Swatty: A Story of Real Boys

by Ellis Parker Butler

But I made Swatty give me his hand anyway. I didn't like it much. I didn't like it any.

Well, we got across, and before we got across Bony had reached the shore ice. It was pretty rotten and it rubbered down under him, and if he hadn't been running so fast I guess he would have broken through. Then he stopped and looked, because between him and the shore was a wide open space—no ice, nothing but water. He just stopped and looked, and then looked back at us and then he ran to the edge of the ice, and it broke under him and he was in water up to his arms. It was because there was a long sandbar reached out from the shore there; if not he would have been drowned. So he walked through the water about half a block and me and Swatty went after him. Gee, it was cold!

When we got ashore Bony was up in the woods and we could hear him shouting, “Papa! Papa!” and crying, too. It was kind of a sick shout, part cry and part shout. It sounded like “Pwaw-pwa! Uh-uh! Pwaw-pa!” and then “Pwaw-pwa! Pwaw-pwa!” and then “Uh-uh-uh!” like a little kid cries when it has lost a penny it meant to get candy with and has cried all the way home.

All of a sudden we heard the shotgun again. It was toward down-river and not near us at all. Bony heard it, too, and he stopped to listen and we caught up with him. I guess he was as good as crazy, because when we got to him he started to run, and he ran right into a grapevine tangle and began pulling and pushing through it, although he could have taken ten steps and have gone around it. I guess he must have liked his father a lot to get so crazy about him. Swatty went right after him. He swore at him in German and told him that the way was to go out on the shore where the sand was, so he could run faster. So Bony went and we went, too, and we all ran.

We didn't say much. Swatty kept telling Bony what kind of a fool he was for thinking his father was going to kill himself, and Bony kept sobbing and running. I guess maybe I cried a little, too. I felt kind of—I don't know—frightened, I guess. So then we got around the bend, and all at once we saw Bony's father.

He was out on the ice. When we saw him first he was about as far out on the ice as two blocks would be, and he had on his rubber boots and his hunting coat, and it looked bulged around the pockets, so me and Swatty knew he had been hunting and had got two rabbits, or maybe three. We guessed that what had happened was that when he got sick of fighting about bills he went hunting, to forget about it, because Swatty's father—when he felt that way—went down to his tailor shop and sewed coats or pants, and when my father felt that way he would go out and split wood or maybe clean out the barn. But I guess Bony's father thought he'd go hunting. I guess maybe he thought he'd like to kill something.

When we saw him out on the ice he was walking fast, or sort of running, going toward the Iowa shore, but that wasn't what scared us. What scared us was that the ice was moving!

We didn't see it at first. Bony was yelling at his father, and his father heard him and turned and looked back, and then started to run toward us. Where we were, at the bend, the ice came close in to the high bank and on the ice there was a limb of a big tree. Somebody had made a fire under it and it was partly burned. Bony ran up and down the bank looking for a good place to climb down, but Swatty was going to slide down right there and let his feet get on that old dead limb. But when Bony's father saw Bony running up and down he shouted to Jim, “Back! Back!” Swatty looked at Bony's father to see why he was shouting that. Then he looked down at the old limb again. It had moved along!

Well, you bet he was frightened for a minute! He wasn't thinking of the ice, he was thinking of that dead branch, and for a dead branch to start and move like that isn't natural. He felt the way you feel when you go to pick up a stick and it is a live snake. For a minute he just stood and held his breath and was scared, and then he saw it wasn't the dead limb that was moving but the ice, and he grabbed my arm and pointed. And just then the fire-whistle on the waterworks over in town began to blow.

That was a sure sign the ice was going out, It was to let folks know so they could come down and see the ice go out because, you bet, it is worth seeing. You can't tell what the ice will do when it starts to go out.