After I got out of bed and went back to school I fought Toady Williams
a couple of times, but it wasn't much good because he wouldn't fight
back. All the good it did was to make Mamie Little tell Lucy I was a
mean, bad boy and that she would never speak to me again as long as she
lived. Once I almost told her that it was me that got the father fashion
plate out of the fire and that Toady Williams didn't do anything but
pick it up out of the mud after I had got it for her, but I didn't tell
her because then she would have thought I was sweet on her. That _would_
have made me feel cheap.
It made me feel pretty mean, just the same, to see the way Toady
Williams was playing with her all the time, when I had picked her out to
be my secret girl. He gave her pencils and apples and everything and
I guess she liked it. I wished I was grown up, so I could ride up on a
bucking bronco and sling a lasso over Toady's head and jerk him into
the dust. Then Mamie Little would say, “Hello, Georgie! Can I get up
and ride behind you over the wild plains, because I don't want to have
anything more to do with a 'fraidy-cat like Toady.”
But it didn't seem as if anything like that was going to happen. Not for
years, anyway.
One day Swatty came over to my yard and he said, “Say!” so I said, “Say
what?” and he said, “Say, you know Herb's tricycle?” and I said I did.
Herb was Swatty's brother that wanted to marry my sister Fan and he
had got the tricycle a couple of years ago, when all the bicycles were
high-wheel bicycles. He had got it for him and Fan to ride on, and
it was a two-seat one--side-by-side seats--and after a few times Fan
wouldn't ride on it because it made her as conspicuous as a pig on a
flagpole. So Herb rode on it alone some, and with some other fellow
some, but mostly he kept it chained up in Swatty's barn and said he
would scalp Swatty and skin him alive if Swatty ever touched it.
So this day Swatty came over and he said, “What do you think!” because
Herb said when he was married to Fan, Swatty could have the tricycle.
You bet Swatty was tickled. So I asked him who would ride on it with
him.
“Well--you will,” he said. “And Bony. That's when I ain't taking
somebody else.”
He didn't say who else, but I knew, because I knew Swatty was having my
sister Lucy for his secret girl.
“And part of the time,” I said, “I can have it alone, can't I, Swatty?”
“It's my tricycle--” he started to say.
“It ain't yet,” I told him, “and I guess if I go to work good and plenty
it never will be, because if I want to I can think up how to make Fan
mad at Herb again and then you wouldn't get it. And, anyway, if Lucy went
to ride on it she might fall off and get hurt, so I guess I'd tell my
mother not to let Lucy ride on it. Unless I could take it sometimes and
find out that it was safe.”
Because I guessed that if Mamie Little had a chance to ride on that
tricycle with me she'd be pretty sick of that fat, old Toady Williams
mighty quick. So me and Swatty fixed it up that way, that I was to have
the tricycle part of the time and he was to have it part of the time.
The only thing was to get Herb and Fan married off as soon as we could,
and to look out that nothing turned up to scare them away from each
other again like that Miss Murphy fuss did. It wasn't going to take
much to scare Herb away. I knew that.
Well, I guess grown folks don't care whether they have a divorce or not,
because they are always having them and so maybe they get used to having
them and don't think much about it and are not ashamed to have them,
but I guess a kid is always kind of ashamed when his folks get them. We
never had one in our family but we had babies and I guess a kid feels
about the same way when there is a divorce in his family as he does
when there is a baby. It makes him feel pretty sick and ashamed and
miserable. It ain't his fault but he feels like it was. He goes out the
back gate and sneaks to school through the alley and when a kid sees him
the kid says: “Ho! you had a baby at your house,” and the kid that had
the baby come to his house wishes he could sneak into a crack in the
sidewalk or die or something.
I guess that's the way it is when you have a divorce at your house. It
ain't your fault but you feel like it was and you don't have any of the
fun of fighting and getting the divorce, like your folks do; you just
have the feel-miserable part.
So one day about when the river began to fall again, only it was still
mighty high, me and Swatty and Bony went up to Bony's room in Bony's
house. It was muddy weather, in June, and I guess we had been wading
in the mud or something so we knew Bony's mother wouldn't let us go
upstairs to his room unless we washed our feet first, unless we sneaked
it. So we sneaked it.
