The Trials of Huckleberry Finn: Adventures with Sam Clemens

The Trials of Huckleberry Finn: Adventures with Sam Clemens

Copyright © 2010 David Hoopes

Smashwords Edition

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ISBN: 978-0-9743247-3-9

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Publisher’s Note

Mark Twain and particularly Huckleberry Finn have been one of my father’s greatest passions. Creating this special story that brings the world of Mark Twain back to vibrant life has been his lifelong desire. It is with great pleasure that I am able to assist in the process.

Aaron Hoopes - 2010

Hyperlinked Table of Contents

Chapter 1 - Chapter 2 - Chapter 3 - Chapter 4 - Chapter 5 - Chapter 6 - Chapter 7 - Chapter 8 - Chapter 9 - Chapter 10 - Chapter 11 - Chapter 12 - Chapter 13 - Chapter 14 Chapter 15 - Chapter 16 - Chapter 17 - Chapter 18 - Chapter 19 - Chapter 20

Beginning

I hate Mark Twain so much it makes my toes ache. I’m Huckleberry Finn, but you probably don’t know much about me unless you’ve read The Adventures of Tom Sawyer, which was written by Mark Twain, or The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, which I wrote. If you’re wondering why Huckleberry Finn came out showing Mark Twain as the author, well, that’s one of the things this book is about.

As you probably know, The Adventures of Tom Sawyer is mostly about Tom, at least until he got on the track of the thief, Injun Joe. That’s where I came in, though just for awhile, until I got so sick with fever I almost died, and when Tom and Becky Thatcher got lost in McDougal’s Cave. Everybody was sure Tom and Becky were dead until they suddenly appeared, scared and hungry, on the bank of the river. But even more important was that in the cave Tom almost had a run-in with Injun Joe, which he didn’t tell anyone about until two weeks later, when he learned that Judge Thatcher (the day after Tom and Becky were found) had reinforced and padlocked the entrance to the cave. Tom spoke up then and everyone rushed there only to find Injun Joe lying just inside dead from starvation. The cave was left open after that.

But even more more important was that Tom had figured out where Injun Joe had hidden the loot from all his thievery, and Tom and I ended up with $6000 each – the getting of which concluded The Adventures of Tom Sawyer. What came next, for me at least, was a long trip, described in The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, on a raft down the Mississippi with a runaway slave. That, of course, was Jim, who was owned by Miss Watson, the Widow Douglas’s sister. I won’t try to tell you the whole story here, but you’ve got to know some of it to understand the things that happened after I got back, which is what this book I’m writing now is about. In The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, I told how Pap, my father, kidnapped me and kept me locked in a cabin by the river so as to keep me from getting too civilized by living with the Widow Douglas and also to help him in getting hold of the money I’d got from Injun Joe’s treasure. It tells how I escaped by making it look like I’d been murdered and how I picked up with Jim and agreed to help him escape by floating with him down the river to Cairo, Illinois, which was a free state.

But we missed Cairo in the fog and kept drifting south without quite knowing what to do until a couple of itinerant con men  they claimed they were European royalty who’d been a king and a duke (wrongfully snatched down out of high places as they put it) and took over the raft and used it as a base or, more often, an escape hatch from the consequences of the tricks they cooked up to cheat the unsophisticated folks in the poor, little river towns out of their money. Any number of times it was only our raft that saved the King and the Duke from getting tarred and feathered by a bunch of angry townspeople.

These frauds would announce themselves as famous English actors and put on silly scenes from Shakespeare or from something they called the Royal Nonesuch, in which the King crawled around naked on all fours. In their biggest scam, they pretended to be the British cousins of the three Wilks girls, whose father had just died and left them $3000 and some nice property, and they darn near got away with it and probably would have if I hadn’t figured out how to squeeze a little monkey wrench, so to speak, into their plans. Most important, however, was that I fell in love with Mary Jane Wilks and kept her secretly in my heart for years afterward.

