Butler Ellis Parker
Swatty: A Story of Real Boys
XIII. THE ICE GOES OUT
First, of course, I made Fan promise she would never tell, hope to die and cross her heart, and she promised, and then I told her all about the Red Avengers and how, if we did set Dad Veek’s barn afire we didn’t mean to, and she said she would talk to Tom Burton about it, but she said Tom Burton was stubborn and she would have to wait until she had the right chance. She was nicer than she had ever been to me.
“Have you told anybody else?” she asked me.
“No,” I said.
“Did Swatty tell his brother Herbert?” she asked.
“No. Nobody has told anybody,” I said.
Well, me and Swatty felt pretty bad and scared and sick, and one reason was that Bony stopped playing with us. His father found out about the Red Avengers and made him promise he wouldn’t play with me and Swatty any more because we were bad boys and would ruin Bony. So we never expected to play with Bony again, but we did, and this was how it happened.
Bony’s father and mother used to fight like everybody else, and about bills, because they were having a fight like that when Bony’s father took the shotgun and went away from home. I guess it was a hat Bony’s mother had bought that was the worst, but Bony wasn’t sure. He said they began to fight when the grocery bill came and fought harder and harder the more bills there were, but it wasn’t until the hat bill came that Bony’s father stopped sassing back, and got solemn and quiet and said that sometimes he felt that it was no use trying to keep up the struggle against poverty and starvation, and that sometimes when these evidences of extravagance came in he felt just like going off somewhere by himself and ending everything. So then Bony’s mother said, “Oh! nonsense!” and pretty soon Bony’s father got his shotgun and went out of the house.
So Bony just sat there in the room expecting every minute to hear the shotgun and to run out and see his father dead in the stable. He sat there and pretended to be studying his geography lesson for Monday, but all he was doing was listening to hear the shot. It was a mighty mean job, I guess, sitting there listening like that, and waiting to hear his father kill himself; but he didn’t hear anything.
So pretty soon he shut up his hook and sort of tiptoed out of the house, but he did not dare go near the stable. He didn’t know what to do. He went out on the front steps and stood there, and pretty soon he saw me and Swatty at the corner, and he waved to us and came running, and we waited for him.
It was January, but it wasn’t cold because we were having a thaw. It was good snow to make snowballs of, so when Bony started to come toward us we made a few snowballs and just threw them at him. I guess we hit him five or six times, but he didn’t beller for us to stop, like he usually does; he put his arm in front of his face and came right on. When he got too close for us to throw at him any more we stopped and then we saw he was crying.
“Aw, shut up and don’t be a baby!” Swatty said; “we didn’t hurt you.” But Bony kept right on bawling. He didn’t bawl the way a cowardy-calf bawls when he gets hurt, he bawled like – well, I guess he bawled like a fellow bawls when his father has gone off with a shotgun to shoot himself. So then we didn’t tell him to shut up any more. Swatty said:
“What’s the matter, Bony?”
So then Bony put his arm up against a tree and cried into it, and after he had cried awhile he said:
“My – my fath-father’s out in the barn sh-shooting himself with his shotgun!”
“He ain’t neither!” Swatty said, and I said it too.
“He is, too, killing himself!” Bony said, and he blubbered at the same time. “You needn’t think, just because your fath-fathers don’t kill themselves, nobody else’s father never kik-kills himself! My fa-father said he’d kik-kill himself, and if he said so he w-will!”
“Aw! He ain’t neither killing himself in the barn!” Swatty said, and I guess that made Bony mad, because it was like saying Bony’s father was a liar, or that Bony was, anyway. Mostly Bony wouldn’t fight, no matter what you said, because he’s a cow-ardy-calf; but I guess when a fellow’s father is killing himself in a barn or anywhere he don’t care what happens to him, so Bony was so mad he forgot how easy Swatty could lick him, and he sort of howled like a cat when you step on its tail and he pitched into Swatty with both fists. So Swatty had to lick him. He licked him good. So when Swatty had him down and was sitting on him, Swatty said:
“Now is your father killing himself in the barn?”
“Yes, he is!” Bony blubbered, and then we knew that Bony’s father was really going to kill himself, because if Bony hadn’t been pretty sure he would have said he wasn’t, because he knew how Swatty can push a fellow’s nose into his face with the bottom of his hand when he has got him down and he don’t say what Swatty wants him to say. So we knew it must be pretty serious. So Swatty didn’t push Bony’s nose, but he said:
“Well, your father ain’t killing himself in the barn, because he went by here a little while ago with his shotgun. How do you know he’s going to kill himself?”
