Huck

by Prizeman, Steven

  I speak now.

  “We ain’t going to do that, Joe. We just ain’t. We don’t want to fight you, ’cause we used to be friends. But if we have to we will. That’s it. I reckon we’re done here.”

  Joe narrows his eyes and gives me a look like stabbing.

  “Reckon we are, Huck,” says he.

  Tom and me pick our way through that rotten fence and back off – we don’t want to turn our backs on Joe. We haven’t taken more’n a few steps when he calls out, raising his voice over Hoss Williams’ roaring and Doc Robinson’s screams. “Remember, Huck: there’s more than one way to skin a cat.”

  Chapter 5: How the cat-skinning begun

  We didn’t go see Jim the next day, neither Tom nor me – talked it over and decided we didn’t want to stir things up more’n they was. Given what happened after, maybe we should’ve. I guess we hoped that seein’ what Jim’d done in the graveyard, walking through them ghosts and laying ’em down and not being afeard of them or nothing, Joe’d be warned off and not try and scare us agin. Don’t know what we ’spected him to do ’zactly – go into the Miz and just disappear, or carry on living with his folks same as before, even though he was dead. Made sense to us at the time; lasted ’most two days ’fore we woke up some and got smart ’bout things.

  Didn’t say nothing to Reverend Sprague neither ’bout Doc Robinson or Hoss Williams or any of that carry on. Tom and me thought it’d raise some questions it wouldn’t be safe to go answering (on account of us seeing the murder and knowing Injun Joe done it and not wanting him to know we knowed and come slitting our throats and all). Maybe we should’ve done that too, given what happened after.

  And, of course, we still didn’t say nothing to no one ’bout Muff Potter being innocent of killing the Doc. Given what happened, we should’ve told ’bout that, certain. He was a bigger drunk than Pap, Muff Potter. All wrinkled up like a walnut, with a grizzled white beard round his sunk-in mouth with half the teeth missing, he looked like the back end of a mangy dog. But it ’most broke my heart ev’ry time I passed the jailhouse and saw that beaten-down face peering out through the bars, pleading like, but despondent and given-up too – he thought he’d done for the Doc same as everybody else. Didn’t know no better. He thought he was going to get hung. I was starting to fear it might be so, and all – ev’ry day that passed, the date for the trial come closer.

  “Well, why didn’t you go tell the sheriff, Hucky, and set it all straight?” That’s what you’re wondering, I guess. Injun Joe, he was one reason (a big one), you ’ready know ’bout. There was another reason tied to that, and this is it:

  Right after Tom and me seed that murder in the graveyard we run off scared and hid up back ’o the old tannery. We thought ’bout telling on Injun Joe – talked ’bout it right off – but we couldn’t be sure the sheriff would believe us or be able to prove it or a jury convict him or nothing. Where’d that leave Tom and me then, with that killer loose and knowing we’d told? He’d get us sooner or later for having crossed him, ain’t nothing certainer – that’s what we thought. We was so afeard of letting slip what we knew that we made sure we wouldn’t – swore ourselves to silence. Tom took a sheet of paper from his pocket and wrote it out with a hunk of red keel – wrote it out neat, leaning ’gainst the wall: “Huck Finn and Tom Sawyer swears they will keep mum about This and They wish They may Drop down dead in Their Tracks if They ever Tell and Rot.” Then we stuck our fingers with a needle and signed it in blood, signed it with our initials (Tom helped me with mine).

  That’s what we swore ourselves to and that was that. Done! Certain! Couldn’t have told after that if we’d wanted to – we’d’ve died for sure. We buried that paper in the dirt right there, by the tannery, just along from the hog sty. Not long after that we heard a dog howl. Thought our time had come when we saw it was a stray. Then we seed it warn’t looking at us – it was howling at another feller who’d sneaked up back of the tannery to hide out. Muff Potter! We knew he was done for then, but didn’t know why till the next day. Feller found Doc Robinson with Muff’s knife in him; ’nother feller saw Muff down at the creek washing the Doc’s blood off of him – he’d got covered in it when Injun Joe dropped the Doc. And if that warn’t all, later that day, when the Doc’s body was brung into Petersburg and the whole town was fired up ’bout it, Muff wanders down the main street, kind of confused, and Injun Joe says he done it – and then, later, at the inquest, he swears Muff done it. Swears on oath! Feller that’d swear off a lie easy as that has the Devil looking out for him certain. Well, Tom and me felt sick when we heard that, I’ll allow – could ’most see the noose tight’ning round Muff’s neck, and us feeling ’most to blame somehow. But we was swore to silence by then – had to just live with it and hope things’d work out.

