Well, when we came to find out about it the new babies at my and Bony's
houses weren't near as hard to bear as we had thought they would be.
One reason was because they came at vacation time, when we didn't have
to go to school, and the other was that they didn't make us take them
out in baby carriages like we was afraid they would. One thing was that
they was too fresh yet, and the other was that they wouldn't trust them
to such young hoodlums anyway.
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.
It makes it easier and you don't feel so foolish going up front.
Well, they had this revival at our church the winter before the vacation
I'm telling about. When they had it I was having Mamie Little for my
secret girl and she went up in front, so I got religion and went up in
front too. But you see I'd ought to have waited, because it made me
feel a lot worse about murdering a man. Or maybe it didn't. I guess
Swatty felt almost as bad as I did. We both felt awful bad. Swatty
didn't go to our church, he went to the German Lutheran church, and
nobody in that church ever got religion, they just had it. At our church
we didn't have it until we got it, and mostly we got it when there was a
revival meeting, and that was when I got it.
So, I guess it was a lot worse for me when the thing happened that I'm
going to tell you, because I had religion and Swatty hadn't.
Well, the way it happened was this way: I'm awfully croupy. I don't know
anybody that's as croupy as I am, so they rub hot goose grease on me
when I get to honking and then make me swallow a lot out of a spoon, and
that was all right when I was little enough so they could hold my nose,
but after I got big Mother said she wouldn't struggle with me another
time, and she changed and gave me a dime a spoonful. So I took the old
stuff because if I hadn't took it Father would have licked me, and I'd
have had to take it anyway. So I got a dime a spoonful. So I bought a
target rifle with the money, when I had enough, and then the rifle got
broke and I couldn't get it fixed until my mother gave me three dollars
because I had been such a good boy when the new baby came.
So then all the kids were coming over to my yard to shoot all the
time--Swatty and Bony and the whole lot of them--and we shot at tin
cans and things against the barn, but we weren't any of us very good
shooters. I guess Swatty was the best. Or maybe I was about as good as
he was.
That was all right, and I guess nobody cared anything, only Mother
was always putting her head out of the window and saying, “Boys, do
be careful with that gun!” So one day Swatty come over, like he always
does, and he says, “Say! we can't shoot the rifle any more!” And I says,
“Why can't we?” And Swatty says, “They made a law that we can't.” And I
says, “Who made a law that we can't?” And Swatty says, “The city council
made a law that nobody can shoot inside the city limits.”
So I guessed they had, because that winter they had made a law we
couldn't slide down Third Street hill, and if they made a law like that
they might make almost any kind of a law. So Swatty says, “If we want to
shoot we've got to go outside the city limits.” And I said--I don't know
what I said but I guess I said that was so.
So, anyway, we didn't shoot in my yard any more, and that wasn't our
fault but the fault of the city council. So that was one of the things
we thought of after we killed the man; but it didn't seem to make us
feel much better, like you'd think it would. I guess there wasn't
anything could make us feel better. Nobody wants to be hanged unless he
has to be, I guess.
Well, it was vacation time, anyway, and we didn't want to shoot all the
time because part of the time we wanted to do something else. Only when
we wanted to go rowing on the river we took the rifle along anyway,
because sometimes we rowed up beyond the city limits and then it was all
right to shoot if we wanted to.
So one day me and Swatty and Bony we went up the river in a skiff. We
always hired a skiff from old Higgins because it was ten cents an hour
or three hours for a quarter from him, and Rogers charged ten cents
straight. So when we got into the skiff and Higgins gave us the oars he
said, “Well, boys, have a good time, but don't shoot anybody with that
cannon.” And we said, all right, we wouldn't. We took turns rowing, like
we always did, and pretty soon we got to the Slough, and we rowed in
and shot at turtles awhile, and then Bony said, “Gee! the mosquitoes are
eating me up,” and they were eating all of us up, so we floated out onto
the river and just floated. We threw the bailing can over and shot at
it until it went down, and just about then we were going past the old
shanty boat, and we began to shoot at that.
