The Further Adventures of Huckleberry Finn

by Greg Matthews

  “He deserves it,” says Pap. “takin’ our hard-earned money that way.”

  “You never helped none smashing that case.”

  “It was both of us had hold of it,” whines Pap. “You can’t blame just me.”

  “I can and do. You let your end go like it was red hot. Next time I ain’t letting you drink before we go out.”

  “You warn’t sober neither.”

  “On me it don’t show, but on you it does. Take a look at yourself. Anytime you ain’t got a bottle in your hand you shake like a goddamn leaf. I ain’t going to be answerable when you die of it.”

  “Don’t say that!” squeals Pap. “I ain’t poorly, just tired.…”

  “You’re drinkin’ yourself into the grave, Finn. You ain’t got the strength to quit now. It’s bound to happen.”

  “It ain’t! Don’t tell me what ain’t!”

  Morg give a disgusted kind of sound and stood.

  “I’m for resting up,” he says, and went out of eye-reach. I heard the bed creak when he flopped down, then snores. Pap stayed sat at the other side of the table so I never seen him, but he’s sobbing quiet to himself. It almost made me take pity, that sound, but I recollected too many bad things about Pap to let myself sentimentalize. My legs was cramped by now and when I tried to stand up I fell hard against the door.

  “Who’s that?” hollers Pap, startled I guess, and I heard his boots come clumping across the floor. Quick as can be I tucked my legs under me and bowed my head just when he yanks the door open.

  “Whater you want?” he says, looking down at the top of my hat.

  “Spare a dollar for a poor cripple, sir?” says I in the differentest voice I can do.

  “I ain’t got no dollar,” he says, and slams the door. Pap’s the kind that won’t piss on you if you’re burning to death, just the meanest man there is. I shuffled along down the hall dragging my knees so he don’t suspicion me and went downstairs, stood upright now. The clerk never even looked at me when I went by, so I reckon he won’t be asking Oliver Twine or Casey Holbrook if he had a nice reunion with his nephew from Ohio.

  I heeled it back to the warehouse yard and got back in the crate with Jim, still snoring, but I can’t sleep no more, and when it’s full day I woke him and we went for some breakfast. I told him everything I seen and he says it’s all mighty mysterious.

  When we showed up for work we got another surprise.

  “Boys,” says Albie, “I don’t rightly know how to tell you, but the rest of the crew ain’t none too happy.”

  “About what?” says I.

  “Well … uh … about you two I reckon,” he says, shifting on his feet and looking at the ground.

  “What’d we do to make ’em unhappy?”

  “Nothing special. It’s just.… Dang it, Jack, this ain’t none of my doing. I got to do it or they say they won’t do no work, and we got a schedule to keep. Things is hard enough with Herb’s broke leg.…”

  “You mean they don’t want to work with a nigger no more.”

  “Not exactly.… It’s just … they reckon you and Ben don’t fit in. We’re kind of a team here, and if the team gets upset the work goes all to hell. It’s the foreman’s job to see that it don’t, and I’m the new foreman. I’m directly answerable to the contractor that’s paying our wages, and if Mr. Wyeth finds out I ain’t getting the work done on schedule he’ll fire me. I got to have this job, Jack.… It ain’t nothing personal.…”

  “Mr. Wyeth? The one that owns the Corneycopey Mercantile Company and the ferry steamer?”

  “That’s the one. He’s a mighty big man in town and I can’t afford to get on the wrong side of him.”

  “So we ain’t working here no more.”

  “I reckon not. I’m real sorry, honest.”

  “Well, we was getting tired of it anyway.”

  “You ain’t going to hold it against me, are you?”

  “You ain’t answerable to me, Albie, just to Mr. Wyeth.”

  Jim and me walked away then, so I had the last word. Halfway across Portsmouth Square Jim says:

  “Happy New Year, Huck.”

  “Happy New Year, Jim.”

  Huck’n’Jim Day seemed like a long ways off.

