Well, it looked like that vacation would be a sort of nice one--at the
beginning of it, anyway--because Fan had taken mother's advice and gone
over to Chicago to visit Aunt Beatrice, and Mamie Little had gone down
to Betzville to be on her uncle's farm awhile, because it would do her
good.
When Fan went she went in a closed carriage as far as the depot, because
she was so pale and peaked she didn't want anybody to see her and have
Herb hear of it. She sent him his ring back, I guess, before she went.
I thought it was pretty mean that Fan had to be mostly sick like that,
while Herb was as well as ever and having a good time with Miss Carter,
as far as I knew, but it wasn't any of my business. Mother said she
guessed Fan would get over it, because she was young yet and, goodness
knew! there wasn't so much difference between one man and another, but
that if people like Bony's mother didn't stop coming over and talking
about it she would go mad. And I guess that was so because Bony's mother
is some talker. I 've heard her talk.
I heard her talk about Fan one day, and it made me sick. And then she
talked about Bony, and it made me sicker.
I was sitting on the edge of our porch waiting for Swatty and Bony. I
was tying a piece of salt pork on the bottom of my foot to keep from
getting the “lockjaw, because I had stepped on a rusty nail, and I
thought maybe I had better scrape some of the sand out of the nail hole
before I put the pork on, so it would heal quicker, and I was scraping
it out with my barlow knife. That's how I happened to be sitting on the
edge of the porch; but Bony's mother and my mother were at the other end
of the porch. So then Bony's mother said:
“No, I have never used a switch on my son. I have never struck him
with my hand, nor has his father. We don't believe in it. We use moral
suasion.” That means they jaw Bony. They corner him up somewhere and jaw
him until he blubbers, the way the teachers jaw the girls when they get
too big to paddle, and then Bony's mother blubbers and makes Bony kiss
her and say that now he will be a better and truer boy and keep the Ten
Commandments and not smoke com silk any more. Or whatever it is.
So my mother didn't say anything because when she thinks I need it
she wales me good. 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.”
Well, that's when I almost laughed out loud. Such a smarty, sitting
there and letting on she knew anything about boys! Say, I guess she
never was a boy! “Normal boys never know fear!” She must have thought
she was in heaven, talking about kid angels and not about boys!
Boys are always afraid of something. Even Swatty used to be afraid of
that old witch, Mrs. Groogs. We other boys used to go across the street
from where she lived and holler:
“Old Mother Groogsy, oh!
Lost her needle and couldn't sew!
Old Mother Groogsy, oh!
Lost her nee-dul and could-dent sew!
Old Mu-uth-er Gur-roog-sy, oh!
Lu-ost her nee-eedul and ku-uld-dent sew!”
And then we'd throw clods at her shanty until she came out with a stick
or broom--mostly it was the cane she used to walk with--and then we'd
all throw clods at her at once and run. It made her pretty mad. But
Swatty made her maddest. He knew a German rhyme he could say pretty
fast, and he'd say it and she would get so mad she would shake all over.
Well, one day when we were all sort of teasing her like that, and Swatty
was with us, she came out with a sword. It was a horse soldier's sword,
a saber, and it was so big she could hardly lift it, but she could with
both hands, and she came right at us across the street, swinging it
around her head. If it had hit us it would have killed us, but we ran.
So after that whenever she came out she would have the sword, but we
weren't afraid of her when we were together. It was when one of us
alone had to go anywhere near her shanty. We wouldn't do it. We'd go
'round.
Well, she was one of the things we were afraid of, but the new street
got her away from there. The new street went right through where her
shanty was, so they tore the shanty down, and after that we weren't
afraid of her any more, because she was gone.
So this day--it was Saturday--I was sitting on the porch fixing my foot
when Swatty came over, like he said he would. Bony was with him, but he
waited in the alley because he knew his mother was at my house. I got
around the corner of the house without my mother seeing I was limping
much, so she didn't call me back, and when we got to the alley Bony was
there all right, with a shovel he had borrowed out of their coal bin
while his mother wasn't home. It was to go ahead and make another room
in our cave with. I could walk pretty good, but I had to walk on the toe
end of one of my feet to keep the heel off the ground because the nail
hole was in the palm of my foot. We got to our cave all right.
