The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn and the Undead Page 14

  Well, the place couldn’t hold no more people, so the duke give a fellow a quarter and told him to tend door for a minute, and then he started around for the stage door, I after him. The minute we turned the corner and was in the dark, he takes me by the shoulder and says:

  “Walk fast now till you get away from the houses, then shin for the raft like an army of Zum was after you!”

  I done it, and he done the same. At one point I thought some people from the town had caught him, as I heard him slow down and yip an groan in pain, but later he told me he had just stepped on an old nail from an old fence board and it went into the bottom of his foot. We struck the raft and in less than two seconds we was gliding downstream, all dark and still, nobody saying a word, the duke taking off his shoe and examining the hole in his foot. I reckoned the king was in for a time of it with the audience, but nothing of the sort; pretty soon he comes out of the wigwam and says:

  “Well, how’d it pan out this time, Bilgewater?”

  We never showed a light till we was about ten mile below the village. Then we lit up and had supper, and the king and the duke fairly laughed their bones loose over the way them people got served. The duke says:

  “Greenhorns! Flatheads! I knew the very first night they would keep mum and let the rest of the town get roped in; I also knew they’d lay for us the third night, and consider it their turn now. Well, they can turn it into a church picnic for all I care – they brought plenty of provisions.”

  Them rascals took in over four hundred and sixty-four dollars in them three nights. I never seen money hauled in by the wagon-load like that before. The duke said a foot wound was a small price to pay, they both chuckled, and the duke let his foot hang in the water to take away the throb.

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Discussions on the River

  The next morning the duke’s foot was swollen, and Jim said he didn’t like the look of it. He urged the duke to stop dunking his foot in the river and let it dry on in the sun for a few hours so a crust would form over the hole where the nail went in. The duke laughed like it warn’t nothing much, but he said he appreciated the concern, and so let it dry out. Jim looked at it again later and said it would be best to put some turpentine on a cloth and wrap it for a couple days; only we didn’t have none on the raft. Jim rooted around the supplies and came up with a little sugar, though, and he burnt some of it in a cup and made the duke stick his foot directly into the smoke. After that, the duke said he felt considerable better.

  We would have tied up next to a little town or village and gone ashore and found a doctor to have a look at it, but both the duke and the king were nervous and said it was too risky; they hadn’t made fools out of one or two people – they had made fools out of the whole village, and as far as they knew, the village had sent out parties after them. It wouldn’t do to lollygag and wait around to see if they was going to catch up. Several days went by and nothing happened to us, but they were happy to keep floating and put miles between us and the village. Their play was so successful they would have liked to duplicate it again and again down the river, but if word got there ahead of them, it wouldn’t be a wagon-load of money, but a bunch of tar and feathers waiting for them. So we sat on the raft and drifted, and the duke reckoned the swelling would go down and he’d be back to snuff as long as he kept off it and rested.

  They did a powerful lot of resting. After breakfast, they went back into the wigwam to sleep off the meal, and only came out again hours later. In the late afternoon, they slept on deck, and after sunset, they’d sit and talk a little, then head back into the wigwam. I had no idea that being a scoundrel took so much out of a person.

  On the third or fourth day down river from the village, when they was both asleep and snoring, Jim says:

  “Don’t it s’prise you how dem kings carries on, Huck?”

  “No,” I says, “it don’t.”

  “Well, why not?”

  “Because it’s in their breed. I reckon they’re all alike.”

  “But, Huck, des kings o’ ourn is regular rapscallions.”

  “That’s just what I’m sayin’, Jim; all kings is mostly rapscallions, as far as I can figure it.”

  “Is dat so?”

  “You go read about them sometime – you’ll see. Look at Henry the Eight – our kings are regular Sunday-school Superintendents next to him. And look at Charles Second, and Louis Fourteen, and Richard Third. My, you ought to have seen Henry the Eight when he was in full stride. He used to marry a new wife every day, and chop her head off the very next morning. And he would do this as indifferent as if he was ordering up eggs. ‘Fetch me Nell Gwyne,’ says he. They fetched her up. Next morning, ‘Chop off her head!’ And they chop it off. ‘Fetch me Jane Smore!’ he says; and up she comes. Next morning, off goes her head.

