The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn and the Undead Read online

  “If gentlemen kin afford to pay a dollar a mile apiece to be took on and put off a yawl, a steamboat kin afford to carry ‘em, right?”

  So the captain took the money and softened right away. When we got put off at the village, a yawl took us ashore, and when we landed, the king says to some men:

  “Kin any of you gentlemen tell me wher’ Mr. Peter Wilks lives?”

  Then they look at each other, shaking their heads as much to say ‘What did I tell you?’ and one of them says, kind of soft and gentle:

  “I’m sorry, sir, but the best we can do is tell you where he did live yesterday evening.”

  Sudden as a wink, the king went all to smash, and went to sobbing and crying, and says:

  “Alas, alas, our poor brother – gone, and we never got to see him – oh, it’s too, too hard!”

  Then he turns around, blubbering, makes a lot of nonsense signs to the duke with his hands, and blamed if he don’t drop his carpet-bags and bust out crying. His cries was at least more genuine, as I believe he was in a good amount of pain, as the tinctures hadn’t done a blessed thing.

  Well, the men all gathered together and sympathized with them, and said all sorts of kind things to them, and carried their carpet-bags up the hill to town, and told the king all about his brother’s last moments, and the king took on about that dead man like they’d just lost the twelve disciples.

  I never seen a thing like this in my life. It was enough to make a body ashamed of the whole human race.

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  All Full of Tears and Flapdoodle

  The news was all over the town in minutes, and you could see people coming down from the town on the run, some of them putting on their coats as they came. Pretty soon we was in the middle of a crowd, and the noise was like some great army on the move. The windows and dooryards were filled, and every minute somebody would say, over a fence:

  “Is it them?”

  And then somebody trotting along with the gang would answer back and say:

  “You bet it is!”

  When we got to the house, the street in front of it was packed, and the three daughters was standing in the door. Mary Jane was red-headed, and awful beautiful, and her face and her eyes was all lit up like glory, she was so glad her uncles had come. The king he spread his arms, and Mary Jane jumped into them; and the second sister jumped for the duke, and that just about sealed it. Everybody cried for joy to see them again at last.

  Then the king hunched the duke private – I seen him do it – and they looked around and saw the coffin, over in the corner, featuring old Peter Wilks all packed with ice. They also had the top of the coffin criss-crossed with the kind of wire you would use to keep animals out of your garden, and the wires was tied and screwed and bolted to the outside of the coffin. It was pretty smart. I’d never seen a thing like that in my village. Even if the ice couldn’t stop him from coming back as a Zum, the wires would keep him in and prevent him from getting up and ruining everything.

  When the king and the duke got to the coffin, they took their hats off, drooped their heads, and they both busted out a-crying again, loud enough so you could ‘a’ heard them in Orleans. And then for three minutes, or maybe four, I never seen two men leak the way they done. And mind you, everyone else was doing the same. Then they both kneeled down and rested their foreheads on the side of the coffin – probably just to cool off – and let on to pray all to themselves. Well, you never seen anyone work a crowd like these two, and everybody broke down and went to sobbing right out loud – the poor girls too.

  Well, by and by the king gets up and comes forward a little, and works himself up and slobbers out a speech, all full of tears and flapdoodle, about it being a sore trial for him and his poor brother to lose the diseased, and to miss seeing the diseased alive after travelling the long journey of four thousand miles, and so he thanks them all out of his and his brother’s heart, and all that kind of rot and slush, till it was just sickening; and then he blubbers out Amen, and turns himself loose to crying fit to bust.

  And the minute the words was out of his mouth, somebody in the crowd struck up “Amazing Grace” and everybody joined in with all their might, and it just warmed you up and made you feel as good as church letting out. Music is a good thing, and after all that soul-butter and hogwash, I never seen it freshen up things so, and sound so honest and bully.

