“You never hurt him, Jim.”
“It don’ matter. I went an’ knock him down. I don’ wanter talk no mo’ ’bout it.”
So we rode along silent for awhile and reached the road and turned west along it. By and by Jim says:
“Huck, how come you let on we’s headed for St. Louis? You layin’ a wrong trail for de sher’ff?”
“That’s the plan, Jim. I hope I acted it good enough so’s Mr. Aintree was fooled. There’s just one thing that’s bothering me and that’s our tracks. The sheriff just has to set eyes on them and he’ll follow right along behind.”
But I never needed to worry. Pretty soon down come the snow again, thick enough to bury tracks even left by a herd of elephants. It lasted for hours and we near froze, same as yesterday, but we had to keep going. We ate in the saddle and never passed a soul on the road. When dusk come the snow stopped, and it turned out later that was the last snowfall of winter, so the worst was over. We stayed the night in a barn that was empty and ramshackle and next day went on. With no snow we made good time. We come to a small town in the afternoon and skirted around her, cutting through the woods, then back onto the road. All the time I had an itchy feeling in between my shoulders, and it’s from waiting to turn around and see Sheriff Bottoms behind us with a bunch of men with guns. But it never happened. Lady Luck was riding along with us, maybe on Mr. Aintree’s mare. That night we slept under a wood bridge over a creek, and mighty cold and damp it was, but better than the open. When I woke up next morning I seen the mare has broken her halter and gone, and I wondered if Lady Luck went with her. It was mighty discouraging.
With the weather fining up at last, we had company on the road, but no one give us a second look. Proberly they never heard of Huck Finn’s jailbreak this far from the river, not yet anyhow. So we ambled along bold as brass, like we had a right to be there, not sneaking through the trees like outlaws, but still with the blankets pulled up around our heads to hide our faces. Nobody suspicioned us for it; the air was cold as Pap’s heart. And that’s how the days went by, sleeping in barns that was set away from houses and not used, or sometimes in woods where the trees was close together and the branches thick overhead to give us shelter. We never went into a town, always around, and when I judged we was eighty mile or more from St. Petersburg I got to feeling relaxed again. Then come trouble. Jim’s mule one night chewed a hole in both foodsacks and et everything that warn’t in a tin, so we was near out of supplies. The next town we come to I say:
“Jim, take both mules and go around and wait for me on the other side of town. Stay hid in the trees till you see me coming along the road.”
“You askin’ for trouble, Huck. We bin lucky so far.”
“We don’t have no choice. We got to eat. Nobody’s going to take no notice of me. I’ll just walk into a store and get what we need and walk out again.”
He warn’t happy but he seen the sense of it, and pretty soon I’m strolling down the only street in town, which is called Hedleyville. You never seen a littler town, with three buildings and a cabin or two. There’s a store like there is in every town and I stepped up onto the porch and knocked snow and mud off my boots and went in. There’s maybe six or eight men sat round the stove smoking and chewing and jawing. Seeing I ain’t a man, they give me no notice. I went up to the counter and rattled off a list of supplies to the storekeeper and he started fetching it down off shelfs and out of barrels. There’s a fair pile so I ask for a sack, and he give me one and I loaded it.
“Fourteen dollars and twenty-seven cents,” he says.
I handed over two ten-dollar bills. They was new and flat and crisp like they come straight off the press, and he looked at them suspicious, holding them up to the light and sort of snapping them in his fingers. Them around the stove was watching now. There ain’t nothing like the sound of money to make heads turn.
“It ain’t counterfeit,” says I, “Pap just sold our farm and got paid in new bills. If you like I can crinkle ’em up for you.”
Someone give a hoot and they all joined in except the storekeeper.
“Danged if you ain’t the suspicionest man in the state, Ed Sykes,” says one. Another with whiskers says:
“You boys heard about the time old Ed figured he’d get himself one of them mail order brides? He goes to the post office and sends away the letter and two months later there’s a woman turns up on his doorstep and says she’s the one. Well, Ed looks her up and down and says she cain’t be no mail order bride. ‘Why not?’ she says. ‘On account of you ain’t wrapped up in paper and string,’ he says, and slams the door.”
