Butler Ellis Parker - Swatty: A Story of Real Boys стр 2.

Our schoolhouse has four rooms on a floor two in front and two in back and the hall comes in the middle, but it dont run all the way from front to back. In the middle in front on the second floor there is a little room with some books in it, and they call it the library room.

It has a window and three doors one into the hall and one into our room, and one into the room across the hall. So Miss Murphy yanked Swatty into that room and locked all three doors. So she had him safe until she got ready to lick him. Then she was going to unlock the door and bring him out and do a good job, because she had a new rawhide all ready. I guess she made up her mind shed lick him until he hollered that time.

So Swatty waited until school was out. Then he had to wait until Miss Murphy got rid of the ones she had kept in to write their names five hundred times, and things like that, but he didnt wait. He opened the window and looked out, and right below him was the peak roof of the porch. It wasnt very big, and it was slated, and if he slipped hed be a goner and break a leg or something, but he got onto the window sill and hung down with his hands on the sill, and dropped. He dropped straddle of the roof and hung on the best way he could.

He said the only thing he thought about was what a fool he had been not to shut the window, but it was J une and most of the windows were wide open anyway, and I guess Miss Murphy didnt notice. She unlocked the door and looked into the room and Swatty wasnt there. Then I guess she thought maybe somebody had come to the library room for a book and had let Swatty out. She never put her head out of the window at all. So she was beaten that time, and she went home.

So Swatty waited until the janitor had swept all the rooms and started to sweep the walk and he hollered to him. It is none of the janitors business who gets licked or who dont, so he came up to the room and helped Swatty get in the window. He just laughed about it.

So the next day Swatty went to school just the same as always, but at noon he came over to my barn and Bony came with him. They generally came because I had to feed my rabbits at noon. This time Swatty sort of poked at the sawdust that was the floor of our barn and didnt say much. He most generally wore his hat on the back of his head, but this time he had it pulled down over his eyes and that was the way he did when he was getting ready to fight a fellow.

After a while he looked up.

Are you fellows going to school this afternoon? he asked.

Yes, I said. Aint you?

Go and get licked? I guess not! he said. Im going down to the river.

What are you going to do down at the river? Bony asked.

Going to look at it; what you think Im going to do? said Swatty.

Well, looking at it wasnt a bad thing to do, because the river was away up, and when the Mississippi is up it is worth looking at. It looks twice as big and sort of rounded up in the middle, and all sorts of things floating down it dead trees, and boxes, and logs, and dead pigs, and sometimes sheds and things. It generally gets up in June, and we always go down on Saturdays to see how shes getting along.

Shes higher than she ever was, said Swatty.

Well, I guess shell be mighty high by Saturday, said Bony.

No, she wont, said Swatty, because shes going to begin falling to-day, the paper says. Why dont you come along down with me?

Yes, and get licked for staying out of school! I said.

All right for you fellows, then! said Swatty. Ill be mad at you for good. If you were going to get licked Id just want to do something so I could get licked too. Dont I always stick by you fellows? And when Im going to get licked you go back on me. Youre fraid-cats.

Whos a fraid-cat? I asked, for I dont let anybody call me that.

You are! said Swatty. And sos Bony. Youre afraid to stay out of school one afternoon. Youre afraid to stay out the day the river hits high-water mark. Youll look nice, wont you, with just you and Bony and a lot of girls in school!

Who said wed be the only kids there? I asked.

Who said it? Why, I said it. You dont think any kids will go to school this afternoon, do you? Everybody will be down at the levee men and everybody. If the river dont drop this afternoon shell go over the island levee. And you sit around in school like it was a common day! Why, its like like election, or Fourth of July, or something like that! Its worse than when the ice goes out.

Well, I never knew a boy to get licked for staying out of school when the ice was going out of the river. He gets kept in the next day, or something, but nobody can blame a boy for wanting to see the ice go out, not even a teacher. So I guessed Id go with Swatty, if I could sneak it. Bony didnt want to go much, but he didnt like both of us to call him a fraid-cat, so he came. We climbed out of my barn window, because Swatty said wed have to be careful; but I guess it wasnt much use, because if we had gone out of the back gate it would have done just as well, and if we had gone out of the front gate nobody would have thought anything but that we were going to school. We kept in the alley all the way down to Indian Creek, and Indian Creek was worth seeing, I tell you.

Mostly there is nothing in it but a little bit of water twisting along in the wet sand, away down in the bottom of the creek bed, but now the creek was full right up to the top, and there were rowboats moored in it. We played in the rowboats a while, until a man came and chased us away, and then we went down along the creek to the river. I tell you, she was some river!

She went rushing along, all big and muddy and foamy, and she was half covered with floating stuff bark and whole haystacks and old trees and boards and boxes and things. It scared a fellow just to look at her. It made me feel the way a little baby feels when a big twelve-wheel mogul engine comes roaring up to the depot platform, only ten times as scary. It was like a whole ocean starting out to rush away somewhere. 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 didnt say anything. He just stepped backward three or four steps and looked frightened. Thats 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 cant that nobody can. When it gets going it is going to keep right on. So we went down to the levee.

Well, there wasnt any levee! Our levee is just a long down-hill of sand, and it wasnt there. The river had backed clean up to the railroad tracks and was sploshing against the second rail of the outside track, and at the down-river end of the levee it had gone under the tracks and was all over Front Street at the corner. The ferry dock, that was usually away down at the bottom of the levee, was tied right up close to the railroad track, and the ferry was tied in behind the steamboat warehouse, so she wouldnt wash away. The water was clean up over the floor of the steamboat warehouse, too, and nothing looked the way it used to look. It was worth forty lickings just to see how different everything was. We just stood and looked and couldnt believe it.

Come on, said Swatty, all at once, lets have some fun. Lets take off our shoes and stockings and have some fun.

We went across the street and asked a man if we could leave our shoes and stockings in his store, and he said we could, and then we went back and began to wade where the water wasnt very deep. There were a few other boys there, wading, and a lot of men standing around, looking at the water. Some would come down and look a while and then go away again, and all at once Swatty said, Garsh! What if our fathers came down here!