just plugged along and felt mean and tired, and I thought about Mother and Mamie Little a lot. I felt so bad I almost didn't care if they did catch me and hang me. That's the way Bony felt, too, but Swatty kept us going.