“I know it because him and Mother was fighting over bills, and he said he would,” Bony said.
So then Swatty said, aw! he didn’t believe anybody would kill himself because he was fighting over bills. He said he didn’t believe any grown-up man would fight over a little thing like bills; so that made me mad, and I said, aw! any man would fight over bills, and that my father did, and that my father was a better man than Swatty’s father any day in the week and could lick Swatty’s father any time they wanted to try it. And that was true, and Swatty knew it, because my father was bigger than his father and not so old. So Swatty said, aw! well, his oldest brother could lick my father, anyway. So I said he’d better try it if he wanted to find out, and Swatty said, Aw! And I guess that’s all we said about that.
Anyway, it didn’t seem to make Bony feel any better that his father had taken his shotgun and had gone off somewhere else to kill himself instead of killing himself right at home in the barn. He kept right on with a kind of whine-blubber, even when Swatty and me were jawing, so Swatty said:
“Aw! what you bellerin’ about?”
“I’ll – I’ll beller if I want to,” Bony said. “I guess you’d beller if your father was going to kill himself, you would.”
“I would not so!” Swatty said. “What’s the use of bellerin’ when you can’t do nothing about it? If he’s going to kill himself, he’s going to, and you can’t help it. If my father was going to do what you said your father was going to do I’d let him do it, and I wouldn’t spoil everybody’s fun by bawling about it. I’d just go ahead and play like nothing was going to happen, until I had to go in and dress for the funeral.”
Well, I guess that wasn’t a very good thing for Swatty to say, because it made Bony blubber more than ever. So then Swatty got sore and disgusted and he said:
“Aw! shut up, then, and we’ll go and find your father and take the shotgun away from him, if you ‘re going to be a baby about it!”
That’s the way Swatty always is; me or Bony would never think of going and taking a shotgun away from a father that wanted to kill himself, and if we did think of it we would never dare to do it; but Swatty wouldn’t care who he took a shotgun away from if he got mad because somebody bellered about nothing. So we knew he’d do it if we went along. So we went along.
When we saw Bony’s father go by with the shotgun he was going toward downtown, so me and Bony and Swatty started toward downtown, and we talked about where Bony’s father would probably go to kill himself if he didn’t want to kill himself in his barn, and none of us thought he would go downtown to do it because somebody might see him start to do it and stop him. So we talked about it and we made up our minds we would go over into the Illinois bottom, across the Mississippi, because a man once went over there to kill himself, and did it and nobody bothered him while he was doing it or knew about it until afterward.
Of course the ferry wasn’t running, but it was easy enough for Bony’s father to get across the river because the ice was frozen and the river was closed and he could go over on the ice.
We went down to the river. There was a good deal of water on the ice in some places, and the snow was mushy everywhere on it and it was pretty bad walking. I guess you know what the river is like when it is closed. There is a lot of snow on it because nobody shovels it off, and they couldn’t if they tried, because the river is three quarters of a mile wide there, and there’s no place to shovel the snow to, and it’s just as good right where it is as it would be anywhere else.
But before the thaw comes the snow blows off some of the smooth places and banks up against the rough places on the ice in drifts. The river don’t freeze over all at once – the ice floats down and jams and stops and the bare places between freeze over; but when the ice jams, it crumples up on the edges and makes ridges, and it is where the ridges are that the snow banks up into drifts. Sometimes the drifts are all around a smooth sheet of ice, and then when the snow begins to melt, the smooth ice turns into a sort of pond, and maybe the water on top of the ice is an inch deep and maybe it is more.
Here and there there are air holes, because I guess a river has to breathe like anybody else and the air holes are where it breathes. They are different sizes.
Well, the road across the river on the ice is always crooked. The farmers over in Illinois make the road to bring over cordwood and hay and stuff, because they can bring it over on the ice free and it costs twenty-five cents a load when the ferry is running.
So the first farmer that dares drive across on the ice starts out from the Illinois shore, and he starts straight, but pretty soon he has to curve around a drift, and then he has to curve around an air hole, and then he has to go around a piece of ice that looks thin, and by the time he has got to town he has made a crooked road; and the next farmer drives in the same path, because the first farmer’s horses’ shoes have roughed it up a little and made it easier to travel.
So that is how the road gets made, and before very long it gets to be quite a road. It gets dark and dirty from the horses and the dirt off the cordwood and maybe some coal the farmers take home, and there are wisps of hay all along, rubbed off loads when they passed other teams.