It all ended way down in Pikesville, Arkansas, where the two reprobates sold Jim back into slavery for $40 and where Tom and I had to set him free again. Though it wasn’t just any normal setting a person free, it was a Tom Sawyer, full-scale production. Tom was known for thinking up complicated games, especially involving me and his other friends, pretending we were gangs of robbers or pirates, stealing chests of gold and jewels and capturing maidens and holding them for ransom. But this was his masterpiece. It took us three weeks to free Jim – which we could’ve done in a day and a half – and got Jim doing all kinds of brainless things like sawing off a bed leg to unchain himself which could’ve been done by lifting up the bed, taming rats with music from a Jew’s harp, sneaking a rope ladder he had no use for into him in a pie, and writing a journal in blood on his shirt. Tom called it the Evasion and capped it off by getting himself shot in the leg by one of the farmers he’d riled up with rumors about a gang of cutthroats coming to steal their runaway slave. And it was only after it was over that we – at least me and Jim – learned that Miss Watson had died since I’d left and had freed Jim in her will.

It was only at the end, too, that Jim told me something else important. Shortly after we set out on the raft we came across a house – a brothel as it turned out – that had been washed off the bank and was floating downriver with us. When we climbed in a window, we found the dead body of someone who’d been murdered – shot in the back. Jim threw some rags over the person’s head and told me not to look. Which I was happy to oblige him in. It was only after the Evasion that Jim told me the dead man was Pap.

But I was talking about Mark Twain and The Adventures of Tom Sawyer. A lot of what’s in it is true, though Twain does tell some stretchers. In fact, that’s another reason I’m so mad at him, because he’s such a liar, especially when he’s swearing he’s telling the truth.

For instance, he says Tom Sawyer wasn’t Tom Sawyer, but three other boys. Talk about stretchers. I knew Tom Sawyer personally and his Aunt Polly and Judge Thatcher and so on and so on and so on. He does say that I’m drawn from life, which sounds pretty weasely to me. Why didn’t he just come right out and say: Huck Finn was a real person I knew.

Well, you know why he couldn’t say that? Because that would be a lie too. Because Mark Twain didn’t know anybody in Hannibal (or St. Petersburg, the little village in Hannibal that lay along the riverside). It was Sam Clemens who knew all these people. Mark Twain was nowhere about when Sam was living and growing up in Hannibal during the 1850’s.

So all Mark Twain’s pretense was just nothing more than pretense and everybody in Hannibal must have gotten a good chuckle out of it when the book first came out.

He goes on with this blather at the end of the book, too. Listen to this: Most of the characters that perform in this book are prosperous and happy, which is not what I found out when I went back many years later to explore my past and find my mother. I don’t use the word revolting very much, but revolting fits Mark Twain now, as it did so many times in the past, like when he treated me so rotten about the jumping frog story.

Finally, in The Adventures of Tom Sawyer, he says, Some day it may seem worthwhile to take up the story of the younger ones again and see what sort of men and women they turned out to be. See what I mean? Is he going to talk about all three Tom Sawyers or just one of them?

But to figure this all out you have to recognize one of Mark Twain’s other lies, maybe the biggest of all  the lie that he was Sam Clemens. You see, I knew Sam Clemens as a boy in Hannibal. We grew up together, well sort of. He was two years older than I was and seemed a lot more. I didn’t really get to know him until after I got back from the raft trip and I’d gotten sort of famous because people thought I was dead all the time I was gone (and also because of Injun Joe’s treasure and Pap’s murder). Sam and I became pretty good friends then. Well, more than good friends actually. Sam was my idol and a lot of this book is about him and  if you must know – how Mark Twain stole him from me.

But right now I’m going to do, at least partly, just what Mark Twain said it might seem worthwhile to do take up the stories of some of the people described in The Adventures of Tom Sawyer and The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn and see what happened to them in the years after my trip down the Mississippi on the raft.

What I’m going to tell you is what happened to me and Tom (a little bit) and Becky (even less) and the runaway slave Jim (not much) and Sam Clemens, a lot more, really a lot more, though I can’t say that Sam was in either of the Adventure books, except maybe in spirit) and some others too. I’ll start by telling you about what happened next after Tom and I got Jim out of captivity.

So what did happen next? Well, I did not write another book  as I said I wouldn’t at the end of The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. Nor did I set out for the Territory, as I said I would.

There was quite a to-do about the Evasion and Tom getting shot. The scariest part for me, however, was that Tom’s Aunt Sally Phelps (who lived in Pikesville and whose family had bought Jim and who was the sister of the Aunt Polly Tom lived with in Hannibal) was talking about adopting and sivilizing me, which struck terror in my heart.