  Then the king sets his jaw to working again, and says how him and his nieces would be glad if a few main friends of the family would join them all and take supper with them this evening, and says if his poor brother laying yonder could speak the names, he knows what he would say, for they was names dear to him, and mentioned often in his letters; and he rattled off every name the young gentleman by the steamboat told him. Only two of the diseased friends warn’t in attendance – the Rev. Hobson and Dr. Robinson. They was both off at the other end of town; the doctor was taking off the head of a newly departed – one without the budget for ice and a wired coffin – and the preacher was p’inting the deceased in the right direction. The rest of them was there, though, listening to the king as he went on. The duke of course didn’t say nothing; he just smiled palely and pointed to his throat, and I noticed then that the duke was looking mighty awful and gray. It looked a lot like grief, but I knew better. His lockjaw was getting worse, and so was the pain.

  The king he blathered along and managed to include every blessed soul that the flathead had mentioned by the steamboat. Then Mary Jane fetched the letter her father left behind, and the king read it out loud and cried over it. It gave the house they was in and three thousand dollars, gold, to the girls; and it gave several businesses and some other houses and lands (worth about seven thousand) and three thousand in gold each to Harvey and William, and told them where the six thousand in gold was hid in the cellar. So these two frauds said they’d go and fetch it up and have everything square and above-board. The king caught my eye and told me to run and bring candles. We shut the cellar door and when they found the bag they spilt it on the ground, and it was a lovely sight. My, the king’s eyes did shine. He slaps the duke on his shoulder and says:

  “Oh, this ain’t bully nor noth’n! Oh no, I reckon not! This here comes of trust’n to Providence, Bilgewater! It’s the best way, in the long run. There ain’t nothin’ better!”

  They pawed through the gold and let it jingle through their fingers and rain to the floor. Then the sifted it back up and put it all back into the bag.

  “Say,” says the king, “I got another idea. Let’s go upstairs and count this money and give it to the girls! Oh, this is the boss dodge, there ain’t no mistake ‘bout that. Let them fetch along their suspicions now if they want to – this’ll lay ‘em out.”

  The duke nodded weakly in agreement, but he was leaning no like if he warn’t leaning against something substantial, he’d go straight to the ground.

  When we got upstairs, everyone gathered at the table and the king counted it out and stacked it up – three hundred dollars in a pile – twenty elegant little piles. Everybody looked hungry at it and licked their chops. Then they raked it back into the bag again, and the king swells himself up for another speech. He tells them that he and his brother have decided to do what their dear diseased brother would’ve wanted them to do, and that is: give it back to the girls. Says he:

  “Here, Mary Jane, Susan, Joanner, take the money – take it all! It’s the gift of him that lays yonder, cold yet joyful, and motionless still!”

  Mary Jane and the others went for him, and then such another kissing and hugging I hope never to see again. And everybody crowded up with tears in their eyes, and most shook hands with the two frauds, saying:

  “Oh, you dear sweet souls! - how lovely! - how could you!”

  Well, then pretty soon everybody got to talking about the diseased again, and how good he was, and what a loss it was, and all that. Before long, a big iron-jawed man worked himself in there from outside, and stood a-listening and looking, and no
t saying anything; and nobody says anything to him either, because the king was talking and they was all busy listening. The king was in the middle of something he had started in on –

  “ – they bein’ particular friends o’ the diseased. That’s why they’re invited here this evening; but tomorrow we want all to come – everybody; for he respected everybody and loved everybody, and so it’s fittin’ that his funeral orgies should be made public.”

  And on and on he went, every little while talking about the upcoming funeral orgies, till the duke couldn’t stand it no more; so he gets a little scrap of paper and writes in a shaky hand “Obsequies, you old fool” and hands it to him. The king reads it and puts it in his pocket and says:

  “Poor William. He asks me to invite everyone to the funeral tomorrow, and asks me to make sure that everyone feels welcome. But he needn’t ‘a’ worried.”