The reason we went up was so Bony could prove it that the Victor bicycle
his father might maybe buy for him weighed only forty-five pounds. He
had a catalogue to prove it with but it was up in his room, so we went
up to get it. It proved it, all right. Swatty said that was pretty light
for a bicycle to weigh, and I said it, too. So then we said a lot of
more things about a lot of other things but mostly we talked about the
bicycle, because Bony was going to let me and Swatty learn to ride on it
if he got it. Swatty bet he could get right on it and ride right off
as slick as a whistle because he had an uncle in Derlingport that had
a dozen bicycles. So then Bony said he'd like to know why, if Swatty's
uncle had that many, he didn't send Swatty one, and Swatty said maybe he
would. We just kind of talked and let the mud dry on our feet and crack
off onto the floor.
Well, in the floor in one place there was a hole and Bony showed us
how he could look through it down into the dining-room and see what
his mother was putting on the table for dinner whenever she was putting
anything on. The hole was about as big around as a stovepipe and it had
a tin business in it to keep the floor from catching afire because that
was where the stovepipe from the dining-room stove came up through the
floor to go into a drum to help heat Bony's room when it was winter. So
we all looked down into Bony's stovepipe hole to see if it was like he
said. And it was.
Just then Bony's father came into the diningroom. He had his hat on
but it wasn't time for dinner or anything and he didn't come into the
dining-room as if he was coming for dinner. He came in fast and threw
his hat on the floor and pounded on the table twice with his fist. The
dishes jumped and a milk pitcher fell over on its side and spilled the
milk.
“Mary! Mary!” he shouted.
So Bony's mother came in from the kitchen. “Why, Henry!” she said;
“what's the matter?”
“Matter? Matter?” he shouted. “I'll tell you what's the matter! I'll
show you what's the matter! Look at this! Look at this, will you!”
Me and Swatty looked but Bony kind of drew back from the hole and his
mother didn't look. I guess she didn't have to. I guess she knew what it
was without looking. It was a bill, all right. Me and Swatty could see
that but we didn't know what it was for--whether it was for a hat or a
dress or what. So Bony's father threw the bill on the table and stood
with one fist on the edge of the table and the other fist opening and
shutting. Bony's mother had been paring potatoes or something, I guess.
She wiped her hands on her apron but she didn't pick up the bill.
“Well?” she said.
“Of all the useless, idiotic, ill-timed, outrageous, unheard-of
extravagance ever incurred by any brainless, gad-about, senseless, vain
peacock of a woman--” Bony's father said.
“Henry! Stop right there!” Bony's mother said. “This time I will
not listen to your abuse. Year after year I have put up with this
browbeating. I go in rags, and if I so much as buy--”
“Rags!” Bony's father shouted. “Rags! You in rags? You dare taunt
me with that, when you crowd enough on your back to support a dozen
families? Rags? When from year's end to year's end I do nothing but
struggle to pay your eternal bills!” Well, maybe I haven't got what
Bony's father and mother said just the way they said it, but it was like
that. So they had a good start and they went right on and pretty
soon Bony's father was walking up and down the room, talking loud
and pounding the table every time he passed it, and Bony's mother was
sitting with a corner of her apron in each hand and the hands pressed to
her cheeks. Her eyes were big and scary. So then Bony's father stopped
in front of her and said a lot and she didn't talk back. So that made
him mad and he took the tablecloth and jerked it and all the dishes fell
on the floor and broke.
Bony just went to the bed and lay on his face and squeezed his hands
into his ears. I guess he felt pretty mean. He was crying, but we didn't
know that then. We found it out afterward.
So then, when all the dishes broke, Bony's mother sort of yelled and
jumped up. Swatty said:
“Garsh! What's she going to do?”
But she didn't do anything like we thought she was going to. She bent
down and picked up a dish that wasn't all smashed to pieces and put
it on the table as easy as could be and then she untied her apron and
folded it up and laid it over the back of a chair as neat as a pin. She
looked at herself in the mirror in the sideboard and then walked around
Bony's father and went toward the door into the hall.
“Where are you going?” Bony's father asked.