That set them haw-hawing and slapping their legs. The storekeeper frowned at them through his little round spectacles and give me a look that says I’m to blame.
“That ain’t the end of it though,” says Whiskers. “That woman raised such a holler Ed had to let her into the house, and right away he’s suspicious and wants to know if she’s a virgin. ‘I ain’t about to marry me a bride that ain’t a virgin,’ he says, and she says, ‘Well then you kin put your finger up and feel for yourself if you really got to know.’ So Ed gets down on his knees and fumbles under her dress and finds what he’s after and runs his finger up … and up … and up … and still cain’t feel no cork so he says, ‘Ma’am, you ain’t no virgin,’ and she looks real upset. ‘Mr. Sykes,’ she says, ‘you have got your finger up my ass.’”
That one had them braying like jackasses and stomping the floor. The storekeeper give me my change and I headed for the door with the sack over my shoulder. I’m almost there when one of the stovers says:
“Wait on there, boy. What’d you say your name is?”
“I never did, but it’s Ben Rogers.”
“Whereabouts is this farm your Pap sold? I ain’t heard of no sale around here.”
“No, sir. It’s back near Independence. We’re moving east to Illinois to be with the rest of the family.”
“Well you must be the only ones. The rest of the country’s heading for California to look for gold. Ain’t you tempted, boy?”
“No, sir. Ma says gold is the devil’s metal.”
“Where’s your Pap now?” says another, squirting tobacco juice into a spittoon.
“He’s up the road a little,” says I. “The wagon busted an axle and he sent me into town to get supplies. He reckons we’ll be stuck there a day or two.”
“Well you tell him to come see Hank Mophett. He’s the best man for fixing things hereabouts. Don’t you forget it.”
“I won’t, sir,” says I, and turned to go.
“Wait on,” says Whiskers. “What’d you say your name was again?”
“Ben Rogers, sir.”
“You sure it ain’t Huckleberry Finn?”
“No, sir. I’d be mortified to have a name like that.”
“I just figured I’d make sure. This Finn, he’s wanted clear across Missouri for murder and he’s on the run with a nigger. You sure you ain’t slit no judge’s throat lately?”
“No, sir. Shot a bank teller last week, but I reckon that don’t count.”
That tickled them. They set to hooting and stomping again and I slid out the door and up the road with legs all gone to jelly under me. It never took but a step or three to leave a town that size. I followed the road around a bend out of eye-reach of Hedleyville and pretty soon Jim give a holler. He brung the mules down onto the road from a stand of trees and I clumb aboard. He says:
“You get ever’thin’ we needs, Huck?”
“I did, and bad news besides. They know about us even way out here, Jim. We got to go careful and not get seen if we can help it.”
“How we goin’ to do it, Huck? De sky gettin’ bluer ever’ day. De snow turnin’ to slush an’ folks soon be gettin’ aroun’ on de road. Ain’t no way to stop ’em lookin’ at us I kin figure.”
“There’s got to be a way around it.”
“How ’bout de same trick we done on de river, when you dressed up like a gal?”<
br />
“What kind of family’d let their daughter travel with just a buck nigger? We’d stand out even more that way.”
“How ’bout I dresses up too?”
“Women never travel alone, Jim, black or white. Anyway, your beard’s growed out and we don’t have a razor. A bearded nigger woman’s bound to bring the whole state down on us to gawp. No, it has to be something else.”
“Dere’s dat trick we done one time, paintin’ me up to be a sick Ayrab wid disease bustin’ out all over.”
“They don’t get sick Ayrabs out here, Jim, nor healthy ones neither. You’d get talked about all to blazes. Think on it some more.”
“I reckon I run outer possibles, Huck. You give her a try.”
So we rode along with me thinking furious hard, but nothing come to me that warn’t foolhardy and bound to fail. Jim was right about one thing, the season was on the turn for sure. Three days now we had bright sunshine most of the time and the road was getting muddier and slipperier as the snow got trampled on and melted. Soon Jim says:
“You figured somethin’ yet, Huck?”
