Butler Ellis Parker - Swatty: A Story of Real Boys стр 6.

Toady didnt get Mamie Little for his girl the right way. He never said she wasnt 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 Georgies girl! Mamie Little is Georgies girl! And he has to get mad and fight them about it to prove its a lie, but after he has fought enough to prove she isnt 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 hes 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 its pretty nice, and you feel pretty good about it and are glad shes 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 didnt care whether there was prohibition or not. Swatty didnt 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 Swattys 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 didnt say a thing to make Swatty mad; all I said was: Huh! You thought you was so smart, didnt you? You thought prohibition was going to get licked, but it was you got licked. Next time you wont be so smart. I guess you and your father feel pretty sick about it.

Dont you say anything about my father! Swatty said.

Ill 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 couldnt 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.

I said, Yes, I am.

All right! he said, and he put his hand on my nose and pushed. He pushed my nose right into my face. I never had anything hurt like that did. I yelled, it hurt so much. I told him to stop.

All right, he said, if I stop what are you?

I knew what he meant. He had already got me from being a Republican to being a Democrat that way once before. I wasnt thinking of Mamie Little; I was thinking of my nose. So I said:

Im an anti-prohibition. Now let me up. You ve busted my nose and some of my ribs, and I want to put some plantain on my eye before it swells up.

We felt of my ribs and couldnt find that any seemed busted, and my nose stopped hurting and came back into shape, so me and Swatty were better friends than we had ever been, because we were now both anti-prohibitions. We went around and made a lot of prohibitions into anti-prohibitions because Swatty showed me how to push a nose the way he pushed mine. But it didnt do much good, I guess. The election was over and, anyway, there were always more anti-prohibitions in Riverbank than there were prohibitions.

It was almost right away after that that me and Swatty and Bony met Mamie Little and Lucy one Saturday afternoon. Lucy is my sister, and they were going down-town. Me and Swatty and Bony were sitting on the curb telling whoppers; or I guess Swatty and Bony were, I was just telling some things that had happened to me sometime that Id forgot until I happened to think them up just then.

Swatty was telling how he went up to Derlingport and his uncle introduced him to the man that had the government job of making up new swear words, when Mamie and Lucy came along. I said:

Where are you going?

Down-town, Lucy said.

Did Mother give you a nickel? I asked, and I was sort of mad, because Mother owed me a nickel and hadnt paid me, because she said she didnt have one, and if she gave one to Lucy, why, all right for Mother!

No, she didnt give me a nickel, Mr. Smarty! Lucy said. If you want to know so much, were going down to Mr. Schwartzs shop to see if hell let Mamie have a father.

I guess that would sound pretty funny if you didnt know what she meant. It was paper dolls.

Girls always play paper dolls, I guess; so Mamie and Lucy and all the girls played them; they got them out of the colored fashion plates in the magazines brides and mothers and sons and daughters.

The trouble was that a good family has to have anyway one father in it, and the magazines didnt have colored fashion plates of fathers. They didnt have any fathers at all.

Some of the girls drew fathers on paper and painted them, but they looked pretty sick. I guess all the girls were jealous of Lucy because she was kind of Swattys girl, and Swatty sort of borrowed an old colored tailor fashion plate out of his fathers store and gave it to Lucy. So Lucy had the only real fathers that any of the girls had. She gave Mamie a couple of fathers out of the fashion plate, but they were the ones that had been standing partly behind other fathers and had mostly only one leg, or pieces cut out of their sides or something. They didnt make Mamie real happy, I guess, so she thought shed try to get some good fathers. They were going down to ask Mr. Schwartz for a fashion plate.

Swatty was frightened right away, because he hadnt asked his father if he could have the old fashion plate but had just sort of borrowed it. So he said:

What are you going to ask my father?

Im going to tell him he gave you one for me, Lucy said, and Im going to ask him if hell give me one for Mamie.

So then Swatty was scared.

No, dont do it! he said.

I will, too, do it! Lucy answered back. I guess I know your father, and I guess my father buys clothes of him, and I guess we take milk of your mother, and I guess I will, too, ask him if I want to!

Well, Swatty couldnt answer back because he had Lucy for his secret girl like I had Mamie Little.

So I got up and stood in front of Lucy and pushed her a little, because she wasnt my girl but only my sister, and I said:

You will not do it. You go home!

You stop pushing me! I wont go home.

Yes, you will, when I say so! I said.

I was going to tell her that as soon as there were any more old fashion plates at Swattys fathers, Swatty would swi would get one for Mamie, but Lucy got mad because I just took hold of her arm too hard between my thumb and finger. She said I pinched her, but I did not; I just sort of took hold of her that way. She ran back a way and stuck out her tongue at me.

Now, just for that, Mr. Smarty, she yelled, Im going to tell Mamie on you!

You just dare! I started for her, but she skipped off.

Mamie, she shouted, youll be mad when I tell you! Georgie Porgie is an anti-prohibition! Mamie just stood and looked at me, because Id said Id always be a prohibition.

Are you? she asked.

If Swatty hadnt been right there I would have changed back to a prohibition again and it would have been all right, but he was there and I wasnt going to have him think I would change just on account of a girl. So I said: