by Dave Mckay
“Look here, Bilgewater,” he says, “I’m a world full of sorry for you, but you ain’t the only person that’s had troubles like that.”
“No?”
“No you ain’t. You ain’t the only person that’s been pulled down wrongly out of a high place.”
“Oh my!”
“No, you ain’t the only person that’s had a secret of his birth.” And truth is, he started to cry.
“Hold! What do you mean?”
“Bilgewater, can I trust you?” says the old man, in a soft crying way.
“To the death!” He took the old man by the hand and squeezed it, and says, “That secret of your being: speak!”
“Bilgewater, I am the son of the king of France!”
You can be sure, Jim and me opened our eyes wide this time.
Then the duke says: “You are what?”
“Yes, my friend, it is too true -- your eyes is looking at this very second on the poor lost Dauphin, Louis the Seventeen, son of Louis the Sixteen and Mary Antoinette.”
“You! At your age! No! You mean you’re his son; you must be six or seven hundred years old, at the very least.”
“Trouble has done it, Bilgewater, trouble has done it; trouble has brought these grey hairs on my face and has taken the hairs from my head. Yes, good men, you see before you, in dirty blue pants and sadness, the lost, forced out, walked-on, and hurting true King of France.”
Well, he cried and took on so that me and Jim didn’t know what to do, we was so sorry -- and so glad and proud we’d got him with us, too. So we did like we done before with the duke, and tried to make him feel happy. But he said it weren’t no use, nothing but to be dead and done with it all could do him any good; but he added that it often made him feel easier and better for a while if people acted toward him as they should, and got down on one knee to speak to him, and always called him “Your Majesty,” and waited on him first at meals, and didn’t sit down when around him, until he asked them.
So Jim and me started majesty-ing him, and doing this and that and t’other for him, and standing up until he told us we might sit down. This done him a lot of good, and so he got happy and comfortable. But the duke kind of turned sour on him, and didn’t look at all happy with the way things was going; still, the king acted real friendly toward him, and said the duke’s father’s grandfather and all the other Dukes of Bilgewater was well thought of by his father, and was free to come to the palace a lot.
But the duke stayed angry a good while, until by and by the king says: “Like as not we got to be together a very long time on this here raft, Bilgewater, and so what’s the use of your being sour? It’ll only make things rough for all of us. I ain’t to be blamed for not being born a duke, and you ain’t to be blamed for not being born a king -- so what’s the use to worry? Make the best of things the way you find ‘em, says I -- that’s my saying. This ain’t no bad thing that we’ve found here -- more than enough food and an easy life -- come, give us your hand, duke, and let’s all be friends.”
The duke done it, and Jim and me was pretty glad to see it. It took away all the hard feelings and we felt mighty good over it, because it would a been a sad business to have any hard feelings on the raft; for what you want, above all things, on a raft, is for everybody to be happy, and feel right and kind toward the others.
It didn’t take me long to learn that these men weren’t no kings or dukes at all, but just low-down empty talk and stories. But I never said nothing, never let on; kept it to myself; it’s the best way; then you don’t have no arguments, and don’t get into no trouble. If they wanted us to call them kings and dukes, I hadn’t no problems with that, as long as it would keep peace in the family; and it weren’t no use to tell Jim, so I didn’t tell him. If I never learned nothing else out of pap, I learned that the best way to get along with his kind of people is to let them have their own way.
Chapter 20
They asked a lot of questions; wanted to know what we covered up the raft that way for, and why we rested days instead of going on down the river -- was Jim running away from his owner?
Says I: “What a foolish question! would a slave run south?”
No, they agreed he wouldn’t. I had to give them some other reason for what we were doing, so I says: “My parents was living in Pike County, in Missouri, where I was born, and they all died off but me and pa and my brother Ike. Pa, he was planning to break up and go down and live with Uncle Ben, who’s got a little one-horse place on the river, forty-four miles below Orleans. Pa was pretty poor, and owed some money; so when he’d squared up there weren’t nothing left but sixteen dollars and our slave, Jim. That weren’t enough to take us fourteen hundred mile, sleeping in the open on a river boat or any other way. Well, when the river come up, Pa had a lucky day; he caught this piece of a raft; so we said we’d go down to Orleans on it. Pa’s luck didn’t hold out; a riverboat boat run over the forward corner of the raft one night, and we all jumped into the water, to swim under the wheel; Jim and me come up all right, but pa was drunk, and Ike was only four years old, so they never come up no more. Well, for the next day or two we had a lot of trouble, because people was always coming out in boats and trying to take Jim away from me, saying they believed he was running away. We don’t run days no more now; nights they don’t come around to question us.”
The duke says: “Leave me alone to work out a way so we can run days if we want to. I’ll think the thing over -- I’ll come up with a plan that’ll fix it. But we’ll not go today, because we don’t want to go by that town we just left when they can see us -- it might not be healthy.”
Toward night it started to turn dark and look like rain; the heat lightning was jumping around low down in the sky, and the leaves was starting to shake -- it was going to be pretty ugly, it was easy to see that.
