by Dave Mckay
Nat didn’t look when we put the witch pie in Jim’s pan; and we put the three tin plates in the bottom of the pan under the food; and so Jim got everything all right, and as soon as he was by himself he broke into the pie and put the rope ladder inside of his mattress, and scratched some marks on a tin plate and throwed it out of the window-hole.
Chapter 38
Making pens was a mighty difficult job, and so was the saw; and Jim said be believed the writing which the prisoner has to scratch on the wall was going to be the hardest of all. But he had to have it; Tom said so. There weren’t no story of a prisoner not scratching words to leave behind, and his coat of arms.
Jim says: “Why, I ain’t got no coat; I ain’t got nuffin but dis old shirt, and you knows I got to keep de diary on dat.”
“Oh, you don’t understand, Jim; a coat of arms is different.”
“Well,” I says, “Jim’s right, anyway, when he says he ain’t got no coat of arms, because he ain’t.”
“I knowed that,” Tom says, “but you can be sure he’ll have one before he goes out of here -- because he’s going out right and there ain’t going to be no bad marks in his record.”
So while me and Jim rubbed away at the pens on two bricks, with Jim a-making his out of the candle-stick and me making mine out of the spoon, Tom set to work to think out the coat of arms. By and by he said he’d come up with so many good ones he didn’t hardly know which to take, but there was one which he thought he would choose over the others. He used a lot of words in saying it… words like a fess, that we didn’t understand.
“What are you on about, Tom Sawyer,” I says, “what does all that mean?”
“We ain’t got no time to worry over that,” he says; “we got to dig in like all get-out.”
“Well, anyway,” I says, “what’s some of it? What’s a fess?”
“A fess -- a fess is -- you don’t need to know what a fess is. I’ll show him how to make it when he gets to it.”
“Rats, Tom,” I says, “I think you might tell a person. What’s a bar sinister?”
“Oh, I don’t know. But he’s got to have it. All the kings and lords does.”
That was just his way. If he didn’t feel like giving an answer, he wouldn’t do it. You might pump him a week, it wouldn’t make no difference.
He’d got all that coat of arms business fixed, so now he started in to plan out a sad line to scratch on the wall -- said Jim got to have one, like they all done.
He made up a lot, and wrote them out on a paper, like so:
Here lies a prisoner’s broken heart.
Here a poor prisoner, hated by the world and friends, lived his sad awful life
Here a tired spirit went to its rest, after thirty-seven years in prison.
Here, without a home or friends, died a stranger who was the son of Louis XIV.
Tom’s voice was shaking as he was reading them, and he almost broke down. When he got done he couldn’t no way make up his mind which one for Jim to scratch onto the wall, they was all so good; but at last he said he would let him scratch them all on. Jim said it would take him a year to scratch such a lot of foolishness onto the logs with a nail, and, besides, he didn’t know how to make letters; but Tom said he would draw them out for him, and then he wouldn’t have nothing to do but just follow the lines. Then pretty soon he says:
“Come to think, the logs ain’t a-going to do; they don’t have log walls in a prison: we got to dig the words into a rock. We’ll get a rock.”
Jim said a rock was worse than logs; he said it would take him such a poison long time to dig them into a rock he wouldn’t ever get out. But Tom said he would let me help him do it. Then he took a look to see how me and Jim was getting along with the pens. It was awful hard, slow work, and didn’t give my hands no show to get well of the sores, and we didn’t seem to be getting nowhere, hardly; so Tom says: “I know how to fix it. We got to have a rock for the coat of arms and one for the sad writing, and we can kill two birds with that same rock. There’s a great big round flat stone that they use to make flour, and we’ll borrow it, and dig the lines into it, and make the pens and saw sharp on it, too.”
It weren’t no little plan; and it weren’t no little stone either; but we said we’d try it. It weren’t quite midnight yet, so we cleared out for the timber yard, leaving Jim at work.
We got the stone, and started to wheel her home, but it was a most awful job. Do what we could, we couldn’t keep her from falling over, and she come mighty close to falling on us every time.
Tom said she was going to get one of us, sure, before we got through. We got her half way; and then we was fully played out, and almost drowning from the heat. We seen it weren’t no use; we got to go and get Jim. So he lifted up his bed and pulled the chain off of the bed-leg, and coiled it round and round his neck, and we went out through our hole and down there, and Jim and me took that stone and walked her along like nothing; and Tom was the leader. He could out-lead any boy I ever seen. He knowed how to do everything.
Our hole was pretty big, but it weren’t big enough to get the stone through; but Jim he took the shovel and soon made it big enough. Then Tom marked out them things on it with the nail, and set Jim to work on them, with a big piece of metal from things we found in the lean-to, to be used for a hammer on the nail. Tom told him to work until his candle quit on him, and then he could go to bed, and hide the stone under his mattress and sleep on it. Then we helped him fix his chain back on the bed-leg, and was ready for bed ourselves. But Tom thought of something, and says: “You got any spiders in here, Jim?”
“No, sir, thanks to de good Lord I ain’t, Master Tom.”