“Going?” she said, or something like that. “I'm going to see if I can't
put a stop to this sort of thing. I have had enough years of it. I'm
going to see Mr. Rascop.”
Well, we knew who he was; he was a lawyer.
“Very well,” said Bony's father, “go! I assure you you cannot get a
divorce too quickly to suit me!”
I guess that when the loud noise stopped Bony thought the fight was over
and listened again. Anyway he was listening now and he heard what they
said.
“I thought that,” said Bony's mother. “This is not the first time, by
many, that I have thought it. You will be glad to be rid of me and I
of you. My mother will be glad enough to have me with her. I shall, of
course, take the boy.”
“As you like!” said Bony's father.
“The boy” was Bony, so he began to blubber worse than ever. He was
pretty much ashamed and when his folks began to talk quiet-like, without
shouting, me and Swatty began to be ashamed, too. We felt the way you
feel when there's just been a baby at your house--as if we hadn't ought
to be there. So Swatty picked up his hat.
“Come on!” he said. “Let's go. It ain't no fun up here in Bony's room.”
“Wait!” Bony whispered, like he was scared to be left there alone, so we
waited. He came along with us.
We tiptoed downstairs and outdoors and I tell you it was good to get
outside where there wasn't any divorce but just good spring mud and
things. So Swatty whistled at a kid down the street but it was a kid
Swatty had said he would lick if he caught him, so the kid ran.
Well, we sat down on the grass under the tree and me and Swatty talked
pretty loud and fighty because Bony wasn't saying anything at all and
was looking so earnest it made us feel sort of ashamed. He was thinking
of the divorce. So me and Swatty talked fighty to each other to try and
make Bony forget.
But Bony didn't laugh. He didn't even smile. 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!”
We hadn't thought of that before and right away we forgot about whether
Bony was feeling sick or not. 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. He'll ask Fan if she has hat-bills--”
“Garsh!” said Swatty again, “we've got to stop the divorce,” only he
said “diworce,” because that was how he talked.
I thought so, too. If Bony's folks got one and Herb heard about it and
got scared of marrying Fan, then Swatty wouldn't have the tricycle and I
couldn't take Mamie Little riding on it and make fat, old Toady Williams
look sick. So I thought like Swatty did, but I said:
“Well, how are you going to stop it?”
“If Bony was to get the diphtheria, and get it bad, that would stop it,”
he said.
I saw that was so. If Bony got the diphtheria, and got it bad, they
wouldn't let him travel on the train, and so his mother couldn't go to
his grandmother's and that would stop it. So I said:
“Yes, and while he was sick we could use his bicycle all the time. How's
he going to get diphtheria?”
“Why, as easy as pie,” Swatty said. “They've got it down at Markses.
All he's got to do is to go down there and sneak in and stand around in
Billy Markses bedroom until he gets it. Diphtheria is one of the easiest
things you can get. Anybody can get it!”
It looked like a mighty good plan to me. Me and Swatty went on talking
about it and the more we talked the better it was. We talked about how
long it would be after Bony got exposed to it before he would really
have it and Swatty said that wouldn't matter. All Bony would have to do
would be to go right down to Markses and get exposed and then hurry home
and tell his mother. The divorce would stop right away and wouldn't have
to wait until he was sick in bed before it stopped. So then I said that,
anyway, Bony's father would send for the bicycle right away, because
fathers always hurry up to get things when their boys are good and sick.
It was all bully and fine and me and Swatty felt pretty good about it,
but Bony spoke up.
“I ain't going to get diphtheria!” he said.
Well, that's the way some fellows are! You go and work your brains all
to pieces thinking up things to help them out of their troubles and then
they say something like that. We saw it wasn't any use to coax him.
If we wanted to stop the divorce we would have to do it another way. I
said:
“I know the preacher that Bony's mother goes to the church of.”
“Well, what's that got to do with it?” Swatty asked.
“Well, couldn't we tell him about it and get him to stop the divorce?
When Jim Carter wouldn't marry our cook my father told the Catholic
priest and he made Jim Carter marry her as easy as pie.”