Our cave was a good one, it was the best one I ever saw anybody make.
It was in the clay bank at the side of Squaw Creek up where there are no
more Irish shanties or geese and where the creek bed is gravelly instead
of sandy. We found the place one day when we were explorers, exploring
the creek to its headwaters, only we stopped when we got to this place
and turned pirates and began digging the cave. We didn't do much that
day, but the next chance we got Swatty had us go up and dig again. We
dug a little every time we went up until the hole was big enough for us
all to get in, and then Swatty said we'd keep right on digging until it
was big enough to live in.
That was what we thought of right at first, but we forgot it. We had had
enough cave digging, I guess. Swatty said: “Aw, garsh! come on and make
a good cave!” but we didn't want to. We wanted to smoke com silk and
talk and be comfortable. So Swatty went outside and climbed up the bank;
but pretty soon he came sliding down the bank. He made the silence sign
and motioned us to come with him. He looked good and scared. So we all
climbed up the bank and looked.
The grass and weeds came right to the edge of the bank and from the edge
they stretched away over a big field. All around the field were trees,
edging it in, but that wasn't what Swatty wanted us to see.
Away over in one corner of the field the Graveyard Gang was playing One
Old Cat.
So that was where we were. The old Squaw Creek had turned and twisted
until it went right into the part of the edge of town where the
Graveyard Gang kids lived, and we had dug our cave right in a place
where we had never dared to go. Gee, I was scared!
We were always scared of the Graveyard Gang. They had to come down to
our school, and there were a lot of them and mostly bigger than we were
and we generally fought after school, but it was only sometimes that
they could catch us and mailer us, because we could throw clods at them
and then skip into our yards where we lived, and they couldn't come
after us. But what they always tried to do was to get some of us
cornered off and chase us out toward the cemetery way. If they got us
out there they could surround us and mailer the life out of us. And they
would.
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. It was a dandy cave. It was big enough to stand up
in, and we made a stove out of old iron and made a hole up through the
ceiling for the smoke to go out, and we had some potatoes and things so
we could stand a long siege. We worked at it nearly all vacation. Swatty
showed us how to make a door, and we made it and we painted the outside
with wet clay so the door would look like the side of the bank but it
didn't. It did some, but not much.
Well, when school began again we began having clod fights with the
Graveyard Gang again and some of them were pretty tough fights. Once,
Swatty said, when me and Bony wasn't with him some of the Graveyard
kids cornered him off and chased him all the way out to their part of
town, but he dodged and went behind some bushes and got to the cave and
hid there until night, and they never found him. So we knew the cave was
a good thing to have. So this day I'm telling about we went right up
the creek to our cave and the minute we got there Swatty stopped short.
“Somebody has been here!” he said.
The door of the cave was busted in and was off one of its hinges. Our
stove was all kicked over and the table we had made was busted down and
everything we had was all kicked around. We guessed the Graveyard Gang
had found us out, so Swatty and me and Bony went to work and fixed up
the door and mended the stove. We didn't know when they would come
back.
They came back quick enough. The first we heard was them talking at the
top of the bank, and then all of them slid down. I guess they wanted to
stop when they got to the cave mouth, but Swatty was in the door of the
cave and he had his pockets full of our throwing stones, and he leaned
out and let them have them. They yelled and slid right on down to the
creek.
Bony began to cry.
Well, there were about twelve of the Graveyard Gang down there in the
creek. They got together and talked about how they would get us and then
they began throwing stones. I tried to help Swatty stone them, but the
door was too narrow, and he told me to stay inside and hand him stones
to throw. He threw as fast as he could and sometimes he hit a Graveyard
kid and sometimes he missed, but one kid can't hardly throw against
twelve, and pretty soon a stone hit Swatty on the forehead just on his
eyebrow. He put up his hand to feel the place and another hit him on the
crazy bone, and he came inside and lay down on the floor of the cave
and hugged his elbow and rocked himself and groaned. I guess it hurt him
pretty bad. Bony just stood and bellered: “Oh, I want to go home! I want
to go home!”
