“It a ghos’ come to harnt me, Huck.”
So I went over and shook the snow off the branches, and underneath it’s just a plain fir sapling. Jim says:
“Huck, she done use magic an’ turn herself into a tree.”
“It was a tree all the time, Jim.”
I snapped off a branch and brung it over to him and when he finally got up the bravery to touch it he says full of amazement:
“Ain’t dat rare, Huck.… It feel jest like de real trees.”
I seen another way is needed, so I say:
“Jim, did you ever wonder why ghosts is white?”
“I reckon cos dey ain’t got no blood in ’em, Huck.”
“Well that’s true, but why does having no blood leave them white?”
“Das de color of de skin das lef’ behin’.”
“Are you trying to tell me your old woman had white skin?”
That stumped him good for a moment, then he says:
“Well, Huck, it muster bin de widder’s ghos’ come back to harnt you, steader my ol’ woman come to harnt me.”
I give up on it after that. He just warn’t prepared to reason straight. We went on back to the cabin before the cold got into our bones and I figured now was as good a time as any to tell Jim about my plan, so I done it, starting with what Judge Thatcher told me. When I finished Jim slapped his knee, real pleased about it.
“Das a dandy plan, Huck. Is we truly goin’ to do it?”
“I made up my mind on it, Jim. We need adventure. This old cabin is stagnatering us.”
“Dis Californy, how far away is she perzacly?”
“Why, it’s a fair step I reckon. That’s why the plan has to work. We’re going to need that cash to get us there.”
“Huck, if’n it don’ work I’se goin’ to know for sure dere ain’t no justice in de worl’.”
So we waited a few days for a break in the weather then moved back to St. Petersburg. I got a room at the Wharf Hotel and Jim went off to stay with a friend. Then I went to see the judge and told him I’m turning over a new leaf and wanted to build a house on the land the widow left me and go back to school and generally get myself ready to be a certified grade-A citizen. He was mighty pleased and says I could move in with him until the house gets built, but I say I want to stay at the hotel so’s not to be no trouble. He was agreeable and told me about a man in town that drawed up plans for houses and says I should go see him, and I promised I would, which was about the only truthful thing I told that day.
The town was in a flurry about gold and there was dozens already leaving to go west without even waiting for spring, steaming down to St. Louis then up the Missouri to St. Joe, which is the jumping-off place for the California trail. It near tore my heart out watching them go and me having to stay behind. But I kept on telling myself about the plan and how it was working smooth so far. The house planner whipped up a drawing and I took it along to a house builder and got told exactly what I wanted to hear, namely that he generally never worked over winter on account of the cold and never had but a few feet of lumber in his yard out back, so he needs payment in advance to get the timber before he can start, plus extra for working in the cold.
I told the judge about it and he says he’ll fix it up with the bank. Then I went to see Jim and find out how his end of things was coming alone. The week before I give him eighty dollars from my back-allowance to get mules for us, and he done well with the help of his nigger friend who’s a fair judge of horseflesh, so there’s two mules in a rundown stable on the edge of town being looked after by a friend of the friend. Niggers is always mighty obliging to one another. So we was all set.
I sweated ice worrying about snags I never thought of till now. Then the judge give me a slip of paper signed by himself and told me to go get the money. First I went back to the hotel and changed the $1,000 writ on the slip into $2,000 then legged it for the bank. I made it in double quick time and handed over the slip. The teller says:
“Would you like the bank to arrange the transfer of funds?”
“No thank you. I’ll do it myself.”
He went away and come back with a piece of paper and give it to me.
“What’s this?” says I.
“That’s a bank note for the amount. You give it to the party concerned and he can either cash it or bank it.”
“But … he wants to be paid directly in cash. He told me so.”
“I’m sorry, Mr. Finn, but the judge’s slip is not made out for cash.”
That shook me down to my boots, but I soldiered on.
“He must of made a mistake then. I told him it had to be cash.”
“All I can do is give you a bank cash slip. Take it to the judge and have him make it out again.”
I grabbed it and run back to the hotel and used up the next half hour doing the judge’s scrawly signature on a scrap of paper till I got it right, then I filled in the new slip, still $2,000, and signed his name on the bottom. When I got back to the bank my legs was like jelly. I wobbled up to the teller and give him the forgery. He looks at it casual-like and went off. It seemed like he took forever, then he come back with a wad of money and hands it over. He says:
“Would you like someone to go with you for safety?”
“I can manage fine, thank you.”
“Well, keep it under your coat.”
“I will.”
And I staggered out. Back at the hotel I got out a brand-new money belt I had hid in the back of a drawer and put the bills into it, then strapped it around myself under my shirt and walked out past the desk clerk casual and cool. That was the last the Wharf Hotel ever seen of me. I got Jim and we lit out for the stable, but when we got there the wife of the nigger that’s looking after the mules says they got loose and wandered off and her husband and eldest boy was out right now rounding them up, so we had to wait around doing nothing and fretting something awful at being stopped before we even got started. Time marched along and still they never showed. The nigger’s wife fixed us some food but we warn’t hungry, and finally I can’t stand it no more. There’s a letter in my pocket for the judge explaining things, and it was part of the plan to have Jim’s friend deliver it one night a couple of days after we left, but now I’m so restless I figure I may as well slip it under the judge’s door beforehand seeing as there’s nothing in it to tell which way we went.