  Then he continues where he’d been and goes to dropping in the funeral orgies every now and then, and when he done it the third time, he says:

  “I say orgies, not because it’s the common term, because it ain’t – obsequies bein’ the common term – but because orgies is the right term. Obsequies ain’t used in England no more now – it’s gone out. We say orgies now in England. Orgies is better, because it means the thing you’re after more exact. It’s a word that’s made up out’n the Greek orgo, outside, or open, or abroad; and the Hebrew jeesum, to plant, or cover up; hence in-ter. So you see, funeral orgies is an opener public funeral.”

  Well, the iron-jawed man he laughed right in his face. Everyone was shocked. One of the other men steps forward and says:

  “Why, doctor, hain’t you heard the news. This is Harvey Wilks.”

  The king he smiled eager and shoved out his flapper like there was no hard feelings, but the doctor knocks the hand away and says:

  “Keep your hands off me! You, an Englishman! It’s the worst imitation I ever heard. You Peter Wilks brother! You’re a fraud, that’s what you are.”

  Well, how they all took on. They crowded the doctor and tried to quiet him down, and tried to explain how Harvey had shown in dozens of ways that he was Harvey, and begged him not to hurt Harvey’s feelings, and all that. But it warn’t no use; he stormed right along and said any Englishman who couldn’t imitate the lingo no better than that was a fraud and a liar. The poor girls were hanging on to the king and crying, and all of a sudden the doctor up and turns on them. He says:

  “I was your father’s friend, and I’m your friend; and I warn you as a friend to turn your back on these scoundrels and have nothing to do with them, with his idiotic Greek and Hebrew, as he calls it. He is an imposter – and he came here with a lot of empty names which he pulled up somewhere; and you listen to him and take them for proofs. You ought to know better. Now Mary Jane Wilks, you know me as a friend. So you listen to me; turn this rascal out – I beg you to do it for your own sake. Will you?”

  Mary Jane straightened herself up, and my, but she was handsome! She says:

  “Here is my answer to you.” She took the bag of gold and put it in the king’s hands, and says “Take the six thousand dollars, and invest it for me and my sisters any way you want to, and don’t give us no receipt for it.”

  Then she put her arm around the king on one side, and Susan and Joanna did the same on the other. Everybody clapped their hands and stomped on the floor like a perfect storm, whilst the king held up his head and smiled proud. The doctor says:

  “All right. I wash my hands of the matter. But I warn you that a time’s coming when you’re going to feel sick whenever you think of this day.” And out he went.

  “All right, doctor,” says the king, kinda mocking him after he was gone; “we’ll try and get ‘em to send for you”; which made them all laugh, and they said it was a prime good hit.

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  The Ice melts

  Well, when they was all occupied with getting the house ready for guests and dinner, the king he asks Mary Jane how they was off for spare rooms, and she said she had one spare room, which would do for Uncle William, and she’d give her own room to Uncle Harvey, which was a little bigger; she would turn into the room with her sisters and sleep on a cot. Up in the garret there was a little cubby, with a pallet on it, and the king said the cubby would do for his valley – meaning me.

  So Mary Jane took us up, and showed them their rooms, which was plain but nice. She said she’d clear out her room if any of their things was in Uncle Harvey’s way, but he said they warn’t. There was an old trunk in one corner, and a guitar-box in another, and all sorts of little knickknacks and jimcracks around, like girls brisken up a room with. The duke’s room was pretty small, but plenty big enough, and so was my cubby for all that.

  That night there was a big supper, and I stood behind the king and the duke’s chairs and waited on them, and the family’s owned folks waited on the rest. The girls talked about how horrible the food was, the way women do to force out compliments; and everybody disagreed and said the food was tip-top. It was just the way people always talk at a supper when other people are around, you know.

  When it was all done, me and Joanna sat in the kitchen, whilst the others was helping the owned folks clear up the dinner things. She got to pumping me about England, and blest if he didn’t come close to getting the best of me sometimes. She says:

  “Do you ever see the king?”

