Multimedia Mania/abacus-multimedia-mania.iso/dp/0134/01348.txt

Text File | 1993-07-27 | 13KB | 274 lines

$Unique_ID{bob01348}
$Pretitle{}
$Title{Adventures Of Huckleberry Finn, The
I Have A New Name}
$Subtitle{}
$Author{Twain, Mark}
$Affiliation{}
$Subject{come
little
says
boat
didn't
get
it's
now
like
old
see
pictures
see
figures
}
$Date{}
$Log{See Huck And Sally*0134801.scf
}
Title:       Adventures Of Huckleberry Finn, The
Author:      Twain, Mark

I Have A New Name

     When I got there it was still and Sunday-like, and hot and sunshiny; the
hands was gone to the fields; and there was them kind of faint dronings of
bugs and flies in the air that makes it seem so lonesome and like everybody's
dead and gone; and if a breeze fans along and quivers the leaves it makes you
feel mournful, because you feel like it's spirits whispering - spirits that's
been dead ever so many years - and you always think they're talking about
you.  As a general thing it makes a body wish he was dead, too, and done with
it all.

     Phelps's was one of these little one-horse cotton plantations, and they
all look alike.  A rail fence round a two-acre yard; a stile made out of logs
sawed off and up-ended in steps, like barrels of a different length to climb
over the fence with, and for the women to stand on when they are going to
jump onto a horse; some sickly grass-patches in the big yard, but mostly it
was bare and smooth, like an old hat with the nap rubbed off; big double log
house for the white folks - hewed logs, with the chinks stopped up with mud
or mortar, and these mud-stripes been whitewashed some time or another;
round-log kitchen, with a big broad, open but roofed passage joining it to
the house; log smokehouse back of the kitchen; three little log nigger cabins
in a row t'other side the smokehouse; one little hut all by itself away down
against the back fence, and some outbuildings down a piece the other side;
ash-hopper and big kettle to bile soap in by the little hut; bench by the
kitchen door, with bucket of water and a gourd; hound asleep there in the
sun; more hounds asleep round about; about three shade trees away off in a
corner; some currant bushes and gooseberry bushes in one place by the fence;
outside of the fence a garden and a watermelon patch; then the cotton-fields
begins, and after the fields the woods.

     I went around and clumb over the back stile by the ash-hopper, and
started for the kitchen.  When I got a little ways I heard the dim hum of a
spinning-wheel wailing along up and sinking along down again; and then I
knowed for certain I wished I was dead - for that is the lonesomest sound in
the whole world.

     I went right along, not fixing up any particular plan, but just trusting
to Providence to put the right words in my mouth when the time come; for I'd
noticed that Providence always did put the right words in my mouth if I left
it alone.

     When I got half-way, first one hound and then another got up and went
for me, and of course I stopped and faced them, and kept still.  And such
another powwow as they made!  In a quarter of a minute I was a kind of a hub
of a wheel, as you may say - spokes made out of dogs - circle of fifteen of
them packed together around me, with their necks and noses stretched up
towards me, a - barking and howling; and more a - coming; you could see them
sailing over fences and around corners from everywheres.

     A nigger woman come tearing out of the kitchen with a rolling-pin in her
hand, singing out, "Begone! you Tige! you Spot! begone sah!" and she fetched
first one and then another of them a clip and sent them howling, and then the
rest followed; and the next second half of them come back, wagging their
tails around me, and making friends with me.  There ain't no harm in a hound,
nohow.

     And behind the woman comes a little nigger girl and two little nigger
boys without anything on but tow-linen shirts, and they hung on to their
mother's gown, and peeped out from behind her at me, bashful, the way they
always do.  And here come the white woman running from the house, about
forty-five or fifty year old, bareheaded, and her spinning-stick in her hand;
and behind her comes her little white children, acting the same way the
little niggers was going.  She was smiling all over so she could hardly
stand - and says:

     "It's you, at last - ain't it?"

     I out with a "Yes'm" before I thought.

     She grabbed me and hugged me tight; and then gripped me by both hands
and shook and shook; and the tears come in her eyes, and run down over; and
she couldn't seem to hug and shake enough, and kept saying, "You don't look
as much like your mother as I reckoned you would; but law sakes, I don't care
for that, I'm so glad to see you!  Dear, dear, it does seem like I could eat
you up!  Children, it's your cousin Tom! - tell him howdy."

     But they ducked their heads, and put their fingers in their mouths, and
hid behind her.  So she run on:

     "Lize, hurry up and get him a hot breakfast right away - or did you get
your breakfast on the boat?"

     I said I had got it on the boat.  So then she started for the house,
leading me by the hand, and the children tagging after.  When we got there
she set me down in a split-bottomed chair, and set herself down on a little
low stool in front of me, holding both of my hands, and says:

     "Now I can have a good look at you; and, laws-a-me, I've been hungry for
it a many and a many a time, all these long years, and it's come at last!  We
been expecting you a couple of days and more.  What kep' you? - boat get
aground?"

     "Yes'm - she -"

     "Don't say yes'm - say Aunt Sally.  Where'd she get aground?"

     I didn't rightly know what to say, because I didn't know whether the
boat would be coming up the river or down.  But I go a good deal on instinct;
and my instinct said she would be coming up - from down towards Orleans.
That didn't help me much, though; for I didn't know the names of bars down
that way.  I see I'd got to invent a bar, or forget the name of the one we
got aground on - or - Now I struck an idea, and fetched it out:

     "It warn't the grounding - that didn't keep us back but a little.  We
blowed out a cylinder-head."

     "Good gracious! anybody hurt?"

     "No'm.  Killed a nigger."

