Swatty: A Story of Real Boys

by Ellis Parker Butler

It was pretty tough. You went into the mud pretty deep, and there were plants that had scratch-els on them, and the lily plants and the arrow-leaf plants were so thick you could hardly wade. They were all around the shore for two or three rods, and you couldn't see over them. They rustled like corn when we pushed through them. But we knew there was a big clear place in the middle of the pond, so we waded on out to it. It was the place where I learned to swim. It wasn't over head anywhere.

Well, Swatty came to the open place first, and he stopped and said:

“There's somebody out there.”

Me and Bony peeked, and there was. Right off we saw who it was—it was Scratch-Cat. She was in where the water was under-arm deep, and she was sort of crying, she was so mad. Then we saw what she was trying to do—she was trying to learn herself to swim. It was enough to make anybody laugh.

It looked like she had been at it a long time, for she was so cold she was shivering. We were near enough to her to see that the black spot on her arm was a mole and not a leaf or a vaccination, and we could see her shiver as plain as could be. The way she was learning herself to swim was this: she put her hands out in front of her and sort of jumped off her feet and then kicked and pounded the water and went down under. I guess you know how that feels. You can't get your head above water when you are that deep unless you stand up; so you paw in the mud, and get scared because you can't get to your feet. Dell Brown would come up scared to death, and spit and blow, and sort of cry, and shiver, and then she would do it all again.

I guess it was pretty tough. Every time she went down she must have got scratched up by the weeds with scratchels on them—some kind of smartweed—and she was scared and chilly. It was mighty funny. I guess I laughed out aloud.

Anyway, all at once she saw Swatty and us. She ducked like a shot, until only her head was out of water, and me and Bony laughed. But Swatty didn't. He pushed me and Bony back and said: “Hey! Scratch-Cat! Wait; I'll show you how to swim.” Only, he said, “I'll showr you how to swim,” the way he always says “show.”

So he slid his hands out on the water and turned on his side and swam towards where she was. He didn't mean nothing. All he meant was to show her how to swim, because she would never learn the way she was trying. But Scratch-Cat turned and held her arms straight out in front of her and hurried for the shore, pushing the weeds away with her hands.

Swatty kept telling her to wait, and once he came up to her, and she turned and hammered him with her fists, crazy mad, and he let her go on. The weeds must have scratched her pretty bad, ripping through them that way; but she got to the railway track and began putting her clothes on fast. So Swatty said: “Garsh! I bet she gets our clothes and hides them or something!”

So me and Swatty and Bony hurried to where our clothes were and dressed. We got most of our duds on and were putting on the rest, when we heard somebody yelling. It was a woman, and she was over on the river road, across a cornfield from where we were, and she was yelling like she was being murdered. I was mighty scared. All I thought of was that whoever was murdering her would murder her and then come over and murder us.