Swatty: A Story of Real Boys

by Ellis Parker Butler

Me and Swatty went up over the hill and down past the Catlic church to South Riverbank and we stopped at the pump on the corner and had a good drink and cooled off our feet in the mud under the pump spout, because the sidewalks were hot.

The water in the Slough wasn't high and it wasn't low. Once the Slough ran through to the river at this end but now it was all filled in with sawdust from the sawmill, and a big conveyor blowpipe kept blowing more sawdust into the Slough from the mill, and all the surface of the Slough was floating sawdust. Then, a little further along, it was water-lily leaves. Then, further along, it was plain Slough for miles and miles and miles.

The water was three or four feet down from the top of the bank and the bank was covered with pretty good grass, and all along the Slough there was a path worn, because kids and fellows had fished in the Slough ever since there was a Riverbank, and before that the Indians had fished in it, I guess. Everywhere, close to the edge of the bank in the shade of the trees, there were places worn smooth-like an old chair seat—where fellows had sat and fished for years and years until they were regular fishing places. When you saw one of them you knew it was a good fishing place and that there was a bent root, all worn smooth and sometimes almost worn in two, part way down the bank, to rest your feet on.

It was all quiet and still, like a fishing place should be, except for the “urr-urr” of the mills away off, or the “caw caw!” of crows or, once in a while, somebody knocking the ashes out of a pipe against a root, across the Slough or a little splash when somebody caught a fish. Then everything would be quiet again.

So me and Swatty walked along down the path, because we thought we would go as far as we had ever been, or farther, this time. Once we stopped and ate 'most all of my lunch. It was nine o'clock but we were mighty hungry. Then we went on.

We got two or three miles down the Slough and most of the fishing places were empty there and I wanted to stop but Swatty said: “Aw! come on! Let's go on down to the point!” so we went.

The point wasn't much of a point but you felt more out in the Slough when you were on it. There was a big water maple at the end of it, with fine roots to sit on, and I sat on some of the roots and fished and Swatty sat on some others and fished. It was good and hot and the Slough smelled warm and weedy and we liked it, because that was part of the regular fishing smell. There was just a little ripple and the corks bobbed up and down gently and we set our poles among the roots and just leaned back and felt good. Over across the Slough was another point, but more rounded and bigger, and it was green and cool looking, with grass and three big elms on it, and back in the fields a cow's bell jingled once in a while, and the crows cawed, and the sawmill hummed away off in the distance, and it got hotter and hotter. I watched my cork until it seemed to lose itself in the ripples and my eyes got sleepier and sleepier and, the next thing I knew, I woke up and Swatty wasn't there! Neither was my cork!

The first thing I did was give my pole a yank and out came a jim-dandy goggle-eye sunfish, just about as good as I ever caught. I held him so the stickers wouldn't sting me and got the hook out of him and strung him on a piece of twine and I was tying the string to a root so the goggle-eye would be in the water when somebody down the Slough a ways hawked, clearing the tobacco out of his throat, and I looked around and saw Swatty coming back to the point, not making any noise. He held up a finger for me to be quiet and then he climbed out onto the roots of the maple and sat down.

“I caught a dandy goggle-eye, Swatty,” I whispered.

He leaned over toward me.