So the duke and the king went to looking over our tent, to see what the beds was like. My bed was a bag of dry grass -- better than Jim’s, which was a bag of corn leaves; there’s always sticks around about in a corn leaf bag, and they stick into you and hurt; and when you move on the bag it sounds like dead leaves; it makes such a noise that you wake up. Well, the duke said he would take my bed; but the king said he wouldn’t.
He says: “I should think the difference in where we come from would a shown to you that a corn bed weren’t good enough for me to sleep on. Your Lord will take the corn bed yourself.”
Jim and me was worried again for a minute, being afraid there was going to be some more trouble between them; so we was pretty glad when the duke says: “It is for me to be always forced into the mud under the iron heel of cruel leaders. Bad luck has broken my once proud spirit; I give in, I will not fight; it is the way things are for me. I am alone in the world -- let me go through the awful pain of it now.”
We got away as soon as it was good and dark. The king told us to stand well out toward the middle of the river, and not show a light until we were a long ways below the town. We saw a little group of lights by and by -- that was the town, you know -- and went quietly by, about a half a mile out. When we was more than half a mile below we put up our lantern; and about ten o’clock it come on to rain and blow with a lot of lightning; so the king told us to both stay on watch until the weather got better; then him and the duke climbed into the tent and turned in for the night.
It was my watch below until twelve, but I wouldn’t a turned in anyway if I’d had a bed, because a body don’t see such a storm as that every day in the week, not by a long piece. My souls, how the wind did blow! And every second or two there’d come an explosion of lightning that would let you see waves on the river for half a mile around, and you’d see the islands looking grey through the rain, and the trees whipping around in the wind; then comes a Bang! -- followed by bum! bum! bumble- umble-um-bum-bum-bum-bum -- and the noise would move away, and quit -- and then bang comes another explosion. The waves almost washed me off the raft sometimes, but I didn’t have any real clothes on, and I wasn’t worried. We
didn’t have no trouble about branches sticking up; the lightning was coming so close together that we could see them soon enough to throw her head this way or that and miss them.
I had the middle watch, you know, but I was pretty sleepy by that time, so Jim he said he would stand the first half of it for me; he was always mighty kind that way, Jim was. I squeezed into the tent, but the king and the duke had their legs pointing around so there weren’t no show for me; so I rested outside -- The rain wasn’t a problem, because it was warm, and the waves weren’t running so high now.
About two they come up again, and Jim was going to call me; but then he changed, thinking they weren’t high enough yet to be a problem; but he was wrong about that, for pretty soon along come a big one and washed me off the raft. It almost killed Jim a-laughing. He was the easiest black man to laugh that ever was.
I took the watch, and Jim went to sleep and snored away; and by and by the storm let up for good and all; and the first cabin light that showed I got Jim awake, and together we found a hiding place for the raft for the day.
The king got out an old box of cards after breakfast, and him and the duke played seven-up a while, five cents a game. Then they got bored of it, and said they would “plan some action,” as they called it. The duke went down into his bag, and brought up a lot of little printed papers and read them out loud. One said, “The well known Doctor Armand de Montalban, of Paris,” would “talk on the Science of head shapes” with empty lines for where and when, at ten cents to get in, and “reports on your best qualities at twenty-five cents each.” The duke said that was him. In another bill he was the “well known Shakespearian actor, Garrick the Younger, of Drury Lane, London.” In other papers he had a lot of other names and done other wonderful things, like finding water and gold with a special stick, breaking the curses of witches, and so on.
By and by he says: “But acting is my best quality. Have you ever walked the boards, King?”
“No,” says the king.
“You shall, then, before you’re three days older, oh Great One,” says the duke. “The first good town we come to we’ll rent a meeting house and do the sword fight in Richard III, and something from Romeo and Juliet. What do you think?”
“I’m in, up to my neck, for anything that will pay, Bilgewater; but, you see, I don’t know nothing about acting, and ain’t ever seen much of it. I was too small when pap used to have them at the palace. Do you think you can learn me?”
“Easy!”
“All right. I’m just freezing for something new, anyway. Let’s start right away.”
So the duke he told him all about who Romeo was and who Juliet was, and said he was used to being Romeo, so the king could be Juliet.
“But if Juliet’s such a young girl, duke, my not having hair and my white beard is going to look very strange on her, don't you think?”
“No, don’t you worry; these uneducated people won’t ever think of that. Besides, you know, you’ll be dressed as a girl, and that makes all the difference in the world; Juliet’s looking out the window at the moon before she goes to bed, and she’s got on her night dress and her beautiful night hat. Here are the clothes for the parts.”
He got out two or three curtain-cloth suits, which he said was soldiers’ uniforms for Richard III and t’other man, and a long white cotton night shirt and a pretty night hat to go with it. The king was happy with that; so the duke got out his book and read the parts over in the most wonderful arms out way, walking around and acting at the same time, to show how it had got to be done; then he give the book to the king and told him to learn his part so he could say it without looking.
