Swatty: A Story of Real Boys

by Ellis Parker Butler

So I was trying that when Slim Finnegan came up. I hadn't ever seen him before, but he acted nice and said the way I was trying to get onto the sled wasn't the right way and he would show me how. So he took my sled and ran away and belly busted onto it. He went down the hill like a flash. I watched him until I couldn't tell which was Slim and which was some other feller, away down the hill, and then I couldn't tell any one from any other, and I waited for him to come back. One feller came up the hill, and then another and dozens came up, but Slim didn't come back with my sled; and after a while I began to blubber the way kids do, and a girl I didn't know took me by the arm and led me home, saying, “Don't cry, Georgie! Don't cry, Georgie!” all the way.

So the girl told my mother somebody had stolen my sled, and that was the first I knew it was stolen. When my father came home he asked me what the boy was like that took my sled and I told him, and he went out and after a long time he came back and he had my sled. It was all painted over with fresh drab paint except where my father had scraped the paint off to show that it was my sled. He said: “That drunken Finnegan's dirty son stole it!” So that was the first I knew of Slim Finnegan.

When I got old enough to play away from the house I mighty soon knew that Slim Finnegan was the feller that would sneak up on us little kids when we were playing marbles and grab up our marbles and steal them and, if we said anything, twist our arms behind us until we yelled. He was the one that would sit in the long grass out in the field when we played ball and, if the ball came near him, grab it up and put it in his pocket and laugh at us. He was the one that, if he came on us when we were fishing, would throw our worm can in the Slough and take the fish we had caught, and then swear at us. He was a sneak and a thief and a tough, and his father was a tough and a drunkard; and it wasn't safe to send your washing to Mrs. Finnegan because sometimes she got drunk and didn't do it for a week, and sometimes it didn't all come back.

Well, Swatty said that Slim Finnegan wouldn't stab him, because he was anti-prohibition and Slim was too; so Bony thought maybe he'd better turn anti-prohibition, and he did. And I hoped Slim knew I had turned, but I was afraid he didn't.

Well, one day that spring—but pretty late—me and Swatty and Bony went down to the levee and hired a skiff from Higgins like we always did; and we rowed across the Mississippi to the Illinois shore above the old ferry landing. I guess maybe we were after turtle eggs; so when we saw the shore was all mud Swatty said:

“Let's row up to the head of the Slough and row down the Slough.”

“What for?” I asked him.

“Oh, just for cod!” he says. So we did.

We rowed up to the place where the Slough branches off from the river, and there was a good deal of water in the Slough yet, so we rowed down the Slough until we came almost to the ferry road, and then we thought we would stop and get some grapevine driftwood to smoke, and we did. We rowed to the shore of the Slough and got out and found plenty of driftwood where it had lodged against the bushes and tree roots, and we lit up and smoked and sat awhile just doing that.

Then Swatty said: “Come on! Let's go over to that sand by the powder house and see if there are any turtle eggs there yet.”