I went to the door and began to throw stones, but I was so mad I
couldn't aim straight. Swatty sat up and rocked himself and hugged his
elbow.
“Shut the door!” he howled at me. “Come in and shut the door! Shut the
door!”
So I did. I wasn't much afraid of being hit, but I knew the door shut
right away, so I shut it. The minute it was shut the stones hit against
it like hail. The Graveyard Gang cheered, but it didn't do them any
good; the little throwing stones couldn't break the door and they
couldn't throw big ones up that far.
In a little while Swatty was just rubbing his elbow and he got up and
helped me brace the door shut with the shovel and things. His forehead
was swelled up like an egg, but he didn't mind that.
“There!” he said. “This shows it was a good thing we have a cave,” and
I guessed he was right. He went over and made Bony stop blubbering.
He made him stop by telling him to hurry and build a fire in the stove
because maybe we might have to stay there a week or even longer, and
we'd have to cook potatoes to live on or else starve to death. So Bony
forgot to cry and started to make a fire.
Between the boards of our door we could see out through the crack and we
could see that the Graveyard Gang didn't know what to do next to get us.
Once in a while they threw a stone or two but that didn't hurt us. And
then they did the thing that chased us out.
I guess it was about five o'clock by then. We thought it was later
because it was getting dark, but we couldn't see that there was a big
storm coming up. It was coming up back of us and was hiding the sun. All
at once there was thunder, and then the stove began to smoke out into
the cave. Then the whole cave began to fill with smoke.
I coughed, and me and Bony thought the wind was blowing the smoke down
the chimney, but Swatty went to the stove and kicked the top off and
began scattering the wood and coals over the floor to put out the fire.
Some of the Graveyard Gang had put something over the top of our chimney
so that the smoke would come into the cave and smoke us out.
Well, that was all right. We kicked the fire out and that ought to have
stopped the smoke but it didn't. The smoke came in worse than ever, and
then Swatty knew what was the matter. The Graveyard Gang was filling our
chimney with burning grass or straw or something and then stopping the
top of the chimney so the smoke would come down into the cave.
The smoke got so thick we couldn't see and we couldn't breathe. Swatty
looked out of the door cracks and there were eight or nine of the
Graveyard Gang down there in the creek laying for us, but what could we
do? We couldn't stay in the cave and be suffocated to death, could we?
So what we had to do we had to do mighty quick.
Swatty threw open the cave door. He had picked up a stick and he sort
of waved it over his head. Bony was blubbering again and I couldn't see
very well for the smoke in my eyes, and neither could Swatty, I guess,
but Swatty waved the stick and shouted:
“Come on, now!” he shouted. “We've got 'em surrounded! Charge 'em! We've
got 'em now!”
Well, the Graveyard kids looked up at the top of the other bank and
Swatty started to slide down the bank right at them, and me and Bony
we started to slide down, and the Graveyard kids turned and ran up the
creek. I guess they were scared that Swatty had seen a lot more of our
kids coming. Anyway, they ran about half a block and then they saw there
was just Swatty and Bony and me and that we were climbing up the other
bank to get away, and they came for us.
We didn't have much of a start. We didn't know exactly where we were.
We ran where the running was easiest, and pretty soon we came to a fence
and climbed over and we were in a road. We turned and ran up the road,
and the first of the Graveyard kids was piling over the fence already
so we just let out our legs and ran! Even Bony stopped crying. He just
turned white and scared-looking and ran. He ran so fast he ran in front
of us and we could hardly keep up with him.
The whole Graveyard Gang was after us now, shouting and running and
pretty soon we knew where we were--we were on the Four Mile Road because
off in the distance we could see the big red building of the Poor Farm.
We knew that building pretty well because it is one of the places we
kept away from because they keep the crazy folks there. You never know
when a crazy man will cut you open with a knife or something.
We didn't have time to think of that scare then, we were so scared of
what would happen to us if the Graveyard kids caught us. I guess we
didn't think of the Poor Farm crazy folks at all.