“Not yet. I’ll smoke a pipe and see if it helps any.”
We both got out our pipes and filled them and puffed away, but a pipe smoked on the move somehow don’t give the same gratification of a pipe smoked when you’re rested. I say so and Jim agreed.
“De bes’ time for smokin’ be de end of a weary day when you knows you kin rest up an’ not hafter do another lick till mornin’. Das when a man gets to thinkin’ on dis an’ dat, quiet an’ peaceful.”
“It’s true, Jim. Why, the world’s greatest thinkers is all pipe smokers.”
“Is dat a fac’?”
“A well-knowed fact, Jim. It’s practickly commonplace, that fact.”
“What’s some of dese big thinkers’ names?”
“I reckon Solomon was about the first to take it up, and he goes back thousands of years. Whenever he had troubles, and kings do get them, he’d out with his pouch and pipe and fill her up and puff away till he untroubled things, only his wife called Ruth used to get upset something terrible whenever he done it. Soon as she seen that pipe come out she’s out of the house and down to the fields to mow the barley and chop the cotton like all the folk that warn’t royalty, just so’s she could get some fresh air. Old Solomon, soon as he knocked his pipe out he’d climb in his chariot and go fetch her back.”
“Women is mighty funny ’bout smokin’. Seems to me if dey took up de habit like us we wouldn’ get so much complainin’ an’ speechifyin’ ’bout de smoke an’ stink.”
“It’s a good point, Jim, but women reckon it ain’t feminine to smoke, so they’ll always raise the roof when we do it.”
“Who else famous for smokin’ an’ thinkin’, Huck?”
“The next one’d be Moses. He was such a deep thinker he smoked all the time and his pipe never went out except when he’s asleep, and even then he had a servant keep feeding it and farming it. You remember how he led the children of Israel out of Egypt with a pillar of smoke by day and a pillar of fire by night? Well that was Moses’ pipe, just blazing away and giving off sparks and smoke like a steamboat’s chimneys.”
“Don’ dat beat all. An’ I was all de time thinkin’ it’s God Almighty sent dem pillars along.”
“That’s because it got translated wrong when King James was putting the Bible in English, Jim. The King James version is just riddled with mistakes. To get the accurate truth you got to read the Queen Anne version, which is different and a whole lot shorter.”
“De queen done translaterin’?”
“She surely did. Queens generally has a lot of time on their hands so that’s what she done most days. In the evenings she made tables and chairs in a little carpentry shop behind the throne room and got famous for that too.”
“She a pipe smoker, Huck? I reckon a queen dat does carpenterin’ kin do mos’ anythin’.”
“The pages of history is blank on that, but Aristotle, he was a smoker definite, and what’s more he done most of it in the bath.”
“Why he do dat, Huck?”
“He was the cautious kind, Jim, and wanted plenty of water around so he’d never set fire to the house. He was a deep thinker too. He figured out that if you take a triangle and step on it and run a wagon over it and beat it out of all shape it’s still a triangle.
“I don’ unnerstan’ dat, Huck.”
“No one can, Jim, and that’s why Aristotle is held to be the deepest thinker of them all.”
Later on in the day we come to a crossroad and there’s a bunch of wagons like I never seen before, and that’s how we come to meet the McSweens.
6
A Church on Wheels—High Times—God’s Work—Coin and Paper—The Facts of Life
There was five wagons, not iron-hooped and canvas-covered but with walls and roofs painted all over with pictures in the brightest colors, angels mostly, in pink nightgowns flying up and down and around corners with light coming out of their heads, whitish gold where it touches their long hair and rainbow colored further out. It hurt your eyes to look, they was so grand. There’s ruts in the ground where four of the wagons went catty-corner across from one road to another to miss the mudhole in the middle of the crossroads, but the fifth never made it and was bogged down axle-deep and leaning over to one side. There’s about ten people stood around, all women except for two men, one tall and lanky and lantern-jawed dressed all in black, and the other short and fat and bearded with a fancy silk waistcoat brighter even than the wagons. Waistcoat come across to us and give us a beaming smile and says:
“Hail, fellow wayfarers. Are you perchance bound west along this here road?”