     "Well, it's lucky; because sometimes people do get hurt.  Two years ago
last Christmas your Uncle Silas was coming up from Neworleans on the old
Lally Rook, and she blowed out a cylinder-head and crippled a man.  And I
think he died afterwards.  He was a Baptist.  Your Uncle Silas knowed a
family in Baton Rouge that knowed his people very well.  Yes, I remember now,
he did die.  Mortification set in, and they had to amputate him.  But it
didn't save him.  Yes, it was mortification - that was it.  He turned blue
all over, and died in the hope of a glorious resurrection.  They say he was a
sight to look at.  Your uncle's been up to the town every day to fetch you.
And he's gone again, not more'n an hour ago; he'll be back any minute now.
You must 'a' met him on the road, didn't you? - oldish man, with a -"

     "No, I didn't see nobody, Aunt Sally.  The boat landed just at daylight,
and I left my baggage on the wharf-boat and went looking around the town and
out a piece in the country, to put in the time and not get here too soon; and
so I come down the back way."

     "Who'd you give the baggage to?"

     "Nobody."

     "Why, child, it'll be stole!"

     "Not where I hid it I reckon it won't," I says.

     "How'd you get your breakfast so early on the boat?"

     It was kinder thin ice, but I says:

     "The captain see me standing around, and told me I better have something
to eat before I went ashore; so he took me in the texas to the officers'
lunch, and give me all I wanted."

     I was getting so uneasy I couldn't listen good.  I had my mind on the
children all the time; I wanted to get them out to one side and pump them a
little, and find out who I was.  But I couldn't get no show, Mrs. Phelps kept
it up and run on so.  Pretty soon she made the cold chills streak all down my
back, because she says:

     "But here we're a-running on this way, and you hain't told me a word
about Sis, nor any of them.  Now I'll rest my works a little, and you start
up yourn; just tell me everything - tell me all about 'm all - every one of
'm; and how they are, and what they're doing, and what they told you to tell
me, and every last thing you can think of."

     Well, I see I was up a stump - and up it good.  Providence had stood by
me this fur all right, but I was hard and tight aground now.  I see it warn't
a bit of use to try to go ahead - I'd got to throw up my hand.  So I says to
myself, here's another place where I got to resk the truth.  I opened my
mouth to begin; but she grabbed me and hustled me in behind the bed, and
says:

     "Here he comes!  Stick your head down lower - there, that 'll do; you
can't be seen now.  Don't you let on you're here.  I'll play a joke on him.
Children, don't you say a word."

     I see I was in a fix now.  But it warn't no use to worry; there warn't
nothing to do but just hold still, and try and be ready to stand from under
when the lightning struck.

     I had just one little glimpse of the old gentleman when he come in; then
the bed hid him.  Mrs. Phelps she jumps for him, and says:

     "Has he come?"

     "No," says her husband.

     "Good-ness gracious!" she says, "what in the world can have become of
him?"

     "I can't imagine," says the old gentleman; "and I must say it makes me
dreadful uneasy."

     "Uneasy!" she says; "I'm ready to go distracted!  He must 'a' come; and
you've missed him along the road.  I know it's so - something tells me so.

     "Why Sally, I couldn't miss him along the road - you know that."

     "But oh, dear, dear, what will Sis say!  He must 'a' come!  You must 'a'
missed him.  He -"

     "Oh, don't distress me any more'n I'm already distressed.  I don't know
what in the world to make of it.  I'm at my wit's end, and I don't mind
acknowledging 't I'm right down scared.  But there's no hope that he's come;
for he couldn't come and me miss him.  Sally, it's terrible - just terrible -
just terrible - something's happened to the boat, sure!"

[See Huck And Sally: "Sally it's terrible - just terrible - something's
happened to the boat, sure!"]

     "Why, Silas!  Look yonder! - up the road! - ain't that somebody coming?"

     He sprung to the window at the head of the bed, and that give Mrs.
Phelps the chance she wanted.  She stooped down quick at the foot of the bed
and give me a pull, and out I come; and when he turned back from the window
there she stood, a-beaming and a-smiling like a house afire, and I standing
pretty meek and sweaty alongside.  The old gentleman stared, and says:

     "Why, who's that?"

     "Who do you reckon 'tis?"

     "I hain't no idea.  Who is it?'

     "It's Tom Sawyer!"

     By jings, I most slumped through the floor!  But there warn't no time to
swap knives; the old man grabbed me by the hand and shook, and kept on
shaking; and all the time how the woman did dance around and laugh and cry;
and then how they both did fire off questions about Sid, and Mary, and the
rest of the tribe.

     But if they was joyful, it warn't nothing to what I was; for it was like
being born again, I was so glad to find out who I was.  Well, they froze to
me for two hours; and at last, when my chin was so tired it couldn't hardly
go any more, I had told them more about my family - I mean the Sawyer
family - than ever happened to any six Sawyer families.  And I explained all
about how we blowed out a cylinder-head at the mouth of White River, and it
took us three days to fix it.  Which was all right, and worked first-rate;
because they didn't know but what it would take three days to fix it.  If I'd
'a' called it a bolt-head it would 'a' done just as well.

     Now I was feeling pretty comfortable all down one side, and pretty
uncomfortable all up the other.  Being Tom Sawyer was easy and comfortable,
and it stayed easy and comfortable till by and by I hear a steamboat coughing
along down the river.  Then I says to myself, "S'pose Tom Sawyer comes down
on that boat?  And s'pose he steps in here any minute, and sings out my name
before I can throw him a wink to keep quiet?"

     Well, I couldn't have it that way; it wouldn't do at all.  I must go up
the road and waylay him.  So I told the folks I reckoned I would go up to the
town and fetch down my baggage.  The old gentleman was for going along with
me, but I said no, I could drive the horse myself, and I'd ruther he wouldn't
take no trouble about me.