  32

  The Price of Fame—The Facts Fancified—A Renewed Acquaintance—Food and Water—Cash and Promises

  We had money enough to keep us fed a few days more so it ain’t all that worrisome, but it means we got to find more work, so we went around every building site in town. They was all the same. No niggers. I could of got a job on any of them, but I never wanted to on account of principle. Jim’s as good a man as me, proberly better, and if he ain’t working then I ain’t neither. It’s the kind of thinking that makes you walk tall, but it don’t do nothing for your pocket. At the end of the day we was both footsore and weary and maybe just a little discouraged, so after we et I come up with a mighty fine idea.

  “Jim,” says I, “did you ever go to the theater?”

  “I never did, Huck.”

  “Well, neither did I, so tonight we’re going to see a show, and it don’t matter what it costs. We need a helping of cheer.”

  Jim’s agreeable so we hauled ourselfs around all the theaters and looked at the billboards outside to see which one we figure we’ll like best. They all looked considerable bright and cheery, with pictures of ladies in frilly little dresses that showed off their legs, but the doormen always says I’m too young to see them shows, so we moved on to a theater down the end of Dupont Street for a looksee there. I reckon we warn’t ready for the billboard they got outside, and I had to read it twice over before I believed it.

  FINN THE RED HANDED

  by

  New York City’s most renowned playwright

  Auberon Clitheroe

  Three (3) Complete Acts!

  SEE

  the Juvenile Murderer of Missouri

  commit his Dastardly Deed

  Before Your Eyes!

  THRILL

  to the excitement of the

  Famous Jailbreak!

  WITNESS

  HUCKLEBERRY FINN’S

  Desperate Journey across the

  Trackless Prairies & Rocky Mountains

  with his companion in blood

  the fearsome

  NIGGER JIM

  featuring

  Quentin d’ Arcy as Huck Finn

  Ambrose Hearn as Jim

  Matthew Prine as Bulldog Barrett

  Kenneth Montcalme as Tom Sawyer

  and

  Miss Grace Gentle as Becky Thatcher

  When I read it out to Jim he never believed it neither, so we just naturally had to go inside and see. The tickets was ten dollars each, and it’s me that laid out the money just in case they don’t like niggers. But there warn’t no trouble once we’re inside. There’s a big crowd all jammed in a room with red walls and paintings and a bar up one end, and they warn’t all dressed special or nothing, mostly in muddy boots with their hats still on and jawing and smoking so hard you can’t hear or see nothing across the other side. Then a man come through a door and bangs a little brass dish with a stick and everyone swallered their drinks and grabbed hold of bottles to take into the part where the seats is, real big and high with balconies around the walls. There’s a curtain hanging down one end with a big eagle painted on it, only it looks more like a buzzard so it warn’t done by no famous artist. There must of been hundreds of people already sat down waiting for the show to start, but not like in church where they’re all sat quiet. This bunch was liquored up and let the world know it, leaning over the backs of their seats and shooting the breeze with them that’s sat behind, and swigging from bottles and flasks and laughing fit to bust, and the men warn’t no better behaved neither. There was every kind of person there, in dirty clothes and fancy clothes and all kinds in between, but all the women was dressed like queens, whores proberly. Up front just below the stage there’s an orchestra kind of twiddling and fiddling and
tootling and plinking and scraping to get their insterments warm, a real racket.

  Me and Jim sat about halfway down next to the aisle and got our toes squashed a couple dozen times by folks passing along the row. There ain’t much light except for lamps along the walls and a string of lamps along the stage, pointed inward so’s we can see the buzzard clear. I got hit by a hunk of orange peel that come from one of the balconies and looked up, but can’t see who flung it. There’s dozens of legs stuck out over the edge and every now and then fruit and scrunched up paper bags and nuts come flying out. Someone upset a bottle that’s balanced on a balcony and it poured out onto someone’s head that’s below, and he hollered up at them that he don’t appreciate a drink that don’t come inside of a bottle, so they flung the bottle down at him too. He still warn’t happy and pulled a pistol and shot the heel off a boot that’s hung over the edge, which was a bad mistake because he got buried under a pile of stuff before he can even get off another shot, and finally went and got a safer seat somewhere else.

