Swatty: A Story of Real Boys

by Ellis Parker Butler

Well, I guess grown folks don't care whether they have a divorce or not, because they are always having them and so maybe they get used to having them and don't think much about it and are not ashamed to have them, but I guess a kid is always kind of ashamed when his folks get them. We never had one in our family but we had babies and I guess a kid feels about the same way when there is a divorce in his family as he does when there is a baby. It makes him feel pretty sick and ashamed and miserable. It ain't his fault but he feels like it was. He goes out the back gate and sneaks to school through the alley and when a kid sees him the kid says: “Ho! you had a baby at your house,” and the kid that had the baby come to his house wishes he could sneak into a crack in the sidewalk or die or something.

I guess that's the way it is when you have a divorce at your house. It ain't your fault but you feel like it was and you don't have any of the fun of fighting and getting the divorce, like your folks do; you just have the feel-miserable part.

So one day about when the river began to fall again, only it was still mighty high, me and Swatty and Bony went up to Bony's room in Bony's house. It was muddy weather, in June, and I guess we had been wading in the mud or something so we knew Bony's mother wouldn't let us go upstairs to his room unless we washed our feet first, unless we sneaked it. So we sneaked it.

The reason we went up was so Bony could prove it that the Victor bicycle his father might maybe buy for him weighed only forty-five pounds. He had a catalogue to prove it with but it was up in his room, so we went up to get it. It proved it, all right. Swatty said that was pretty light for a bicycle to weigh, and I said it, too. So then we said a lot of more things about a lot of other things but mostly we talked about the bicycle, because Bony was going to let me and Swatty learn to ride on it if he got it. Swatty bet he could get right on it and ride right off as slick as a whistle because he had an uncle in Derlingport that had a dozen bicycles. So then Bony said he'd like to know why, if Swatty's uncle had that many, he didn't send Swatty one, and Swatty said maybe he would. We just kind of talked and let the mud dry on our feet and crack off onto the floor.

Well, in the floor in one place there was a hole and Bony showed us how he could look through it down into the dining-room and see what his mother was putting on the table for dinner whenever she was putting anything on. The hole was about as big around as a stovepipe and it had a tin business in it to keep the floor from catching afire because that was where the stovepipe from the dining-room stove came up through the floor to go into a drum to help heat Bony's room when it was winter. So we all looked down into Bony's stovepipe hole to see if it was like he said. And it was.

Just then Bony's father came into the diningroom. He had his hat on but it wasn't time for dinner or anything and he didn't come into the dining-room as if he was coming for dinner. He came in fast and threw his hat on the floor and pounded on the table twice with his fist. The dishes jumped and a milk pitcher fell over on its side and spilled the milk.

“Mary! Mary!” he shouted.

So Bony's mother came in from the kitchen. “Why, Henry!” she said; “what's the matter?”

“Matter? Matter?” he shouted. “I'll tell you what's the matter! I'll show you what's the matter! Look at this! Look at this, will you!”

Me and Swatty looked but Bony kind of drew back from the hole and his mother didn't look. I guess she didn't have to. I guess she knew what it was without looking. It was a bill, all right. Me and Swatty could see that but we didn't know what it was for—whether it was for a hat or a dress or what. So Bony's father threw the bill on the table and stood with one fist on the edge of the table and the other fist opening and shutting. Bony's mother had been paring potatoes or something, I guess. She wiped her hands on her apron but she didn't pick up the bill.