Multimedia Mania/abacus-multimedia-mania.iso/dp/0132/01322.txt

Text File | 1993-07-27 | 15KB | 246 lines

$Unique_ID{bob01322}
$Pretitle{}
$Title{Adventures Of Huckleberry Finn, The
Pap Struggles With The Death Angel}
$Subtitle{}
$Author{Twain, Mark}
$Affiliation{}
$Subject{old
time
get
off
pap
didn't
govment
couldn't
way
too}
$Date{}
$Log{}
Title:       Adventures Of Huckleberry Finn, The
Author:      Twain, Mark

Pap Struggles With The Death Angel

     Well, 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 that money, and he went
for me, too, for not stopping school.  He catched me a couple of times and
thrashed me, but I went to school just the same, and dodged him or outrun him
most of the time.  I didn't want to go to school much before, but I reckoned
I'd go now to spite pap.  That law trial was a slow business - appeared like
they warn't ever going to get started on it; so every now and then I'd borrow
two or three dollars off of the judge for him, to keep from getting a
cowhiding.  Every time he got money he got drunk; and every time he got drunk
he raised Cain around town; and every time he raised Cain he got jailed.  He
was just suited - this kind of thing was right in 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 using around there she would make trouble for
him.  Well, wasn't he mad?  He said he would show who was Huck Finn's boss.
So he watched out for me one day in the spring, and catched me, and took me
up theriver about three mile in a skiff, and crossed over to the Illinois
shore where it was woody and there warn't no houses but an old log hut in a
place where the timber 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 a chance 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 gun which he had stole, I reckon, and we
fished and hunted, and that was what we lived on.  Every little while he
locked me in and went down to the store, three miles, to the ferry, and
traded fish and game for whisky, and fetched it home and got drunk and had a
good time, and licked me.  The widow she found out where I was by and by, and
she sent a man over to try to get hold of me; but pap drove him off with the
gun, and it warn't long after that till I was used to being where I was, and
liked it - all but the cowhide part.

     It was kind of lazy and jolly, laying off comfortable all day, smoking
and fishing, and no books nor study.  Two months or more run along, and my
clothes got to be all rags 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 plate,
and comb up, and go to bed and get up regular, and be forever bothering over
a book, and have old Miss Watson pecking at you all the time.  I didn't want
to go back no more.  I had stopped cussing, because the widow didn't like it;
but now I took to it again because pap hadn't no objections.  It was pretty
good times up in the woods there, take it all around.

     But by and by pap got too handy with his hick'ry, and I couldn't stand
it.  I was all over welts.  He got to going away so much, too, and locking me
in.  Once he locked me in and was gone three days.  It was dreadful lonesome.
I judged he had got drownded, 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 warn't a window to it big enough for a dog to get through.  I couldn't
get up the chimbly; it was too narrow.  The door was thick, solid oak slabs.
Pap was pretty careful not to leave a knife or anything in the cabin when he
was away; I reckon 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 rusty
wood-saw without any handle; it was laid in between a rafter and the
clapboards of the roof.  I greased 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 chinks and putting the
candle out.  I got under the table and raised the blanket, and went to work
to saw a section of the big 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 gun in the woods.  I got rid of the signs of my work, and
dropped the blanket and hid my saw, and pretty soon pap come in.

     Pap warn't in a good humor - so he was his natural self.  He said he was
down-town, and everything was going wrong.  His lawyer said he reckoned he
would win his lawsuit and get the money if they ever got started on the
trial; but then there was ways to put it off a long time, and Judge Thatcher
knowed how to do it.  And he said people allowed there'd be another trial to
get me away from him and give me to the widow for my guardian, and they
guessed it would win this time.  This shook me up considerable, because I
didn't want to go back to the widow's any more and be so cramped up and
sivilized, as they called it.  Then the old man got to cussing, and cussed
everything and everybody he could think of, and then cussed them all over
again to make sure he hadn't skipped any, and after that he polished off with
a kind of a general cuss all round, including a considerable parcel of people
which he didn't know the names of, and so called them what's-his-name when he
got to them, and went right along with his cussing.

