by Mark Twain
Chapter Thirty-Five
I am Continually Thwarted
The doctor was an old man; a very nice, kind-looking old man when I banged on his door and got him up. I told him me and my brother was over on Spanish Island hunting yesterday afternoon, and camped on a piece of a raft we found, and in the middle of the night, I was having this horrible dream about spiders and talking pigs, and it must ‘a’ given me a fright, so I kicked out in my sleep, and I wound up kicking his gun, and it went off and shot him in the leg, and we wanted to get it fixed up and not let anyone know, because we both wanted to come home tonight and surprise the folks.
He puts on his glasses and peers at me and says:
“Who is your folks?”
“The Phelpses, down yonder.”
“Oh,” he says. And after a minute, he says:
“How’d you say he got shot again?”
“I had a dream about some spiders and pigs – talking pigs,” says I, “and it shot him.”
“Some pig,” he says.
So he lit up his lantern and got his saddle-bags, and we started out. But when he seen the canoe he didn’t like the look of her – said she was big enough for one, but didn’t look safe enough for two. I says:
“Oh, you needn’t be afeared, sir, she carried the three of us easy enough.”
“What three?”
“Why, me and Sid, and – and – and the guns; that’s what I meant.”
“Oh,” says he.
But he put his foot on the gunnel and rocked her, and shook his head, and reckoned he’d look around for a bigger one. But they was all locked and chained; so he took the canoe by himself and told me to wait till he come back, or I could hunt around further, or maybe go down home and get them ready for the surprise if I wanted to. But I didn’t like them ideas. So I told him how to find the raft, and off he went.
Then I crept into a lumber-pile to get some sleep, and the next time I waked up the sun was way over my head. I shot out and went to the doctor’s house, but they told me he hadn’t come back yet. Well, thinks I, this looks bad for Tom, and I’ll make my way back to the island right off. So away I shoved, and turned the corner, and plowed right into Uncle Silas. He says:
“Why, Tom! Where you been all this time, you rascal? Your aunt’s been right uneasy when she found you two missing.”
“I hain’t been nowheres,” I say, “just out trying to get an idea of what was going on there last night – me and Sid. We followed after the dogs, but they outrun us, and we lost them. Then we started to hear a few gunshots, so went down to the river and got in a canoe and moved upstream where it was safer; then we tied up the canoe and went to sleep and never waked up till about an hour ago. Sid’s at the post-office to see what he can hear, and I’m a-branching out to get something to eat for us, and then we’re going home.”
“Well,” says he, “you missed a little excitement, but we was prepared for a world worse. Supposed to be a whole gang of Zum holed up somewheres nearby, but we didn’t find anything like that. We was out till early this morning, and only found three of ‘em. We took care of ‘em right off and buried ‘em in the woods – all except for an old man who lives a ways inland, and we trussed him up and his kin are going to pick him up and arrange a funeral. Lucky thing one of the men recognized him. Old man lived pretty much by himself; must’ve died of pneumonia or something just a day or so ago, and just walked out the front door. Anyway, we was expecting an army, but it appears there warn’t no such thing.”
So we went to the post-office to find “Sid” but just as I figured, he warn’t there. So the old man he got a letter out of the office, and we sat a bit on a bench outside, but finally the old man said, come along, let Sid foot it home when he’s done foolin’ around. I couldn’t get him to let me stay and wait, and he said there warn’t no use in it, and he wasn’t up to arguing about it as he was traipsing through the brush all night braced to run into hundreds of mad Zum. I must come along, and let Aunt Sally know I was all right.
When we got home, Aunt Sally was so glad to see me she laughed and cried both, and hugged me, and gave me one of them lickings of hern that don’t amounts to shucks, and said she’d serve the same to Sid when he walked in the door.
And the place was full of farmers and farmer’s wives, to dinner, in a kind of relieved celebration that things warn’t as bad as they had planned for, and that they all worked together just as they promised if the Zum ever got to organizing near them. Aunt Sally was particularly relieved, and chattered along like a happy squirrel.