“Jim,” says I, “I’m going back into town on unfinished business. I won’t be no more than an hour at most.”
He says as how he’ll stay on and wait for the mules and I set off back to town, pushing along through the snow and wind. It’s evening by now and there warn’t a soul around so I had no trouble getting to the judge’s house without no one seeing me, and when I come up the walk to the front door I pulled out the letter. I done that letter a fair few times to get her how I wanted, and this is how she read:
Dear Judge, This is to let you know I am sorry for what I done. I do not think it is a crime. But some people would. Please do not come after me. I am not telling where anyway. I had to do it or bust.
yours truly,
Huck Finn
I got to say it, book learning and schooling come in mighty handy sometimes. So I’m all set to put the letter under the door when I seen something in the snow on the front step. It’s a footprint, but not just any old kind. There’s a cross on the heel made by nails to keep off spells and devils. There’s only the one print, crisp and clear and fresh, and it made me break out in a flood of sweat. I never knowed but one person ever had such a cross on his hoof and that was my own Pap which Jim swore blind he seen dead on that house floating down the river all that time ago. But there it is, large as life, and I come near to an attack of the fan-tods just looking at it.
Then I seen something else. The door warn’t shut like you’d expect on a winter’s day but open maybe six inches, and the hairs on my neck got stiff as porcupine quills. I could of run off right there and then but I never done it, which they call a m
issed opportunity. No, I pushed the door open all the way and stepped inside where it’s dark and cold with no lamps lit, and the wind is blowing snow onto the hall carpet. I closed the door and listened awhile, but there warn’t no voices nor knives and plates banging in the kitchen, not a cat’s me-yow, just a grandfather clock tick-tocking slow and solemn and the wind blowing outside, low and steady. So I went in further, going from room to room, but there’s no one around and every step took give me the shivers that little bit more. When I got to the back of the house and I’m stood outside the judge’s office I had the jitters so bad my knees can’t hardly bend.
Then I’m through the door and in the office and the curtains was drawed so it’s dark as a whale belly. I blundered around the furniture some, then struck a lucifer and lit a lamp near to hand. And there’s the office all of a shambles around me, the chairs and desk turned over and away in corners they warn’t in before and papers and legal files just scattered all over, with a big splash of red ink across the wall with drips running down, only dried, so I reckon it all happened awhile before I come. And there’s the judge with just his legs showing behind the roll-top desk which is smashed open, on his back so I knowed even before I seen the rest of him he’s dead as a wedge. I took a closer look and there’s a pool of blood under his head from where his neck was sawed open. Whoever done it was the kind to make certain because the knife is sticking out of his chest too. The judge’s eyes must of stayed open all through being murdered; they’re staring right at me where I froze to the floor.
I seen dead men before but nothing like this, done deliberate and for gain, which is why the desk and drawers is smashed open so: robbery and murder. Maybe the judge seen the robber at work and it was someone he reckernized and he had to be killed so he won’t say the name. Pap’s been dead all this time but I knowed it was him, don’t ask me how. It come to me like a bolt from the blue, the sure and certain knowledge as they say. Pap was alive and come for revenge on the judge, who never gave him the money he figured was his on account of being my Pap, which they call the motive. It was clear and plain, and I recollected the widow’s house burning down and how no one could figure how it happened, and how before that Pap was made to feel small by the widow with lectures about this and that, mostly to do with him being a drunk and general good-for-nothing, which wounded Pap’s pride some I can tell you, because even drunks as low as Pap can’t take no more camel straw on their back, and from a woman too.
I run this kind of stuff through my head over and over, trying to get it straight, but it was forever coming unstuck, nothing I could give the proof of except the hoofprint outside. Right about then the front door slammed and footsteps come along the hall, two sets, and Becky Thatcher’s voice says all peevish:
“Why are the lamps not lit?”
The nigger maid says:
“We only jest come in, Miz Becky.”
“Well get them lit straightaway. A body could have an injury in all this dark. Papa must have fallen asleep at his desk.”
The door come open and there I was, and there they was, and there’s the judge, the only one that took it all calm and composed. The nigger maid screamed and run back out into the street hollering loud enough to get heard in St. Louis and Becky had a fit of the vapors and sunk graceful to the floor without giving herself a knock on the head or nothing hurtful. I figured the best thing to do is fan her face like I seen ladies do on a hot day, so I done it with the hem of her dress which is located convenient and was still doing it when there come a tramping of feet through the front door and the nigger maid’s back with half the town and still hollering. She points and says:
“Lookit! Now he done lif’ her dress! Murder an’ molesterin’ on de same day! Lawd, lawd, how dere be so much sin insider one chile?”
“You best be explaining yourself, Finn,” says Jo Harper’s old man, looking mighty grim, and someone else grabbed me by the neck and hauled me up and give me a shake that set the teeth rattling in my head.
“Well, boy? Speak up! What’re you doing here?”