  By and by the crowd got restless waiting for the show to get started and hollered for the curtain to go up, but it stayed down so they tried stamping their feet. It catched on and everyone done it till it sounds like a marching army, and this time a man in fancy duds come onto the stage from the side and the orchestra give out a kind of braying and blaring for a second or three. He holds up his hands till the crowd simmered down and there’s quiet, then opened his mouth.

  “Ladies and gentlemen …” he says.

  “Where?” hollers someone, and they all hooted.

  “Tonight the Eagle Theater will present for your entertainment and erudition a story of today, a story of passion, a story of cold-blooded murder. You will witness many marvelous effects specially designed by the author on our play, Mr. Auberon Clitheroe himself, some never seen before on any other stage.”

  “Let’s see ’em then!” the same drunk hollers, but the man on stage never paid him no heed and goes on:

  “You will experience the thrill of danger as the notorious outlaw Huckleberry Finn is captured and escapes to continue his flight from justice. You will weep with compassion as the luckless waif Becky Thatcher struggles to avenge her father’s death. You will cheer the efforts of our hero, the greatest detective in Christendom, Chauncey Thermopylae Barrett, as he grimly seeks out the wrongdoer in the name of retribution, and above all, you will see how crime is rewarded only by punishment in a finale which has not yet taken place outside the precincts of this theater, but which, as surely as there is God above, must happen in the near future. For no man, or indeed boy, may transgress the laws of our great nation and live to profit thereby. This, then, is the essence and moral of our tale.”

  He ducked a few pieces of fruit that got throwed at him and talks even louder above all the grumbling, flinging his arms wide again.

  “Ladies and gentlemen, we proudly present … Finn the Red Handed!”

  They give him a big hand now that he’s through and he walked off. The orchestra started up again and hammered away real dramatic, but the curtain never lifted and things got noisy again with more boot stomping and whistling too. Even before it starts I ain’t inclined to enjoy the story, not after they give it that name to mean I’m a murderer with blood on my mitts. I only got called Finn the Red Handed by Tom Sawyer when we used to play pirates with Jo Harper and Ben Rogers and the rest, but used like this it sounds real bloodthirsty.

  Finally the buzzard lifted in the air and flapped up out of the way and we seen a room that’s got a rolltop desk and bookshelfs and a couple chairs. There’s a middle-aged man sat at the desk writing something down, and the violins kind of whimpered to let you know he’s a goodly kind soul. Then come a knock at the door and he says:

  “Come in.”

  It opens and this dirty-looking boy without no boots come in and sat himself on a corner of the desk when he could of took a chair, and made himself comfortable there while the man give him a mean look, specially when he spit tobacco juice on the floor. Soon as he come in the piano rumbled away dangersome and dark so you know it’s the villain, then quit so’s you can hear him talk.

  “You wanted to see me, Judge?” says the boy, and I see he’s meant to be me and the other one is Judge Thatcher. Neither of them looked nothing like the real thing, let me tell you.

  “Yes, Huckleberry, I did,” says the judge. “And I would appreciate it if you would not sit on my desk like some ruffian. A respectable person sits in a chair in polite company.”

  “I ain’t polite and I ain’t respectable,” says Huck, and a woman in the front row calls out:

  “Shame on you, you brat! Have some respect!”

  “Aawww, go drown yourself,” says Huck to her and the crowd roars, not disapproving or nothing, just having fun, and the woman never talked back so the story got moving again.

  “Well, spit it out, Judge,” says Huck. “I ain’t got all day to flap my gums. I got important matters to take care of.”

  “And what might they be?” asks the judge, looking stern.

  “Fishin’ mostly,” says Huck, “and maybe a little smokin’ too. Me and Jim got a busy day planned out.”

  “That is what I wish to talk to you about, young man.”

  “Fishin’?”

  “No, the nigger.”

  “Well, what about him?”

  “It is rumored that you have filled his head with abolitionist trash talk about freedom and equality.”

  “You heard correct, Judge. I figure a nigger’s as good as a white man any day.”