“That's no good,” Swatty said. “That was marrying. That's what priests
and preachers are for--marrying folks together--they ain't for diworcing
them apart again. If it was somebody I wanted to have married together
of course I'd have thought of a preacher right away. You don't think I'm
so dumb as not to have thought of that, do you? But this ain't marrying
them together, it's keeping them married together; it's keeping them
from diworcing apart.” Then, all at once he said, “Garsh!”
“What are you garshing about?” I asked him.
“Garsh!” he said again. “I guess I am dumb! I guess I ought to let a
mule kick me! 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.”
Well, I guess we didn't think when we started how we would do it. We
just started.
When we got down to the court-house, where the judge stays, I didn't
feel so much like doing it and Bony didn't feel like doing it at all. It
was different when we got down there than it was when we were sitting
on the grass under my apple tree. All along the front edge of the front
porch of the court-house were big pillars and each pillar was as big
around as twenty boys standing in a lump would be. So me and Bony we
sort of peeked into the hall and went out on the porch again, but Swatty
went right inside. So we sort of frowned at Swatty and shouted in a
whisper: “Aw! come on, Swatty! Let's go home.”
But Swatty spoke right out, as if he wasn't afraid of the court-house at
all.
“Aw, come on!” he said. “What are you afraid of?”
I wouldn't have talked out loud like that for anything. His voice came
back in echoes: “Aw-waw-come-um-um-on-non-non!” Like that. Every word he
said said itself over and over that way.
But Swatty, when we didn't come, went down the hall and when he found an
open door he went right in. He asked for the judge. We looked into the
hall and we saw Swatty come out of the door he had gone in at and we saw
him go up the wide stairs and push open the green door at the head
of the stairs and go in. After a while he came out again and came
downstairs and out on the porch.
“Did you see him?” I asked.
“No,” he said. “I'd ought to have remembered that this was Saturday.
Judges don't have court on Saturday; they go fishing.”
So then Bony began to cry. He leaned against one of the big pillars and
began to snigger like a little kid that's lost, and then he turned his
face to the pillar and I guess he bawled to himself. I guess he had sort
of thought Swatty would have everything fixed so there wouldn't be any
divorce when he came from the judge's room and it disappointed him. So
Swatty said: “Aw! shut up your bellerin'! We ain't going to let your
folks get diworced, are we? You make me sick, acting like we was. I
guess me and George knows what we are going to do, don't we, George?” So
I says, “Yes; what is it?”
Well, Swatty knew just what we were going to do; and so did I, after he
told me. We were going to go to the judge where he was fishing and tell
him not to divorce Bony's folks. And that was all right because Bony's
mother was afraid of the water and wouldn't ride in a rowboat and so
even if she wanted to get divorced quick she couldn't be until the judge
came back from fishing. So then I said:
“Aw! there ain't no fishing when the water is so high in the river!”
“Aw! who told you so much?” Swatty said. “You think you know all the
kinds of fishing there is, don't you? Well, I guess you don't! I guess
me and the judge knows more kinds of fishing than you do.”
So we walked down to the river and Swatty told us. It was buffalo
fishing you do with a pitchfork. I guess you know what kind of a fish a
buffalo is. At first nobody ate buffalo fish but niggers, and they ate
dogfish, too, but pretty soon the fishmarket men got so they shipped
buffalo fish to Chicago and everywhere just like they shipped catfish.
But nobody in our town ate them but niggers, because they tasted of mud.
Maybe the Chicago people liked to taste mud.
Well, anyway, the buffalo fish eat grass or roots or something and in
the spring, when the river is high and up over the bottoms, the buffalo
fish swim up to wherever the edge of the river has gone in the grass and
weeds and sometimes they swim in so close that their backs stick out
of water and they sort of swim on their bellies in the mud--dozens and
hundreds of them, big fat fellows. So then the farmer can't plough yet,
because it is too muddy in the fields, and they get their farm wagons
and some pitchforks and drive down to the river. Then they separate
apart and wade out and come together again when' they are out about
waist deep and they wade in toward shore and the buffalo fish are
between them and the shore. Then the farmers go with a rush and the
buffalo fish get scared. Some of them get so scared they try to swim
right up on shore on their bellies, and some try to swim out into deep
water, but whatever they try to do the farmers just pitchfork them up
onto shore. Wagon loads of them! So, before the Chicago folks got to
like buffalo fish, the farmers chopped the buffalo fish into bits and
ploughed them into the ground to make things grow better, but now they
mostly hauled them to town and sold them to the fishmarket men for one
and one half cents a pound. So that was where the judge was. He was
over to a farmer's named Shebberd, in Illinois, because he had never
pitchforked buffalo fish before and he wanted to do it once and see what
it was like.