It sounded mighty lame when I told them I only come to deliver a letter.
3
A Prisoner’s Life—Religion on a Plate-Conversations with Tom Sawyer—Desperate Plans—Failure
Things moved along swift after that. They drug me down to the jailhouse on the edge of town and Sheriff Bottoms put me in a cell and there was more people crammed in there than peach preserves in a mason jar, all talking loud and telling me to come clean and give out the whole truth, which would be better for me in the long run. They already had it but it never fit what they wanted to hear, namely Huck Finn went and slit the judge’s throat and lifted his daughter’s skirts, which is something I never would of felt like doing even drunk. There was such a babbling of noise Sheriff Bottoms ordered everybody out so he can talk with me peaceful and find out what truly happened. Well, they hated to go, thinking maybe they’d miss out on a confession full of gore, but he made them and they grumbled some and went, but I could still hear them outside along with the rest of St. Petersburg except them that’s crippled or deaf.
The sheriff set himself down and rubbed his jaw awhile, then says:
“Now then, Huckleberry, they say you went and murdered the judge. Is it so?”
And I told it all over again, about the letter and the footprint with the cross on the heel and the open door and all of it, and he hummed into his fist looking serious and stern and says:
“This letter, have you got it with you still?”
“No, Sheriff, and I disremember what I done with it. I had it in my hand up until I seen Pap’s footprint. I reckon I must of dropped it on the front porch without knowing.”
“What’s in the contents of it?”
“It was private. I can’t say.”
“Son, this could be important. You’ve got to tell me.”
“I’ll go this far. It was apologizing for something.”
“I’ve got to know more, Huck.”
“I can’t do it.”
You proberly guessed it already. It’s the money belt still tied around my belly. If it got around I forged the judge’s signature on top of the murder I never would of stood a chance. If they found the letter it would of explanated me being at the judge’s house, but like I say, shoved me in deeper. And I never wanted to get Jim mixed in with it neither. If a nigger gets snagged up in something where folks is peeved, he’ll get blamed faster than a fox with chicken feathers in his mouth. So I stayed shut about the letter, thinking I never should of let on about it but it’s too late now. Sheriff Bottoms went on at me about it some more but I never budged, so then he says:
“About this footprint story. You know your Pap’s dead, Huck. The whole town knows. It’s the flimsiest kind of make-believe.”
“No it ain’t, I swear. Pap’s alive, I just know it.”
“Very well, son. I see you’re a reluctant witness despite your best interests. You’re hiding something I reckon. My advice to you is think again on your story before tomorrow.”
He left me alone and went into the other room that was part of the jailhouse, a little office with a desk and a stove that had a flue which come through the wall between to keep the cell warmed before going up through the roof. So I was snug enough with the blankets he give me too, in spite of the itty-bitty window having no pane in it. I give that window a careful looking over, but it’s too small to squeeze through and barred anyway. Sheriff Bottoms’s wife come along after the crowd outside got cold and went home, and she brung food for us both. The sheriff can’t go home at all on account of having to guard me and keep an escape from happening. She come through into the cell with a heaped plate and set it down along with a Bible, for spiritual comfort, she says. I got more comfort from the plate. She watched me eat, shaking her head and tut-tutting away like the Widow Douglas done when she caught me at wrongdoing. Then she went away again. It was late by now so I bundled myself up in the blankets and got set to try and sleep when there com
e a tapping at the window bars and a soft me-yow and I knowed it was Tom Sawyer giving our old sign from the pirate gang days. I clumb up on a stool and there he is outside the window along with Jim.
“Well,” Tom says, “I never thought someone with your criminal background would be fool enough to get nabbed red-handed. I’m disappointed in you, Huck. Why didn’t you do the dastardly deed with a smidgen more carefulness, the way I would of?”
So you see he never changed all that much after all, still with all his superior smart-lip ways like I remembered. It was like old times.
“I never done it, Tom. I’m innocent as a lamb.”
“That’s the right spirit,” he says. “Deny everything and let your crime be a matter betwixt yourself and your conscience. It’s much more noble that way instead of blatting it to all the world. Why, if you live to be a hundred you’ll never forget the bloodiness of it and the suffering will make you wise as Solomon.”
“But I never done it.”
“Huck, your closest bosom companions alone can share the burden of guilt with you. Me and Jim are safe to be given all the details, even them that wrench your heart to tell of.”
“There ain’t nothing to wrench my heart nor any other part. I’m a victim of circuses got catched in place of the true murderer, honest.”
“Do you swear on your soul it’s the absolute truth?”
“Both feet, Tom. I’ll walk on stumps if it ain’t.”
“Well all right,” he says. “I’ll believe it, but it’s a mighty poor showing. Being the innocent accused don’t have half the shine of being a genuine murderer. I wouldn’t brag on it if I was you.”
Then Jim gets his chance to slip a word in edgeways and he told how the news run through town like floodwater and when he heard the trouble I’m in he legged it to Tom Sawyer’s place to let him in on it, and they both come on the trot to see if they can render their assistance, as Tom puts it. How can a body not be gratified at something like that? It made me feel right humble and I out and say so, and Jim says: