Huckleberry Finn

by Dave Mckay

  Chapter 5

  When I took a candle and went up to my room that night there sat pap himself!

  I had shut the door to. Then I turned around. and there he was. I used to be scared of him all the time, he hit me so much. I thought I was scared now, too; but in a minute I seen I was wrong -- that is, after the first surprise, as you may say, when my breathing kind of stopped, he being so not what I was thinking would be there; then right away after, I seen I wasn’t scared of him worth worrying about.

  He was most fifty, and he looked it. His hair was long and messy and dirty, and was hanging down so you could see his eyes looking through like he was behind vines. It was all black, no grey; so was his long, confused beard. There weren’t no colour in his face, where his face showed; it was white; not like another man’s white, but a white to make a body sick, a white to make a body’s skin turn cold -- a tree-frog white, a fish-stomach white. As for his clothes -- just pieces of broken cloth, that was all. He had one ankle resting on the other knee; the shoe on that foot was broken open, and two of his toes were sticking through, and he worked them now and then. His hat was lying on the floor -- an old black hat with a concave top.

  I stood a-looking at him; he sat there a-looking at me, with his chair leaning back a little. I put the candle down. I could see the window was up; so he had climbed in by the tool room. He kept a-looking me all over. By and by he says: “Straight clothes -- very. You think you’re the best part of a big head now, don’t you?”

  “Maybe I am, maybe I ain’t,” I says.

  “Don’t you give me none of your lip,” says he. “You’ve put on way too many airs since I been away. I’ll take you down a step or two before I get done with you. You’re educated, too, they say -- can read and write. You think you’re better than your father, now, don’t you, because he can’t? I’ll take it out of you. Who told you you might be part of such high minded foolishness, hey? -- who told you you could?”

  “The widow. She told me.”

  “The widow, hey? -- and who told the widow she could put in her shovel about a thing that ain’t none of her business?”

  “Nobody never told her.”

  “Well, I’ll learn her to mix things up. And you drop that school, you hear? I’ll learn people to bring up a boy to put on airs over his own father and let on to be better than what he is. Don't let me catch you going to that school again, you hear? Your mother couldn’t read, and she couldn’t write either, before she died. None of the family couldn’t before they died. I can’t; and here you’re a-lifting yourself up like this. I ain’t the man to stand it -- you hear?"

  Then he says, "Say, let me hear you read.”

  I took up a book and started something about George Washington and the wars. When I’d read about half a minute, he give the book a hit and knocked it across the room. He says: “It’s so. You can do it. I didn’t believe it when you told me. Now look here; you stop that putting on airs. I won’t have it. I’ll be watching, and if I catch you at that school I’ll whip you good. First thing you know, you’ll get religion, too. Never seen such a son."

  He took up a little blue and yellow picture of some cows and a boy, and says: “What’s this?”

  “It’s something they give me for learning my school work.”

  After tearing it up, he says: “I’ll give you something -- I’ll turn your skin to leather.

  He sat there making angry talk a minute, and then he says: “Ain’t you a sweet-smelling little girl? A bed; blankets; a mirror; and a rug on the floor -- and your own father got to sleep with the pigs in the leather yard. I never seen such a son. I’ll take some of these ways out of you before I’m done with you. Why, there ain’t no end to your airs -- they say you’re rich. How’s that?”

  “They lie -- that’s how.”

  “Look here -- mind how you talk; I’ve taken about all I can. Don’t give me no back talk. I been in town two days, and ain’t heard nothing but about you being rich. I heard about it way down the river, too. It’s why I come. You get me that money tomorrow.”

  “I ain’t got no money.”

  “It’s a lie. Judge Thatcher’s got it.”

  “You get it. I want it.”

  “I ain’t got no money, I tell you. Ask Judge Thatcher; he’ll tell you the same.”

  “All right. I’ll ask him; and I’ll make him give out, too, or I’ll know the reason why. Say, how much you got in your pocket now?”

  “I ain’t got only a dollar, and I want that to -- “

  “Don’t make no difference what you want it for; give it over.” He took a bite of it to see if it was good, then said he was going to town to get some whiskey; said he hadn’t had a drink all day. When he had got out on the tool room roof he put his head in again, and told me off for putting on airs and trying to be better than him. When I thought he was gone he come back and put his head in again, and told me to mind about that school, because he was going to be looking for me and whip me if I didn’t drop it.

  Next day he was drunk, and he went to Judge Thatcher’s and argued with him, and tried to make him give up the money; but he couldn’t; then pap promised he’d make the law force him.

  The judge and the widow went to law to get the court to take me away from him and let one of them take care of me; but it was a new judge that had just come, and he didn’t know my old man; so he said courts must not force their way in and separate families if they could help it; said it was best not to take a child away from its father. So Judge Thatcher and the widow had to quit on the business.

  That pleased the old man until he couldn’t rest. He said he’d whip me until I was black and blue if I didn’t get some money for him. I asked for three dollars from Judge Thatcher, and pap took it and got drunk, and went a-blowing around and using bad words and shouting and carrying on; and he kept it up all over town, with a tin pan, until almost midnight; then they locked him up, and next day they had him before court, and put him away again for a week. But he said he was okay; said he was boss of his son, and he’d make it warm for him.