  Anyhow, Joe Harper. We didn’t see hide nor hair of him the day after that night in the graveyard. And we was glad of that. When I met up with Tom, after he’d been stuck in school for the day, it sounded ’most like things was normal for him: he hadn’t got no punishment for going off pirating and scaring everybody who’d thought him drownded, but he took a couple of floggings for blotting and tearing some books. Tom didn’t seem to think it was fair and maybe it warn’t, but I guess such things even theirselves out. (I think it had something to do with Becky Thatcher – Jeff’s cousin, who Tom makes eyes at – but I warn’t going to ask ’bout that.)

  But Joe was there all the time, at the school – deathly pale and all damp and clammy – as if nothing had happened. His eyes on Tom every moment: during the schooling, and at the break time, and when everyone ate their lunch outside in the sun. Joe didn’t eat nothing, though. Tom said it made his skin crawl – but none of the kids nor the school master seemed to notice nothing wrong. Well, I didn’t feel I was missing out on schooling when I heard that, I can tell you.

  I didn’t see Joe next day neither – kept away from his folks’ house and the river both – nor the next. But the day after, Tom crept out agin – long after dark – and hunted me up. I was in Ben Rogers’ hayloft (said I could sleep there, long as I didn’t burn it down with my smoking). I don’t know how Tom’d borne going to school all those days knowing Joe would be there waiting for him, silent and watchful – planning who knew what, his eyes on him the whole time like hounds on a runaway.

  “I’d’ve come sooner, Hucky,” says Tom. “But it was Examination Day, the last day ’fore the summer vacation always is, and there was a meeting and speeches and poetry – talking ’nuff to make your jaw fall off. But the boys played a good trick on old Dobbins – wish you could’ve seen it.” He smiles, but it don’t last long – he hadn’t sneaked out to tell me ’bout pranks. Instead he tells me something makes me shiver. “Guess what I found on the doorstep of Aunt Polly’s house this morning, Huck.”

  “I’ll lay I don’t know, Tom,” says I. “What?”

  “A catfish.”

  “Catfish?” says I.

  “Yep, big one.”

  “Who put it there?”

  “Who d’you reckon?” says he, lowering his voice. “Joe! Must’ve been. Who else?”

  “Why’d he bring you a catfish, Tom? Peace offering?”

  “I don’t think so, Huck,” says he. “That catfish hadn’t been caught with no hook; but it’d been wrapped up in a fish line. Tied up round and round, tied up tight. It was still alive when I found it – flapping about best it could, banging against the planks. Must have brung it straight from the river. I think it was a threat, Hucky. Think Joe’s saying he could tie me up like that and put me in the river if he wanted.”

  “Dern,” says I. And I was thinking leastways Tom has a home to lock hisself into; I have to sleep wherever I can find me a place. Stables mostly, barrels sometimes.

  “Aunt Polly couldn’t fathom it, of course, but said we mustn’t look a gift horse in the mouth,” says Tom. “Cooked it for supper; I ’most choked on it.”

  “Dern,” says I. “And you like catfish.”

 
; “Well,” says Tom, “if he does something else, shall we go see Jim? See if he’ll help? Agreed?”

  I nodded: “’Greed!”

  Happened the day after. We was round side of Jeff Thatcher’s place, Tom and me and some of the boys, playing ring-taw; Tom’s brother Sid hanging round watching. Now that school was out of season Tom and the others didn’t have to go foolin’ their days away indoors. (Wouldn’t have made no difference to me if school had been in, ’cepting that it’s always lonesomer when everyone else is locked up. Don’t mind that, mostly.) Didn’t have no marbles of my own, so Tom staked me half-a-dozen. I was doing pretty good with them, just won a couple of white alleys and a red spiral off of Ben Rogers, when…

  “Say, boys, what are we playing? Ring-taw is it? Mind if I join you?”

  It’s Joe Harper, right beside us; hadn’t none of us noticed him coming.

  “This game’s full, Joe,” says Tom, kind of sharpish. “There’s too many want to play as it is. Siddy’s ahead of you.”