     He said he would like to see the widow get me.  He said he would watch
out, and if they tried to come any such game on him he knowed of a place six
or seven mile off to stow me in, where they might hunt till they dropped and
they couldn't find me.  That made me pretty uneasy again, but only for a
minute; I reckoned I wouldn't stay on hand till he got that chance.

     The old man made me go to the skiff and fetch the things he had got.
There was a fifty-pound sack of corn meal, and a side of bacon, ammunition,
and a four-gallon jug of whisky, and an old book and two newspapers for
wadding, besides some tow.  I toted up a load, and went back and set down on
the bow of the skiff to rest.  I thought it all over, and I reckoned I would
walk off with the gun and some lines, and take to the woods when I run away.
I guessed I wouldn't stay in one place, but just tramp right across the
country, mostly night-times, and hunt and fish to keep alive, and so get so
far away that the old man nor the widow couldn't ever find me any more.  I
judged I would saw out and leave that night if pap got drunk enough, and I
reckoned he would.  I got so full of it I didn't notice how long I was
staying till the old man hollered and asked me whether I was asleep or
drownded.

     I got the things all up to the cabin, and then it was about dark.  While
I was cooking supper the old man took a swig or two and got sort of warmed
up, and went to ripping again.  He had been drunk over in town, and laid in
the gutter all night, and he was a sight to look at.  A body would 'a'
thought he was Adam - he was just all mud.  Whenever his liquor begun to work
he most always went for the govment.  This time he says:

     "Call this a govment! 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 anxiety and all the
expense of raising.  Yes, just as that man has got that son raised at last,
and ready to go to work and begin to do suthin' for him and give him a rest,
the law up and goes for him.  And they call that govment!  That ain't all,
nuther.  The law backs that old Judge Thatcher up and helps him to keep me
out o' my property.  Here's what the law does: The law takes a man worth six
thousand dollars and up'ards, and jams him into an old trap of a cabin like
this, and lets him go round in clothes that ain't fitten for a hog.  They
call that govment!  A man can't get his rights in a govment like this.
Sometimes I've a mighty notion 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 the
blamed country and never come a-near it ag'in.  Them's the very words.  I
says, look at my hat - if you call it a hat - but the lid raises up and the
rest of it goes down till it's below my chin, and then it ain't rightly a hat
at all, but more like my head was shoved up through a jint o' stove-pipe.
Look at it, says I - such a hat for me to wear - one of the wealthiest men in
this town if I could get my rights.

     "Oh, yes, this is a wonderful govment, wonderful.  Why, looky here.
There was a free nigger there from Ohio - a mulatter, most as white as a white
man.  He had the whitest shirt on you ever see, too, and the shiniest hat;
and there ain't a man in that town that's got as fine clothes as what he had;
and he had a gold watch and chain, and a silver-headed cane - the awfulest
old gray-headed nabob in the state.  And what do you think?  They said he was
a p'fessor in a college, and could talk all kinds of languages, and knowed
everything.  And that ain't the wust.  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 'lection day, and I was just about to go and vote myself if I warn't too
drunk to get there; but when they told me there was a state in this country
where they'd let that nigger vote, I drawed out.  I says I'll never vote
ag'in.  Them's the very words I said; they all heard me; and the country may
rot for all me - I'll never vote ag'in 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
shoved him out o' the way.  I says to the people, why ain't this nigger put
up at auction and sold? - that's what I want to know.  And what do you
reckon they said?  Why, they said he couldn't be sold till he'd been in the
state six months, and he hadn't been there that long yet.  There, now -
that's a specimen.  They call that a govment that can't sell a free nigger
till he's been in the state six months.  Here's a govment that calls itself
a govment, and lets on to be a govment, and thinks it is a govment, and yet's
got to set stock-still for six whole months before it can take a-hold of a
prowling, thieving, infernal, white-shirted free nigger, and -"