  “And he made every one of them tell him a tale every night; and he kept at it until he had hogged a thousand and one tales that way, and then he put them all into a book. You don’t know kings, Jim, but I know them; and this ole rip of our’n is one of the cleanest I’ve struck in history. All I can say is, kings is kings, and you have to make allowances. They’re a mighty ornery lot. It’s the way they was raised.”

  “Now, de duke,” Jim says, “he’s a tolerable likely man in some ways.”

  “Yes, dukes are different. But not very different. When this one’s drunk, you could take him for a king himself.”

  “Well, anyways, I doan’ hanker fo’ no mo’, Huck. De ones we have is all I kin stand.”

  “I feel the same way, Jim. But we’ve got them on our hands, and we got to make allowances. Sometimes I wish we knew of a country that was out of kings.”

  Jim leaned closer. “An’ our duke a-gwyne to catch sick, I reckon, Huck.”

  “What are you saying, Jim?”

  “With his foot. He let it go too long befo’ he dried it out. I’m afeer’d he’s a-gwyne ‘a’ get the lockjaw. I seen it before. I kin tell by the little ticks and twitches he does he didn’t do befo’. It’s a-comin’. It might be bad; powerful bad.”

  “Can we do anything?”

  He shook his head. “If I went asho’ an’ found me a healer, I could get us some o’ the right kind o’ berries, and turpentine, and somesuch, an’ make a poultice, but I s’pect it might even be too late fo’ that.”

  “But you don’t know, right?” I said. “It might not get too bad.”

  Jim just stared out over the water and was done talking.

  I went to sleep and Jim didn’t wake me when it was my turn. He often done that. When I waked up just before daybreak he was sitting there with his head down betwixt his knees, moaning and mourning to himself. I didn’t take no notice nor let on. I knowed what it was about. He was thinking about his wife and children, away up yonder, and he was lone and miserable and homesick; because he hadn’t ever been away from home in his life, and I do believe he cared just as much for his people as white people do for theirs. He often moaned and mourned through the night, when he judged I was asleep, saying “Po’ little Lizzie! Po’ little Johnny! It’s mighty hard; I s’pect I may never see you no mo’. My po’ babies!” It made me feel that I knew all I needed to know about Jim, and that he was a good and decent man.

  But finally we was both awake and I somehow get to talking about him and his wife and young’uns, and by and by he says:

  “Every time I remembers ‘em, I have this pic’ures in my mind. Like somethin’ you would put in a locket. I ‘member Johnny standing in back of a chicken coop, and I here I come ‘round the corner, and he’s flingin’ crabapples at an ol’ ho’nets nest. Made me laugh out loud, cause it was the same kind of thing I done as a chile. I ‘member him sitting in a chair one night wi’f his maw cuttin’ his hair, and boy, you should ‘a’ seen the tears come down. I says to him “She hoitin’ you, boy?” and he sniffles and shakes his head. He didn’t know why he was cryin’.

  “An’ I remember ‘nother time when the wife brought me a plate ‘a’ bea
ns an’ set it down and laid a hand on my back, and that little thing, it was as good as the beans themself. Doan’ remember what she said, or why I ‘member it; I jes do.”

  “Because you miss them so much,” I says.

  “I sho’ly do. An’ I ‘member when ‘Lizzie sassed me ‘bout somef’n, an’ I fetched her a slap side de head dat sent her a-sprawlin’. Dat chile standin’ there, a-lookin’ at me wif her big eyes, en de tears runnin’ down, wonderin’ what she had done to make her paw hate her so. We foun’ out de poor chile was deef, Huck, plumb deef in both ears – an’ I’d been treatin’ her like dat. Ain’t no medicine fo’ a pain like dat, Huck. It jes stays wi’f you, and you have to up and say: tomorrow I’ll be a mo’ decen’ man; I swear it.”