Me and Swatty and Bony knew where Shebberd's was, because when you were
over in Illinois you could get a drink of water there.
I guess it was almost a mile across the river and then it was almost
five miles back to Shebberd's bottom land cornfield. We got a skiff at
the boathouse and me and Swatty and Bony rowed across the river. The
water was mighty high and the current was everywhere and not just in one
place, and it was strong. Bony sat in the stem and me and Swatty rowed
and we had to row almost straight up-stream. It was hard work. My wrists
swelled up and got hot and tight but we kept thinking about the divorce
we didn't want Bony's folks to get and we kept on rowing. Even with the
boat pointed almost straight up-stream we were about half a mile below
where we started, when we reached the Illinois side and rowed in among
the trees. It was easier there; not so much current.
It was fine rowing through the trees, seeing everything, and nothing
looking like it usually does. We came to the First Slough and it was
just water--like a road of water between the trees--and we kept on
rowing and came to the Second Slough and the Third Slough and they were
like that, too, and then we came out of the trees and we were in a whale
of a lot of water. Bony said, “Oh!” and Swatty looked over his shoulder
and said, “Garsh!” and stopped rowing. It looked like miles and miles of
water--water we had never seen before--and all at once you felt little
and lost and sort of frightened.
“Garsh!” Swatty said. “I was never here before.”
“Where is it?” I asked.
Swatty looked all around.
“I don't know,” he said. “I never heard of a place like this.”
“Swatty!” I said.
“What?”
“Let's go home!”
I guess I sort of whined it, and so Bony began to cry. Swatty stood up
and let his oars rest and looked all around. He looked anxious and when
Swatty looked anxious it was time to be frightened. Anyway, I thought
so.
When Swatty had looked all around and didn't know any more than he did
before, he sat down and looked over the edge of the boat at the water.
So I did it.
“What do you see, Swatty?” I asked, because I was afraid he saw
something to be frightened of. But what he saw was little flecks of
leaves and things floating by in the water the way dust floats in the
sunlight, and the reason he looked was so he could see which way the
current was running, because no matter where we were we wanted to row
up-stream. We had gone into the woods below the bottom road and when the
water was as high as it was now the bottom road either made a dam across
the bottom or the water came over it like a waterfall or rushed through
in a rapids nobody could row up. So Swatty knew we couldn't have passed
the bottom road but must be below it somewhere and the place we wanted
to be at was just where the bottom road hit the hill, so what we had to
do--wherever we were then--was to row up-stream. So we rowed. We rowed I
don't know how far and all at once Bony said:
“Look out! you're rowing into something!”
Me and Swatty backed water as quick as we could and looked over our
shoulders. What we had nearly rowed into was a pile of sticks and a heap
of dried grass. It was a good deal as if somebody had chucked a couple
of forks full of hay on a lot of driftwood and set it adrift.
“There's something alive in it!” Bony sort of shivered.
Swatty looked and I looked.
“Mush-rat's house!” Swatty said right away, and it was. It was the kind
the mush-rats make so that when a flood comes it will float and not
sink, and there it was right out in the middle of the lake we were lost
in.
Then all at once Swatty said: “Say!”
Gee, but he scared me!
“What, Swatty?” I asked.
“Say!” he said; “we're floating away from that mush-rat house and it
ain't floating with us. I never heard of a mush-rat house out in the
middle of a lake, with a current floating by, that didn't float with the
current!”
“Are you scared, Swatty?” I asked, for if he was scared I didn't know
what I would be.
“No, I ain't scared,” he said, “but it ain't right. It ain't possible,
that's all! I bet this is a haunted lake. I bet there is a haunted house
around here, or an ol' witch, or something.”
“Come on, let's get out of it, then. Let's row!”