The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn and the Undead Page 8

  “Hah!” Jim says, and I was kind ‘a’ startled, as it warn’t meant to be a comical piece. I says:

  “What was that, Jim?”

  He wasn’t looking at me, just staring out on the river and shaking his head. “It jes sounds like white people doin’ something stupid and lookin’ ‘round for someone else to blame. Zum’ll do; ain’t like they’re goin’ to stand around an’ argue about it.”

  “Are you joshing me?” I asks.

  “Nope. Not at all. It’s what I think. You put me on that ol’ riverboat, I bet you look around and you’ll find an article on how I did it. Easier to tell a lie than fess up and and say you warn’t payin’ attention and hit a snag.”

  “It’s in the newspaper,” says I, waving the piece of paper in front of him.

  He pushed my hand away and made one of his faces. “An’ you think that makes it so? Just ‘cause it’s writ, it’s so?”

  “Making up a story like that don’t make no sense at all.”

  “Makes plenty,” he says. “’stead of being taken for a drunken fool who wrecks a boat he probably don’t even own, the captain’s a hero. Which one’d you ruther be?”

  “You think a newspaper would make up a bunch of lies just to save someone who cain’t pilot?”

  “Ain’t not what I said, Huck. I said they’d print the story ‘cause it’s a good story. That’s all.”

  I picked up the history book I had been reading and shook it at Jim the way a teacher would. “Here’s a whole book what’s been written down. It’s history, Jim. You think somebody made it all up cause it makes a good story.”

  “History’s good stories, Huck,” Jim says, and it seems to be he’s getting more bull-headed as he goes. “But I allow it’s jes’ opinion. Jes’ someone’s opinion. Deys drawings and fanciful stories ‘bout places an’ people I never met, and I know you thinks it’s all true, but that’s cause you read. I ain’t never learned, so I thinks differently. What I know I learn’t from watchin’ people; jus’ watchin’ people an’ plain common sense. So when I hears a thing, like someone see’d a cat flyin’ through the sky, I might believe it, might not. You readin’ people, you read it, next thing you know you start duckin’ your head for low-flyin’ coon cats. When I hears a thing, I judge if it’s likely true or not. Dat newspaper story sounds like somethin’ you’d read for bedtime to a little baby. Jes’ print it up and white people’ll gobble it down like honey, whether ‘tis true or not.”

  I had never heard Jim talk like this before, and it made me think that he was angry, though I couldn’t figure out over what. We walked about King Sollerman some more, and Jim asked me what color he was, and if he was white, and I said of course he was white; he was king. Jim just shrugged his shoulders and said he ‘spected so. Anyways, jus’ after that I got tired of reading, and Jim got tired of listening, so we just set and watched the river, and I set out a few lines, and gradual we both settled down.

  We judged that three miles more would fetch us to Cairo, at the bottom of Illinois where the Ohio River comes in, and that was what we was after. We would sell the raft, and get on a steamboat and go way up the Ohio amongst the free states, and then be out of trouble, more or less.

  Well, the second night a fog began to come in, and we made for a towhead to tie to, for it wouldn’t do to drift on the river in a fog. I paddled ahead in the canoe, holding a line, but there warn’t but little saplings to tie onto. Finally, I got back on the raft and passed the line around the biggest sapling I could find, right on the edge of the bank, but the current was too swift, and the raft tore it out by the roots and away it rode. I jumped back in the canoe to go after her and try something else, but I was in such a hurry that I hadn’t untied her. I gave a paddle and it jerked back, and by the time I got her undone, the raft was gone in the fog.

  I started out after the raft, and I stayed hot and heavy on the paddle, up close to the towheads. But the towheads warn’t more than sixty yards long, and the minute I flew by the foot of it, I shot out into a solid white fog and I hadn’t no more idea where I was going than a dead man.

