Tom recollects hisself first.
“Now, Hucky, now,” shouts he, hooking an arm over the log and holding out t’other to me. “Hang on and kick for the shore. We ain’t done yet!”
Then me and Tom and the log just tumble downstream, kicking hard and aiming for the shore. It’s ’most like swimming in mud, mud that sucks at you from below and clutches at your feet, and sticks and slows and don’t want you going nowhere. But, spite of everything, Tom and I was getting closer to the bank. That current hain’t done with us yet though – it carries us farther than we want, a mile or more, along under the bluffs that line the Missouri side thereabouts. Might’ve carried us farther still if Tom hadn’t yelled: “Now, Hucky, right here.” And he pushes away from that there log and lights out for a little patch of sand, low and easy to get onto, right at the foot of one of them bluffs, one with what looks like an easy climb to the top – he done well to spot that. I do the same and a minute later we’re running ’cross that sand, spitting and coughing and gasping. I look back at the river and there are splashes of blood all across that sand near our footsteps. We look and see our rattler charms have been tugged deep into our ankles as if someone had been hanging off of them; they hurt fearful, though we hadn’t neither of us had a moment to notice till then.
“Have we got time, Tom?”
“Lord, I hope so, Hucky,” says Tom. And we don’t neither of us worry none ’bout our bleeding ankles, nor ’bout being half drownded, nor nothing, we just climb up that bluff fast as we can and run for town. Well, we just run and we run – and if we get whipped by one branch as we go through the woods, then we must get whipped by a dozen; and if we step on one sharp stone, then the soles of our feet was cut up by a score or more by the time we sight Petersburg. We don’t care – them ain’t the kind of souls we was fretting on.
Warn’t much of a town, Petersburg, but I’d never been so glad to see it. We run up the river road, past the old slaughterhouse, and up through the streets, ’long every shortcut we know – don’t need say nothing ’bout it. And the strange thing is, though I’m’most in a panic, there ain’t nothing I can do ’cept run – there ain’t even no point in thinking ’bout what might happen if we was too late. So my mind just kind of takes itself off and even as I was running, I was thinking “My, ain’t that Jeff Thatcher’s house as still owes me a white alley from when I beat him at ring-taw?” and “Say, that’s where Billy Fisher lives as let me fly his kite” and “Ain’t that the hogshead I slept in, last night I was in town?” I never knowed how much I liked that town ’fore then.
When I hear the church organ playing, my stomach does the same as my thoughts and takes itself off somewheres, leaving just this empty hole inside; but Tom and I keep running. The doors of the church is shut and we hit them together, bust right in. Reverend Sprague is saying: “We give thee hearty thanks, for that it hath pleased thee to deliver these our brothers out of the miseries of this sinful world…” Or some such. And we run up that aisle, halfway to the altar, shouting: “We ain’t dead! We ain’t dead!”
There’s a gasp from all round, then there’s silence. Reckon the whole town was there. Everyone’s staring at us, eyes bugging out of their heads, and I look round those faces and see Tom’s Aunt Polly and Sid and Mary, and I see Mr and Mrs Harper and all Joe’s brothers and his sister Susy and other kin. Tom steps forward and says straight to Reverend Sprague, his voice kind of quiet now: “Huckleberry Finn and me. We ain’t dead.” And the Reverend’s face (which is usually kind of gray and sour) lights up like he’s been told the best joke in the world and he hollers, the joy just pouring out of his voice: “Praise the Lord, our prayers have been answered. The boys are alive! These blessed innocents are alive and restored to us: Tom Sawyer… Huckleberry Finn… and Joseph Harper.”
For a moment the whole congregation is too stunned to make any noise, and Tom and me ain’t sure what to say, but we notice folks looking straight past us, so we turn, and then we’re pretty stunned ourselves. There’s Joe Harper. He’s standing in the doorway, dripping wet like he’s just that second come out the river, dressed the same as last time we saw him. Tom and I look at each other, our jaws hanging low ’nuff to put our fists in. We start to say something, but then the whole congregation erupts like it’s New Year: folks is jumping up and cheering and clapping and Tom’s folks mob him and the Harpers all charge down the aisle toward Joe, and every woman in the place is crying, and men are clapping me on the back and shaking my hand – fellers I’ve never even spoke to before.