  When he got out the new judge said he was a-going to make a man of him. So he took him to his own house, and dressed him up clean and nice, and had him to breakfast and lunch and dinner with the family, and was just old pie to him, so to speak. And after dinner he talked to him about not drinking and such things until the old man cried, and said he’d been foolish, and wasted his life; but now he was a-going to turn over a new leaf and be a man nobody would be embarrassed by, and he hoped the judge would help him and not look down on him. The judge said he could hug him for them words; so he cried, and his wife cried again; pap said he’d always been a man that no one had understood before, and the judge said he believed it. The old man said that a man that was down wanted trust and love, and the judge said it was so; so they cried again. And when it was time for bed pap got up and held out his hand, and says: “Look at it, everyone; take it, hold it, and shake it. There’s a hand that was the hand of a pig; but it ain’t so no more; it’s the hand of a man that’s started in on a new life, and will die before he’ll go back. You mark them words -- just remember I said them. It’s a clean hand now; shake it -- don’t be afraid.”

  So they shook it, one after the other, all around, and cried. The judge’s wife she kissed it. Then the old man he signed a promise -- made his mark. The judge said it was the holiest time in history, or something like that. Then they put the old man into a beautiful room, which was the extra room, and in the night some time he got powerful thirsty and climbed out onto the roof and down the side and sold his new coat for a bottle of whiskey, and climbed back again and had a good old time; and toward morning he climbed out again, drunk as could be, and fell off the roof and broke his left arm in two places, and was almost dead from the cold when someone found him after sun-up. And when they come to look at that extra room they had a devil of a job putting it all back together.

  The judge he felt kind of angry. He said it seemed the only way a body could chan
ge the old man was with a gun.

  Chapter 6

  Pretty soon the old man was up and around again, and then he went for Judge Thatcher in the courts to make him give up the money, and he went for me too, for not stopping school. He caught me a few times and whipped me, but I went to school just the same, and was able to hide from him or run away most of the time. I didn’t want to go to school much before, but I I wanted to go now to get back at pap. That court business was so slow -- seemed they weren’t ever going to get started on it; so every now and then I’d ask for two or three dollars off of the judge for pap, to keep from getting a whipping. Every time he got money he got drunk; and every time he got drunk he made trouble around town; and every time he made trouble he got locked up. He was just perfect for that -- this kind of thing was right up his line.

  He got to hanging around the widow’s too much and so she told him at last that if he didn’t quit coming around there she would make trouble for him. Well, wasn’t he angry? He said he would show who was Huck Finn’s boss. So he watched out for me one day at the end of winter, and caught me, and took me up the river about three mile in a flat bottom boat, and crossed over to the Illinois side where there was lots of trees and no houses but a rough old log cabin in a place where the trees was so thick you couldn’t find it if you didn’t know where it was.

  He kept me with him all the time, and I never got an opening to run off. We lived in that old cabin, and he always locked the door and put the key under his head nights. He had a rifle which he had robbed, I’d say, and we fished and hunted, and that was what we lived on. Every little while he locked me in and went down to the shop, three miles, to where he gave fish and other animals for whiskey, and would bring it home and get drunk and have a good time, and whip me.

  The widow she found out where I was by and by, and she sent a man over to get hold of me; but pap forced him off with the rifle, and it weren’t long after that before I was used to being where I was, and liked it -- all but the whipping part.

  It was kind of lazy and fun, resting all day, smoking and fishing, and no books or study. Two months or more run along, and my clothes got to be all holes and dirt, and I didn’t see how I’d ever got to like it so well at the widow’s, where you had to wash, and eat on a dish, and smooth your hair, and go to bed and get up at special times, and be forever worrying over a book, and have old Miss Watson talking at you all the time.

  I didn’t want to go back no more. I had stopped using bad words, because the widow didn’t like it; but now I took to it again because pap hadn’t no problem with it. It was pretty good times up in the trees there, take it all around.

  But by and by pap got too enthusiastic with his whipping stick, and I couldn’t stand it. I was all over sores. He got to going away so much, too, and locking me in. Once he locked me in and was gone three days. It was awful being there all alone. I judged he had got drowned, and I wasn’t ever going to get out any more. I was scared. I made up my mind I would fix up some way to leave there. I had tried to get out of that cabin many a time, but I couldn’t find no way. There weren’t a window to it big enough for a dog to get through. I couldn’t get up the chimney; it was too narrow. The door was thick, solid flat pieces of timber. Pap was pretty careful not to leave a knife or anything in the cabin when he was away; I would say I had hunted the place over as much as a hundred times; well, I was most all the time at it, because it was about the only way to put in the time. But this time I found something at last; I found an old dirty saw blade without any handle; it was in between a horizontal board and the angle boards of the roof. I oiled it up and went to work. There was an old horse-blanket nailed against the logs at the far end of the cabin behind the table, to keep the wind from blowing through the holes and putting the candle out. I got under the table and lifted the blanket, and went to work to saw a piece of the bottom log out -- big enough to let me through. Well, it was a good long job, but I was getting toward the end of it when I heard pap’s rifle in the distance. I cleaned up any signs of my work, and dropped the blanket and put my saw back, and pretty soon pap come in.