By the time the thaw comes, a good deal of the river in front of town gets so you know how it looks, just like the town itself. The wood road goes zigzagging across, and maybe – if it is a cold winter – the trotting-horse men have a speed track on the ice that is different from the wood road and marked off to show a mile. Wagon loads of waste stuff get dumped on the ice in piles and maybe a dozen or two dozen dead horses. You get so you know how it looks, and you get to feeling as if the river had always been frozen over and had always looked like that. Maybe you have names for things, so anybody like Swatty or Bony knows what you mean when you say: “You know, where the wood road comes nearest to the horseshoe air hole.”
Well, it was pretty mushy when we started across the river. It was warm, too, warm enough to make us sweat; but there was a good breeze blowing from the Illinois shore and it wasn’t as warm as it might have been. But, anyway, it was warm. Swatty showed us where to go. He went first and we went behind him, and pretty soon we were far off the wood road because wherever there was a drier place he went that way.
When we got out toward the middle of the river, away from the town dirt, I wished we hadn’t come. Out there the ice hadn’t been cut up by being skated on, and there were whole big places where the ice was perfectly smooth and green and clear, and with the snow water on top of it we couldn’t tell whether it was ice or air hole. We had to walk on the snow close to the ridges, because there we knew there was ice under us, even if we did wade through slush up to our knees. It was scary enough for anybody and Bony began to cry.
I guess we would have gone back if it hadn’t been for Swatty, and even Swatty didn’t tell Bony to shut up and stop crying. I guess Swatty felt pretty scared himself. You couldn’t see anybody on the ice anywhere; we were the only ones. I guess everybody was afraid to go on the ice, it was getting so rotten. That’s what I thought then, but it wasn’t the reason; Swatty knew the real reason, but he didn’t tell us then because he was afraid we would be more scared than we were. Nobody was on the ice because they were afraid it might go out any minute.
So all Swatty did was to say, “Hurry up!” because he was afraid if we didn’t hurry up maybe the ice would go out before we got across, and nobody likes to get drowned in ice water.
So pretty soon we came to a place where there wasn’t any snow and where there were no ridges – nothing but clear ice with water on it, and the wind making little ripples. Bony cried, and I said, “Aw! let’s go back, Swatty!” because you couldn’t tell whether it was ice under that water or air hole. Swatty looked all around, but he couldn’t see any way to get to Illinois but to cross right over. Neither could any of us. So Swatty said:
“All right for you! You and Bony can let his father kill himself if you want to; but I won’t, and when I get back I’ll lick you both.”
Well, we didn’t care if he did lick us. We’d rather be licked than be drowned. So Swatty said:
“Aw! Come on! I wouldn’t have come if I thought you were a couple of cry-baby cowardy-calves. I’ll dare you to come!”
But we didn’t. So Swatty said:
“I double tribble dare you, and whoever don’t take the dare is a sooner!”
Well, a sooner was the worst thing anybody could call you; even Bony would fight if you called him a sooner, but we didn’t care what he called us; but just then we heard a gun go off over in the woods, and before either of us could stop him Bony started. He ran right out on the wet ice, crying and blubbering, and he fell down in the water and got up again and ran on. Every little while he would fall down, but he would get right up and run again. The water was almost up to his knees, but he didn’t care. I guess he kind of liked his father and wanted to get to him.
Swatty shouted and told him to stop and come back, or anyway to wait for us, but Bony ran right on. Swatty shouted:
“Hey, Bony! come back, I was only fooling! Your father ain’t going to kill himself.”
Because Swatty knew Bony’s father wasn’t going to kill himself, but he was afraid Bony would be drowned. He just wanted us to cross the river because nobody had ever crossed it when the ice was so rotten and we would be the first that ever did it, and he knew we wouldn’t do it unless we thought we were going to save Bony’s father, or something. So all we could do was to go after Bony, and we did. We waded through the water after Bony, and I was glad Bony had gone first because we were sure there was no air hole where Bony had been ahead of us.
But I made Swatty give me his hand anyway. I didn’t like it much. I didn’t like it any.
Well, we got across, and before we got across Bony had reached the shore ice. It was pretty rotten and it rubbered down under him, and if he hadn’t been running so fast I guess he would have broken through. Then he stopped and looked, because between him and the shore was a wide open space – no ice, nothing but water. He just stopped and looked, and then looked back at us and then he ran to the edge of the ice, and it broke under him and he was in water up to his arms. It was because there was a long sandbar reached out from the shore there; if not he would have been drowned. So he walked through the water about half a block and me and Swatty went after him. Gee, it was cold!