I found it out a couple of days after Tom’s Aunt Polly arrived. Tom had recovered mostly from the bullet wound in the leg he’d gotten during the evasion. We were outside the house and saw the two sisters talking in the living room very seriously so we were certain it must be something we ought to know about. We crept up under the window as quietly as we could  which was pretty quiet since it was the kind of thing we did for a living, so to speak.

Well, Aunt Sally was saying, I grew so fond of Tom Sawyer (that’s who I had pretended to be at first) I don’t guess it makes any difference if his name is Huck Finn. Yes, if that’s what you’re askin’ me, yes, I’d surely like to think of adopting Huckleberry. I like that, don’t you, Sis... ‘Huckleberry’, no more ‘Huck’ after he’s mine.

Tom and I, we just looked at each other at first, curiosity seeping out the pores of our skin. Then, simultaneously, our eyelids sprung into action, bottom one downward and top one up  staring bug-eyed at each other as we plumbed the real meaning of what Aunt Sally was saying.

Well, that’s nice of you, Sis, Aunt Polly said. With Miss Watson having passed away, Widow Douglas might appreciate the burden being taken off her shoulders. I’ll write to her today.

Tom began shaking his head vigorously, to say the least, while I pretended to tear my hair out and almost gave us away when a couple of strands got wrapped around my little finger and pulled clear out of my scalp and I had to clap my hand over my mouth to stop from yelling Ouch. Tom made a gesture toward the rear with his thumb and bolted across the yard to the barn door, me hard on his tail. We wriggled quickly behind a pile of hay. Here, crouching and whispering hoarsely, we managed with hardly any effort to fan the flames of onsetting panic.

Did you hear them? Tom asked.

Sure did, I said.

Do you know what that means?

What does it mean, Tom? Is it what I think it means?

Cain’t be anythin’ else, Tom said.

Sure does sound like it.

Tom looked at me a little curiously. Sounds like what? he asked.

Like it cain’t be anythin’ else, I said, getting a little worried because I wasn’t certain just where I was headed and I sure didn’t know where I’d been. Well, whatever you was talkin’ about, I said.

Golly, Huck, I’ve tried to tell you often enough, don’t just parrot what other people say. Tom must have seen the puzzled look on my face. That means repeat what someone says without knowin’what it means.

We’ll be a thousand miles apart, I said, which was what everybody we talked with about it figured the distance was between Hannibal, Missouri, and Pikesville, Arkansas."

Won’t see each other for months, Tom said, maybe not for a hundred years. How’re we gonna search for buried treasure? You realize we found $12,000 dollars on our first try  if you don’t count the diggin’ we did ‘round that tree when we started out.

We got to figure out something to do. Doggone, Tom, I ain’t a stayin’ here and that’s a everlastin’ finality.

Look, Tom said, let’s think on it for a day or so. We ain’t leavin’ right away. Aunt Polly said she’d stay a week at least. See what we come up with.

Actually what I did first was weigh the pros and cons of living with Aunt Sally or the widow. Aunt Sally was good to me and I liked her enough but the widow was in St. Petersburg where my friends were, and I’d begun to find her tolerable. Besides, Aunt Sally owned slaves, which the widow didn’t, which was a good thing on the widow’s side. I was pretty sure she’d been behind Miss Watson freeing Jim in her will.

Also, something was coming over me that I was not ready to look square in the eye, but which was boring into my brain like some mental termite making little tunnels through which the idea of getting educated  which I knew I’d not escape if I lived with the widow  might surface and show itself to actually be mine rather than something put on me by others.

The next day we went down to the river and sat on the dock. Tom said, "Well, wha’d you think of?

Couple a things, but they ain’t much good. Maybe we could write Widow Douglas ourselves  or maybe Judge Thatcher. He wanted to be a guard for me of some sort, just like the widow.

That’s too risky. We got to present them with a fate a combly.

What’s that?

That’s French and means surprisin’ people by doin’ somethin’ smart that nobody else ain’t thought of. What about makin’ a raft and goin’ back up the river?

Cain’t do it, Tom. It’d take me twenty years about.

Even if Jim went with you?

Too dangerous for Jim. He’s got no papers yet and could get sold back into slavery if someone mean got a hold of him. The King and the Duke might be right out there on some island or towhead just a-waitin’ for us to slither by.

What about stealin’ a canoe or a rowboat?

I guess I could shave a little time off with a canoe. Only take me ten, twelve years. What about seein’ if Aunt Sally would adopt both of us?

That’s brilliant, Tom said sarcastically. Cain’t you jus’ see Aunt Polly toleratin’ that!

