Swatty: A Story of Real Boys

by Ellis Parker Butler

Well, when I had time to think it over I thought it was funny that Swatty had let Bony have a third partnership in the engagement ring as easy as he had. And then one day I found out why it was. It shows how slick Swatty was to keep a secret or anything.

The vacation before the time I'm telling about—which was almost vacation time again—there was a new girl came to Riverbank. She lived in a little house across Main Street that had a picket fence and a yard that ran mostly down the gully toward Front Street, and the first I knew about her was one day when I had to go down town on an errand and went past her house.

I had on some new shoes, so I knew everybody would see them and be thinking of them, and I felt pretty mean; and when I went by the little house the girl was behind the picket fence, looking out. So I made a face at her, because it was none of her business if I did have on new shoes.

It was summer, of course, and hot; but the girl had on a woolen dress—red and black checks—and it fitted her pretty tight all over, and was too short and little, so that it was tight like skin, and her wrists stuck out too far. She was barefoot, too, and that was funny, because girls don't go barefoot. It was as funny to see her barefoot as to see me with shoes on.

I was going to yell something at her, but I didn't, I only made a face at her. But she didn't make one back at me. She just looked.

She wasn't like any girl in Riverbank that I ever saw. She was brown—almost like an Indian—but she had reddish cheeks, and her hair was as black as tar and cut short, like a boy's, only it was banged in front, and her bangs were so long they came down to her eyes, and were cut as straight as a string.

She stood behind the picket fence and just looked at me, and I didn't like it. Her eyes were like big black marbles and her mouth like a painted red. So I whistled and looked the other way and the first thing I knew she was out of the gate and after me. I tried to run, but she cornered me and took me by the hair and jerked me back and forth. I thought she was going to jerk my head off. So I pulled loose and ran, because no girl can jerk me around by the hair like that. So all she got for her smarty business was just a handful of hair or two. And who cares for a handful of hair?

Well, you bet I got even with her, all right! I never went past her house alone after that.

So that's the way she was. She stayed in her yard, and when a boy came along she would jump out and grab him by the hair, or slap him, and chase him away from in front of her house. She was a tartar, all right. She was like a spider that is always waiting and comes out and grabs flies; only what she grabbed wasn't flies—it was boys. So we all got afraid of her, and we didn't dast go past her house unless we were two or three together. And then we generally went round some other way. Except Swatty.

Because one day Swatty he went past her house, and she come out and was going to pull his hair, like she did the rest of us; and when she came at him he backed up against the fence, and when she reached out for his hair he hit her hand away with one hand and slapped her on the face good and plenty. He slapped her two or three times and dared her to touch him. So she didn't say anything, and Swatty didn't say anything, and they just stood there.