Ellis Parker Butler

“ Bony and Swatty were out there now, and Mamie Little and Scratch-Cat, and I didn't know how I would dare talk to them. I sort of felt like they would see it in my face. If they did I would feel so mean I'd die.
I guess you know how a fellow feels about it. Any fellow would almost rather go to jail than have a baby come to his house. The fellows yell at him, “Aw, Georgie, you got a baby at your house.” And he knows it is so and he can't tell them they're liars. ”

“ The glass fell all around us and one piece cut Swatty on the hand, but he only said, “Jump! Jump!”
Maybe we would have jumped, but we didn't. The firemen had got to the back of the building and had turned the hose in at the back window, and just when Swatty said, “Jump!” the stream of water hit us like a board. It took us as if we were pieces of paper and slammed us out of the broken window and halfway across the street, and threw us head over heels in the mud, and the fashion plate, with Mamie Little's father, came flying with us. ”

“ So then Swatty made a face at the pieces of old stump.
“Garsh!” he said. “Garsh! who'd of thunk anybody cared for that old stump? We didn't know Ladylove cared that much for it, did we? Well, come on!”
“Come on where?” Bony sort of whined.
“Where do you think?” Swatty asked. “What do I care where? Anywhere we can get a tree to plant—that's where. We'll get a big tree, like those maple trees, and we'll fetch it here and plant it; that's what we'll do! I'll tell you what. We'll take the capstan rope and go out to the cow pasture and dig up a big tree and let my cow drag it here. ”

“ I said. “Me and Bony and Swatty planted a new tree for you where that old stump was.”
THE STUMP
My grandmother looked at the tree. Her eyes were full of tears again, but they weren't the kind that worried me. She held out a hand toward the tree and said some more poetry:
“What plant we in this apple tree? Buds, which the breath of summer days Shall lengthen into leafy sprays; Boughs, where the thrush with crimson breast Shall haunt and sing and hide her nest. We plant upon the sunny lea A shadow for the noontide hour, A shelter from the summer shower, When we plant the apple tree.” ”

“ That's the way Swatty always is; me or Bony would never think of going and taking a shotgun away from a father that wanted to kill himself, and if we did think of it we would never dare to do it; but Swatty wouldn't care who he took a shotgun away from if he got mad because somebody bellered about nothing. ”

“ Toady didn't get Mamie Little for his girl the right way. He never said she wasn't his girl, he just said she was. The right way is that when the other fellows find out he has a girl they holler at him: “Mamie Little is Georgie's girl! Mamie Little is Georgie's girl!” And he has to get mad and fight them about it to prove it's a lie, but after he has fought enough to prove she isn't his girl, why, then she is his girl and he can have her for his girl and nobody hollers it at him. ”

“ I ought to have thought of it right off!”
“Thought of what, Swatty?”
“Why, the judge! You, talking about preachers and priests and all them and not thinking of the judge! It's a judge that always diworces people apart, ain't it? Well, what we've got to do is see the judge and tell him not to diworce Bony's folks apart!”
“Come on! We'll go see the judge and tell him not to diworce Bony's folks apart.” ”

“ Us kids would get up and sneak round and steal a girl's cake or something, and she would holler and be mad; and then we started in to pull their hair-bows, and maybe their hair a little, and they would slap at us and scold and giggle. They pretended they didn't like it; but they did. So pretty soon some of them got up and chased us round the table, and after the ice cream it turned out we were playing tag; and Bony's mother said:
“Heaven save the furniture! But, anyway, I'm glad they've waked up!”
Well, I didn't pull Mamie Little's hair, or anything. ”

“ So Swatty said: “What's she crying for? Why don't she shut up?”
He meant Mamie Little. So I said:
“She can cry if she wants to! I'd like to see you try to stop her! She's crying because your father gave her his fashion plate and it's going to be burned up, and if you say much I'll lick you!”
So Swatty said: “If that's all she's crying for, come on. We'll get her old fashion plate for her.” So I said to Mamie Little: “Stop being a baby and shut up, and we'll get your old fashion plate for you.”
Swatty just cut in through the crowd, and me and Bony followed after him. ”

“ Anyway, I'd rather be waled ten times a day than be moral-suasioned like Bony, and so would Swatty, and so would all the kids, and so would Bony. But my mother didn't say anything because Bony's mother was a caller and you don't fight with callers until after they've got you so perfectly exasperated you just have to speak your mind.
So Bony's mother said:
“Yes, indeed!” and she said it the way women say things when they 're being stylish. “Yes, indeed! the rod implants fear in the child, and we should rule by love. My child shall never know fear. The normal child never knows fear.” ”

“ We just stood and looked at it, and pretty soon Swatty says, “Gosh!” Only he always says “Garsh!” And I said, “Gee!” That was all we said, and Bony didn't say anything. He just stepped backward three or four steps and looked frightened. That's the way you always feel when you see the old Mississippi on a rampage. You feel as if you ought to do something to stop it, and you know you can't—that nobody can. When it gets going it is going to keep right on. So we went down to the levee.
Well, there wasn't any levee! Our levee is just a long down-hill of sand, and it wasn't there. ”

“ But she don't mind being pushed around, because that's one way she knows he's her fellow. So, when there is a party, she is the one he drops a pillow before, and if she don't kiss him, all right for her! But mostly she does. She lets on that she hates it, but she don't. She likes it.
Well, I guess one reason Swatty was glad to get rid of Lucy was because Swatty didn't care for kissing games anyway, and it wasn't much fun for him to have a girl, because nobody hardly dared yell at him:
“Swatty! Swatty! Swatty! Lucy she is your girl!” ”