     Pap was a-going on so he never noticed where his old limber legs was
taking him to, so he went head over heels over the tub of salt pork and
barked both shins, and the rest of his speech was all the hottest kind of
language - mostly hove at the nigger and the govment, though he give the tub
some, too, all along, here and there.  He hopped around the cabin
considerable, first on one leg and then on the other, holding first one shin
and then the other one, and at last he let out with his left foot all of a
sudden and fetched the tub a rattling kick.  But it warn't good judgment,
because that was the boot that had a couple of his toes leaking out of the
front end of it; so now he raised a howl that fairly made a body's hair
raise, and down he went in the dirt, and rolled there, and held his toes; and
the cussing he done then laid over anything he had ever done previous.  He
said so his own self afterwards.  He had heard old Sowberry Hagan in his best
days, and he said it laid over him, too; but I reckon that was sort of piling
it on, maybe.

     After supper pap took the jug, and said he had enough whisky there for
two drunks and one delirium tremens.  That was always his word.  I judged he
would be blind drunk in about an hour, and then I would steal the key, or saw
myself out, one or t'other.  He drank and drank, and tumbled down on his
blankets by and by; but luck didn't run my way.  He didn't go sound asleep,
but was uneasy.  He groaned and moaned and thrashed around this way and that
for a long time.  At last I got so sleepy I couldn't keep my eyes open all I
could do, and so before I knowed what I was about I was sound asleep, and the
candle burning.

     I don't know how long I was asleep, but all of a sudden there was an
awful scream and I was up.  There was pap looking wild, and skipping around
every which way and yelling about snakes.  He said they was crawling up his
legs; and then he would give a jump and scream, and say one had bit him on
the cheek - but I couldn't see no snakes.  He started and run round and round
the cabin, hollering "Take him off! take him off; he's biting me on the
neck!"  I never see a man look so wild in the eyes.  Pretty soon he was all
fagged out, and fell down panting; then he rolled over and over wonderful
fast, kicking things every which way, and striking and grabbing at the air
with his hands, and screaming and saying there was devils a-hold of him.  He
wore out by and by, and laid still awhile, moaning.  Then he laid stiller,
and didn't make a sound.  I could hear the owls and the wolves away off in
the woods, and it seemed terrible still.  He was laying over by the corner.
By and by he raised up part way and listened, with his head to one side.  He
says, very low:

     "Tramp - tramp - tramp; that's the dead; tramp - tramp - tramp; they're
coming after me, but I won't go.  Oh, they're here! don't touch me - don't!
ands off - they're cold; let go.  Oh, let a poor devil alone!"

     Then he went down on all fours and crawled off, begging them to let him
alone, and he rolled himself up in his blanket and wallowed in under the old
pine table, still a-begging; and then he went to crying.  I could hear him
through the blanket.

     By and by he rolled out and jumped up on his feet looking wind, and he
see me and went for me.  He chased me round and round the place with a clasp-
knife, calling me the Angel of Death, and saying he would kill me, and then I
couldn't come for him no more.  I begged, and told him I was only Huck; but
he laughed such a screechy laugh, and roared and cussed, and kept on chasing
me up.  Once when I turned short and dodged under his arm he made a grab and
got me by the jacket between my shoulders, and I thought I was gone; but I
slid out of the jacket quick as lightning, and saved myself.  Pretty soon he
was all tired out, and dropped down with his back against the door, and said
he would rest a minute and then kill me.  He put his knife under him, and
said he would sleep and get strong, and then he would see who was who.

     So he dozed off pretty soon.  By and by I got the old spit-bottom chair
and clumb up as easy as I could, not to make any noise, and got down the gun.
I slipped the ramrod down it to make sure it was loaded; and then I laid it
across the turnip-barrel, pointing towards pap, and set down behind it to
wait for him to stir.  And how slow and still the time did drag along.