Swatty: A Story of Real Boys

by Ellis Parker Butler

“I'm going over and get Bony.”

“How are you going to get him?” I asked.

“I'm going to row over,” he said. “You stay here and watch that man and I'll go over and get Bony.” Well, I guessed that if he said he would, he'd find some way to row over whether there was a boat or not, because that was the way Swatty was. When he wanted to do anything he did it. So I looked down the Slough and I could see the end of the man's fishpole sticking out over the water and his cork floating and Swatty climbed onto the bank and took his fishpole and went up the Slough. He had to go pretty far before he found a boat and the boat he found was not much good. It was an old flatboat and one end was busted some and it was water-logged. Swatty had to stay away up in one end to keep the busted end out of water and he paddled the best he could with a piece of fence board. He paddled out to the middle of the Slough and stopped there and pretended to fish a while and then he paddled a little nearer Bony and pretended to fish a while longer, and then he paddled to shore near where Bony was and got out of the flatboat and went up to Bony. For a while they sat together and I guessed Swatty was talking to Bony about the ring and the fifty dollars and the man, and coaxing Bony to come to our side of the Slough and see if it was his father's ring the man had on his thumb.

So all the time I kept looking three ways—at Bony and Swatty, and at my cork, and at the end of the man's fishpole—and all at once when I looked the man's fishpole wasn't there. It was gone!

So I looked harder, but it was gone, no matter how hard I looked. So then I knew Swatty would give me a whale of a licking if he came back and found out I had let the man get away while he was fetching Bony, and I climbed off the root and up the bank and I was just starting to run, to go where the man had been, when I saw him. He was right in the middle of the path near where he had been fishing and he was bent down with his back toward me, picking up fish, because the string he had had them strung on had broken. He was stringing them again and as he picked them up I could see the ring on his thumb.

Pretty soon he had all his fish strung again and then he straightened up and took a chew of tobacco and looked up into a tree that was right there, and I looked up and saw he had put his fishpole up the tree, so I guessed maybe he fished there pretty often, or was coming back sometime. So then he slouched off. I watched him.

He was big but he wasn't very old. Maybe he was twenty or thirty. His clothes were pretty old and faded and he looked lazy in the arms and legs and when he walked he walked tired. He went down the path a ways and then he climbed over the fence there was along there and I went across the path and watched him from behind another tree. It was a ploughed field there and he walked in a furrow clear across the field to the road that was on the other side and climbed over another fence. So I climbed up on my fence and watched to see where he would go. There were three little houses across the road and he went into the one on the end toward town. So then I guessed that was where he lived and I got down off my fence and went back to the point.

Swatty and Bony were in the boat and Swatty was paddling it as well as he could but it was only halfway across. Then, all at once, Swatty began to paddle harder. He paddled as hard as he could and then, I guess, he said something to Bony and Bony began to bail out the boat as fast as he could. Then Bony began to cry. I could hear him where I was and Swatty shouted at him and looked over his shoulder to see how far he had to paddle. Then Swatty dropped his paddle stick and began to bail with his hat like he was crazy. And before I could see it, almost, the old, rotten flatboat took a dive and Swatty and Bony were in the water. Bony yelled and went under but Swatty came right up, spitting water and kicking out with his hands. It was a good thing he was barefoot.

Well, Swatty looked all around as soon as he got the water out of his eyes but he couldn't see Bony. So he dived for him.

There's one place nobody ever swims and that is the Slough. All you have to do is to look down into it anywhere and you know why. All you see when you look down is seaweed—tons and oceans of it—all tangled and twisty, and old trees and branches sticking around in it to get caught onto. When the Slough is low you can't row on it because the seaweed grabs your oars and holds on like it was some mean man trying to drown your boat. It scares you. And all in among the seaweed are tough weeds and water-lily stems and water vines. There have been plenty of boys drowned in the Slough, I guess. So Bony had got caught in the weeds and vines and things.