  Pap wasn’t in a good spirit -- like he is most of the time. He said he had been down in town, and everything was going wrong. His lawyer said he believed he would win his argument and get the money if they ever got started; but then there was ways to put it off a long time, and Judge Thatcher knowed how to do it. And he said people were saying there’d be another move to get me away from him and give me to the widow for my care, and they believed it would win this time. This shook me up a lot, because I didn’t want to go back to the widow’s any more and be so squeezed up and straight. Then the old man got to using bad words, and he used them against everything and everybody he could think of, and then did them all over again to make sure he hadn’t missed any, and after that he finished off with a kind of a general shout all around, with quite a lot of people which he didn’t know the names of, and so he called them what’s-his-name when he got to them, and went right along with his bad words.

  He said he would like to see the widow try and get me. He said he would watch out, and if they tried any such game on him he knowed of a place six or seven mile off to hide me in, where they might hunt until they dropped and they couldn’t find me. That made me pretty scared again, but only for a minute; I made my mind up that I wouldn’t stay on hand long enough for him to do that.

  The old man made me go to the boat and bring the things he had got. There was a fifty-pound bag of corn meal, and a side of salted pig meat, bullets, and a four-gallon container of whiskey, and a few other things. I carried up some of it, and went back and sat down on the front of the boat to rest. I thought it all over, and I thought I would walk off with the rifle and some lines, and take to the trees when I run away. I wouldn’t stay in one place, but just walk right across the country, mostly night times, and hunt and fish to keep alive, and get so far away that the old man or the widow couldn’t ever find me any more. I planned to saw my way out and leave that night if pap got drunk enough, and I believed he would. I got so full of thinking about it I didn’t know how long I had been staying at the boat until the old man shouted and asked me if I was asleep or drowned.

  I got the things all up to the cabin, and then it was about dark. While I was cooking dinner the old man took a drink or two and got himself warmed up, and went to angry talking again. He had been drunk over in town, sleeping all night in the open, and he was something to look at. A body would a thought he was Adam -- he was just all mud.

  Whenever his whiskey started to work he most always went for the government. This time he says: “Call this a government? Why, just look at it and see what it’s like. Here’s the law a-standing ready to take a man’s son away from him -- a man’s own son, which he has had all the trouble and all the worry and all the cost of caring for. Yes, just as that man has got that son growed up at last, and ready to go to work and start to do something for him and give him a rest, the law up and goes for him. And they call that government! That ain’t all, either. The law backs that old Judge Thatcher up and helps him to keep me out of my money. Here’s what the law does: The law takes a man worth six thousand dollars and more, and squeezes him into an old prison of a cabin like this, and lets him go round in clothes that ain’t good enough for a pig. They call that government? A man can’t get his rights in a government like this. Sometimes I’ve a strong feeling to just leave the country for good and all. Yes, and I told ‘em so; I told old Thatcher so to his face. Lots of 'em heard me, and can tell what I said. Says I, for two cents I’d leave this awful country and never come near it again. Them’s the very words. I says look at my hat -- if you can call it a hat -- but the top sticks up and the rest of it goes down until it’s below my face, and then it ain’t really a hat at all, but more like my head was pushed up through a piece of stove pipe. Look at it, says I -- such a hat for me to wear -- and me one of the richest men in this town if I could get my rights.

  “Oh, yes, this is a wonderful govern
ment, wonderful. Why, look here. There was a free nigger there from Ohio -- half and half he was, almost as white as a white man. He had the whitest shirt on you ever seen, too, and the cleanest hat; and there ain’t a man in that town that’s got as good clothes as what he had; and he had a gold watch and chain, and a silver-headed walking stick -- the awfulest old grey-headed businessman in the country. And what do you think? They said he was a teacher in a university, and could talk all kinds of languages, and knowed everything. And that ain’t the worst. They said he could vote when he was at home. Well, that let me out. Thinks I, what is the country a-coming to? It was voting day, and I was just about to go and vote myself if I wasn’t too drunk to get there; but when they told me there was a place in this country where they’d let that nigger vote, I pulled out. I says I’ll never vote again. Them’s the very words I said; they all heard me; and the country may come to nothing for all I care -- I’ll never vote again as long as I live. And to see the cool way of that nigger -- why, he wouldn’t a give me the road if I hadn’t pushed him out of the way. I says to the people, why ain’t this nigger put up for sale and sold? -- that’s what I want to know. And what do you think they said? Why, they said he couldn’t be sold until he’d been here for six months, and he hadn’t been there that long yet. There, now - - that’s proof. They call that a government that can’t sell a free nigger until he’s been one place six months. Here’s a government that calls itself a government, and lets on to be a government, and thinks it is a government, and yet it’s got to sit doing nothing for six whole months before it can take a hold of a travelling, robbing, awful, white-shirted free nigger, and -- “