Swatty: A Story of Real Boys

by Ellis Parker Butler

X. SLIM FINNEGAN

Well, I guess the nearest Swatty ever came to having a lot of money was the time Mr. Murphy got it and Swatty didn't. It was a thousand and five hundred dollars, and if Swatty didn't get it Mamie Little ought to have had it; and if Mamie Little didn't get it I ought to have had it; but we didn't any of us get it, because Mr. Murphy got it.

I told you about the time Mamie Little got mad at me because I had been prohibition and changed over to anti-prohibition because Swatty could lick me, and about how her father had the prohibition newspaper. Well, he kept publishing in his newspaper that the saloons ought to be closed; so one day somebody blew up Mr. Little's house with dynamite—only it was gunpowder. But they called it dynamite. They called the men that blew up the house the dynamiters. They blew up two other houses, too, and that was why Mr. Murphy was in town. He was a detective. He came and worked in the sawmill, and nobody knew he was a detective until he got the money me or Swatty or Mamie Little ought to have had.

Me and Swatty and Bony was sitting on the empty manure bin back of our barn, smoking cornsilk cigarettes, and that reminded us of the time we were up the river smoking driftwood grapevine cigarettes, when we saw Slim Finnegan steal the gunpowder, and we got to talking about it.

“Well, if anybody ever finds out Slim Finnegan stole it he won't stab me!” Swatty said; “because he wouldn't think I told on him, because I ain't prohibition and I never was; and I guess Slim and everybody knows it.”

So that made me and Bony feel pretty scared, because everybody knew Slim Finnegan was a stabber. He'd just as soon stab you as not. I don't remember whether he ever had stabbed anybody; but I guess he had, because everybody said so. Anyway, he was always showing us the knife he stabbed fellers with when he wanted to stab them, and he said he'd stab any of us for two cents. The knife had a staghorn handle and a six-inch blade, with a curve in it and a spring in the back that, when you pressed it, snapped the blade open all ready to stab with.

Once, when he met me when I was alone, he grabbed me by the neck and backed me against a fence post, and pulled out the knife and opened it. I bellered and said: “Aw, lemme alone, Slim! I never done nothin' to you!” And he said he knew mighty well I hadn't and that I'd better not try to, because he was a stabber, and if I did anything he didn't like he'd cut my heart out and leave it sticking to the fence post with the knife in it, to show fellers not to monkey with Slim Finnegan. So I said I'd never, never do anything he didn't want me to, and please to let me go. So he said, well, he guessed he'd stab me, anyway, while he had me; and he put the point of his knife against my stomach and leaned up against me, so that all he had to do was lean a little harder against the handle of the knife and I'd be stabbed.

I thought I was going to be killed, sure. I held my breath, and my bones felt like water; and just then he laughed at me and bumped my head against the post three times and threw me down on the grass and went away.

That was before me and Swatty and Bony saw him set the lumber yard afire too. After we saw him set the lumber yard afire we were all more scared of him than ever; even Swatty was scared of him, and said so. When we saw him set the lumber yard afire Slim was in our class at school; but he was twice as big as anybody in our room, because he only went to school when he wanted to and he didn't want to very often; and after the fire he quit going to school. I guess he went bumming for a while.

The first I knew about Slim Finnegan was when I was a little bit of a kid and not big enough to ride belly buster or knee gut on a sled or slide down the big hills. I had a high sled and rode on it sitting down, and rode from the sidewalk into the gutter, and things like that. So my father got me a new sled on my birthday, a clipper sled with half-round irons, and it was painted red and was named Dexter. I took it out on the hill where the big kids were sliding and tried to ride belly buster on it, which is lying flat on your stomach and steering with both feet, like knee gut is lying on one knee and steering with the other foot, but the runners on my sled were so slick that when I put the sled down it slid away before I could get onto it.