Huckleberry Finn - Dave Mckay, Mark Twain (reading books for 7 year olds TXT) 📗

Then he says, "Say, let me hear you read.”

I took up a book and started something about George Washington and the wars. When I’d read about half a minute, he give the book a hit and knocked it across the room. He says: “It’s so. You can do it. I didn’t believe it when you told me. Now look here; you stop that putting on airs. I won’t have it. I’ll be watching, and if I catch you at that school I’ll whip you good. First thing you know, you’ll get religion, too. Never seen such a son."

He took up a little blue and yellow picture of some cows and a boy, and says: “What’s this?”

“It’s something they give me for learning my school work.”

After tearing it up, he says: “I’ll give you something -- I’ll turn your skin to leather.

He sat there making angry talk a minute, and then he says: “Ain’t you a sweet-smelling little girl? A bed; blankets; a mirror; and a rug on the floor -- and your own father got to sleep with the pigs in the leather yard. I never seen such a son. I’ll take some of these ways out of you before I’m done with you. Why, there ain’t no end to your airs -- they say you’re rich. How’s that?”

“They lie -- that’s how.”

“Look here -- mind how you talk; I’ve taken about all I can. Don’t give me no back talk. I been in town two days, and ain’t heard nothing but about you being rich. I heard about it way down the river, too. It’s why I come. You get me that money tomorrow.”

“I ain’t got no money.”

“It’s a lie. Judge Thatcher’s got it.”

“You get it. I want it.”

“I ain’t got no money, I tell you. Ask Judge Thatcher; he’ll tell you the same.”

“All right. I’ll ask him; and I’ll make him give out, too, or I’ll know the reason why. Say, how much you got in your pocket now?”

“I ain’t got only a dollar, and I want that to -- “

“Don’t make no difference what you want it for; give it over.” He took a bite of it to see if it was good, then said he was going to town to get some whiskey; said he hadn’t had a drink all day. When he had got out on the tool room roof he put his head in again, and told me off for putting on airs and trying to be better than him. When I thought he was gone he come back and put his head in again, and told me to mind about that school, because he was going to be looking for me and whip me if I didn’t drop it.

Next day he was drunk, and he went to Judge Thatcher’s and argued with him, and tried to make him give up the money; but he couldn’t; then pap promised he’d make the law force him.

The judge and the widow went to law to get the court to take me away from him and let one of them take care of me; but it was a new judge that had just come, and he didn’t know my old man; so he said courts must not force their way in and separate families if they could help it; said it was best not to take a child away from its father. So Judge Thatcher and the widow had to quit on the business.

That pleased the old man until he couldn’t rest. He said he’d whip me until I was black and blue if I didn’t get some money for him. I asked for three dollars from Judge Thatcher, and pap took it and got drunk, and went a-blowing around and using bad words and shouting and carrying on; and he kept it up all over town, with a tin pan, until almost midnight; then they locked him up, and next day they had him before court, and put him away again for a week. But he said he was okay; said he was boss of his son, and he’d make it warm for him.

When he got out the new judge said he was a-going to make a man of him. So he took him to his own house, and dressed him up clean and nice, and had him to breakfast and lunch and dinner with the family, and was just old pie to him, so to speak. And after dinner he talked to him about not drinking and such things until the old man cried, and said he’d been foolish, and wasted his life; but now he was a-going to turn over a new leaf and be a man nobody would be embarrassed by, and he hoped the judge would help him and not look down on him. The judge said he could hug him for them words; so he cried, and his wife cried again; pap said he’d always been a man that no one had understood before, and the judge said he believed it. The old man said that a man that was down wanted trust and love, and the judge said it was so; so they cried again. And when it was time for bed pap got up and held out his hand, and says: “Look at it, everyone; take it, hold it, and shake it. There’s a hand that was the hand of a pig; but it ain’t so no more; it’s the hand of a man that’s started in on a new life, and will die before he’ll go back. You mark them words -- just remember I said them. It’s a clean hand now; shake it -- don’t be afraid.”

So they shook it, one after the other, all around, and cried. The judge’s wife she kissed it. Then the old man he signed a promise -- made his mark. The judge said it was the holiest time in history, or something like that. Then they put the old man into a beautiful room, which was the extra room, and in the night some time he got powerful thirsty and climbed out onto the roof and down the side and sold his new coat for a bottle of whiskey, and climbed back again and had a good old time; and toward morning he climbed out again, drunk as could be, and fell off the roof and broke his left arm in two places, and was almost dead from the cold when someone found him after sun-up. And when they come to look at that extra room they had a devil of a job putting it all back together.

The judge he felt kind of angry. He said it seemed the only way a body could change the old man was with a gun.

Chapter 6

Pretty soon the old man was up and around again, and then he went for Judge Thatcher in the courts to make him give up the money, and he went for me too, for not stopping school. He caught me a few times and whipped me, but I went to school just the same, and was able to hide from him or run away most of the time. I didn’t want to go to school much before, but I I wanted to go now to get back at pap. That court business was so slow -- seemed they weren’t ever going to get started on it; so every now and then I’d ask for two or three dollars off of the judge for pap, to keep from getting a whipping. Every time he got money he got drunk; and every time he got drunk he made trouble around town; and every time he made trouble he got locked up. He was just perfect for that -- this kind of thing was right up his line.

He got to hanging around the widow’s too much and so she told him at last that if he didn’t quit coming around there she would make trouble for him. Well, wasn’t he angry? He said he would show who was Huck Finn’s boss. So he watched out for me one day at the end of winter, and caught me, and took me up the river about three mile in a flat bottom boat, and crossed over to the Illinois side where there was lots of trees and no houses but a rough old log cabin in a place where the trees was so thick you couldn’t find it if you didn’t know where it was.

He kept me with him all the time, and I never got an opening 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 rifle which he had robbed, I’d say, and we fished and hunted, and that was what we lived on. Every little while he locked me in and went down to the shop, three miles, to where he gave fish and other animals for whiskey, and would bring it home and get drunk and have a good time, and whip me.

The widow she found out where I was by and by, and she sent a man over to get hold of me; but pap forced him off with the rifle, and it weren’t long after that before I was used to being where I was, and liked it -- all but the whipping part.

It was kind of lazy and fun, resting all day, smoking and fishing, and no books or study. Two months or more run along, and my clothes got to be all holes 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 dish, and smooth your hair, and go to bed and get up at special times, and be forever worrying over a book, and have old Miss Watson talking at you all the time.

I didn’t want to go back no more. I had stopped using bad words, because the widow didn’t like it; but now I took to it again because pap hadn’t no problem with it. It was pretty good times up in the trees there, take it all around.

But by and by pap got too enthusiastic with his whipping stick, and I couldn’t stand it. I was all over sores. He got to going away so much, too, and locking me in. Once he locked me in and was gone three days. It was awful being there all alone. I judged he had got drowned, and I wasn’t ever going to get out any more. I was 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 weren’t a window to it big enough for a dog to get through. I couldn’t get up the chimney; it was too narrow. The door was thick, solid flat pieces of timber. Pap was pretty careful not to leave a knife or anything in the cabin when he was away; I would say 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 dirty saw blade without any handle; it was in between a horizontal board and the angle boards of the roof. I oiled 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 holes and putting the candle out. I got under the table and lifted the blanket, and went to work to saw a piece of the bottom log out -- big enough to let me through. Well, it was a good long job, but I was getting toward the end of it when I heard pap’s rifle in the distance. I cleaned up any signs