When we got ashore Bony was up in the woods and we could hear him shouting, “Papa! Papa!” and crying, too. It was kind of a sick shout, part cry and part shout. It sounded like “Pwaw-pwa! Uh-uh! Pwaw-pa!” and then “Pwaw-pwa! Pwaw-pwa!” and then “Uh-uh-uh!” like a little kid cries when it has lost a penny it meant to get candy with and has cried all the way home.
All of a sudden we heard the shotgun again. It was toward down-river and not near us at all. Bony heard it, too, and he stopped to listen and we caught up with him. I guess he was as good as crazy, because when we got to him he started to run, and he ran right into a grapevine tangle and began pulling and pushing through it, although he could have taken ten steps and have gone around it. I guess he must have liked his father a lot to get so crazy about him. Swatty went right after him. He swore at him in German and told him that the way was to go out on the shore where the sand was, so he could run faster. So Bony went and we went, too, and we all ran.
We didn’t say much. Swatty kept telling Bony what kind of a fool he was for thinking his father was going to kill himself, and Bony kept sobbing and running. I guess maybe I cried a little, too. I felt kind of – I don’t know – frightened, I guess. So then we got around the bend, and all at once we saw Bony’s father.
He was out on the ice. When we saw him first he was about as far out on the ice as two blocks would be, and he had on his rubber boots and his hunting coat, and it looked bulged around the pockets, so me and Swatty knew he had been hunting and had got two rabbits, or maybe three. We guessed that what had happened was that when he got sick of fighting about bills he went hunting, to forget about it, because Swatty’s father – when he felt that way – went down to his tailor shop and sewed coats or pants, and when my father felt that way he would go out and split wood or maybe clean out the barn. But I guess Bony’s father thought he’d go hunting. I guess maybe he thought he’d like to kill something.
When we saw him out on the ice he was walking fast, or sort of running, going toward the Iowa shore, but that wasn’t what scared us. What scared us was that the ice was moving!
We didn’t see it at first. Bony was yelling at his father, and his father heard him and turned and looked back, and then started to run toward us. Where we were, at the bend, the ice came close in to the high bank and on the ice there was a limb of a big tree. Somebody had made a fire under it and it was partly burned. Bony ran up and down the bank looking for a good place to climb down, but Swatty was going to slide down right there and let his feet get on that old dead limb. But when Bony’s father saw Bony running up and down he shouted to Jim, “Back! Back!” Swatty looked at Bony’s father to see why he was shouting that. Then he looked down at the old limb again. It had moved along!
Well, you bet he was frightened for a minute! He wasn’t thinking of the ice, he was thinking of that dead branch, and for a dead branch to start and move like that isn’t natural. He felt the way you feel when you go to pick up a stick and it is a live snake. For a minute he just stood and held his breath and was scared, and then he saw it wasn’t the dead limb that was moving but the ice, and he grabbed my arm and pointed. And just then the fire-whistle on the waterworks over in town began to blow.
That was a sure sign the ice was going out, It was to let folks know so they could come down and see the ice go out because, you bet, it is worth seeing. You can’t tell what the ice will do when it starts to go out.
So then we knew the ice must be going out faster on the Iowa side than on our side. What Bony’s father was trying to say and do was to tell us to keep off the ice, and to get off it himself; but he did not have to tell us much because before he got close enough for us to hear him much the ice was making such a noise we couldn’t hear him at all. And he couldn’t get off! The ice began to pile up against the upper side of the bend, shearing itself off and sliding on top of itself and leaving a big open space below the bend.
Well, I guess Bony cried then! And he had something to cry about that time. His father came running as near as he could to us, but it wasn’t very near, because the ice near shore was cracking up into big pieces. He ran up-stream on the ice, shouting to us all the time, but the ice was going downstream, and at last it floated down so there was an air hole opposite us and he had to stop. I say he had to stop, but he kept going, because the ice carried him on down the river. He looked all around, and then waved his arm at us and started to run toward the Tow Head.
The Tow Head is a big island in the river but nearer Iowa than Illinois, where we were. The wind was pushing the ice over that way, and I guess he thought maybe he could get off the ice on the Tow Head if he could get there before the ice carried him by.
Bony’s father ran around the air hole and kept running up and across, and he ran hard; but by that time the ice was going pretty fast, so me and Swatty and Bony got down to the sand and ran down-stream as fast as we could. Or maybe not as fast as we could; we kept even with Bony’s father. He was running up-stream but he was going downstream all the time.
Pretty soon the old race track the men had made on the ice went by, and then the end of the wood road went by. It was funny to think that me and Bony and Swatty were running one way and Bony’s father the other way, and that we kept right opposite each other. But it wasn’t very funny, because we all thought Bony’s father would be drowned.