  (Sid looks up at this, kind of hopeful, ’cause it’s only a couple of minutes since Tom told him he couldn’t play, and couldn’t borrow no marbles and ought to go bothering his cousin Mary ’stead of him.)

  Ben flicks a marble, then looks up.

  “Say, Joe,” says he, “did you run all the way here from your place? The sweat’s just pouring off of you.”

  We look and he’s right, near ’nuff; there’s great beads of sweat all over Joe’s forehead and trickling down his neck, and his shirt’s kind of rank with it. Only it ain’t sweat, though; it’s Miz water. Joe’s just soaked through to the bone with it, I reckon. Don’t look like he’ll ever dry out.

  “Indeed ’n ’deed, I did, Ben,” says Joe, wiping the water off of his head with the back of his hand and flicking it away. “Ran all the way up here. Didn’t realise it was such a powerful hot day. Ain’t it, though? That sun’s powerful fierce!’

  “Guess so,” says Ben.

  “It ain’t so hot,” says Jeff Thatcher. It’s no hotter’n most days.

  “Know what I like to do on a hot day like this’n?” says Joe, like he hain’t heard Jeff. “Go down to the river and have a swim. Cool off and splash and float about – ain’t that the thing for a hot day? Ain’t it, though? And not in the creek, mind – in the Mississip. Why, it sounds so good I reckon I’ll go right now. Who’s with me, boys?”

  “We can’t go swimming,” says Tom. “We’re busy. We’re playing ring-taw. We ain’t done.” Tom’s voice is getting harder as he goes along, but he’s holding it back some – guess he don’t want the boys to see that he and Joe ain’t friends no more.

  “I could go for a swim,” says Billy Fisher. “And this round’s just ended.”

  “Surprised your ma lets you near the river,” says Jeff, “after you and Tom and Huck nearly drowning and all.”

  “My ma ain’t my boss,” says Joe, kind of boastful. “I can go swimming anytime I please, wherever I choose… but I guess if some of you boys is scared of upsetting your ma’s – or your aunts [Joe looks at Tom special when he says that.] – then the rest of us will leave you to your marbles.” And he says “marbles” as if they’ve become the worst thing a boy could be caught playing with – worse than dolls; never realised Joe was so cunning before. “Who’s with me, boys?” And Joe gives a big injun whoop and leaps off toward the river, glinting away in the distance all inviting.

  Couple of the fellers give whoops right off and run along after Joe; the rest hang back a few seconds, looking from face to face, then go running and whooping too – even the ones I knowed was scared of their ma’s and wouldn’t’ve dared stir a muscle if they’d been watching. They didn’t want to lose face, that was it.

  “But we ain’t done!” shouts Tom. He grabs up a handful of marbles from the dust and waves them in the air. “Don’t you want a chance to win them back? You can have two for each one of mine!”

  But it’s no good – the boys ain’t listening.

  “I guess Tom don’t dare do nothing without his Aunt Polly says so,” shouts Joe, laughing. “I guess he don’t dare come swimming with us, boys. What a good boy!” And Joe gets them all laughing at that, as though being good was the worst thing a boy could be. Tom must’ve already knowed he was going to take some bullyragging for not joining in, for looking like he didn’t dare, but he feared something awful was going to happen – could see it writ ’cross his face, plain.

  “Come back,” hollers Tom. “It ain’t safe! Jeff! Ben! It ain’t safe! Stay away from the river!”

  The laughter comes rolling back toward us at that; Joe even gets ’em to take it up as a chant as they go running and skipping off: “It ain’t safe! It ain’t safe!”

  And then it’s just me and Tom and Sid, with the marbles Tom’d won lying at his feet. I pick them up and hand them back to him.

  “They don’t know no better,” says I. “Maybe he won’t do nothing.”

  We can’t speak plain ’cause Sid’s still there. Least he was there a moment ago – we look up and there he is, wandering off after the boys.

  “You stop right there, Siddy,” hollers Tom. “Don’t you go down to the river.”

  “I’m just going to watch,” says Sid. “I ain’t going in, Tom.”

  “You bet you ain’t going in,” says Tom. “And you ain’t watching, neither – you ain’t going nowhere near that river.”

  “I ain’t going near the river,” says Sid. “Just near ’nuff to watch.”

  “No, you ain’t!” says Tom, getting angry now.