“ The river don't freeze over all at once—the ice floats down and jams and stops and the bare places between freeze over; but when the ice jams, it crumples up on the edges and makes ridges, and it is where the ridges are that the snow banks up into drifts. Sometimes the drifts are all around a smooth sheet of ice, and then when the snow begins to melt, the smooth ice turns into a sort of pond, and maybe the water on top of the ice is an inch deep and maybe it is more. ”

“ So Swatty took some mud and stuck it on his nose and pretended it was medicine or something; to make Bony laugh. But Bony didn't laugh. I guess he felt pretty bad. Maybe a kid always feels that way when his folks are going to get divorced. So then Swatty said:
“Hey, George! this is the way I'll ride on Bony's bicycle when he gets it!”
So he pretended he was on a bicycle and he pretended to fall off all sorts of ways and to run into a tree and everything. Then I thought of something. I said:
“Say! if they get a divorce and Bony goes away we can't learn bicycle riding on his bicycle!” ”

“ It was all painted over with fresh drab paint except where my father had scraped the paint off to show that it was my sled. He said: “That drunken Finnegan's dirty son stole it!” So that was the first I knew of Slim Finnegan.
When I got old enough to play away from the house I mighty soon knew that Slim Finnegan was the feller that would sneak up on us little kids when we were playing marbles and grab up our marbles and steal them and, if we said anything, twist our arms behind us until we yelled. ”

“ Thursday afternoon I went past Mamie Little's yard about five o'clock and she was trying to fix up a couple of old boxes to make a playhouse and I leaned on the fence and was glad I was there, because nobody else was there to see me. So I said: “Aw! that's no way to make a playhouse out of boxes!”
“Oh, dear!” she said. “I know it ain't. I want this one on top of the other one but I can't lift it.”
“I bet I could lift it!” I said.
“I know you could,” she said. “Boys are stronger than girls.” ”

“ Bony's father and mother fought a good deal with their jaws sometimes, like when we thought Bony's father was going across the river to kill himself and we went to keep him from it, and me and Swatty decided there must be a big fight going on at Bony's house, because that always makes a fellow feel cheap and mean. So we said we wouldn't tease him about it. So Bony came back and we dug awhile and went home to dinner.
And the next thing was that Mamie Little came back from Betzville and began playing with Lucy and Toady Williams again, and that made me feel mean. ”

“ At our house Fan spent most of her time loving the new kid, and Lucy and Mamie Little didn't do much but hang around and coax to hold the baby a minute, and Toady Williams just hung around and waited for Mamie Little to come out and play. I guessed that I would never have anything to do with Mamie Little again, but that when I got a new girl it would be a different kind, like Scratch-Cat. I wished I hadn't got religion, or anything that I'd got because of Mamie Little.
A lot of us got religion at once, because that's how you usually get it. ”

“ We got pretty sick of hearing about the reward Bony's father had offered, and about how the policemen came to the house and looked at Bony's bedroom window and everything and wrote it all down.
“Garsh!” Swatty said; “it ain't nothing to brag about to be burglared! The way you talk you'd think nobody in the world could be burglared but you. If I wanted to I could write to my uncle in Derlingport and he'd send down a burglar to burglar my house in a minute. And he'd burglar Georgie's house, too. And my uncle would send down a real burglar, too.” ”

“ Bony said.
So then Swatty said, aw! he didn't believe anybody would kill himself because he was fighting over bills. He said he didn't believe any grown-up man would fight over a little thing like bills; so that made me mad, and I said, aw! any man would fight over bills, and that my father did, and that my father was a better man than Swatty's father any day in the week and could lick Swatty's father any time they wanted to try it. And that was true, and Swatty knew it, because my father was bigger than his father and not so old. ”

“ It wouldn't have been any fun at all, that first part, only Swatty had brought some beans in his pocket and we had some fun shooting them at the girls with our thumbs. Every once in a while Bony's mother would come in from the kitchen and clap her hands and say:
“Come, now! We must all have a good time! All you boys and girls think of a game and play it. Bony”—only she called him Harold—“I'm surprised you don't start a game!” ”

“ When they had the election, prohibition was elected all over the state, but not in Riverbank; but we had to have it in Riverbank because the state elected it.
Of course I was prohibition, because I had paraded and because Mamie Little was, but Swatty was antiprohibition. I didn't say a thing to make Swatty mad; all I said was: “Huh! You thought you was so smart, didn't you? You thought prohibition was going to get licked, but it was you got licked. Next time you won't be so smart. I guess you and your father feel pretty sick about it.” ”

“ So me and Bony saw that our cave was a pretty good thing. If the Graveyard Gang got us cornered off and we had to run out their way they would think they had us, but we would just run and slide down to our cave and then we could fight them until they had enough or we had killed them all. So every day that we went to the cave we took up stones, and we dug and dug. ”

“ We hadn't stopped to think that a divorce Bony's folks were getting would make a big difference like that to me and Swatty. It kind of brought us right into the divorce ourselves. Swatty looked frightened.
“Garsh! that's so!” he said. “We can't learn to ride on a bicycle that's in another town.”
“And, say!” I said, frightened, “if Herb hears about it, and how married folks fight and get divorces over hat-bills and things he's going to be scared to marry Fan, because hat-bills are the things father scolds Fan most about. ”

“ Well, the road across the river on the ice is always crooked. The farmers over in Illinois make the road to bring over cordwood and hay and stuff, because they can bring it over on the ice free and it costs twenty-five cents a load when the ferry is running.
So the first farmer that dares drive across on the ice starts out from the Illinois shore, and he starts straight, but pretty soon he has to curve around a drift, and then he has to curve around an air hole, and then he has to go around a piece of ice that looks thin, and by the time he has got to town he has made a crooked road ”