A week after the slaughter of Huckleberry Finn, the water was devoid of search boats. Townspeople feigned grief for a lowly boy they had little hope for- no amount of new clothes and reading lessons could clear his reputation. The Widow Douglass found another charity, and Miss Watson simply bitched at somebody else. Normalcy settled over St. Petersburg at a disturbing rate; though there was a gruesome murder, the loss was a fellow everyone could do without.
Tom Sawyer was a crease in the laid back fabric of his small town. The search for his best friend's body wasn't over- and wouldn't be over until Tom found him. It was a grueling week of little sleep, little eating, and a lot of thinking. The entire world seemed to have forgotten about Huck, but not him. The young man deserved a burial, one solitary display of the dignity he lacked from others in his brief life. And to have a burial, one needed a body to bury. Such became Tom's obsession. No portion of the river bank was left unchecked. No irregularity of the forest was left unnoticed. No part of Tom's days were left free of grief.
Aunt Polly's decision of sending Tom up the river surprised nobody but him. Despite her stern nature, she was acutely noticing the changes in her dear nephew following the familiar vagabond's tragic end. Each and every essence of the boy seemed muted, from his vibrant eyes to his booming voice and his mischievous grin. The usual arguments concerning his habit of playing hooky took a new sort of gravity- Tom barely responded and took punishments with a subdued nod. Aunt Polly genuinely pleaded for him to talk to her, but it was obvious that his mind was elsewhere.
Nothing left Aunt Polly as slighted and powerless as Tom's unfortunate bond with the local bastard child. When she first saw them playing together, Polly's heart lept into her throat and she ran with a rare ferocity to save her nephew- but the damage was done. With that one fateful encounter, (and, perhaps, many others she hadn't witnessed but feared happened) all the lectures and tannings in her trusty arsenal were rendered useless. The words went right in one ear and out the other; warnings and threats and shamings be damned, because once free time was in Tom's grasp, it was off to the filth he went. Off to the filth for which his affections laid, whether she approved of them or not.
Nobody else could be as detrimental to Tom as Huckleberry Finn, with his cursing, smoking, and evil kin. He was nasty habits and bad news, plain and simple. However, what scared her the most was the sheer happiness in her nephew's eyes as he regarded the hopeless tramp. The fear was most clearly concentrated on the aftermath of Tom's weeklong cave excursion. Straight out of a cave and malnourished to near death, Tom's worries were immediately shifted to his sickened friend. As Aunt Polly reluctantly accompanied the weakened boy to his companion, the joy that followed assured her that her struggles were futile. There was no stopping the Finn boy's grip on Tom.
Polly always knew Huckleberry Finn would leave her Tom desolate. Sending him to her sister Sally was the least she could do for him.
However, Tom saw this decision as yet another snub at the expense of his best friend. It wasn't enough that he laid alone, bloody and dying, in some cabin far from his hogsheds and doorsteps. It wasn't enough to be ripped at with an ax and hauled away to Lord knows where like a load of hogwash. It wasn't enough that the world struck him down and plumb flushed him from memory within a solitary week. It wasn't enough that justice was but a wandering dream rather than a solid, important task. It never seemed to be enough- and now the final person to carry his memory was to be carted away.
It was only a matter of time now. As Tom laid crying silent tears in bed, he considered the thought that Huck's body wouldn't be found- not by him, and certainly not by anybody else. He had failed him.
His sobs picked up with the thought, and he was glad that his younger half brother Sid no longer shared the room with him.
He thought himself as a fraud, making clubs and oaths that he wouldn't upkeep. The books Tom read wouldn't end like this. The hero wouldn't be beaten and overthrown by a simple emigration. He wouldn't let anything stop him from his task. He would get the job done for his friend-body or no body, vengeance would be achieved.
As if on cue, a commotion outside drew Tom's tearful face from his pillow. A flurry of male voices slurred and drawled from outside. Tom sat up as glass shattered and the voices grew louder with irritation. He crept towards the open window and peered through the warped glass; two figures staggered around eachother, obviously in the starting phase of a fight. Part of him was unsurprised to see Pap Finn among the pair, while another fraction felt an unprecedented anger rise in his chest at the sight of the graggly man.
"Finn, ya filthy bastard, I says no!"
"Aw, hain't you a God-fearin' man! Got no change to spare for an orphan-in' father?"
"Drink's been gettin' to ya, I reckon, cause there ain't no thing as an 'orphan-in' father'! Ya just as dim-witted as the usual; go on back to them pig pens an' tryta stay clean. Pray for that poor boy o' yours- better hope Providence'll even give ya the light o' day."