  “Who? William Fourth? Why, I bet I have – he goes to our church.” I knowed he was dead years ago, but I never let on. She says:

  “What – regular?”

  “Yes, regular. His pew’s over opposite our’n – on the other side of the pulpit. I could hit him with a hymnal four times out of five if’n he sat still.”

  “I thought he lived in London.”

  “Well, he does. Where else would he live?”

  “But I thought Uncle Harvey said you lived in Sheffield?”

  I could see I was up a stump. I had to let on I was getting choked by a chicken bone, so as to get time to figure how to get back down again.

  “I mean he goes to church regular when he’s in Sheffield. That’s only in the summer-time; and that’s because his advisors have him leave London so they can sweep the city for Zum.”

  “Oh? How does that work?

  “Just like you’d suspect.”

  “Tell me.”

  “Well, they start on one side of the city and comb the place street by street and round up all the Zum. If you have Zum on your property with their heads already cut off, then it’s ok during the sweep to pitch ‘em on the street, and they haul ‘em off with the rest. The king leaves for this occasion because it unsettles him.”

  “My! They must wind up with piles and piles!”

  “I believe so.”

  “What do they do with them?”

  “Scotland,” I said without thinking, but that one seemed to go over.

  “Do they sweep Sheffield for Zum, too?”

  “Oh, they do this in all the big cities. Like clockwork. But they cain’t do it in Sheffield when they’re doing the same the London, or that would throw things off. The king would have nowheres else to go.”

  I felt like I was out of the woods again, and so I was comfortable and glad. Next, she says:

  “Do you go to church, too?”

  “Yes – regular.”

  “Where do you sit?”

  “Why – in our pew.”

  “Whose pew?”

  “Why, your Uncle Harvey’s.”

  “What would he be doing in a pew? I thought he’d be up in the pulpit.”

  Drat the king, I forgot he was a preacher now. I see I was up a stump again, so I played another chicken bone and got another think. Then I says:

  “Oh, it’s mainly for special visitors. Because it’s close to the front. Of course, he’s never in it, but it’s his pew. He just shares it. If you and your sisters came over, you’d all sit up there.”

  “Do they have those new kind of Zum over
there – the ones who can talk, and swim, and scheme, and calculate and such?”

  “Oh sure, they’s all over. When they sweep the big cities, they always take the clever ones away and have doctors look at ‘em to see if they can cipher anything out from ‘em. If you see a Zum trying to get away from the sweep, just that is enough to figure out he ain’t like the others, who just stomp around and don’t try to avoid nothing.”

  “Hmm. How is servants treated in England? Do they treat them better than we treat our slaves?”

  “No! A servant ain’t nobody there. They treat ‘em like dogs.”

  “Do they have to work on holidays?”

  “Why Joanna, they never git to see a holiday from one year to the next. They never git to go to the circus, nor theater, nor puppet shows, nor nowheres.”

  “Nor church?”

  “Nor church.”

  “But you always go to church – you said so a minute ago.”

  Well, there I was again. I forgot I was the old man’s servant, though I wasn’t sure if I was Adolphus still or not. The next minute I conjured up an explanation, but it didn’t do me any good, and when I got done I could see she wasn’t satisfied. She says:

  “Honest injun now, hain’t you been tellin’ me a lot of lies?”

  “No!” says I, tryin’ to seem fairly wounded.

  “Well, I’ll believe a little bit of it; but I don’t think I’ll believe the rest.”

  “What is it you won’t believe, Jo?” says Mary Jane, stepping into the kitchen with Susan behind her. “It ain’t right nor kind for you to talk to him so, and him a stranger, and so far from home. How would you like to be treated so?”

  Joanna didn’t budge at first, but Mary Jane kept after her. She says:

  “I don’t care what was said and whether it was something big or little, he’s in our house, and it wasn’t good for you to say it. If you was in his place it would make you feel ashamed; and so you oughtn’t to see a thing in our house that will make him ashamed.”