  Thinks I, it won’t do to paddle; first thing you know, I’ll run into a bank or a towhead, or something worse; I got to set still and float. I whooped once or twice and listened. Away down somewheres I hears a small whoop, and up comes my spirit. I went tearing after it, listening to hear it again. Next time I hear it it was off to my right, and the next time, it seemed to be behind me. I wish’d Jim would think to beat a tin pan, and beat it all the time, but he never did.

  I throwed the paddle down, and heard the whooping again, still behind me, but in a different place. It kept going, and it kept changing its place, till by and by it was in front of me again, and I knowed the current had swung the canoe’s head down-stream.

  The whooping went on, and I figured I’d be all right if it was Jim and not some other raftsman on the river hollering. I couldn’t tell nothing ‘bout voices in the fog, for nothing don’t look natural nor sound natural in a fog.

  The whooping went on and in another second or two it was solid white and still again. I sat perfectly still then, too, listening to my heart thump, and I reckon I didn’t draw a breath while it thumped a hundred.

  I just gave up then, but I knowed what the matter was. The cutbank was an island, and Jim had gone down one side, and I went t’other. It warn’t no towhead that you could float by in five minutes. I was a regular island, and it might be five or six miles long before the end of it.

  I kept quiet, with my ears cocked, about fifteen minutes I reckon. I was floating along pretty quick, but you don’t ever think of that. No, you feel like you are laying dead on the water, and if a little glimpse of a branch stuck in the water slips by, you don’t think to yourself how fast you’re gwine, but you catch your breath and think, my! how that snag’s moving along. If you think it ain’t dismal and lonesome out there in a fog that way by yourself in the night, you try it once – and you’ll see. I imagined how it could get any worse, and of course, I imagined that fine. I thought of hands grabbing the sides of the boat, and some dead Zum draggin’ himself over the side and comin’ at me. I knew this were fanciful thinking, because the Zum didn’t take to water, as they fell apart, and the fish and birds was on them constant. But I wondered: what if they did? One pair of hands would come aboard and underneath there might be ten more pair, ready to pull me down under the water if the boat tipped.

  I knew there warn’t no such thing, but that didn’t mean it couldn’t be, only that it hadn’t happened yet. Then suddenly a branch came at me out of the fog, and I knew I was too close to the bank. I had to claw away from the bank pretty lively four or five times, but the good thing was, I stopped thinking about dead things waiting for me underneath the canoe.

  Finally, I seemed to be in the open water again by and by, but I couldn’t hear no more whoops. I reckoned Jim was somewhere in front of me, but I couldn’t figure out where, so it was all up to him. I was good and tired, so I laid down in the canoe and concentrated on listening for far-off whoops. I also listened for the skritching of fingernails on the bottom of the canoe, and that made me even tireder.

  I reckon I went to sleep, for when I opened my eyes again, the stars was shining big, the fog was all gone, and I was spinning down a big bend stern first. I didn’t know where I was; I thought for a moment that I might be dreaming; and when things finally came to me, it seemed like something that had happened a long time ago.

  It was a monstrous big river here, with the tallest and thickest kind of timber on both banks; just a solid wall as well as I could see by the stars. I looked downstream, and saw a black speck on the water. I took after it, but when I got to it it warn’t nothing but a couple of saw-logs made fast together, and no one on it. Then I seen another speck, and chased that; then another, and this time I was right. It was the raft.

  When I got to it, Jim was sitting there with his head down by his knees, asleep, and his right arm hanging over the steering oar. The other oar was
smashed off, and the raft was littered up with leaves and branches and chunks of dirt, so she’d had a rough time.

  I made fast, then rousted Jim.

  “Hello, Jim, here I been asleep. Why didn’t you stir me up?”

  “Goodness gracious, is dat you, Huck? You ain’t drownded – you back ag’in? It’s too good to be true, honey. You ain’t dead, are you? You’s back ag’in, de same ol’ Huck.”

  “What’s the matter with you, Jim? You been a-drinking?”

  “Drink? Has I been a-drinkin’? Has I had the chance?”

  “Well then, you’re talking awful wild.”

  “How am I talkin’ wild?”

  “How? Why, you talking about me coming back, and all that stuff, as if I’d been away.”