There was a little one-horse town about three miles down the bend, and after dinner the duke said he had worked out a plan to run when the sun was out without it being dangerous for Jim; so he said he would go down to the town and fix that thing. The king said he would go, too, and see if he couldn’t do something. We was out of coffee, so Jim said I better go along with them in the canoe and get some.
When we got there there weren’t nobody up yet; streets empty, and perfectly dead and still, like Sunday. We found a sick slave lying in the sun in a back yard, and he said everybody that weren’t too young or too sick or too old was gone to a camp meeting, about two mile back in the trees. The king asked how to get there, and told me he’d go and work that camp meeting for all it was worth, and I might go too.
The duke said what he was after was a printing shop. We found it; a small room, up over a carpenter shop -- carpenters and printers all gone to the meeting, and no doors locked. It was a dirty, messy place, and had ink marks, and papers with pictures of horses and slaves that run off on them, all over the walls. The duke took off his coat and said he was all right now. So me and the king left for the camp meeting.
We got there in about a half an hour with our shirts wet from the heat, for it was a most awful hot day. There was as much as a thousand people there from twenty miles around. The place was full of horse teams and wagons tied to trees, with the horses hitting their feet on the ground to keep off the flies. There was shops made out of sticks and roofed over with branches, where they were selling lemon drinks and sweet biscuits, and watermelons and green corn and other things like that.
The preaching was going on under the same kinds of buildings, only they was bigger and held crowds of people. The benches was made out of half logs, with holes drilled in the round side to push sticks into for legs. They didn’t have no backs. The preachers had high places to stand on at one end of the buildings. The women had on sun-hats; and their best dresses. Some of the young men was without shoes, and some of the children didn’t have on any clothes but just a rough shirt. Some of the old women was knitting, and some of the young people was secretly looking for friends of the opposite sex.
The first building we come to the preacher was lining out a song. He’d say two lines, then everyone would sing it, and it was great to hear it, there was so many of them and they done it in such an enthusiastic way; then he lined out two more for them to sing -- and so on. The people come alive more and more, and were singing louder and louder; and toward the end some started to moan, and some started to shout. Then the preacher started to preach, and started in all sincerity, too; and went walking first to one side of the stage and then the other, and then a-leaning down over the front of it, with his arms and his body going all the time, and shouting his words out with all his strength; and every now and then he would hold up his Bible and open it out, and kind of pass it around this way and that, shouting, “It’s the gold snake in the desert! Look on it and live!” And people would shout out, “Glory! -- Amen!” And so he went on, with the people moaning and crying and saying amen:
“Oh, come to the sinners’ bench! come, you who are black with sin! (amen!) come, you who are sick and sore! (amen!) come, you who are crippled and blind! (amen!) come, you who are poor and in need! (a-a-men!) come, all that’s tired and dirty and hurting! -- come with a broken spirit! come with a humble heart! come in your old clothes and sin and dirt! The waters that will make you clean is free, the door of heaven stands open -- oh, come in and be at rest!” (a-a-men! glory, glory!) And so on. You couldn’t make out what the preacher said by this time, because of all the shouting and crying. People got up all over the crowd, and worked their way to the sinners’ bench, with the tears running down their faces; and when all the sinners had got up there to the front benches in a crowd, they would sing and shout and throw themselves down on the ground, just crazy and wild.
Well, the first I knowed the king got a-going, and you could hear him over everyone; and next he went a-running up onto the stage where the other preacher was, and the preacher he begged him to speak to the people, and he done it. He told them he was a pirate -- been a pirate for thirty years out in the Indian Ocean -- and his men was thinned out a lot last year in a fight, and he was home now to take out some new men, and thanks to God he’d been robbed last night and put on land off of a river boat withou
t a cent, and he was glad of it; it was the best thing that ever happened to him, because he was a changed man now, and happy for the first time in his life; and, poor as he was, he was going to start right off and work his way back to the Indian Ocean, and put in the rest of his life trying to turn the pirates into the way of truth; for he could do it better than anyone else, because he knew all pirates in that ocean; and even if it took him a long time to get there without money, he would get there anyway, and every time he brought a pirate to the Lord, he would say to him, “Don’t you thank me, don’t you give me nothing; it all belongs to them good people in Pokeville camp meeting, spiritual brothers who have reached out to the whole world, and that good preacher there is the truest friend a pirate ever had!”
And then he broke into tears, and so did everyone. Then someone sings out, “Take up some money for him, take it up!”
Well, five or six made a jump to do it, but someone sings out, “Let him pass the hat around!” Then everyone said it, the preacher too.
So the king went all through the crowd with his hat, rubbing his eyes, and blessing the people and saying how good they was and thanking them for being so good to the poor pirates away off there; and every little while the prettiest girls, with tears running down their cheeks, would up and ask would he let them kiss him for to remember him by; and he always done it; and some of them he hugged and kissed as many as five or six times. He was asked to stay a week; and everyone wanted him to live in their houses; said they’d think it was a gift to them if he stayed; but he said as this was the last day of the camp meeting he couldn’t do no good there, and besides he was in a hurry to get to the Indian Ocean right off and go to work on the pirates.