  “I am so!” Sid’s angry hisself – upset and whiney too. “You ain’t my boss, Tom. I can watch the fellers swimming if I want to. Just ’cause you ’most got yourself drownded!”

  Tom leaps after Sid and grabs him by the wrist – ’most lifts him off of the ground.

  “I am so your boss, Siddy,” says Tom, shaking him around. “And I’ll whup you good if you go disobeying me. And Aunt Polly’ll whup you too if I tell her you was fooling near the river – and don’t think Mary will stop her, ’cause she won’t. You take one more step that way, I’ll get Huck here to whup you too – that’ll learn you!”

  That gave Sid pause, ’cause I had no business to go whupping anybody, so he was phased somewhat to find hisself threatened with me on top of his folks. He stops trying to wriggle away from Tom and looks up at me and says, his voice kind of puzzled and quiet: “You wouldn’t whup me, would you, Huck?”

  I fix him with a stare.

  “I will whup you, Sid Sawyer,” says I. “I owe Tom a favour so I’ll just have to if he asks me. I’ll whup you worser’n Pap whups me.” That makes him pale some; he’s seen my bruises, same as everyone else.

  “Now get off home, Siddy,” says Tom, letting him go. “Huck and me got things to do.” He lets fly a kick in Sid’s direction to help him off (though he pulls it short, so it don’t hit him), and Sid runs away, his lip trembling. When he gets to the corner of the Thatcher place he turns back and yells at us: “You’re mean, Tom! And you, Huck! And I’m telling Aunt Polly!” Then he turns and runs off without waiting to see if we’ll do something.

  But Tom and me ain’t worrying ’bout Sid no more – reckon we’ve done him a favour scaring him off like that.

  “What’re we going to do, Huck?” says Tom. “All our friends is going to get drownded!”

  “Don’t see what we can do,” says I. “Lessen you want to go diving in and drowning alongside ’em. We could run along the bank, maybe, and keep an eye out? Throw ’em a rope when they get into trouble? Send some fellers after ’em in a skiff?”

  Well, Tom must think that’s better’n nothing, so he nods sharp and we start running for the river, after the boys. They didn’t tarry none, so by the time Tom and me’s ’bout fifty yards off from where they headed – just down from the jetty where the steamboats dock – the last of ’em’s stripped hisself and is just diving in. Bob Tanner it was. Well, Bob’s no sooner in the Miz than whoosh! – off the boys sh
oot downstream – all half-dozen of ’em – spinning round in the current and bobbing up an down, and shrieking and shouting. But they’re laughing too, ’cause Joe’s swimming round ’em easy as pie and being all encouraging and making out it’s all in fun.

  “Why, ain’t it grand, boys?” says he. “That’s the way, Jeff! Come on, Johnny! Keep up with me, Jim Hollis, if you can – that’s it! Let’s see who can dive deepest, boys! I’ll lay none of you can beat me!”

  Then off they go, tumbling and tumbling in the Miz, with the trees and the bank blocking ’em from view.

  “Come on!” shouts Tom, tearing off southwards. “We’ve got to try and keep sight of ’em, Huck!”

  “Wait up!” I dive into a skiff pulled up on shore; come up a few seconds later with a coil of rope (it’s heavy but I figure we’ll need it). Then I’m out and running after Tom.

  Some of the fellers along the bank are pointing at the boys and hollering to them that they’re going to get drownded – that don’t cheer Tom and me none.

  “Can you see ’em?” shouts Tom. We was running alongside the bank, getting as close as we dare, but having to run inlands a-ways sometimes ’cause of how the land is with mud and shallows and marshes and cliffs and woods and cricks and all. “Can you?”

  “Think so,” says I. “ I see a head! Johnny, ain’t it? And there’s some arms going through the water.”

  Well, some of ’em was still alive and kicking, at least. So we run on and on.

  “Don’t go through that creek, Huck,” yells Tom. “Jump over it! Don’t land in it whatever you do!”

  He was getting mighty distrustful of water, Tom.

  On we go, running and running, ’most wrenching our necks, we keep glancing over toward the river so much – and nearly falling and breaking our necks ’cause of it (and that rope ’most bending my arm out of shape).

  “Oh, Lord, Tom,” says I. “I can’t hear no shouting no more!”

  On we go till we reach the bluffs south of town; we rush up to the edge and look down at the Miz, ’bout half a mile ’bove where we come ashore after getting back from Jackson’s Island.