  “Huck – Huck Finn, you look me in de eye. Look me in de eye. Hain’t you been away?”

  “Gone away? Why, what you mean? I ain’t been gone anywheres. Where would I go to?

  “Well, answer me dis: didn’t you try to put a line around a towhead?”

  “No, I didn’t. What towhead?”

  “Look here, de line pulled loose and de raf’ went a-hummin’ down de river, an’ you got in de canoe and get lef’ behind in de fog.”

  “What fog?”

  “Why, de fog dat’s been around all night. En didn’t you whoop, en didn’t I whoop, and we got mixed up amongst de islands. Now, ain’t dat so, Huck – ain’t it so? You answer me dat.”

  “Well, this is too much for me, Jim. I ain’t seen no fog, nor no islands, nor no trouble, nor nothing. I been setting here talking till you nodded over and went to sleep, and I suppose you been dreaming.”

  Jim didn’t say nothing for about five minutes, but set there studying it. Then he says:

  “Well, I reckon I did dream it, Huck; but dang if it ain’t de powerfulest dream I ever had.” So Jim went to work and told me the whole ‘dream’ just as it happened, only he painted it up considerable. Then he said he would have to interpret what the dream was trying to tell him, as it had to be some kind of warning.

  “O well,” says I, “what do you suppose these things stand for in your dream?”

  I pointed out the leaves and rubbish on the raft and the smashed oar. The fog was all gone, and you could see first-rate now.

  Jim looked at the trash, and then looked at me, and then back at the trash again. It didn’t take him no time at all to figure out what I had done. He looked at me steady without smiling and says:

  “What do dey stan’ for? Well, I’s gwyne to tell you. When I stopped calling for you en went to sleep, my heart was broke cause I thought you was gone fer good. En then I woke up en you was back ag’in, all safe en sound, I could ‘a’ got down on my knees and kiss yo’ foot, I’m so thankful. En all you was thinkin’ was how you could make a fool a ol’ Jim wid a lie. Dat stuff on de raf’ is trash; en trash is what people is dat tricks dey frens en makes em ashamed.”

  Then he got up and walked to the wigwam and went in without another word. But he had said enough. It made me feel what I had done was mean, and not funny at all, and when I went in, I humbled myself and told him he was right, and a friend, and I was a fool who didn’t even deserve a friend like him. I warn’t sorry for what I told him then, but I was sorry for everything else. I didn’t do him no more tricks, and I wouldn’t ‘a’ done that one if I’d knowed it would make him feel so low.

  Chapter Fifteen

  The Gang’s Dark Oaths

  We slept most of the day, and started out the next night, a little ways behind a monstrous long raft that was as long going by as a procession. She had four long oars at each end, and we judged she carried as many as thirty men. She had five wigwams aboard, and an open camp-fire in the middle, with a tall flag-pole at either end. Each flagpole few several flags; there was an American flag on top, then some kind of state flag from I don’t know where, and on the bottom was a small hand-made white flag that had printed on it: FOR THE LIVING. It amounted to something, being a raftsman on such a craft as that.

  We went drifting down a big bend, and the night clouded up and got hot. The river was very wide, and the banks was walled solid with timber on both sides. We talked about Cairo, and wondered whether we’d even know it when we got there. I said we probably wouldn’t, cause it wasn’t such a big place, only about a dozen houses, but Jim said if two rivers joined there, that would be enough to show. But I said maybe we might think we was passing the foot of an island and only coming into the same old river again, and that disturbed Jim. I figured I would paddle ashore the first time we reckoned we were at the right place, and I’d tell them pap was behind me, coming along on a trading scow, and wanted to know how far it was to Cairo. Jim agreed it was a good idea, so all we had to do was smoke our seegars and wait.

  Jim said he’d look mighty sharp for it, because he’d be a free man the minute he seen it, but if we missed it we’d be a-drifting into slave country, and that would pretty much be the end of things. Every now and then Jim jumps up and says:

  “Dah she is?”

