Adventures of Huckleberry Finn and Zombie Jim (4 page)

He got to hanging around the widow's too much and so she told him at last that if he didn't quit using around there she would make trouble for him. Well,
wasn't
he mad? He said he would show who was Huck Finn's boss. So he watched out for me one day in the spring, and catched me, and took me up the river about three mile in a skiff, and crossed over to the Illinois shore where it was woody and there warn't no houses but an old log hut in a place where the timber was so thick you couldn't find it if you didn't know where it was.

This was fringe territory, y'see, all trees and shadows and full up of baggers that din’ belong to nobody. You could see ‘em wandering about, not a direction or clue ‘bout what they was s'posed to be doin', but not actually causing ruckus, either. Like discarded dogs, I figger. Just roamin’ the forest and not knowin’ why.

Pap called ‘em bunderlugs.

He'd say, “Fetch us water an’ mind the bunderlugs, boy."

He kept me with him all the time, and I never got a chance to run off. We lived in that old cabin, and he always locked the door and put the key under his head nights. He had a gun which he had stole, I reckon, and we fished and hunted, and that was what we lived on. Every little while he locked me in and went down to the store, three miles, to the ferry, and traded fish and game for whisky, and fetched it home and got drunk and had a good time, and licked me. The widow she found out where I was by and by, and she sent a man over to try to get hold of me; but pap drove him off with the gun, and it warn't long after that till I was used to being where I was, and liked it-all but the cowhide part.

Still, he could take his aggressions out on the baggers, or bunderlugs, when the occasion took him. He might be mad as spit, but here comes another walkin’ dead man in need of a good lickin'. And pap would give it to ‘im, too. Them unbranded baggers was anyone's property, and there ‘as no penalty for abusin’ ‘em. Not that pap woulda cared about penalties, nohow.

It was kind of lazy and jolly, laying off comfortable all day, smoking and fishing, and no books nor study. Two months or more run along, and my clothes got to be all rags and dirt, and I didn't see how I'd ever got to like it so well at the widow's, where you had to wash, and eat on a plate, and comb up, and go to bed and get up regular, and be forever bothering over a book, and have old Miss Watson pecking at you all the time. I didn't want to go back no more. I had stopped cussing, because the widow didn't like it; but now I took to it again because pap hadn't no objections. It was pretty good times up in the woods there, take it all around.

One time we had us a bad bunderlug, one of the kinds you wish never've been let out of the bag in the first place. Real dangerous and nasty, like a pack of whupped ‘coons all bundled up into one person. All they do is bite and scratch and claw, and there was even a story or two about men having their brains scooped right out of their heads.

Sounds like a story that Tom'd tell, but it wasn't.

It was Arnold the blacksmith what got himself into a scrape with one of them full-baggers. Mean and vicious and just appeared at the shop as if he come out of nowhere. Well, blacksmith was a big ol’ lobcock an’ didn't reach for his hammer fast enough. Before he even knowed what hit him, that bunderlug was all upon him, and opening his skull to get at the good parts.

I heard that story from the widow.

When pap got himself into the same pickle, he weren't one to take no chances. This bagger come up out of the river, like a monster wrapped up in seaweeds, an’ he didn't even have to bare his teeth ‘fore pap knowed he was one of the bad ones.

"Get th’ ax, boy,” he calls out.

He put two shots in the bagger's head, and then hauled ‘im up ashore to cut ‘im down to smaller pieces. Pap was superstitious like that. He said the bad ones had the powers of the devil, an’ it was smart thinkin’ to buck ‘em up into parts, so they cain't be causin’ more troubles.

I din’ argue with such thinkin'.

At times like that, pap was nearly bearable.