It was up on the mud and partly sunk into it and the hull was so rotten
you could kick a hole in it, and it wasn't anybody's anyway. Everybody
had thrown stones at the windows in the side and broken them and nobody
cared, I guess; but nobody had broken all the windows in the end toward
the river, because that end was toward the river, so we shot at the
windows. At first we couldn't hit them and we drifted below, but we
rowed back again and in closer and then we all hit them. We hit them a
lot of times, until they were all smashed out, and we began to say who
had hit the most times, and Swatty said, “Let's go ashore and see who is
the best shot. I bet I am.” So we went.
So we shot at cans and things, and Swatty was the best shot, and then
nobody said anything but we just thought we'd go on the shanty boat for
fun. We climbed up on the little front deck, and Bony was first, and
Swatty was next, and then I come. So Bony pushed the door open and
looked in, and he stood there looking in and didn't move, and then, all
at once he made a sound--well, I don't know what kind of sound it was.
It was a frightened sound. I guess it was like the sound a rabbit makes
when you step on it by mistake. And then he turned, and his face was so
scary it frightened me and Swatty and we turned and jumped off the front
deck onto the railroad bank; but Bony jumped sideways off the deck and
landed on the cracked crust that was over the mud the shanty boat was
stuck in. He went right through the crust and over his knees in the
mud, but me and Swatty was so scared we started to run down the railroad
track as fast as we could.
Pretty soon we stopped, because the sand between the ties was full of
sandburs, and then we didn't know what we were running for, so we looked
back. Bony was sort of swimming on top of the mud crust and he was
crying as hard as he could cry, but not loud. He was trying to get away
from the shanty boat as fast as he could, and every time he got a foot
out of the mud and tried to step he broke through the crust again, so he
sort of laid on the crust and bellied along. He looked like an alligator
swimming in the mud, and he was crying like an alligator, too. Only I
guess it is crocodiles that cry. Bony was trying to get to the skiff,
and Swatty knew that if Bony got there before we did he would get in
the skiff and go home and leave us. So we picked the sandburs out of our
feet and tried to hurry, but Bony got to the skiff and got in and pushed
off.
We ran and hollered, but he didn't stop. He was so frightened that the
oars jumped out from between the pins almost every time he pulled on
them, and he was crying hard; but he rowed the boat pretty fast because
he was working his arms so hard. Swatty and me hollered at him and told
him what we would do to him if he didn't come back, but it didn't do any
good. He was too scared. All he wanted to do was to get away.
Well, we tried to throw stones at him, to bring him back, but we
couldn't throw that far and we just stood and watched him row down-river
as hard as he could.
“Say, what do you think he saw in there?” Swatty said after while.
“I don't know what he saw,” I said. “What do you think he saw?”
“I don't know what he saw, but I'm going to see what he saw,” Swatty
said.
Swatty was always like that. If anybody saw anything he wanted to see it
too.
“I ain't afraid to see it,” he said.
“Well, I ain't afraid if you ain't afraid,” I said.
So we climbed up on the deck of the shanty house again. We climbed up
careful and went to the door and peeked in.
As soon as I had the first peek I turned, and jumped off the deck and
started to run, but Swatty just stood and looked. I hollered at him. I
guess I was crying, too.
“Swatty! Swatty, come on! Oh, Swatty, come on, Swatty!” I hollered.
He turned his head and looked at me and then he looked back into the
shanty boat. All he said to me was, “Shut up!”
I guess you know what we saw when we looked into the shanty boat. There
was almost a whole page about it in the paper later on. He--the man--was
lying there on the floor of the shanty boat in the broken bottles and
straw and the dry mud that had sifted in when the river was high. He was
lying on his face with his feet to the door and he was sort of crumpled
up with one hand stretched out. He was dead. One side of his face was
up and there was blood from the place in his forehead where he had been
shot. It was on the floor.