So pretty soon Bony began to drop back, and we caught up with him. It
was thundering and lightning hard now and the wind was blowing the way
it does just before a big storm--big whoofs that throw up the dust in
thick waves and make the trees bend low down and shake the leaves out of
them--and Bony was crying again. Swatty shouted at him, but we couldn't
hear what he was saying, the wind and the thunder and trees made so much
noise. I looked back and saw that the Graveyard kids were right after us
and then--Bony fell down!
He didn't fall flat. He fell half and took half a step and then turned
and fell sideways, and when he tried to get up he couldn't. I ran a
little bit before I stopped, but Swatty stopped short and when I looked
back he was trying to drag Bony up again. There was an awful flash of
lightning, one of the kind you can't see for a minute after, and then a
bang like a thousand cannon, only keener, and a big tree at the side of
the road just split in two and one half fell across the road. I guess
maybe I cried a little, but I didn't stop to do it; I ran back to Swatty
and Bony and grabbed hold of Bony's other arm and helped Swatty drag
him.
I don't know what happened to the Graveyard Gang. I guess they got
scared of the storm and went home but we didn't think of that then,
All we thought of was to get Bony away in a hurry. It was awful! The
lightning and thunder were just glare, glare, glare! and bang, bang,
bang! and no rest in between, and the wind was bending the trees almost
down to the ground and holding them there stiff, not swaying. I was just
bellering and yanking Bony by the arm and saying, “Oh, come on, Bony!
Oh, come on, Bony!” over and over. Swatty was shouting at me all the
time, but I couldn't tell what he was saying, but he pulled more at his
arm of Bony than I pulled at mine, and then I saw he was taking him off
the road, because there was a house right where we were and he wanted to
get him to the house.
Just when we got Bony onto the porch of the house it began to rain. It
didn't rain down, it rained straight across, like the lines on writing
paper, and it didn't rain a little--it rained all the rain there ever
was or will be, I guess. The rain came into that porch like water shot
out of a fire hose nozzle, just swish-swash against the front of the
house and then up to your ankles on the rotten floor of the porch. And
then, when there was a white flash of lightning I saw where we were. We
were on the porch of the Haunted House!
[Illustration: 182]
All the kids knew about the Haunted House. The way I knew about it was
because we used to go out the Four Mile Road nutting and then we used to
see it. Anybody would know it was a haunted house just by looking at it.
The glass in the windows was all gone and boards, any old boards, were
nailed across the windows, and the doors were either nailed up or broken
in and hanging crooked on one hinge. The paint was all off and the
chimneys had toppled over and the bricks and mortar were all scattered
down the roof and some on the porch roof. The shingles were all curled
up and there were bare patches where they had blown off.
It was a big house, two stories and a half, and there was a porch all
across the front, but at one corner the porch post had rotted down so
that the porch roof sagged almost to the floor there, and the rest of
the roof was all skewish. The floor of the porch where we were was all
dry-rotted and some of the boards were gone, and the grass and weeds
grew up through the floor everywhere. The yard was all weeds, as high
as a man, and tangled blackberry bushes, and at night, so Swatty and
all the kids said, something white used to come to the windows and stand
there, and you could hear moans. It was a haunted house all right. All
the boys knew that and all the boys kept away from it. And there we
were, right on the porch and the rain just drowning us.
“Come on, we got to get him inside,” Swatty said, and he took hold of
Bony again.
I didn't want to. It was bad enough to be on the porch of a haunted
house or anywhere near it, but the thunder and lightning and rain and
wind and everything made all things kind of different than on other
days. It wasn't like real; it was like dreams. It was like the end of
the world, when you don't think what you do but just do it; and so I
took hold of Bony and helped.
We got Bony to the front door and into the hall of the house. In there
it was so black we couldn't see except when the lightning flashed,
and then we couldn't see much. The rain was blowing in at the door and
running down the hall. The old house shook and trembled. A brick or
something rolled down the roof and thumped on the porch roof.