“All right, we’ll get you some.”
“But bless you, honey, I don’t want none. I’s afraid of ‘em. I just as soon have rattlesnakes around.”
Tom thought a minute or two, and says:
“What a good plan! And I think it’s been done. It must a been done; it stands to reason. Yes, it’s a very good plan. Where could you keep it?”
“Keep what, Master Tom?”
“Why, a rattlesnake.”
“What you talking about, Master Tom? Why, if dey was a rattlesnake to come in here I’d take and break right out through dat log wall, I would, wid my head.”
“Why, Jim, you wouldn’t be afraid of it after a little. You could make friends with it.”
“Make friends with it?”
“Yes -- easy enough. Every animal is thankful for people being kind and touching them softly, and they wouldn’t think of hurting a person that touches them softly. Any book will tell you that. You try -- that’s all I ask; just try for two or three days. Why, you can get him so in a little while that he’ll love you; and sleep with you; and won’t stay away from you a minute; and will let you coil him around your neck and put his head in your mouth.”
“Please, Master Tom -- don’t talk so! I can’t stand it! He’d let me put his head in my mouth? -- because I want it, is dat it? I think he’d wait a powerful long time before I’d ask him. And more den dat, I don’t want him to sleep wid me.”
“Jim, don’t act so foolish. A prisoner’s got to have some kind of an animal, and if a rattlesnake ain’t ever been tried, why, there’s more glory to be found in you being the first to ever try it than any other way you could ever think of to save your life.”
“Why, Master Tom, I don’t want no such glory. Snake take and bite Jim’s nose off, den where's de glory? No, sir, I don’t want no such doings.”
“Blame it, can’t you try? I only want you to try -- you needn’t keep it up if it don’t work.”
“But de trouble all done if de snake up and bite me while I’s a trying him. Master Tom, I’s willing to take on almost anything dat ain’t too foolish, but if you and Huck brings a rattlesnake in here for me to play with, I’s gwyne to leave, dat’s sure.”
“Well, then, let it go, if you’re so strong about it. We can get some garden-snakes, and you can tie some buttons on their
tails, and let on they’re rattlesnakes, and I think that’ll have to do.”
“I can stand dem, Master Tom, but I really could get along widout ‘em too, I tell you dat. I never knowed before it was so much worry and trouble to be a prisoner.”
“Well, it always is when it’s done right. You got any rats around here?”
“No, sir, I ain’t seen none.”
“Well, we’ll get you some rats.”
“Why, Master Tom, I don’t want no rats. Dey’s de dad blamedest animals to move around over a body, and bite his feet, when he’s trying to sleep, I ever seen. No, sir, give me garden snakes, if I’s got to have ‘em, but don’t give me no rats; I ain’t got no use for ‘em hardly.”
“But, Jim, you got to have ‘em -- they all do. So don’t make no more arguments about it. Prisoners ain’t ever without rats. There ain’t one time of it. And they teach them, and touch them, and learn them tricks, and they get to be as friendly as flies. But you got to play music to them. You got anything to play music on?”
“I ain’t got nuffin but a comb and paper, and a juice-harp; but I don’t think they’d take no interest in a juice-harp.”
“Yes they would. They don’t care what kind of music it is. All animals like music -- in a prison they get to where they can’t live without it. What they like most is sad music; and you can’t get no other kind out of a Jew’s harp. It always interests them; they come out to see what’s wrong with you. You want to sit on your bed nights before you go to sleep, and early in the mornings, and play your Jew’s harp. When you’ve played about two minutes you’ll see all the rats, and snakes, and spiders, and things start to feel worried about you, and come. They’ll get all over you, and have a real good time.”
“Yes, dey will, I think, Master Tom, but what kind of time is Jim having? Blessed if I can see de point. But I’ll do it if I got to. I see it’s best to keep de animals happy, and not have no trouble in de house.”
Tom waited to think it over, and see if there wasn’t nothing else; and pretty soon he says: “Oh, there’s one more thing. Could you grow a flower here, do you think?”
“I don’t know but maybe I could, Master Tom; but it’s pretty dark in here and I don’t got no use for no flower, and she’d be a powerful lot of trouble.”
“Well, you try it, all the same. Some other prisoners has done it.”
“One of dem big cat-tail-looking plants would grow in here, Master Tom, I think, but she wouldn’t be worth half de trouble she’d cost.”
“Don’t you believe it. We’ll bring you a little one and you plant it in the corner over there, and grow it. And you want to water it with your tears.”
“Why, I got more than enough well water, Master Tom.”
“You don’t want well water; you want to water it with your tears. It’s the way they always do.”
“Why, Master Tom, I think I can grow one of them plants two times with well water while another man’s just a starting one wid tears.”
“That ain’t the point. You got to do it with tears.”
“She’ll die on my hands, Master Tom, she surely will; because I don’t hardly ever cry.”