“Why, I was so scared the last few days I dasn’t hardly go to bed, or get up, or lay down, or even set at the table. Why, I had dreams – horrible dreams – of an eye-less man on horseback, waving a saber, parading around on a rotting horse, both of them all covered in maggots and flies, and just when I think it can’t get no worse, out of the woods pours hundreds more Zum, in straight lines like an army, all marching together in the night, gobbling up everything in front of them. It looks foolish enough now, in the daytime, but in the night you don’t think such. I says to myself, there’s my two poor boys upstairs in that lonesome room, and I got to protect them! All the rest of the men was gone – it was just me alone in the house with the children! I crept upstairs and locked the boys in! I did. Anybody would. Then I got me a few extra guns and put them around me and sat by the front door, waiting for a wall of Zum to start clawing and tearing at the walls and the doors and windows, and me alone to stop them. When you get scared that way, it keeps going on and you cain’t stop it, and getting worse and worse all the time, and you get to thinkin’ of all kind ‘o wild things, and your wits get to addling, and by and by you think to yourself, spos’n I was a boy and all that grand excitement was goin’ on, and the door warn’t locked, and you –“ She stopped, looking kind of thoughtful, and then she turned her head around slow, and when her eyes lit on me – I got up and took a walk.
Later, when everyone had et and was sitting a little more peaceful, I went back to Aunt Sally and told her the noise and the shooting waked me and “Sid” up, and the door was locked, and we wanted to see the fun, so we clambered out the window and went down the lightning-rod to the ground, and both of us fell and got hurt a little, and we never wanted to try that no more. And I went on and on until she said she forgave us, and maybe it’s what a body might expect of boys, for all boys was a pretty harum-scarum lot as fur as she could see; and so, as long as no harm had come to us, she judged she was grateful we was both still alive and well, stead of fretting over what was past and done. So then she kissed me and hugged me tight, and pretty soon she releases me and says:
“Why, lawsamercy, it’s most night and Sid not come yet! What has become of that boy?”
I sees my chance, so I skips up and says:
“I’ll run right into town and fetch him,” I says.
“No you won’t,” she says. “One’s enough to be lost at a time. If he ain’t here by supper, your uncle’ll go.”
Well, he warn’t there by supper; so right after, Uncle Silas went out after him.
He came back well after ten a bit uneasy; he hadn’t run across Tom’s track, nor talked to anybody who had. Aunt Sally was a good deal uneasy, but Uncle Silas said boys will be boys, and you’ll see this one turn up in the morning all safe and sound. It warn’t like there was a mess of Zum wandering around in the night. But Aunt Sally says it was a mistake to think if the men cleared the area of Zum on one night they wouldn’t be back the next. But she said she’d wait up for him awhile, and keep a light burning in the window so he could see it.
When I went up to bed, she came in behind me and tucked me in, and smothered me so good I couldn’t look her in the face; and she sat down on the bed and talked with me a long time and asked if I reckoned Sid had got lost, or hurt, or drownded, and might be laying this minute somewheres suffering or dead, and she not there to help him, and I told her that he was all right, and would be home in the morning, sure; and she squeezed my han
d, and told me to say it again, because it done her good to hear it, because she couldn’t bear so see another child go over to that accursed state and having to be put back down. Finally she looked at me in my eyes so steady and gentle, and says:
“The door ain’t going to be locked, Tom, and there’s the window and the lightning-rod; but you’ll be good, won’t you? For my sake?”
Laws knows I wanted to skip out bad enough to see about Tom, but after that I couldn’t went, not for kingdoms.
So I slept very restless. And twice I went out the window and down the rod and slipped around front, and seen her setting there by the candle in the window, with her eyes towards the road like Tom might come walking back any minute. I wished I could do something for her, but I couldn’t; I could only swear I wouldn’t do nothing to grieve her heart no more. And the third time I slid down, it was around dawn, and she was there yet, and her candle was down to a nub, and her old gray head was resting on her hand, and she was asleep.
Chapter Thirty-Six
Why they Didn’t Hang Jim
The old man was up-town again before breakfast, but he couldn’t get no track on Tom; and both of them sat at the kitchen table thinking, and not saying anything, and looking mournful, and their coffee getting cold, and not eating anything. I couldn’t stir neither.
But then Aunt Sally hears something and picks up her head, and goes over to the window, where she lets out a gasp. It was a wagon coming that contained Tom Sawyer on a mattress; and that old doctor, with the reins in his hands; and Jim, with his hands tied behind his back; and a lot of other people on horseback or walking next to the wagon. She came out of the house and flung herself on Tom, crying, and says:
“Oh, he’s dead, he’s dead, I know he’s dead!”
And Tom he turned his head a little and muttered something or other, and she flung up her hands, and says:
“He’s alive! Thank God! And that’s enough!” and she snatched a kiss of him, and flew back to the house to get a bed ready, scattering orders right and left, as fast as her tongue could go.
I followed the men to see what they was going to do with Jim, and the old doctor and Uncle Silas followed after Tom into the house. The men was all huffy, and some of them wanted to hang Jim right then as an example to other slaves who might be thinking of running away. But others in the crowd said, don’t do it, it wouldn’t do at all; he ain’t ours to hang, and his owner might turn up and make us pay for him, sure. So that cooled them down a little, but they cussed him out considerable, and gave him a cuff or two side the head, but Jim never said nothing. They took him to the same cabin he had been in before, and put his clothes on him, and chained him again, and not to no bed-post this time, but to a big spike drove into the bottom log, and chained his hands, too, and his legs, and said he warn’t going to have nothing to eat but bread and water till his owner came, or be sold at auction if the owner didn’t come in a certain length of time. They put a few men with guns around the cabin to watch him most of the night, and tied a bulldog to the door in the daytime; and about this time they was through with it all and was giving him a good-bye cussing, and the old doctor comes out and sees what is going on, and says:
“Don’t be rougher to him than you’re obliged to, because he ain’t a bad sort. When I got to where I found the boy, I could see I couldn’t cut the bullet out without any help, and he warn’t in condition for me to leave and go get help. He just got a little worse and a little worse, and after a time he went out of his head, and I see I couldn’t do nothing with him at all; so I says, Lord, I get to have help somehow; and the minute I says it, out crawls this man from the cattails and says he’ll help, and he done it, too, and he done it very well. We was at it for a full day and night, and I never seen a better nurse or one faithfuler. I knew he was a runaway; and here he was, risking his freedom to do it. He worked hard, and I liked him for that. I tell you, gentlemen, a man like this is worth a thousand dollars - and kind treatment, to boot. The boy did as well out there as he would ‘a’ done anywhere else, on account of this man. Then this morning some men in a skiff come by, and I waved them over, and they tied him up before he knew what they was about, and we never had no trouble. He never made the least row on the way back nor said a word. He aint a bad sort, gentlemen; that’s what I think of him.”
Then the ones who were in favor of hanging him softened up a little, and I was mighty thankful to that old doctor for his kind words. And I was glad it was according to my judgment, too; because I thought Jim had a good heart in him and was a good man the first time I seen him. They all agreed that he had acted very well, and was deserving to have some notice took of it, so every one of them promised, right out, that they wouldn’t cuss him no more, nor cuff him on the head.
Aunt Sally she stuck to the sick-room all day and all night, and every time I seen Uncle Silas moon around I dodged him.
Next morning, I heard Tom was a good deal better and they said Aunt Sally had gone to take a nap. So I slip into the sickroom, prepared to put together some kind of story with Tom’s help, but he was sleeping, and sleeping very peaceful, too.
In about a half-hour, Aunt Sally comes gliding back in, and she set down and whispered how we could be joyful now, because he was looking first-rate, sleeping peacefuller all the time, and ten to one he’d wake up in his right mind.