Well, the ice went past the Tow Head. It went past before Bony’s father was halfway to the Tow Head, and he stopped running and stood still. Then he turned and started to run toward us again.
On our side of the river the water between the shore and the ice was getting wider and wider, because the river was wider here and because the wind was blowing the ice toward the Iowa shore. If I had been Bony’s father I would have run for the Iowa shore because the ice was pushing up against it, but it would have been foolish because the Tow Head was like a knife and split all the ice as it came to it. Nobody could get across from where Bony’s father was to the Iowa shore, but I did not think of that. But Bony’s father did. So did Swatty. He said so afterward. He said he would have done just what Bony’s father did.
Bony was crying, of course, and he was running in front, because he wanted to see his father drowned if he was drowned, I guess. I was next, but Swatty was behind because he had stopped to look, and that was the way we were when we came to the mouth of the First Slough. The ice was rubbery, but Bony and me ran across and up the bank and in through the woods – you have to, there – and kept right on as soon as we came out on the shore.
Bony’s father was getting nearer and nearer, but the stretch of water was getting wider. It was too wide for anybody to swim, of course. I felt kind of sick. I don’t know why – I guess it was because I thought, all at once, that I was running like that just to see a man drown in the river, and it made me sick. I shouted to Bony, but he kept on running and then I looked at Bony’s father.
He was still running, but he had his hand in the air and he was waving a white handkerchief, and then he put it in his pocket and just ran. Pretty soon I looked back for Swatty, and I saw him!
He wasn’t on the shore. He – but that’s what Swatty is like. He was in a skiff, rowing as hard as he could toward the ice!
Bony and me had run across the First Slough without thinking of anything but hurrying up, but Swatty, when he came to the Slough, thought, “Well, if anybody has a boat around here they would haul it into the Slough where the river ice wouldn’t sweep it away or crush it.” So he just took a look, and there was a skiff. It was hauled up under a tree and padlocked to the tree. It looked as if it was there for good and all, but when Swatty looked at the boat the chain was just stapled into the boat and all he did was pry out the staple with a piece of driftwood. There were no oarlocks, but you can make a thole pin with a piece of wood, and that was what Swatty did. He made thole pins with pieces of driftwood and he pried the skiff down to the ice and slid it to the river, and then he jumped in and began rowing with two pieces of driftwood for oars.
I shouted to Bony and he stopped, and we turned back and ran. Swatty was n’t trying to keep up with the ice, he was trying to get to it any way he could, and he was having a pretty hard time of it. First one thole pin broke and then the other and he had to paddle. I thought he’d never reach the ice.
Even Bony stopped crying.
Well, Swatty got to the ice, but he couldn’t land on it. He just sort of hugged it with the boat, and Bony and me had to run again to keep even with him. Then Bony’s father came to the edge of the ice and tried it carefully with his foot, but it was firm because all the weak ice had been scraped off at the bend. So all he did was to get into the boat. It was easy. Then he took one of the pieces of driftwood and helped Swatty paddle.
So then everything was all right and Bony’s father wasn’t drowned or hadn’t shot himself or anything, so Bony began to cry again.
It took us a long time to get the boat back where it belonged and a longer time to walk back to opposite the town. It was dark when we got there and the ice was still going by, and we knew it might be a week before we could get across the river again; but all at once we heard a rifle or a shotgun across the river, and then Bony’s father fired his, and that let them know he was all right. So then we all worked and built a big driftwood fire and when it was burning we walked in front of it – one, two, three, four, and then back again: one, two, three, four. We hoped they could see there were four of us and that we were all right.
And they did, because right away somebody shot off a pistol – one, two, three, four. That meant they knew there were four of us.
Well, it was two days before we could get across the river again, but we got our meals at a house up on the bluff and slept in their barn, and it was good enough fun.
When Bony got home his father said:
“Mother, look at this young hero! If it hadn’t been for those boys I would be dead this minute. Now, stop crying over him, and go and make him the biggest lemon meringue pie he ever saw!”
So I guess Bony felt all right. But when I got home Mother said:
“Well, thank goodness you ‘re back! That child – Mamie Little – has pestered the life out of me ever since you went away. For mercy’s sake, run over and tell her you’re home again!”
That was all right, but the best was that Bony’s father wasn’t mad at us any more and he talked with us about Dad Veek’s barn. He was pretty solemn about it, and when we had told him all we wanted to he said it looked serious, but he would help us all he could, and the first thing he did was to go to Judge Hannan’s office and see Herb Schwartz. So he found that Herb was already bestirring himself, but when Bony’s father talked to him he said he would bestir himself more than ever.
