Adventures of Huckleberry Finn

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

The Phelps place was one of these little one-horse cotton plantations, and they all look alike. It had a rail fence around a two-acre yard; a stile made out of logs sawed off and upended in steps, like barrels of different lengths, 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 the yard was bare and smooth, like an old hat with the nap rubbed off; a big double log house for the white folks—hewn logs, with the chinks stopped up with mud or mortar, and these mud stripes whitewashed at some time or other; a round-log kitchen, with a big broad, open but roofed passage joining it to the house; a log smokehouse back of the kitchen; three little log cabins for the enslaved people in a row on the other side of the smokehouse; one little hut all by itself away down against the back fence, and some outbuildings a little way down on the other side; an ash hopper and a big kettle to boil soap in, by the little hut; a bench by the kitchen door, with a bucket of water and a gourd; a hound asleep there in the sun; more hounds asleep all around; about three shade trees far off in a corner; some currant bushes and gooseberry bushes in one place by the fence. Outside the fence were a garden and a watermelon patch; then the cotton fields began, and after the fields the woods.

I went around and climbed over the back stile by the ash hopper, and started for the kitchen. When I had gone a little way I heard the dim hum of a spinning wheel wailing up and sinking down again; and then I knew for certain I wished I were dead—for that is the most lonesome sound in the whole world.

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

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

An enslaved woman came tearing out of the kitchen with a rolling pin in her hand, singing out, “Begone, you Tige! You Spot! Begone, sir!” 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 came back, wagging their tails around me and making friends with me. There is no harm in a hound, anyhow.

And behind the woman came a little enslaved girl and two little enslaved 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 came the white woman running from the house, about forty-five or fifty years old, bareheaded, with her spinning stick in her hand; and behind her came her little white children, acting the same way the little enslaved children were doing. She was smiling all over so that she could hardly stand—and said:

“It’s you, at last!—isn’t it?”

I blurted out a “Yes, ma’am” before I thought.

She grabbed me and hugged me tight; and then gripped me by both hands and shook and shook; and the tears came into her eyes and ran 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 for goodness’ sake, I don’t care about that; I’m so glad to see you! Dear, dear, it does seem as if I could eat you up! Children, it’s your cousin Tom!—say howdy to him.”

But they ducked their heads, and put their fingers in their mouths, and hid behind her. So she ran 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 gotten 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 sat herself down on a little low stool in front of me, holding both of my hands, and said:

“Now I can have a good look at you; and, mercy me, I’ve been hungry for it many and many a time, all these long years, and it’s come at last! We’ve been expecting you a couple of days and more. What kept you?—Did the boat get aground?”

“Yes, ma’am—she—”

“Don’t say yes, ma’am—say Aunt Sally. Where did 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 toward Orleans. That didn’t help me much, though; for I didn’t know the names of bars down that way. I saw I had 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 wasn’t the grounding—that only kept us back a little. We blew out a cylinder head.”

“Good gracious! Anybody hurt?”

“No, ma’am. Killed a Black man.”

“Well, it’s lucky, because sometimes people do get hurt. Two years ago last Christmas your uncle Silas was coming up from New Orleans on the old Lally Rook, and she blew out a cylinder head and crippled a man. And I think he died afterward. He was a Baptist. Your uncle Silas knew a family in Baton Rouge that knew 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 has been up to the town every day to fetch you. And he’s gone again, not more than an hour ago; he’ll be back any minute now. You must have met him on the road, didn’t you?—an oldish man, with a—”

“No, I didn’t see anybody, Aunt Sally. The boat landed just at daylight, and I left my baggage on the wharfboat and went looking around the town and out a little way in the country, to put in the time and not get here too soon; and so I came down the back way.”

“Who did you give the baggage to?”

“Nobody.”

“Why, child, it’ll be stolen!”

“It won’t be, I reckon—not where I hid it,” I said.

“How did you get your breakfast so early on the boat?”

It was kind of thin ice, but I said:

“The captain saw me standing around, and told me I had better have something to eat before I went ashore; so he took me in the texas to the officers’ lunch, and gave me all I wanted.”

I was getting so uneasy I couldn’t listen well. 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 a chance; Mrs. Phelps kept it up and ran on so. Pretty soon she made the cold chills streak all down my back, because she said:

“But here we are running on this way, and you haven’t told me a word about Sis, or any of them. Now I’ll rest my works a little, and you start up yours; just tell me everything—tell me all about them all, every one of them; 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 saw I was up a stump—and really up it. Providence had stood by me this far all right, but I was hard and tight aground now. I saw it wasn’t a bit of use to try to go ahead—I had to throw up my hand. So I said to myself, “Here’s another place where I have to risk the truth.” I opened my mouth to begin; but she grabbed me and hustled me in behind the bed, and said:

“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 saw I was in a fix now. But it was no use to worry; there was nothing to do but just hold still, and try to be ready to stand from under when the lightning struck.

I had just one little glimpse of the old gentleman when he came in; then the bed hid him. Mrs. Phelps jumped for him, and said:

“Has he come?”

“No,” said her husband.

“Goodness gracious!” she said, “what in the world could have become of him?”

“I can’t imagine,” said the old gentleman; “and I must say it makes me dreadfully uneasy.”

“Uneasy!” she said; “I’m ready to go distracted! He must have 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 have come! You must have missed him. He—”

“Oh, don’t distress me any more than 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 that I’m downright scared. But there’s no hope that he’s come; for he couldn’t come without my missing him. Sally, it’s terrible—just terrible—something’s happened to the boat, sure!”

“Why, Silas! Look over there!—up the road!—isn’t that somebody coming?”

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

“Why, who’s that?”

“Who do you reckon it is?”

“I haven’t any idea. Who is it?”

“It’s Tom Sawyer!”

By jingo, I almost slumped through the floor! But there wasn’t any 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 were joyful, it was nothing to what I was; for it was like being born again—I was so glad to find out who I was. Well, they clung to me for two hours; and at last, when my chin was so tired it could 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 blew out a cylinder head at the mouth of White River, and it took us three days to fix it. That was all right, and worked first-rate, because they didn’t know but that it would take three days to fix it. If I had called it a bolthead it would have 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 until by and by I heard a steamboat coughing along down the river. Then I said to myself, “Suppose Tom Sawyer comes down on that boat? And suppose 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 would rather he didn’t take any trouble about me.