  The music rumbled and crashed like buildings is falling down and everyone booed fit to raise the roof. Huck just sneered at them and when things got quieted down some the judge says:

  “You must mend your ways, my boy. Since the death of your miserable father I have acted as your legal guardian, but you have been a great disappointment to me, nay, a burden upon my good intent and generosity. You must stop filling the darkie’s head with nonsense and let him live his days in fruitful labor for those best suited to run the country, namely us. You are playing with fire, and should those flames of freedom ever catch it would be tragical.”

  “I ain’t interested in none of this,” says Huck, spitting again.

  “Alas,” says the judge, looking out past the stage lights and putting his hand on his heart. “I have nurtured a viper in the bosom of my happy home. Is there no hope of mending the boy’s devilish ways? Long have I yearned for a son, but remained unblessed till the death of my dear wife. In vain did I hope this errant youth would be that boy I never had, and now look, he talks of niggers as equals, hateful words to my ears, and refuses to conduct himself or dress in a manner befitting the adopted son of a judge. And worse, I fear his influence upon my lovely daughter Becky. Above all else she must be kept free from the impure stain of this boy’s godlessness. Would not every father feel this way?”

  Everyone agreed it’s so and cheered him on, and he points to the door and says:

  “Leave my sight, Huckleberry Finn, and do not enter my home again until you have mended your ways!”

  “I’ll do it, and gladly,” says Huck. “I never liked it here anyhow. If there’s three things I can’t abide it’s clean sheets, clean clothes and clean living. It ain’t my idea of a good life, no sir. I reckon I’m happier living like a hog and getting drunk and keeping company with a nigger. That’s the life for me, and I’m off right now to get me some, so you can just holler up a drainpipe, Judge, for all the good it’ll do you.”

  He went out the door but you can’t hear it close behind him on account of the booing, then a moment later it opens again and in comes a girl with yeller hair all done out with ribbons and a frilly white dress. The violins shivered and sobbed way up high to tell you the only thing that’s keeping her down here instead of up there with the angels is the weight of her shoes, and she goes over to the judge who’s slumped in despair over his desk.

  “Papa,” she says, “what ails you so? Was
it that wretched boy I have just now seen leaving our home? Oh, fie upon him for upsetting my noble parent so. He is a sore trial to us all. Speak to me, Papa.”

  “I can scarce draw breath, Daughter,” says he, “for the stench of dirt and evil left behind by Huck Finn’s pernicious presence. You must never go near him again.”

  “But Papa, I warned you when you took him into the bosom of our happy home that things would turn out this way. You cannot tame a snarling beast to a gentle lamb. I fear your efforts have met with naught but heartbreak for you, my darling Papa. Oh, wretched youth, and to think I once looked upon him as my friend! But no more, for his niggerish ways are loathsome to me. I am glad, glad! that he has at last left our tranquil abode. Without doubt he will return from whence he came, that broken-down cabin out in the woods wherein he lives as does a beast, and that is where he belongs. Good riddance to bad rubbish, I say!”

  They all agreed and give her a heap of clapping, and the buzzard come crashing down so we can’t see the room no more. When it went up again they got the inside of a log cabin set up on stage, with Huck sat on a rickety table whittling wood and talking to himself, which is something I ain’t never done seeing as it’s the sign of a fool.

  “That danged judge has got me all meaned up,” says Huck. “He thinks I ain’t nothing but trash, but I reckon I’m worth ten of him. One of these days I’ll have my revenge on him for them words he spoke, and my partner Jim will help me.”

  The cabin door opens and in comes a man with his face and hands all blacked with paint. All the deep-down insterments kind of plodded along like elephants and a lone violin skittered around like a lazy fly that can’t figure out where to set down. Jim shambles over to Huck and says:

  “Huck, we ain’t got nothin’ to eat. De fish nebber bit.”

  “Well what kind of bait was you using, Jim?”

  “I put a real nice apple core on de hook, but dey nebber et it.”

  Everyone laughed at him for being a simple nigger, and Jim says:

  “I reckon we got to go hungry now de judge ain’t gibbin’ you no spendin’ money no mo’, Huck.”

  “Jim, I’ve just now hatched a plan that will get us all the money we need.”