“We are,” says I, and he beams all the wider and says:
“I beg leave to request Christian assistance in the matter of getting our wagon unbogged. We’d be purely grateful for it.”
“I reckon we can oblige,” says I, and we got down and went over to the wagon. It’s axle-deep like I say, and the team never could of pulled it out alone. Waistcoat says:
“We struggled and strained with her but to no avail. She is sunk deep in the slough of despond awaiting the arrival of sinew and muscle and Christian charity, and lo, it has come in the person of you and your nigger.”
It’s flowery talk all right, but I seen through it. There warn’t none of them covered in mud which they would of been if they struggled and strained like he says, but I let it pass and say:
“What you got to do is dig a trench in front of the wheels with a slope to it, then fill them with brush so the wheels can grab on it and come free. Is there a shovel in your rig?”
“There surely is,” says Waistcoat, and turns to the women. “Constance, fetch the shovel from the calliope.”
Away she went and come back from the first wagon with a shovel that’s considerable blackened with soot like a steamboat shovel that’s used for feeding the firebox. She give it to Waistcoat who give it to me and I handed it to Jim and he got digging. Says I:
“It’ll be a heap faster if you give a hand to fetch the brush.”
He clapped his hands together and I see they’re gloved, soiled but not real dirty, and he hollers:
“Faith, Hope, Charity, Constance, Mercy, Grace, Chastity, give the young man assistance in the gathering of the brush! May it be a plentiful gathering!”
And the girls started gathering hither and yon, picking up dead brush and breaking off twigs from the trees and piling it all in a heap, so there warn’t much for me to do. Waistcoat beamed away at the females then offers me a glove and says:
“I am Phineas McSween. This here gentleman is my brother the Reverend Mordecai and over yonder is my good wife Harriet, but we call her Ma.”
She’s a right big woman, bigger than any three of the rest, and she give me a little nod but never spoke and the Reverend done the same. Pa McSween says:
“The young ladies are all the proud fruit of my loins, every one. I call them the seven virtu
es. No man ever had a finer family nor more close-knit than we. May I know the name of our kindly benefactor?”
“Tom Sawyer,” says I.
“Tom, you have delivered us from the depths of despair. We are behind schedule and due for arrival in Slocombe tomorrow. The populace awaits us with eagerness due to passing through last year with great success and making a solemn vow to return. It is a typical show of thanks, which we generally get in every town on our winding way.”
“Is it a circus?” I ask, and he looks at me scornful.
“A circus?” he spits. “We are the minstrels of the Lord, just as brother Mordecai is his minister. You see before you the McSween Traveling Church of Christ the Lamb.”
He points at the nearest wagon which has got a picture of Jesus squeezing a lamb next to him and staring at you with big lonesome eyes. He’s wearing white so’s you can pick him out from all them pink angels, and McSween goes on:
“We are the Lord’s attendants, spreading the gospel far and wide through the towns west of the river where men and women, Godfearing hardworking citizens all, are starved of the Word. It is our beholden task and duty to bring enlightenment and salvation to these worthy souls that they may profit thereby and rejoice in the blood of the Lamb. We are the shepherds of His farflung flock, and mighty proud to be so.”
And the Reverend and Ma both give out with “Amen.”
Then McSween wants to know where I’m bound and I give him the story about going to join Uncle Brewster Sawyer out near St. Joseph, and he looks thoughtful for a minute then says:
“Strange are the ways of the Lord. That is the very location we are aimed at, with minor diversionation along the way. The Lord has whispered in my ear and told me your nigger there has a strong back and a willing heart and the road betwixt here and St. Joseph is plagued with mudholes aplenty that will be needing backbone and gristle to get us out of. The Lord reckons it’d be a fine proposition if I offered you a place among our happy throng, you and the nigger both, so you can help in His holy work. Seeing as how man does not live by bread alone I’ll cross your palm with a dollar a week and you can feed along with the rest and sleep comfortable in a wagon at night. How do you figure it appeals, young Tom?”
The Further Adventures of Huckleberry Finn Page 8
