When I got there it was all still
and Sunday-like, and hot and sunshiny; the hands was
gone to the fields; and there was them kind of faint
dronings of bugs and flies in the air that makes it
seem so lonesome and like everybody’s dead and
gone; and if a breeze fans along and quivers the leaves
it makes you feel mournful, because you feel like it’s
spirits whispering spirits that’s
been dead ever so many years and you always
think they’re talking about you. As
a general thing it makes a body wish he was dead,
too, and done with it all.
Phelps’ was one of these little
one-horse cotton plantations, and they all look alike.
A rail fence round a two-acre yard; a stile made out
of logs sawed off and up-ended in steps, like barrels
of a different length, to climb over the fence with,
and for the women to stand on when they are going
to jump on to a horse; some sickly grass-patches in
the big yard, but mostly it was bare and smooth, like
an old hat with the nap rubbed off; big double log-house
for the white folks hewed logs, with the
chinks stopped up with mud or mortar, and these mud-stripes
been whitewashed some time or another; round-log kitchen,
with a big broad, open but roofed passage joining
it to the house; log smoke-house back of the kitchen;
three little log nigger-cabins in a row t’other
side the smoke-house; one little hut all by itself
away down against the back fence, and some outbuildings
down a piece the other side; ash-hopper and big kettle
to bile soap in by the little hut; bench by the kitchen
door, with bucket of water and a gourd; hound asleep
there in the sun; more hounds asleep round about;
about three shade trees away off in a corner; some
currant bushes and gooseberry bushes in one place by
the fence; outside of the fence a garden and a watermelon
patch; then the cotton fields begins, and after the
fields the woods.
I went around and clumb over the back
stile by the ash-hopper, and started for the kitchen.
When I got a little ways I heard the dim hum of a
spinning-wheel wailing along up and sinking along down
again; and then I knowed for certain I wished I was
dead for that is the lonesomest sound
in the whole world.
I went right along, not fixing up
any particular plan, but just trusting to Providence
to put the right words in my mouth when the time come;
for I’d noticed that Providence always did put
the right words in my mouth if I left it alone.
When I got half-way, first one hound
and then another got up and went for me, and of course
I stopped and faced them, and kept still. And
such another powwow as they made! In a quarter
of a minute I was a kind of a hub of a wheel, as you
may say spokes made out of dogs circle
of fifteen of them packed together around me, with
their necks and noses stretched up towards me, a-barking
and howling; and more a-coming; you could see them
sailing over fences and around corners from everywheres.
A nigger woman come tearing out of
the kitchen with a rolling-pin in her hand, singing
out, “Begone you Tige! you Spot! begone
sah!” and she fetched first one and then
another of them a clip and sent them howling, and
then the rest followed; and the next second half of
them come back, wagging their tails around me, and
making friends with me. There ain’t no
harm in a hound, nohow.
And behind the woman comes a little
nigger girl and two little nigger boys without anything
on but tow-linen shirts, and they hung on to their
mother’s gown, and peeped out from behind her
at me, bashful, the way they always do. And
here comes the white woman running from the house,
about forty-five or fifty year old, bareheaded, and
her spinning-stick in her hand; and behind her comes
her little white children, acting the same way the
little niggers was doing. She was smiling all
over so she could hardly stand and says:
“It’s you, at last! Ain’t
it?”
I out with a “Yes’m” before I thought.
She grabbed me and hugged me tight;
and then gripped me by both hands and shook and shook;
and the tears come in her eyes, and run down over;
and she couldn’t seem to hug and shake enough,
and kept saying, “You don’t look as much
like your mother as I reckoned you would; but law sakes,
I don’t care for that, I’m so glad to
see you! Dear, dear, it does seem like I could
eat you up! Children, it’s your cousin
Tom! tell him howdy.”
But they ducked their heads, and put
their fingers in their mouths, and hid behind her.
So she run on:
“Lize, hurry up and get him
a hot breakfast right away or did you get
your breakfast on the boat?”
I said I had got it on the boat.
So then she started for the house, leading me by
the hand, and the children tagging after. When
we got there she set me down in a split-bottomed chair,
and set herself down on a little low stool in front
of me, holding both of my hands, and says:
“Now I can have a good
look at you; and, laws-a-me, I’ve been hungry
for it a many and a many a time, all these long years,
and it’s come at last! We been expecting
you a couple of days and more. What kep’
you? boat get aground?”
“Yes’m she ”
“Don’t say yes’m say
Aunt Sally. Where’d she get aground?”
I didn’t rightly know what to
say, because I didn’t know whether the boat
would be coming up the river or down. But I go
a good deal on instinct; and my instinct said she
would be coming up from down towards Orleans.
That didn’t help me much, though; for I didn’t
know the names of bars down that way. I see
I’d got to invent a bar, or forget the name of
the one we got aground on or Now
I struck an idea, and fetched it out:
“It warn’t the grounding that
didn’t keep us back but a little. We blowed
out a cylinder-head.”
“Good gracious! anybody hurt?”
“No’m. Killed a nigger.”