It seems like an age till the place quietens down enough for Tom and me to edge up close together and force our way through the crowd back to where Joe is. He looks well enough, I guess: a little puffy in the face maybe, and his eyes kind of dark and stary-looking, like he’s the only one there not excited by all the to-do. His ma’s hugging him and hugging him, and each time she squeezes, more water just seems to ooze out of his clothes and run across the floor so’s he’s standing in a regular puddle. Mrs Harper don’t seem to mind, though, and I don’t reckon no one else even notices, ’cept me and Tom. At last Mrs Harper steps away and is helped to a pew by her husband and some of her friends, she’s so tearful and overwrought. And just for a moment Tom and me are alone near Joe and able to have a quiet word (we whisper ’cause this is a puzzling business and we reckon we’d better get our stories straight).
“What happened to you, Joe?” says Tom. “We thought you was dead.”
“Thing is, Tom,” says Joe. “I am dead. And you ought to be too, dern you. And you Huck Finn.” That shakes me. “You’ve got something that belongs to me, Huck.”
Well, I pull that Barlow out of my pocket right off and hold it out to him; I ain’t going to argue ’bout that none. But Joe just kind of snorts like he ain’t impressed; he picks that knife up off of my hand and slaps it back agin, and, when he does, my hand’s running with water.
“I don’t mean the Barlow, Huck,” says Joe. “I mean life. Leastways you ain’t got no more claim on it than me. We was all meant to drown that night.”
“Says who, Joe Harper?”
“Says the Mississippi herself,” says Joe.
Tom and I gape at each other, then back at Joe.
“That’s right,” says Joe. “The Miz ain’t sure how it happened, but somehow you two slipped through her fingers. She’s awful riled ’bout it. She heard us talk ’bout the pirating we was planning, and she liked the idea of that, that tickled her – she wanted some pirates. But she only got me. Now I’m here to get the whole crew back together: Huck Finn the Redhanded… Tom Sawyer, the Black Avenger of the Spanish Main… and Joe Harper, the Terror of the Seas. Come back to the river with me, boys. She won’t be mad, Lady Miz – she promised. Just dive in and leave the rest to her; we can go pirating up and down the Mississippi till the end of time. It’ll be mighty.”
“Living under the water?”
“No, Huck, not living. We’ll all be dead – but that don’t matter none to ghosts.”
“You look pretty solid for a ghost,” says Tom.
“I’m kind of a deputy for the Miz,” says Joe. “She can’t hardly come herself, now can she? Being a river and all. But she can help me some; more’n you think, maybe. Say goodbye to your folks if you like, but come back to the river tonight. All you’ve got to do is slip into the water, then the three of us will be just as good as one of them stories you like so much, Tom.”
“And if we don’t?” says Tom.
“Well, then,” says Joe. “There’s more’n one way to make a person a ghost. But ain’t none of ’em as painless as this. And there’s some eternities more miserable than others – why d’you think so many ghosts goes around wailing and crying and rattling their chains and suchlike? Reckon that kind would jump at what I’m offering you. You think on it.”
“You keep away from me, Joe Harper,” says I. “I don’t take no stock in dead people.”
Then before any of us can say anything else – though I don�
�t know what we could say – Tom’s Aunt Polly comes bustling up and grabs him, and starts another round of kissing him and petting him, and saying how she’s so pleased to see him, even if he has taken years off of her life with the worry.
“But you boys won’t go scaring us all half to death again with your adventures, will you?” says Aunt Polly, her eyes darting round us. “Promise me that, won’t you? Promise me things will be different from now on.”
And Joe just kind of smirks and says:
“Oh, yes. Things will be different from now on. Real different. I can promise you that.”
Chapter 4: Dead. And buried.
Tom and me met up round back of the livery stable, that first night back in town – don’t reckon I need hardly say we had matter to think on. We agreed it ’fore his Aunt Polly dragged him off home from the church. It’d’ve been better if we could’ve met up in daylight – what with a ghost or some such being the source of our woes – but we both knew his Aunt Polly warn’t going to let him out her sight that day. And I ain’t the sort to get invited back home by folks – leastways not by folks’ ma’s and aunts. So I whittled the day away till past sunset. Ain’t nothing new ’bout that, ’cepting I didn’t paddle my feet none, nor cast a line, nor sit in a boat, nor get within a stone’s throw of the Mississipp if I could help it. When evening come, and it was time to meet Tom, I was fixing to be prompt. Maybe that’s why I warn’t taking care when I turned the corner into that alley round back of the tavern.
