“Are you prohibition?” he asked.
I said, “Yes, I am.”
“All right!” he said, and he put his hand on my nose and pushed. He pushed my nose right into my face. I never had anything hurt like that did. I yelled, it hurt so much. I told him to stop.
“All right,” he said, “if I stop what are you?”
I knew what he meant. He had already got me from being a Republican to being a Democrat that way once before. I wasn't thinking of Mamie Little; I was thinking of my nose. So I said:
“I'm an anti-prohibition. Now let me up. You 've busted my nose and some of my ribs, and I want to put some plantain on my eye before it swells up.”
We felt of my ribs and couldn't find that any seemed busted, and my nose stopped hurting and came back into shape, so me and Swatty were better friends than we had ever been, because we were now both anti-prohibitions. We went around and made a lot of prohibitions into anti-prohibitions because Swatty showed me how to push a nose the way he pushed mine. But it didn't do much good, I guess. The election was over and, anyway, there were always more anti-prohibitions in Riverbank than there were prohibitions.
It was almost right away after that that me and Swatty and Bony met Mamie Little and Lucy one Saturday afternoon. Lucy is my sister, and they were going down-town. Me and Swatty and Bony were sitting on the curb telling whoppers; or I guess Swatty and Bony were, I was just telling some things that had happened to me sometime that I'd forgot until I happened to think them up just then.
Swatty was telling how he went up to Derlingport and his uncle introduced him to the man that had the government job of making up new swear words, when Mamie and Lucy came along. I said:
“Where are you going?”