But by and by pap got too handy with his hick'ry, and I couldn't stand it. I was all over welts. He got to going away so much, too, and locking me in. Once he locked me in and was gone three days. It was dreadful lonesome, an’ maybe just a little bit scared, too. I judged he had got drowned, and I wasn't ever going to get out any more.
Yes,
I was right scared. I made up my mind I would fix up some way to leave there. I had tried to get out of that cabin many a time, but I couldn't find no way. There warn't a window to it big enough for a dog to get through. I couldn't get up the chimbly; it was too narrow. The door was thick, solid oak slabs. Pap was pretty careful not to leave a knife or anything in the cabin when he was away; I reckon I had hunted the place over as much as a hundred times; well, I was most all the time at it, because it was about the only way to put in the time. But this time I found something at last; I found an old rusty wood-saw without any handle; it was laid in between a rafter and the clapboards of the roof. I greased it up and went to work. There was an old horse-blanket nailed against the logs at the far end of the cabin behind the table, to keep the wind from blowing through the chinks and putting the candle out. I got under the table and raised the blanket, and went to work to saw a section of the big bottom log out-big enough to let me through. Well, it was a good long job, but I was getting towards the end of it when I heard pap's gun in the woods. Shootin’ baggers, again. I got rid of the signs of my work, and dropped the blanket and hid my saw, and pretty soon pap come in.

Pap warn't in a good humor-so he was his natural self. He said he was down town, and everything was going wrong. His lawyer said he reckoned he would win his lawsuit and get the money if they ever got started on the trial; but then there was ways to put it off a long time, and Judge Thatcher knowed how to do it. And he said people allowed there'd be another trial to get me away from him and give me to the widow for my guardian, and they guessed it would win this time. This shook me up considerable, because I didn't want to go back to the widow's any more and be so cramped up and sivilized, as they called it. Then the old man got to cussing, and cussed everything and everybody he could think of, and then cussed them all over again to make sure he hadn't skipped any, and after that he polished off with a kind of a general cuss all round, including a considerable parcel of people which he didn't know the names of, and so called them what's-his-name when he got to them, and went right along with his cussing.

He said he would like to see the widow get me. He said he would watch out, and if they tried to come any such game on him he knowed of a place six or seven mile off to stow me in, where they might hunt till they dropped and they couldn't find me. That made me pretty uneasy again, but only for a minute; I reckoned I wouldn't stay on hand till he got that chance.

The old man made me go to the skiff and fetch the things he had got. There was a fifty-pound sack of corn meal, and a side of bacon, ammunition, and a four-gallon jug of whisky, and an old book and two newspapers for wadding, besides some tow. I toted up a load, and went back and set down on the bow of the skiff to rest. I thought it all over, and I reckoned I would walk off with the gun and some lines, and take to the woods when I run away. I guessed I wouldn't stay in one place, but just tramp right across the country, mostly night times, and hunt and fish to keep alive, and so get so far away that the old man nor the widow couldn't ever find me any more. I judged I would saw out and leave that night if pap got drunk enough, and I reckoned he would. I got so full of it I didn't notice how long I was staying till the old man hollered and asked me whether I was asleep or drownded.

He was takin’ a bit ill. Coughing like a dyin’ dog and he had an infection up in his nose. Called it the bad humor. He said it smelled awful bad inside his own head and I believed him because I could smell it strong on my own, not anywhere close to his head. It was a strong, foul stench, like sulphur and phossyferous, and running out of him like yellowed water.

Bein’ that way just made him more disagreeable than usual.

I got the things all up to the cabin, and then it was about dark. While I was cooking supper the old man took a swig or two and got sort of warmed up, and went to ripping again. He had been drunk over in town, and laid in the gutter all night, and he was a sight to look at. A body would a thought he was bunderlug, for sure-he was all mud and filth and flies and such. Whenever his liquor begun to work he most always went for the govment, this time he says:

"Call this a govment! why, just look at it and see what it's like. Here's the law a-standing ready to take a man's son away from him-a man's own son, which he has had all the trouble and all the anxiety and all the expense of raising. Yes, just as that man has got that son raised at last, and ready to go to work and begin to do suthin’ for
him
and give him a rest, the law up and goes for him. And they call
that
govment! I got no rights at all. A damn half-bagger got more rights'n I do, that's the truth of it. That ain't all, nuther. The law backs that old Judge Thatcher up and helps him to keep me out o’ my property. Here's what the law does: The law takes a man worth six thousand dollars and up'ards, and jams him into an old trap of a cabin like this, and lets him go round in clothes that ain't fitten for a hog. They call that govment! A man can't get his rights in a govment like this. Sometimes I've a mighty notion to just leave the country for good and all. Yes, and I
told
‘em so; I told old Thatcher so to his face. Lots of ‘em heard me, and can tell what I said. Says I, for two cents I'd leave the blamed country and never come a-near it agin. Them's the very words. I says look at my hat-if you call it a hat-but the lid raises up and the rest of it goes down till it's below my chin, and then it ain't rightly a hat at all, but more like my head was shoved up through a jint o’ stove-pipe. Look at it, says I-such a hat for me to wear-one of the wealthiest men in this town if I could git my rights.

"Wonderful govment, boy. Van Buren took his oppatunity, din’ he, now? Free the negros and make the baggers do all the wuk. That's a fine idea, id'nit? Let the dead folks manage the flowers an’ cook the beef, huh? Is that how you run a country? You run a country way a bagger has more rights than a white man? Who says I cain't go a-poundin’ on a bagger? Whether he's half-bag or full-bag don’ mean a lick to me. Turn the negro loose so he can own what I cain't?

"Oh, yes, this is a wonderful govment, wonderful. Why, looky here. There was a negro there from Ohio-a mulatter, most as white as a white man. He had the whitest shirt on you ever see, too, and the shiniest hat; and there ain't a man in that town that's got as fine clothes as what he had; and he had a gold watch and chain, and a silver-headed cane-the awfulest old gray-headed nabob in the State. And what do you think? They said he was a p'fessor in a college, and could talk all kinds of languages, and knowed everything. And that ain't the wust. They said he could
vote
when he was at home. Well, that let me out. Thinks I, what is the country a-coming to? It was ‘lection day, and I was just about to go and vote myself if I warn't too drunk to get there; but when they told me there was a State in this country where they'd let that negro vote, I drawed out. I says I'll never vote agin. Them's the very words I said; they all heard me; and the country may rot for all me-I'll never vote agin as long as I live. And to see the cool way of that negro-why, he wouldn't a give me the road if I hadn't shoved him out o’ the way. I says to the people, why ain't this negro put up at auction and sold anymores?-that's what I want to know. And what do you reckon they said? Why, they said they don't sell ‘em no more, on account of the fissythis. There, now-that's a specimen. Free negros everywhere-"

Pap was agoing on so he never noticed where his old limber legs was taking him to, so he went head over heels over the tub of salt pork and barked both shins, and the rest of his speech was all the hottest kind of language-mostly hove at the negro and the bagger and the govment, though he give the tub some, too, all along, here and there. He hopped around the cabin considerable, first on one leg and then on the other, holding first one shin and then the other one, and at last he let out with his left foot all of a sudden and fetched the tub a rattling kick. But it warn't good judgment, because that was the boot that had a couple of his toes leaking out of the front end of it; so now he raised a howl that fairly made a body's hair raise, and down he went in the dirt, and rolled there, and held his toes; and the cussing he done then laid over anything he had ever done previous. He said so his own self afterwards. He had heard old Sowberry Hagan in his best days, and he said it laid over him, too; but I reckon that was sort of piling it on, maybe.

After supper pap took the jug, and said he had enough whisky there for two drunks and one delirium tremens. That was always his word. I judged he would be blind drunk in about an hour, and then I would steal the key, or saw myself out, one or t'other. He drank and drank, and tumbled down on his blankets by and by; but luck didn't run my way. He didn't go sound asleep, but was uneasy. He groaned and moaned and thrashed around this way and that for a long time. At last I got so sleepy I couldn't keep my eyes open all I could do, and so before I knowed what I was about I was sound asleep, and the candle burning.