LITMIR.BIZ

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looking. It was a bill, all right. Me and Swatty could see that but we didn’t know what it was for – whether it was for a hat or a dress or what. So Bony’s father threw the bill on the table and stood with one fist on the edge of the table and the other fist opening and shutting. Bony’s mother had been paring potatoes or something, I guess. She wiped her hands on her apron but she didn’t pick up the bill.

      “Well?” she said.

      “Of all the useless, idiotic, ill-timed, outrageous, unheard-of extravagance ever incurred by any brainless, gad-about, senseless, vain peacock of a woman – ” Bony’s father said.

      “Henry! Stop right there!” Bony’s mother said. “This time I will not listen to your abuse. Year after year I have put up with this browbeating. I go in rags, and if I so much as buy – ”

      “Rags!” Bony’s father shouted. “Rags! You in rags? You dare taunt me with that, when you crowd enough on your back to support a dozen families? Rags? When from year’s end to year’s end I do nothing but struggle to pay your eternal bills!” Well, maybe I haven’t got what Bony’s father and mother said just the way they said it, but it was like that. So they had a good start and they went right on and pretty soon Bony’s father was walking up and down the room, talking loud and pounding the table every time he passed it, and Bony’s mother was sitting with a corner of her apron in each hand and the hands pressed to her cheeks. Her eyes were big and scary. So then Bony’s father stopped in front of her and said a lot and she didn’t talk back. So that made him mad and he took the tablecloth and jerked it and all the dishes fell on the floor and broke.

      Bony just went to the bed and lay on his face and squeezed his hands into his ears. I guess he felt pretty mean. He was crying, but we didn’t know that then. We found it out afterward.

      So then, when all the dishes broke, Bony’s mother sort of yelled and jumped up. Swatty said:

      “Garsh! What’s she going to do?”

      But she didn’t do anything like we thought she was going to. She bent down and picked up a dish that wasn’t all smashed to pieces and put it on the table as easy as could be and then she untied her apron and folded it up and laid it over the back of a chair as neat as a pin. She looked at herself in the mirror in the sideboard and then walked around Bony’s father and went toward the door into the hall.

      “Where are you going?” Bony’s father asked.

      “Going?” she said, or something like that. “I’m going to see if I can’t put a stop to this sort of thing. I have had enough years of it. I’m going to see Mr. Rascop.”

      Well, we knew who he was; he was a lawyer.

      “Very well,” said Bony’s father, “go! I assure you you cannot get a divorce too quickly to suit me!”

      I guess that when the loud noise stopped Bony thought the fight was over and listened again. Anyway he was listening now and he heard what they said.

      “I thought that,” said Bony’s mother. “This is not the first time, by many, that I have thought it. You will be glad to be rid of me and I of you. My mother will be glad enough to have me with her. I shall, of course, take the boy.”

      “As you like!” said Bony’s father.

      “The boy” was Bony, so he began to blubber worse than ever. He was pretty much ashamed and when his folks began to talk quiet-like, without shouting, me and Swatty began to be ashamed, too. We felt the way you feel when there’s just been a baby at your house – as if we hadn’t ought to be there. So Swatty picked up his hat.

      “Come on!” he said. “Let’s go. It ain’t no fun up here in Bony’s room.”

      “Wait!” Bony whispered, like he was scared to be left there alone, so we waited. He came along with us.

      We tiptoed downstairs and outdoors and I tell you it was good to get outside where there wasn’t any divorce but just good spring mud and things. So Swatty whistled at a kid down the street but it was a kid Swatty had said he would lick if he caught him, so the kid ran.

      Well, we sat down on the grass under the tree and me and Swatty talked pretty loud and fighty because Bony wasn’t saying anything at all and was looking so earnest it made us feel sort of ashamed. He was thinking of the divorce. So me and Swatty talked fighty to each other to try and make Bony forget.

      But Bony didn’t laugh. He didn’t even smile. So Swatty took some mud and stuck it on his nose and pretended it was medicine or something; to make Bony laugh. But Bony didn’t laugh. I guess he felt pretty bad. Maybe a kid always feels that way when his folks are going to get divorced. So then Swatty said:

      “Hey, George! this is the way I’ll ride on Bony’s bicycle when he gets it!”

      So he pretended he was on a bicycle and he pretended to fall off all sorts of ways and to run into a tree and everything. Then I thought of something. I said:

      “Say! if they get a divorce and Bony goes away we can’t learn bicycle riding on his bicycle!”

      We hadn’t thought of that before and right away we forgot about whether Bony was feeling sick or not. We hadn’t stopped to think that a divorce Bony’s folks were getting would make a big difference like that to me and Swatty. It kind of brought us right into the divorce ourselves. Swatty looked frightened.

      “Garsh! that’s so!” he said. “We can’t learn to ride on a bicycle that’s in another town.”

      “And, say!” I said, frightened, “if Herb hears about it, and how married folks fight and get divorces over hat-bills and things he’s going to be scared to marry Fan, because hat-bills are the things father scolds Fan most about. He’ll ask Fan if she has hat-bills – ”

      “Garsh!” said Swatty again, “we’ve got to stop the divorce,” only he said “diworce,” because that was how he talked.

      I thought so, too. If Bony’s folks got one and Herb heard about it and got scared of marrying Fan, then Swatty wouldn’t have the tricycle and I couldn’t take Mamie Little riding on it and make fat, old Toady Williams look sick. So I thought like Swatty did, but I said:

      “Well, how are you going to stop it?”

      “If Bony was to get the diphtheria, and get it bad, that would stop it,” he said.

      I saw that was so. If Bony got the diphtheria, and got it bad, they wouldn’t let him travel on the train, and so his mother couldn’t go to his grandmother’s and that would stop it. So I said:

      “Yes, and while he was sick we could use his bicycle all the time. How’s he going to get diphtheria?”

      “Why, as easy as pie,” Swatty said. “They’ve got it down at Markses. All he’s got to do is to go down there and sneak in and stand around in Billy Markses bedroom until he gets it. Diphtheria is one of the easiest things you can get. Anybody can get it!”

      It looked like a mighty good plan to me. Me and Swatty went on talking about it and the more we talked the better it was. We talked about how long it would be after Bony got exposed to it before he would really have it and Swatty said that wouldn’t matter. All Bony would have to do would be to go right down to Markses and get exposed and then hurry home and tell his mother. The divorce would stop right away and wouldn’t have to wait until he was sick in bed before it stopped. So then I said that, anyway, Bony’s father would send for the bicycle right away, because fathers always hurry up to get things when their boys are good and sick. It was all bully and fine and me and Swatty felt pretty good about it, but Bony spoke up.

      “I ain’t going to get diphtheria!” he said.

      Well, that’s the way some fellows are! You go and work your brains all to pieces thinking up things to help them out of their troubles and then they say something like that. We saw it wasn’t any use to coax him. If we wanted to stop the divorce we would have to do it another way. I said:

      “I know the preacher that Bony’s mother goes to the church of.”

      “Well, what’s that got to do with

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