“Well, it’s lucky; because
sometimes people do get hurt. Two years ago
last Christmas your uncle Silas was coming up from
Newrleans on the old Lally Rook, and she blowed out
a cylinder-head and crippled a man. And I think
he died afterwards. He was a Baptist. Your
uncle Silas knowed a family in Baton Rouge that knowed
his people very well. Yes, I remember now, he
did die. Mortification set in, and they
had to amputate him. But it didn’t save
him. Yes, it was mortification that
was it. He turned blue all over, and died in
the hope of a glorious resurrection. They say
he was a sight to look at. Your uncle’s
been up to the town every day to fetch you. And
he’s gone again, not more’n an hour ago;
he’ll be back any minute now. You must a
met him on the road, didn’t you? oldish
man, with a ”
“No, I didn’t see nobody,
Aunt Sally. The boat landed just at daylight,
and I left my baggage on the wharf-boat and went looking
around the town and out a piece in the country, to
put in the time and not get here too soon; and so
I come down the back way.”
“Who’d you give the baggage to?”
“Nobody.”
“Why, child, it ’ll be stole!”
“Not where I hid it I reckon it won’t,”
I says.
“How’d you get your breakfast so early
on the boat?”
It was kinder thin ice, but I says:
“The captain see me standing
around, and told me I better have something to eat
before I went ashore; so he took me in the texas to
the officers’ lunch, and give me all I wanted.”
I was getting so uneasy I couldn’t
listen good. I had my mind on the children all
the time; I wanted to get them out to one side and
pump them a little, and find out who I was.
But I couldn’t get no show, Mrs. Phelps kept
it up and run on so. Pretty soon she made the
cold chills streak all down my back, because she says:
“But here we’re a-running
on this way, and you hain’t told me a word about
Sis, nor any of them. Now I’ll rest my
works a little, and you start up yourn; just tell
me everything tell me all about ’m
all every one of ’m; and how they are, and what
they’re doing, and what they told you to tell
me; and every last thing you can think of.”
Well, I see I was up a stump and
up it good. Providence had stood by me this
fur all right, but I was hard and tight aground now.
I see it warn’t a bit of use to try to go ahead I’d
got to throw up my hand. So I says to myself,
here’s another place where I got to resk the
truth. I opened my mouth to begin; but she grabbed
me and hustled me in behind the bed, and says:
“Here he comes! Stick
your head down lower there, that’ll
do; you can’t be seen now. Don’t
you let on you’re here. I’ll play
a joke on him. Children, don’t you say
a word.”
I see I was in a fix now. But
it warn’t no use to worry; there warn’t
nothing to do but just hold still, and try and be ready
to stand from under when the lightning struck.
I had just one little glimpse of the
old gentleman when he come in; then the bed hid him.
Mrs. Phelps she jumps for him, and says:
“Has he come?”
“No,” says her husband.
“Good-Ness gracious!”
she says, “what in the warld can have become
of him?”
“I can’t imagine,”
says the old gentleman; “and I must say it makes
me dreadful uneasy.”
“Uneasy!” she says; “I’m
ready to go distracted! He must a come;
and you’ve missed him along the road.
I know it’s so something tells
me so.”
“Why, Sally, I couldn’t
miss him along the road you know that.”
“But oh, dear, dear, what will
Sis say! He must a come! You must a missed
him. He ”
“Oh, don’t distress me
any more’n I’m already distressed.
I don’t know what in the world to make of it.
I’m at my wit’s end, and I don’t
mind acknowledging ’t I’m right down scared.
But there’s no hope that he’s come; for
he couldn’t come and me miss him.
Sally, it’s terrible just terrible something’s
happened to the boat, sure!”
“Why, Silas! Look yonder! up
the road! ain’t that somebody coming?”
He sprung to the window at the head
of the bed, and that give Mrs. Phelps the chance she
wanted. She stooped down quick at the foot of
the bed and give me a pull, and out I come; and when
he turned back from the window there she stood, a-beaming
and a-smiling like a house afire, and I standing pretty
meek and sweaty alongside. The old gentleman
stared, and says:
“Why, who’s that?”
“Who do you reckon ’t is?”
“I hain’t no idea. Who is it?”
“It’s Tom Sawyer!”
By jings, I most slumped through the
floor! But there warn’t no time to swap
knives; the old man grabbed me by the hand and shook,
and kept on shaking; and all the time how the woman
did dance around and laugh and cry; and then how they
both did fire off questions about Sid, and Mary, and
the rest of the tribe.
But if they was joyful, it warn’t
nothing to what I was; for it was like being born
again, I was so glad to find out who I was. Well,
they froze to me for two hours; and at last, when
my chin was so tired it couldn’t hardly go any
more, I had told them more about my family I
mean the Sawyer family than ever happened
to any six Sawyer families. And I explained
all about how we blowed out a cylinder-head at the
mouth of White River, and it took us three days to
fix it. Which was all right, and worked first-rate;
because they didn’t know but what it would
take three days to fix it. If I’d a called
it a bolthead it would a done just as well.
Now I was feeling pretty comfortable
all down one side, and pretty uncomfortable all up
the other. Being Tom Sawyer was easy and comfortable,
and it stayed easy and comfortable till by and by I
hear a steamboat coughing along down the river.
Then I says to myself, s’pose Tom Sawyer comes
down on that boat? And s’pose he steps
in here any minute, and sings out my name before I
can throw him a wink to keep quiet?
Well, I couldn’t have it
that way; it wouldn’t do at all. I must
go up the road and waylay him. So I told the
folks I reckoned I would go up to the town and fetch
down my baggage. The old gentleman was for going
along with me, but I said no, I could drive the horse
myself, and I druther he wouldn’t take no trouble
about me.