What about, if you got some disease, Tom said, real rare or a kind that only happens in Hannibal or Missouri or something so you have to go back there to see some special doctor?

Don’t sound too good to me, I said, We don’t know nothin’ about them kinda of things. I don’t recall you readin’ much in medical books, ’cept cadgin’ a look at the naked pictures in the book in old Dobbins’ desk drawer. Don’t think we could fool the smart old doc who took care of your bullet wound.

Suddenly Tom snapped his fingers  which sent a little chill through me because I knew from experience that that particular kind of snap, sweeping his hand in front of him as he did it and swiveling his face up at the sky with a kind of thank you, Lord look on it, meant he had a classic Tom Sawyer idea full of danger and daring  and, pretty regularly, disaster.

I’ve got it, he said, looking furtively around, shifting closer to me and lowering his voice. We’ll smuggle you back. That was the Tom Sawyer I knew. As a stowaway!

Bully, just bully. You gonna put me down in the boiler room so I sweat so much and get so little to eat I just about waste all away by the time we get back to St. Petersburg. I could see myself crowded into a corner near the roaring boiler or next to the ratcheting iron rods that drive the paddle wheel, scrunched up, hidden by the machine, day after day, until my whole body shook and continued shaking for a week after I got back to the widow’s and everybody’d feel so sorry for me no one would think of sending me back to Arkansas.

"Naw. That’s not a bad idea, but you cain’t really hide down there. The boiler tenders would find you probly before we left the wharf or pretty soon after and they’d drop you at the first town up river, so’s you could be sent back. No, it’s got to be someplace won’t nobody find you. And the best place for that is in the lifeboat. Paddle wheelers never sink and nobody don’t never use the boats (which wasn’t so. I’d seen steamboats sinking with my own eyes, and from the stories we heard it sounded like half the steamboats on the river blew up or sank every year). So we can hide you in under the canvas and I can bring you food and some tobaccy and maybe I can sneak in and we’ll have a smoke together. That ought to get us home in good shape. Then when you’re bv there, we’ll have done our fate a combly and won’t nobody have the meanness to send you back a thousand miles just so you can be adopted where you don’t want to be.

Well, I told him again how bully the idea was, though I still wasn’t sure the lifeboat was really the best place to stow away. But we got down to planning the details, even so, mainly working out how Tom would create some distraction  diversion he called it  and enable me to sneak on board. We went over what I would bring. Cold weather had set in further north and I’d need something to keep me warm. We wrapped up some apples, bread, and jerked beef  food that would keep  and Tom said he would steal some stuff from the dining room.

As the time got closer, I got pretty excited. Then a couple of days before we were to leave, Tom decided to have a practice run. When a regular steamboat pulled in to dock, Tom went tearing up and down alongside it as fast as he could with the limp he still had from his bullet wound, while I crouched in some bushes and waited with my bundles. Pretty soon he had everybody looking at him when suddenly he stumbled and fell in the river. He wasn’t supposed to do that, it wasn’t in the plan, but he did, and if you think that didn’t get everybody’s attention! I was able just to sashay up the gangplank with nobody taking the least notice of me, climb into the lifeboat, and stretch out in comfort.

There was only one trouble. We hadn’t really thought too much about how I was going to get out and back on shore. When we got to the real stowing away I’d not have to. Just sneak in and wait till we got home. But now...well, it wouldn’t be difficult to walk off the steamboat, if I could get out of the lifeboat ok, except steamboat captains didn’t really like folks walking on and off their boats who didn’t look like they’d paid their fare.

Then I remembered a stunt Tom had pulled once at a circus  and it was none too soon. As the boat whistle blasted and the engines beat and whined while they took on power just before the gangplank was pulled up and where everyone was again looking at something other than the lifeboat, I leaped out, ran to the gangplank, threw my bundle over my shoulder, and walked backward off the boat.

It was a silly stunt but it seemed to confuse the pilot enough so that he wasn’t inclined to stop the departure for some strange kid walking backward down the gangplank. The people in the crowd who knew who I was  and there were a good many because we got pretty well known during the evasion  laughed and thought it was a jolly prank, and they’d have talked the captain out of doing anything even if he’d been mad enough to stop and come after me. But it was good Aunt Polly wasn’t there.

Then all we could do was wait. Aunt Polly and Aunt Sally talked a lot by