It’s like walking into a tree – only it ain’t no tree, it’s a man.
“Injun Joe!”
The words ’scape me fast as steam from a steamboat whistle. Wish my feet could’ve moved so fast – but no, they was froze. He’s six foot and a half and a yard ’cross the shoulders, arms and legs like pit props, face like it’s been carved out of stone by a clumsy feller with a blunt chisel, long black hair down to his shoulders.
“Huckleberry Finn.”
His voice is flat – always is – like a deep, dark pool you don’t hardly know what’s at the bottom of. You hear him lose his temper, that’s the last thing you’ll ever hear!
“Injun Joe!” says I agin.
Who’s Injun Joe? Only the cut-throatingest villain west of the Mississippi, that’s all – and whenever he got in a boat and crossed over to Illinois he was the cut-throatingest villain east of it too. Had more bodies to his name than smallpox, so they said – no evidence, though, else he’d’ve had a rope round his neck ’fore now.
“Huckleberry Finn,” says he agin. “Your pa owes me ten dollars.”
“Well, if you say so, I don’t doubt it, Inj-… sir! It sure sounds like Pap.”
He was a half-breed, Injun Joe, but folks hated him twice as much as if he’d been a full-blooded injun.
“Didn’t know he was so brave.”
He just appeared in town one day, years back, and had hung around since. Now he was stuck to Petersburg like it’d stepped in him.
“Brave?” says I.
“Running out on me without paying. Lost at poker. Said he was good for it. Said he’d pay next day. Didn’t pay next day – left town instead. Mighty brave.”
Any low-down job going he’d turn his hand to, long as there was a dollar in it.
“Oh, no,” says I. “Just forgetful, that’s all. Pap forgets ’bout me for, oh, months at a stretch. He’ll remember when he comes back to Petersburg, I bet.”
“Yes,” says Injun Joe. “I’ll remind him. You see him first, you remind him. Twenty dollars.”
“Twenty?”
Why didn’t folks just run him out of town, him being so hated? Guess they figured it was handy having someone around who’d do low-down jobs.
“Double for keeping me waiting. If he ain’t got it first time I see him it’ll double again. If he ain’t got that next time I see him, well…”
“Well…?”
“…nobody’d care if they didn’t see his face in town again, would they?”
He was right; no one’d pine for Pap ’cept the folks selling liquor.
“In fact…” says he. He looks down at me hard and the corner of one of his eyes twitches; his lip curls, yellow teeth behind it; he reaches up a hand toward my throat. There’s a noise behind me in the street, a door opening and fellers talking, walking our way; Injun Joe’s eyes flick up for a moment, then down at me. His face is blank agin.
“Best stand aside,” says he. “I’m ’bout to start walking.”
“Yessir!” I do it fast, don’t doubt it.
“Remember what I said,” says he as he walks away, not bothering to look back. “I know you will.”
I’d pretty much stopped shaking by the time I met up with Tom. He’d slipped out of his bedroom window after supper, way he always does when we need to meet secret. I got to what he called our ronday-view first: up back of the livery stable on the west side of town. Reckon we wanted to keep Petersburg ’twixt us and the river as much as we could. We was sitting on the fence round the paddock. Least I was sitting on it; Tom was pacing up and down, kicking the dirt, and fretting ’nuff for both of us.
“I shoulda knowed! I shoulda. I just should!” It’s Tom that’s carrying on. “I shoulda knowed there warn’t nothing like a drowning to keep a spirit from resting quiet, like it oughter. There ain’t nothing more liable to bring ’em back, ’cepting a cut throat or a no-good back-stabbing murder.”
We was talking ’bout Joe – Joe Harper, of course, not Injun Joe. This whole thing was puzzle enough without bringing him in.
“Well,” says I. “He’s back now, and that’s a fact. But is he a ghost, or a corpse that’s still lively, or what?”
“Yes – what am I?”
We jump at that; there’s Joe, right beside us. Hadn’t heard or seen him come. I ’most fall off of the fence.