  But it warn’t; and I started feeling all trembly and nervous too, so much I couldn’t rest; for I felt to blame for Jim being here, even though I warn’t the one who drove him from his rightful owner. I tried to talk myself out of it, but my conscience wouldn’t let me believe it, no how nor no way. I didn’t tell nobody that Jim had run, and I could have – plenty of times.

  I got to feeling so mean and miserable I almost wished I was dead. I fidgeted up and down the raft and couldn’t keep still, and neither could Jim. Every time he jumped up and said “Dah’s Cairo!” it went through me like a shot, and I’d wager the Zum had no such feelings of regret, and conscience, and sadness, and it made me want to be dead even more.

  Jim talked out loud the whole time he was fidgeting. He was saying the first thing he would do when he got to be a free man was get a job and save up money and never spend a cent. Then when he had got enough, he would buy back his wife, who was owned on a farm close to where Miss Watson lived.

  He said she had been born in Africa and sent over on a big old boat just filled with people. They was all in chains and kept under deck and just fed enough to keep ‘em alive. But a bunch of ‘em died anyways, and they shouted to the men on deck to come and get them out, get them out, but they was told to just quiet down and tend to themselves. By the time they arrived, the dead had become Zum, and it was terror and madness down there, and everyone – dead and alive – was struggling to get free and rid themselves of their shackles. Groups of armed men went amongst them and led the live ones out up into the daylight, while others went and hacked at the Zum who was still in their chains. Then the living ones were led back and told to clean it up, and that was their first job in the new country. Jim said she had told him this story once and never spoke of it again; she also told him not never to repeat it.

  Anyways, Jim’s plan was to buy her up, and then they would both go to work, and when they had yet more money on hand, they would buy the two children, and if their master refused to sell them, Jim said he knew what he’d do, and get them one way or the other.

  It froze me to hear such talk. He had never spoken like that before in front of me. I could just see how he was changing the nearer he got to being a free man. There was an old saying, “Give a nigger an inch and he’ll take a mile,” and now it made a kind of sense. I guess being owned puts a yoke on a man that likely makes it too wearisome to look at the horizon. Take that yoke off and, soon enough, he’ll strike out and see what the horizon looks like for hisself. Being free also gives you a lot more chances to make a mess ‘a’ things – I knowed that. Being owned must be like being walled in on four sides; ain’t a thing you can do about it, and why bother even thrashing around?

  By and by, finally, we see a light, and Jim sings out:

  “We’s safe, Huck, we’s safe. Jump up and crack yo’ heels! Dat’s de good ole Cairo there, I jes knows it!”

  I says:

  “I’ll take the canoe and se
e, Jim. It mightn’t be, you know.”

  He hopped up and got the canoe ready, and gives me the paddle, and as I shove off, he says:

  “Pooty soon I’ll be a-shoutin’ fer joy, Huck, en its all on account o’ you. Huck done it. Huck done it. Jim won’t ever fergit you, Huck. You de bes’ frien’ Jim’s ever had, en you’s the only one Jim’s got now.”

  When I was further off, Jim says:

  “Deh you goes, Huck; de only white man dat ever kep’ his promise to ole Jim.”

  Right after that along comes a skiff with two men it, with guns, and they stopped and so did I. One of them says:

  “What’s that yonder?”

  “A piece of a raft,” I says.

  “Do you belong on it?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Any men on it?”

  “One, sir.”

  “Well, there’s five niggers run off last night up yonder above the head of the bend. Is your man white or black?”

  “He’s white, sir.”

  “I reckon we’ll go see for ourselves.”

  “I wish you would,” says I, “because it’s pap that’s there, and maybe you’d help him tow the raft ashore where the good light is. He’s sick – and so is mom - and the twins.”

  “Oh, the devil! We’re in a hurry, here, boy. But I suppose we got to. What’s the matter with your father?”

  “It’s the – a – the – well, it ain’t nothin’ much.”

  They stopped paddling toward the raft. One says:

  “Boy, what are you telling us? What is the matter with your pap? Answer up square now, and it’ll be better for you.”