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’s 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 onto 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 smokehouse back of the kitchen; three little nigger cabins
in a row t’other side the smokehouse; 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 going. 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 world _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 ’tis?”
“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.