  “I believe you, Jim.”

  There was plenty of differences between Jim, and the duke and the king, but when Jim said that, I knew what the big one was – the duke and the king was never going to try and be better: just sharper.

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  The King Turns Parson and the Duke Turns Silent

  A day or so later, toward night, we laid up under a little willow island out in the middle, a village on either side of the river. The duke was sweating a bit and rubbing his neck, but he reckoned that whatever he had, the worst was over and it was silly of him to dwell on it too much. The king agreed and said it was time for them to lay out a plan for working these two towns. Jim he spoke to the duke and said he hoped whatever they had in mind wouldn’t take but a few hours, because it got mighty heavy and lonesome when he had to lay all day in the wigwam tied with the rope. You see, when we left him all alone we had to tie him up, because if anybody happened on him all by himself and not tied up, it might look suspicious and attract attention. So the duke said he’d put his mind to it and cipher some way to get out of it.

  He was uncommon bright, the duke was, and he soon had it figured out. He dressed Jim up in King Lear’s outfit – a long curtain-calico gown and a white horse-hair wig and whiskers; then he took his theater paint and painted Jim’s face and arms a dull, solid blue, like a man that’s been drownded nine days. Blamed if he warn’t the horriblest-looking outrage I ever seen. Then the duke took some paint and wrote out a sign on a shingle:

  DEAD MAN BEING RETURNED FOR REWARD. DANGEROUS.

  And he nailed that shingle to a lath, and stood the lath at the front of the raft four or five feet up. Jim was satisfied. It was a sight better than him trembling and trying to hide every time there was a sound. The duke told him to make himself free and easy, and if anyone ever came meddling around, he must hop out of the wigwam and carry on a little, and fetch a howl or two like a wild beast. As no one else knew who was offering this ‘reward’, the duke reckoned they would steer clear of the raft and leave him alone. Which was sound judgment; most people wouldn’t even wait around long enough for him to howl. Why, he not only looked Zum, he looked like an angry, enraged, and tricky Zum, and considerable more than that.

  These rapscallions wanted to work their play again, but they was still worried that word might ‘a’ worked itself down ahead of them. They couldn’t hit no project that suited them; so at last the duke reckoned he’d go to the village on the Arkansas side and see if he could find a doctor to help with the lockjaw. He could still talk, but it was painful and came out in a little whisper. His neck hurt too, and he said it was working its way down his body. The king allowed he would drop over to t’other village without any plan, but just trust in Providence to lead him the profitable way – meaning the devil, I suppose.

  We all had fresh store-bought clothes from where we stopped last, and now the king put his’n on, and he told me to put mine on. The king’s duds was all black, and didn’t he look swell and starchy. I never knowed how clothes could change a body before. Why, before, he looked like the orneriest old rip that ever was, and after an evening with the whiskey jug, he looked like something you might not want to see after dark, unless you had the means with you to take off his head. But now, when he’d take off his white beaver hat and make a bow and do a smile, he looked grand and good and pious, like he had just walked off the ark.

  There was a big steamboat up under the point, about three miles above the town; it had been there a few hours, taking on freight. Says the king:

  “See’n as how I’m dressed, I reckon I better arrive from St. Louis or Cinncinnati, or some other fine city. Let us go to the steamboat, Huckleberry.”

  I paddled the canoe and nosed her into a dead water bank just above the steamboat. Then we get out and move toward the steamboat. First thing we see is a nice innocent-looking young man also waiting to board the steamboat. He was setting on a log and had a couple of heavy carpet-bags with him.

  “Where you bound, young man?” says the king.

  “Waitin’ on the steamboat; going to Orleans.”

  “Excellent!” says the king. “Hold on there, my servant’ll help you with them bags. Jump up and help the gentleman, Adolphus” – meaning me, I see.