That stopped Tom. But he studied it over, and then said Jim would have to worry along the best he could with an onion. He promised he would go to the slave cabins and drop one, secretly, in Jim’s coffee-pot, in the morning. Jim said he would just as soon have tobacco in his coffee; and he found so much wrong with it, and with the work and trouble of growing the plant, and Jews’s harping the rats, and being friendly with the snakes and spiders and things, on top of all the other work he had to do on pens, and sayings, and diaries, and things, which made it more trouble and worry to be a prisoner than anything he ever did before, that Tom almost give up on him; and said he was just covered with more good openings than a prisoner ever had in the world to make a name for himself, and yet he didn’t know enough to be thankful for them, and they was just about wasted on him. So Jim he was sorry, and said he wouldn’t be like that no more, and then me and Tom went to bed.
Chapter 39
In the morning we went up to the village and bought a wire rat-trap and brought it down, and opened the best rat-hole, and in about an hour we had fifteen of the best in it; and then we took the trap and put it in a safe place under Aunt Sally’s bed. But while we was gone for spiders little Thomas Franklin Benjamin Jefferson Alexander Phelps found it there, and opened it to see if the rats would come out, and they did; and Aunt Sally she come in, and when we got back she was a-standing on top of the bed half crazy, and the rats was doing what they could to keep off the boring times for her.
So she took to us both with a stick. We was as much as two hours catching another fifteen or sixteen for ourselves, thanks to that dirty little child, and they weren’t the best, either, because the first lot was the best of the family. I never seen a better lot of rats than that first trap was full of.
We got a wonderful box of mixed spiders, and insects, and frogs, and caterpillars, and one thing or another; and we close to got a wasp nest, but we didn’t, because the family was home. We didn’t give it right up, but stayed with them as long as we could; because we thought we’d tire them out or they’d tire us out, and they done it. We got some medicine and rubbed on the places where they got us, and was pretty near all right again, but couldn’t sit down easily. And so we went for the snakes, and found about twenty garden and house snakes, and put them in a bag, and put it in our room, and by then it was time to eat, and what a good honest day’s work it had been.
But there weren’t a blessed snake up there when we went back -- we didn’t half tie the bag, and it seems they worked out and left. But it wasn’t a big problem, because they was still in the house somewhere. So we judged we could get some of them again. There weren’t no real problem finding snakes about that house for a good long while after that. You’d see them hanging from the roof and other places every now and then; and they generally landed in your plate, or down the back of your neck, and most of the time where you didn’t want them.
Well, they was beautiful and striped, and there weren’t no danger in a million of them; but that never made no difference to Aunt Sally; she hated snakes, be them what they may, and she couldn’t stand them no way you could fix it. Every time one of them dropped on her, it didn’t make no difference what she was doing, she would just lay it down and run out. I never seen such a woman. And you could hear her shouting to Jericho. You couldn’t get her to take a-hold of one of them with a stick even; and if she turned over and found one in bed she would jump out and lift a cry that you would think the house was on fire. She worried the old man so that he said he could almost wish there hadn’t ever been no snakes made. After every last snake had been gone clear out of the house for as much as a week Aunt Sally weren’t over it yet; when she was sitting thinking about something you could touch her on the back of her neck with a feather and she would jump right out of her socks. It was very strange. But Tom said all women was just so. He said they was made that way for some reason or other.
We got a whipping every time one of our snakes come in her way, and she promised they weren’t nothing to what she would do if we ever filled up the place again with them. I didn’t mind the whippings, because they didn’t come to much; but I was angry about all the trouble we had to get another lot. But we got them, and all the other things; and you never seen a cabin as alive as Jim’s was when they’d all come out for music and go to him. Jim didn’t like the spiders, and the spiders didn’t like Jim; and so they’d go for him, and make it hard for him. He said that between the rats and the snakes and the big stone there weren’t hardly no room in bed for him; and when there was, a body couldn’t sleep, it was so alive with animals. It was always that way, he said, because they was never all asleep at one time, but took turns, so when the snakes was asleep the rats was on the job, and when the rats turned in the snakes come on watch, so he always had one gang under him, and t’other gang having a circus over him, an
d if he got up to hunt a new place the spiders would have a go at him as he crossed over. He said if he ever got out this time he wouldn’t ever be a prisoner again, not for pay.
Well, by the end of three weeks everything was in pretty good shape. The shirt was sent in early, in a pie, and every time a rat would bite Jim he'd get up and write a little in his diary while the blood was wet; the pens was made, the sayings and so on was all scratched on the stone; the bedleg was sawed in two, and we had eat up the saw-dust, and it give us a most awful stomach-pain. We believed we was all going to die, but didn’t. It was the most difficult sawdust to eat I ever see; and Tom said the same.
But as I was saying, we’d got all the work done now, at last; and we was all pretty much tired out, too, but mostly Jim. The old man had written a few times to the farm below New Orleans to come and get their runaway slave, but hadn’t got no answer, because there weren’t no such farm; so he said he would advertise Jim in the St. Louis and New Orleans papers; and when he said the St. Louis ones it give me the cold shakes, and I seen we hadn’t no time to lose.