We got Bony into a dry corner of the hall and let him sit on the floor
and Swatty tried to feel Bony's leg to see if it was broken or what,
and while he was doing that there came a big crash and the rain stopped
coming in at the front door. It was the porch roof. It had blown down
the rest of the way, shutting up the door and shutting us in. But we
didn't know then that we were shut in. We were just frightened by the
noise. We thought maybe the house had been struck by lightning.
Well, after that it was darker in the house than ever. We didn't get the
light from the lightning through the door any more, and we only got
it through the cracks between the boards at the windows. We just stood
there, me and Swatty, and Bony on the floor, and listened to the storm
and the water swashing against the house and to the old house creaking
and grating, and Bony moaned over his ankle and cried because of
everything. I was just plain scared. I just stood and got more and more
scared. I tried to listen whether the creaking and grating was the house
or ghosts, and I listened so hard my ears seemed to reach out. I didn't
dare to breathe. Pretty soon I was too scared for any use. I said,
“Swatty!”
“What?” he answered back.
“I'm scared,” I said.
Well, then Bony began to beller loud.
“Aw, shut up!” Swatty told him. “I'm scared, too, ain't I? Feel my
wrist,” he says to me, “it's all goose flesh, ain't it? That's how
scared I am, but it don't do any good to beller about it.”
So we just stayed there. Bony held on to Swatty's ankle with one hand
and I sort of edged over so I was close to Swatty, and we just waited,
because that was all there was to do. So after a while the storm let up.
It rained a little yet, but the thunder and lightning stopped. The wind
blew some, but not so much. It was pretty dark in the house. We knew it
must be getting toward night.
“I guess we can go now,” Swatty said, and I was glad of it. We boosted
Bony up so he could hobble on one leg between us and we went to the
front door. Well, we couldn't get out!
And that wasn't the worst of it; every other way out was boarded up! We
went all around the first floor and tried all the windows and the back
door and they were all boarded up. We were fastened tight into the
Haunted House.
It was pretty bad going into the dark rooms, one after another, not
knowing whether something would jump out at you, and I guess me and Bony
wouldn't have done it if Swatty hadn't made us. But there wasn't any
way out, and that wasn't the worst. There wasn't even a little piece
of board to pry the boards off the windows. There, wasn't a loose brick
or anything. Nothing but dust, and maybe a couple of pieces of paper.
“What'll we do?” I asked, awfully scared. “Garsh! I don't know!” Swatty
said. “We got to get out somehow. We'll starve to death here if we
don't. We got to get something to pry off a board from a window.”
Well, there wasn't anything to pry one off with. Not down where we
were. So Swatty said, all of a sudden:
“Come on! I'm going to see if there's anything we can get upstairs.”
“Aw, no, Swatty!” I begged. “Don't go up there! I don't want to go up!”
“Well, you don't have to, do you?” he said. “I didn't ask you to. I said
I was going.”
So he went alone, and I stayed down with Bony. We were all alone in the
dark down there and Swatty went up the stairs. He went up a step at a
time and then stopped and listened, and then he went up another step and
listened. Pretty soon he got to the top of the stairs and then we heard
him going from one room to smother and feeling with his foot for a board
or something that would do to pry our way out. Then we didn't hear him
for a minute, I guess.
Pretty soon he came to the head of the stairs. He leaned over the
balusters.
“Hey! George! Come on up,” he said in a whisper. “There ain't nothing up
here. I want to go up in the attic.”
Bony wouldn't go. Swatty had to come down and talk to him like a Dutch
uncle and tell him what he thought of him, and then he blubbered while
we were helping him up the stairs. He said it was all right for us to go
up because if anything--he didn't say a ghost, because he was afraid
to, but that was what he meant--jumped out at us we could run, but he
couldn't because his ankle was sprained. But we got him up all right.
We got him up and I stayed with him at the head of the stairs, and
Swatty went and opened the attic stair door. He opened it, and then he
stood there a second. Even where I was I could hear it. It was like a
groan--like a long, sick sort of groan--and it was from up there in the
attic. I turned so stiff and cold I couldn't open or shut my lips. I
couldn't breathe. I was like ice, numb and cold all over except my hair
pulled upward all over my head. A ghost could have come and put its cold
hand on me and I couldn't have moved.
