Swatty. Ellis Parker Butler
because Mamie did and my father didn't care whether there was prohibition or not. Swatty didn't 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 Swatty's 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 didn't say a thing to make Swatty mad; all I said was: “Huh! You thought you was so smart, didn't you? You thought prohibition was going to get licked, but it was you got licked. Next time you won't be so smart. I guess you and your father feel pretty sick about it.”
“Don't you say anything about my father!” Swatty said.
“I'll 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 couldn't 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 wasn't thinking of Mamie Little; I was thinking of my nose. So I said:
“I'm 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 couldn't 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 didn't 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 I'd 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 hadn't paid me, because she said she didn't have one, and if she gave one to Lucy, why, all right for Mother!
“No, she didn't give me a nickel, Mr. Smarty!” Lucy said. “If you want to know so much, we're going down to Mr. Schwartz's shop to see if he'll let Mamie have a father.”
I guess that would sound pretty funny if you didn't 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 didn't have colored fashion plates of fathers. They didn't 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 Swatty's girl, and Swatty sort of borrowed an old colored tailor fashion plate out of his father's 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 didn't make Mamie real happy, I guess, so she thought she'd 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 hadn't 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?”
“I'm going to tell him he gave you one for me,” Lucy said, “and I'm going to ask him if he'll give me one for Mamie.”
So then Swatty was scared.
“No, don't 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 couldn't 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 wasn't my girl but only my sister, and I said:
“You will not do it. You go home!”
“You stop pushing me! I won't 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 Swatty's father's, 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, “I'm going to tell Mamie on you!”
“You just dare!” I started for her, but she skipped off.
“Mamie,” she shouted, “you'll be mad when I tell you! Georgie Porgie is an anti-prohibition!” Mamie just stood and looked at me, because I'd said I'd always be a prohibition.
“Are you?” she asked.
If Swatty hadn't 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 wasn't going to have him think I would change just on account of a girl. So I said:
“Uh, huh!”
“All right for you, Mr. Georgie! You needn't ever speak to me again as long as you live!” she said.
I felt pretty cheap. I tried to say something, and I couldn't think of anything to say, so I made a face at her and she made one at me, and then we were mad at each other and she went away. She went toward down-town, and Lucy skipped across the street and ran and went with her. And that was one reason Mamie was glad that Toady Williams had her for his girl when he came to town. She guessed I did not like it. And I didn't.
Mr. Schwartz said Mamie could have the fashion plate as soon as he was through with it, which would be at the end of the season when he got a new one. Lucy let me know that, all right! I guess it was on account of Lucy he promised to let Mamie have the fashion plate, because he was awful fond of Lucy.
Anyway, Mamie was mighty pleased to know she was going to have a good father.
When she played paper dolls