“You leave us be, Joe Harper,” says Tom straight off, though there’s a tremble in his voice. “We ain’t done nothing to you; don’t you do nothing to us, else…”
“Else…?”
“There’s ways to deal with ghosts. Reckon you know that now if you didn’t know it before.”
Joe snorts at that and sniffs – all wet-sounding like he’s got a cold (though I don’t hardly reckon he has to worry ’bout them no more).
“Think you’re the boy to deal with me, Tom Sawyer? You ain’t! This ain’t no tick race.”
“Aw, knucks to you then, Joe,” says Tom. “You don’t scare us!”
That ain’t strictly true, we all know it.
“‘Let’s go rafting, Joe.’ ‘Let’s be pirates, Joe.’ ‘This here raft’s my pirate ship, Joe.’ ‘It’s called the Spirit of the Storm, Joe.’ ‘Let’s go to Jackson’s Island, Joe.’ ‘Pirates always sticks together, Joe.’”
It’s vexing hearing Joe take off Tom that way. I can see it making Tom feel bad and riled both.
“Ain’t my fault we capsized, Joe!”
“‘Ain’t my fault we…’”
Tom shuts him up then, lamping Joe a good one – a right hook, smack on the jaw.
But Tom’s fist just sinks into the side of Joe’s face, making it crumple up like a big sponge. There’s a splash of water that soaks us both, then Joe’s face springs back into place – laughing.
It ain’t just the moonlight making Tom look pale then.
“You ain’t regular, Joe,” says I.
“Reckon I ain’t, Hucky,” says Joe. “Now why don’t you boys come along with me an’ I’ll show you some ghosts that is? Tell me then if that’s how you want to end up – ’cause that’ll be it for you, if you don’t do as I say.”
“Don’t you threaten us, Joe Harper,” says Tom.
“I am a threatenin’,” says Joe. “Now get!”
We got.
Joe took us to the graveyard. Took us ’bout half an hour to get there, up the side of Cardiff Hill. We seed where we was goin o’course, warn’t no surprise. We didn’t like it none, Tom and me, but reckon we both wanted to know what Jo
e was about and warn’t too sure what he could and couldn’t do to us. It’d just been words so far; he hadn’t hurt us none – though he’d been hinting plenty – but I was recollecting that big fish that tugged me into the water, back on the island, and was wondering some. Tom and me stuck close, and we made sure Joe stayed ahead of us, where we could see him. And Tom and me had other reasons to be fretting – warn’t the first time we’d been in that graveyard. And the last time we’d been there… well! Anyways it had been ’most a month since we’d laid eyes on the place. Least it warn’t midnight yet. We hadn’t said a word, but I knowed Tom warn’t no more likely than me to stay there till that hour – not after last time, and not with Joe the way he was. Warn’t somewheres you’d go for a picnic, that graveyard. Overgrowed with weeds, graves collapsing in on themselves like so many little pits, the fence all tumbledown. Warn’t a tombstone in the place, just wooden headboards and rickety crosses, all green with moss and mould and hardly readable. Only way folks knowed who’d been buried was if they ’membered the planting.
“Tom…,” says I, whispering, “…who are they? Oh, Lordy!”
Soon as I speak, I get my answer – and I don’t need Tom to tell me no more. All across the graveyard, scattered here and there, some in little huddles but mostly on their own, are shapes, figures. I could say “people” – only they ain’t really people, not really, not no more. Guess you’d have to come out with it and just say they was ghosts (spirits if you want to be formal). Some of them look ’most like regular folks, only awful pale – not just their skin, but all over, like the colour’s drained out of them, from their hair and clothes too (yes, sir, they all had spirit-clothes on – though I never could figure how clothes come to have ghosts). They ain’t just pale, of course, I can see through them too – some hardly at all, just catching glimpses sometimes of what’s behind them; others was more gone than here and I only notice them when they move. Then there was others, all smoky and gray, like shadows in the shape of people. Some of these still have features I can recognise as human, others is kind of smudged – like when you draw a picture with charcoal and rub the side of your hand ’cross the paper. Couldn’t hardly make out they was people at all, so blurred and blobbed they were. Way I figured it, the most colourful and least see-through ones was the freshest, and the greyest, most smudged ones was the oldest. I reckon they just fade away over the years. Ain’t nothing lasts forever, I guess – not even ghosts.
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