“Oh! Oh--!” came that long moan from up in the attic. Bony stood up,
and his ankle gave way and he fell down the stairs--all the way to the
bottom.
He stayed there, just calling out, “Swatty, Swatty!” over and over.
It was dark there now, dead dark. All at once I screamed. Something had
touched me on the arm.
“Aw, shut up!” Swatty said, because it was Swatty that had touched me.
“Shut up and don't be a baby! I've got to go up there, and you've got
to go up with me.”
“Why?”
“Because I don't want to go up there alone,” he said. “That's why if you
want to know.”
“What do you want to go up for, anyway?”
“Well, you won't go up alone, will you? And Bony won't go up alone, will
he? Somebody's got to go up and see if there's anything up there we can
pry our way out with. Come on! That noise ain't nothin' but the wind,
or maybe an owl, or something else.” So I had to go. I made Swatty go
first, and he went up the attic stairs real slow, and I didn't crowd him
any, you bet! At the top of the stairs he stopped short. So I stopped
short.
“What's the matter?” I whispered. Swatty stood still.
“There's something up here or somebody--something alive,” he whispered
back in terror.
And there was! Between the moans I could hear it breathe, a long breath,
like “Ah-ah!” So the next thing I knew I was down two flights of stairs
at the front door, trying to scratch my way through the porch roof with
my finger nails, and Bony was hanging onto my legs, and we were both
scared stiff. I guess it wasn't so long after we heard something
breathe in the attic, about a second after, maybe. And I couldn't
scratch my way out. So I began to yell: “Swatty! Oh, Swatty! Come here;
why don't you come here? Oh, Swatty, come!” And Bony yelled too. We both
did. I guess we both cried, we were so scared and frightened and afraid.
Shut in a haunted house like that and something moaning and breathing in
the attic! Anybody would be scared. Anybody but Swatty.
Afterward, the next time we got together after Bony's ankle was well and
after the manager of the Poor Farm had given us each a watch and chain
for what we did, Swatty said he wasn't scared when he heard the groaner
breathe, because he had heard his folks's cow when it had the colic, and
that was the way the cow groaned and breathed when it had it. Anyway,
when I ran away from him and left him alone he stood and listened, and
then he went up the last step and listened again. It was black up there.
So he said, “Who's there?” and waited and the groaning kept on. So he
walked right over toward where the groaning kept coming from. He walked
slowly, pushing one foot ahead of him and holding out both hands,
because the floor might not be all there, and all at once his foot hit
something hard and cold. He was barefoot, like all of us.
It might have been a snake. It might have been anything, for all Swatty
knew, but he bent down and felt it with his hand. I wouldn't have done
it for a million dollars, and Bony wouldn't have done it for ten million
dollars! No, sir! So at first Swatty thought it was an old scythe blade
somebody had left there, and he was mighty glad anyway, because it would
do to pry the boards off a window and let us out, but when he tried to
pick it up it was held onto.
Well, I guess I might as well say it right out. It was a sword, and it
was Mrs. Groogs's sword, and it was old Mrs. Groogs that was holding
onto the other end of the sword and lying there and groaning and
breathing! It was her son's sword, and he had been killed in the war
Grant and Lincoln and Swatty's father had been in, and when she ran away
from the Poor Farm and they couldn't find out where she had gone, that
was all she took and that was where she went to die--there in the attic
of the Haunted House. She went there because she was kind of crazy and
thought the mother of a son that had died for his country oughtn't to
die in the Poor House. But she didn't die in it, either, because the
Woman's Relief Corps rented a room for her and the city gave her Outside
Support again.
So if it hadn't been for us Mrs. Groogs would have starved to death in
the Haunted House, and if it hadn't been for her and her sword maybe we
would have starved to death in it. So I guess it was all right.
So that time none of us got licked when we got home. Swatty didn't
because his father was a G.A.R. and Mrs. Groogs was a G.A.R.-ess, and I
didn't because my folks were glad I hadn't been struck by lightning, and
Bony didn't because his folks were moral suasion. They jawed him.