I didn't dare run away without Swatty, because I guess I was as scared
as Bony had been, and I didn't dare go back to the shanty boat, so I
just stood, and all at once I began to shake all over, the same as a wet
kitten shakes in cold weather. I couldn't help shaking. I felt pretty
sick. But most of all I was scared.
I thought Swatty was going to stand there forever, looking into the
shanty boat, but pretty soon he went inside, and that shows he's as
brave as he always brags he is. I wouldn't have gone in for a million
billion quadrillion dollars. In a minute he come out and he dropped off
the end of the deck and sort of crouched low. He kept crouched low as he
come up the railroad bank, and he crouched low when he dodged down the
other side, so I crouched low, too, and went down the other side of the
railroad bank. And when Swatty come up to me I saw he was scared, too,
but he wasn't scared the way I was. I was just scared because I'd seen
a dead man, but Swatty was frightened.
There was a lot of tall ragweed and a pile of railroad ties in the
bottom of the cut along side the railroad track, and Swatty went right
in close to the pile of ties where the ragweed hid everything and he sat
down there. He looked pretty frightened.
“Well,” he said, “we killed him.”
That was the first I'd thought that we'd killed the dead man; but the
minute Swatty said it I knew we had killed him by shooting through the
windows of the shanty boat. I couldn't shake any more than I had been
shaking so I just kept on shaking like I had been, but I got sicker at
my stomach. When I was through being sick Swatty he got mad.
“Stop shaking like that!” he said. “We've gone and done it and we've
got to think what we 're going to do about it. Stop shaking and help me
think.”
“I c-c-c-can't stop sh-sh-sh-shaking!” I said. “I w-w-w-would if I
c-c-c-c-could, w-w-w-wouldn't I?”
“Well, you've got to stop shaking,” Swatty said. “If you go shaking all
around town like that everybody will know we did it. If you don't stop
shaking I'll lick you!”
I began to cry. I didn't cry because Swatty said he'd lick me but
because I just had to cry. So Swatty tried to make me stop shivering.
He took the backbone of my neck in his thumb and fingers and pinched
it hard, because you can stop hiccoughs that way; but it didn't do any
good. So he got madder.
“What are you shaking for, anyway?” he asked. “I ain't shaking.”
“W-well, y-y-you h-h-haven't got r-r-religion,” I said. “It's w-w-worse
for anybody that's g-g-g-got r-r-religion to kill anybody.”
Well, he hauled off and hit me. He hit me in the jaw, and then he said
what I wouldn't let anybody say about my getting religion, and I fought
him. Then we stopped fighting and I was still shaking, but not so bad.
“Yah! Little sissy boy got religion!” he said. “Little sissy boy went
and got religion 'cause he's stuck on Mamie Little!”
Well, that did make me mad! I lit into him, and we had another good
fight, and pretty soon he said, “'Nuff!” and I stopped. So I started to
tell him what I'd do to him if he ever said that again. I was crying, I
guess.
“That's all right,” he said; “I just said it on purpose. I just said it
to make you fight. You ain't shaking now.” And I wasn't. I'd got so mad
I forgot to shake. So, as Swatty had just said what he said on purpose,
I didn't care. So I stopped crying.
“Now you've got some sense,” Swatty said. “Don't you get that way again.
We don't want to get hung, do we?”
I hadn't thought of that. Of course they would hang us if they found out
we'd killed the man in the shanty boat, and it made us pretty sober. I
guess I began to cry again.
“Oh, shut up!” Swatty said. “If you're going to blubber all the time,
and not try to help, I wish I'd killed that man all by myself. You shut
up and try to help me think what to do, or I'll go and tell everybody
you killed him.”
“You won't do it!” I said.
“Yes, I will,” he said back. “And I'll prove it on you. You didn't look
at that man and I did, and I know what kind of a man he is.”