  I done so, and all three of us started on. The young chap was mighty thankful, and said it was tough work toting his baggage in such hot weather. He asked the king a few questions, and the king told him he was going up the river a few miles to visit an old friend he had up there. The young fellow says:

  “When I first saw you, I says to myself, ‘It’s Mr. Wilks, sure.’ But then I thinks, ‘No, I reckon it ain’t him or else he wouldn’t be paddling up the river.’ You ain’t him, are you?”

  “No. My name’s Blodgett – Elexander Blodgett – Reverend Elexander Blodgett. I’m sorry all the same about this Mr. Wilks not arriving in time. I hope he hasn’t missed anything by it?”

  “Well, he’ll still get his property, but he missed seeing his brother Peter die. His brother would ‘a’ give anything in this world to see him before he died; never talked about anything else these last three weeks; hadn’t seen him since they was boys together. And he never seen his brother William at all – that’s the deef and dumb one. William was the baby of the family, ain’t more than thirty-five now.”

  “I see, I see,” says the king, paying close attention.

  “Four brothers all told. Peter and George were the only ones who came out here – to the frontier. The other two thought that with all the Zum running around, it warn’t the time for such a thing, but Peter and George was the bold ones. George and his wife both died last year, and sure enough, t’was Zum-related. Harvey and William are the only ones left now – and as I mentioned, they haven’t got here in time.

  “But someone sent them word?”

  “Oh yes, a month or two ago when Peter first took; Peter said then he felt like he warn’t going to get better this time. His daughters was too young to be much company for him, and he was kinder lonesome after his brother and his wife died. He left a letter behind for Harvey, and said he explained in it where all the money was hid, and how he wanted the rest of his properties divided so his brother’s girls would be taken care of.”

  “Why do you reckon Harvey didn’t come?”

  “Oh, he lives in England – hasn’t ever been to this country, and I gather from what he reads in the paper, doesn’t particularly want to. Besides, he mightn’t ‘a’ got the letter at all you know.”

  “Too bad, too bad. Pour soul. You going to Orleans, you say?”

  “Yes, but only for a few days. A stopover, more like. I’m going in a ship next Wednesday for South American, where my uncle lives.”

  “Oh, that should be lovely. Tell me more about the children. How old are they?” I knew what that old king was doing, even as he set there doing it.

  Well, the king went on asking questions till he just fairly emptied that young fellow. Blamed if he didn’t enquire about everybody in that blessed town, and all about poor Peter Wilks, and poor George Wilks, and his poor wife. I knew he was nailing together some plan to make them all a lot poorer.

  “When did you say he died?”

  “Oh, just last night.”
>
  “Funeral then tomorrow, likely?”

  “Yes, we all figured the sooner the better. They put Peter’s body in a coffin and filled around the sides with a bunch of ice they brought in. They’re hoping they can put off the Zum infestation for at least until after the ceremony. A little something for the daughters, don’t you see? They’ve already been through so much.”

  “Ice? I never thought of that. Sounds like an expensive proposition.”

  “Mr. Wilks was well off. A few hundred pounds of ice won’t put much of a dent in the estate. And it’s money well-spent if it has the desired effect.”

  “Well, it’s all terrible sad, but we’ve all got to go one time or another.”

  “I suppose that’s true.”

  Pretty soon the steamboat was loaded, but the king and I stayed behind and waved her off. When the boat was gone, the king says to me:

  “Now hustle back, right off, and fetch the duke and the new carpet-bags. If he’s sitting in a doctor’s office, just go in and git him. Tell him to git himself here regardless. Shove off, now!”

  I knew what he was up to, but I never said nothing, of course. I went across the river and found the duke in a general store buying up tinctures of this and that for the lockjaw, but from the expression on his face, he didn’t look hopeful. When the king saw him, though, he laughed and said it was going to be perfect, as they was going to need him to play deef and dumb.

  The duke tried to answer him, but no sound came out at all, and it looked like the attempt itself was painful to even try.

  About the middle of the afternoon, we hailed a steamboat coming from Cincinnati, and she sent a yawl out for us. When they found we only wanted to go four or five miles, they was booming mad, and gave us a cussing, but the king was calm. He pulled out a handful of gold coins and said: