I guess this is a good time to tell about Mamie Little, because now you
know who me and Swatty and Bony are. Mamie Little was my girl, only she
didn't know it. Nobody knew it but me. It was a secret I had. That's
the way a fellow has a girl at first: she's a secret and she don't know
she's his girl. Sometimes she don't never get to know it and the fellow
has to get another girl. But while he “has” her the fellow knows it, and
it makes him feel bashful and uncomfortable and frightened when she is
near by and it is pretty bully.
The reason I picked out Mamie Little for my girl was because she had
the nicest eyes and nicest hair of any girl I ever saw and the way she
swished her dress when she walked. She lived across the street from my
house and mostly played with my sister Lucy. So when I played with
Lucy I could play with Mamie Little, too, and nobody would think it was
because she was my girl. They would think I was just playing with my
sister.
Mamie Little had been my girl a good while like that, with nobody
knowing it but me, and I guessed that pretty soon it would be time for
me to fight Swatty or somebody about her and have her for my real girl,
if she didn't mind; but just then Toady Williams came to town and he
picked out Mamie Little to be his girl and didn't care who knew it. And
Mamie Little didn't care who knew it.
Toady was a new kid in town, because his father had come to Riverbank
to start a store. We never said Toady could be one of our crowd and we
never wanted him to be, but he just joined on because he felt like it.
That's the kind of boy he was. He thought anybody would be tickled to
death to have him be around with them. He wasn't a fat boy, but he was
a plump one, and his breeches always fit him so close they were like
the skin on a horse; when he wrinkled they wrinkled. He wore shoes in
summer. He looked all the time like company come to visit, and I guess
that was one reason we didn't care for him much.
The reason we called him Toady was because of his eyes. They popped out
like a frog's eyes, sort of like brown marbles, and the more he talked
the more they popped out. When he talked he couldn't do anything else
but talk. Swatty could lie on his stomach and chew an apple and play
mumblety-peg and kick a hole in the sod with one toe and talk, all at
one time, but Toady couldn't. He had to sit up straight and pop his eyes
out. When he got started talking you could cut in and say, “Was your
grandmother a monkey?” and he'd say, “Yes,” as if he hadn't heard,
and go right on talking. He wouldn't fight, like me and Swatty, and
sometimes Bony, would. If you thought it was time to have a fight with
him and pitched into him he would bend down and turn his back and let
you mailer him until you got through. But, mostly, he would talk somehow
so you wouldn't want to fight him. That's no way for a boy to talk. It's
the way girls talk. Or preachers.
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. So
then she is the one he chooses to kiss when they play “Post-Office” or
“Copenhagen” at parties, and if he's got anything to give her he gives
it to her, like snail shells or a better slate pencil than she has, and
such things. So it's pretty nice, and you feel pretty good about it and
are glad she's your girl.
Well, a short while before Toady Williams came to our town they had an
election to see whether the state was to be prohibition or not, and all
the school children whose fathers were prohibition paraded; so Mamie
Little paraded because her father had the prohibition newspaper in
Riverbank, and I paraded because Mamie did and my father didn't care
whether there was prohibition or not. Swatty didn't parade because his
father was a German tailor, and when he felt like a glass of beer he
wanted to have it, and every fall Swatty's mother made grape wine out of
wild grapes that me and Swatty got from the vines in the bottom across
the Mississippi. 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.”
“Don't you say anything about my father!” Swatty said.
“I'll say he was licked, because he was licked,” I said.
So Swatty pulled off his coat and I pulled off mine, and we had a good
fight. He licked me because he always did; and when he was sitting on my
ribs and had his knees on my arms so I couldn't do anything, he asked me
if I had had enough, and I said I had. Because I had had.
“I guess I showed you how much the prohibitions can lick the
anti-prohibitions!” he said.
“Let me up,” I said.
“Are you prohibition?” he asked.