“What kind of a man is he?” I asked.
“He's a tough kind,” Swatty said. “And if you don't shut up your bawling
I'll say you and him got into an argument about religion, and you shot
him because he wouldn't come and join in with you and get it. And folks
will believe that, because you've just got it, and there ain't any
other reason why any of us should kill him. I haven't got religion,
have I?”
“Well,” I said, for I saw Swatty could do like he said, “what are we
going to do, anyway?”
“We've got to keep from getting arrested and put into jail and hung,”
Swatty said. “I don't know how, but we've got to. We've got to be
careful, and not let anybody know we shot that man. If they find it out
they'll hang us sure.”
“We didn't mean to shoot him,” I said. “We had a right to shoot outside
the city limits.”
“We didn't have a right to shoot anybody,” said Swatty. “We had a right
to see if there was anybody in the shanty boat before we shot at it.
We'll all three be hung if they find out we did it.”
Well, I had an idea just then, but I didn't say it to Swatty. I didn't
really think it, it just come. I knew as soon as I thought it that I
wouldn't be so mean, and I knew Swatty wouldn't either. But it would
have been easy enough for me and Swatty to say Bony did it. We was two
to one. Maybe I would have said it if I hadn't got religion. But it made
me feel better for a while to think that I'd thought it and hadn't said
it. So the next thing I thought was that it would be mighty noble and
true and religious if I'd go to the mayor or somebody and just say: “I
killed a man up there at the old shanty boat on the river, but nobody is
to blame but me. Swatty ain't and Bony ain't, so go ahead and hang me.
I did it, and it was my target rifle.” But I thought that if I was going
to be hung I'd not feel as lonesome if Swatty and Bony got hung too.
Anyway, Swatty started to talk, and I forgot it.
“If Bony hadn't gone off with the skiff,” he said, “we'd be all right.
We'd get in the skiff and row out to the middle of the river and lay
flat in it, and nobody would see us. We could float down the river as
far as we wanted to and hide in a cane-brake or somewhere. Or maybe,
we'd row up the Missouri and hide in the Rocky Mountains. If they got
after us we could turn bandits or something.”
“You could,” I said, “but I couldn't.”
“I forgot you'd got religion,” he said. “You'd have to start a ranch.
But we can't do that, because Bony went off with the skiff.”
What we decided was that nobody would be apt to find the dead man that
day. Maybe they'd never find him. Unless somebody like us happened to
go into the old shanty boat he might never get found, and then, the next
spring, when the Mississippi had her spring flood, or that same fall,
if the water got high enough, we could come up and float the old shanty
boat out of the mud and take her out in the river and sink her. We
talked over a lot of things, and the more we talked the more it didn't
seem so bad. It looked as if we had a chance not to get hung, after all.
I wanted to cut across the cornfield to the hill and go home that way,
so that if anybody saw us they'd think we had been up in the woods and
not near the shanty boat, but Swatty said that wouldn't do because our
footprints would show in the cornfield, and detectives would trace us by
them if they started out to find who murdered the man. He said it would
be more innocent to go right down the railroad track, and if anybody
asked us anything to say we hadn't been as far up as the shanty boat,
and that Bony had got a stomach ache or something and gone home first
with the boat. So we did that. We walked down the track. We talked about
the murder all the time, and the more we talked the surer we were nobody
would think we did it.
Well, we got to my gate all right, and Swatty and me crossed our hearts
we wouldn't say anything about killing the man, and I tried to think
how I'd act so nobody at home would think anything different than they
always did, and I went into the house. It was pretty late. They were
eating supper. So I went in and sat down, and Father scolded me a
little for being late, like he does nearly every day, and then he said
something else.
“Son,” he said, “after supper you'll get that target rifle of yours and
turn it over to me.”
Well, I almost jumped out of my skin, I was so scared.
“Now, you needn't begin any of that,” he said. “I mean what I say. Do
you know who was shot today?”