So we set there watching, and by and by he stirs a bit, and opens his eyes very natural, and takes a look, and says:
“Why, I’m at home!”
“You’re going to be all right,” Aunt Sally says.
“Good! Splendid! Now we’re all of us right and safe! Did you tell aunty how we done the whole thing?”
“What whole thing?” says Aunt Sally.
“Why, the whole thing – how we set Jim free!”
And there it was, out of the bag. Aunt Sally allowed he was out of his head again, but he disagreed with her and told her the whole story, every last part of it: how he made up the inscription on the inside of Jim’s cabin; how we stole knives and such from the house to dig a proper hole; the creation of the nonnamous letters; going up and down the lightning rod; loading up the cabin with rats and snakes, as company for Jim, and on and on and on, ending with the made-up Zum invasion, and Jim a free man, with only a bullet in Tom’s leg to pay for it.
She wore a smile for the first little bit of it, but it gradually came off, and soon I thought she might pull him out of his sick-bed and light into him right there, but she controlled herself and told him that when he was back to full strength, she planned on tanning the devil out of both of us. And she commanded him to stop meddling with the runaway slave once and for all.
Tom looked at us both very grave and says:
“Didn’t he just tell me Jim was all right? Hasn’t he gotten away?”
“Indeed he hasn’t,” says Aunt Sally. “They’ve got him back safe and sound, and he’s in the cabin again, on bread and water, and loaded down with chains until he’s claimed or sold.”
Tom rose up in his bed, his eyes hot, and sings out:
“They ain’t got no right to shut him up! Turn him loose! Turn him loose! He ain’t no slave – he’s as free as you or me.”
“What are you talking about, child?”
“I mean every word I say, Aunt Sally. Old Miss Watson died just two months ago, and she was ashamed she was going to sell him down the river, and said so; and she set him free in her will.”
“Then why on earth did you go to those lengths to set him free, seeing he was free already?”
“Why, for the adventure of it!”
With this, he slumped back into the bed, and it was a good thing, too. Later that afternoon, Aunt Polly arrived on a steamboat, and all of our lies were made plain – that I warn’t Tom Sawyer, but Huckleberry Finn; and that he warn’t Sid Sawyer, but Tom. It was easy enough to start these inventions when people are willing to believe you, but so hard to untangle them again and explain why a person would do such a thing. But I made a go of it,
and though I don’t think they entirely understood why we did what we did, they offered forgiveness, and the rest came easy.
Chapter the last
Nothing More to Write
The first time I catched Tom private I asked him what was the idea – what was it he planned to do after we freed Jim. And he said what he planned in his head from the start, if we got Jim out all safe, was for us to run him down the river on the raft and and have adventures plumb to the mouth of the river, and then tell him about being free and take him back home on a steamboat, in style, and pay for his lost time, and march him back into town with a brass band like some kind of hero.
We got Jim out of the chains in no time, and when Aunt Polly and the Phelpses found out how he helped the doctor nurse Tom, they made a fuss over him, and gave him all the food he cold eat, and fixed him up prime. Tom gave Jim forty dollars for being such a good prisoner and Jim was pleased most to death, thinking he might even see his wife and children again in this life. Tom thought it would be a nice idea for me to kick some more money for Jim into this pot, but I reckoned I was broke now, because it was likely that pap had been busy back home, getting my fortune away from Judge Thatcher’s people and drinking it all up.
“No he hasn’t,” Tom said. “It’s all there yet – your six thousand and more; and your pap ain’t been back since – and he ain’t a-coming back again.”
“Why would you think such a thing?” I says. “Pap ain’t walking away from a jackpot like that.”
Tom was quiet, but at last he says:
“He was always getting drunk, thinking he could out-fight any Zum he come across. And maybe it was true for awhile, but not for long. He got drunk and went at a Zum – a new one – and this one knew a thing or two about knives. Your pap wasn’t a fan of fair fights, and neither was the Zum that kilt him. Your money is where you left it. Your pap’s gone.”