"Prayin' won't do him well now, never did. Ain't never been a boy as wicked as mine, nor as disrespectin' with that damn book-totin'. Loss is really pullin' my sore soul down, so can ya spare one measly drink?"
"Hain't nobody here wicked as you," the stranger muttered, turning and trudging away before Pap could get another lousy word in.
Tom felt the man's last statement resonate fiercely within him. Hain't nobody here wicked as you.
The elder Finn regarded the retreating man with one more slurred attempt at a beg:
"How 'bout takin' care of tha livin' 'stead o' blubberin' over tha dead? Riddin' er'one of some ingrate pup should be hollerin' good news! No doubt he had it comin', little bastard he was."
Tom felt his nails dig painfully into his palms at the conversation. "If anybody should be ridded of here, it should be you, Mr. Finn. How could you? How you talk 'bout your son! I knows you ain't got a respectin' bone in that dirty body o' yourn, but this, this is disturbin' me, truly," he whispered. It was getting tougher to keep his voice down and restrain his fists from punching the window. "Huck ain't deservin' a' this, any of it. For you to slink around like some martyr an' tryta get your paws on another drink... hellbound bastard, your claimin' innocence ain't foolin' me. It ain't foolin' anybody, but they's just done dealin' wit' you."
With that, the boy turned and marched back into bed. He seethed over the unfairness of it all, how the wrong Finn remained alive and hopeless- truly hopeless, not the 'hopeless' folks threw at every boy in their vacinity- while the innocent, smart, kind-hearted young man... Tom choked back tears once more. Part of him couldn't bear to accept the gruesome murder, as agonizingly real as it was-and as agonizingly obvious it was regarding who did it. It wasn't Jim, like some thought. Jim was a good soul; lowly, yet trusted and friendly to Tom and his comrades. He fled right around the time of Huck's murder, but that was what slaves did recently. Tom remembered reading a newspaper about the north; they allowed negroes to be free, a luxury foreign in Missouri. Jim's whereabouts were obvious, and Tom hadn't the heart to scorn him.
But Huck's father... didn't have the same soft reputation. The man would sell his invaluable soul for one more drink- and fool those who had the fortune of never meeting him. The new judge, for instance. The optimistic official dressed Pap up and paraded him around like a well-dressed pig; unfortunately, a pig is a pig, no matter how clean and respectable it may appear to be. Hours into his celebrated sobriety, the ceiling of reality crashed as hard as Pap himself, that is, drunk as anything off the first story of some random house. The judge just then realized his blunder, and soon declared the drunkard only reformable with a shotgun- a fact well known by each inhabitant of the small Missourian village.
The murder fell between an honest slave and a low-down, mean spirited drunkard. Tom had no problem choosing between the two.
He didn't have much time. Launching up and out of bed, Tom snuck down the worn stairs towards the rear closet. It was late; Aunt Polly was asleep in her room across the hall, and though she slept light to deal with the late night shenanigans of her nephew, Tom wouldn't let himself be caught tonight. Shifting through the heavy cabinet, the young man's hand gripped cool metal:the aforementioned tool of reformation.
The chilly air of late night Missouri swept against Tom's skin as he rushed to where he last saw Pap. He couldn't have gotten far, he imagined, by the way he stumbled and nearly fell all over himself earlier on. He ran as quietly as he could through the numerous low down alleyways-nothing. He checked the pig pen Pap usually resided in-empty. He stalked around local bars and peeked through every single window-Pap was nowhere in sight. Finally, Tom took a break to catch his breath. Walking around to calm his raging heartbeat, the young man caught sight of a painfully familiar barrel. His heart lurched at the closer inspection; scraps of ragged brown fabric were caught in several bindings of the barrel, as well as remnants of tobacco, though the smell had since faded away. Tom felt grief pierce his chest once again. The small part of him that was still holding on to hope for finding Huck's body was sorely disappointed, but a raw sense of responsibility quickly took its place.
Laying a hand lightly on the sacred barrel, Tom quietly promised, "Leave it to me, Hucky. Your Pap won't hurt nobody soon enough. I'll be makin' sure of it."
With that, Tom gripped the shotgun tighter as he remembered another possible location for the loathed drunk-the Poker House. Though it was officially old Robert Johnson's inhabitance, its claim to notorious fame were the wild nights of gambling and drinking there; as long as some money from the nightly antics were paid to Robert, he would turn a blind eye to immoral and illegal actions alike.
"It's payin' the bills is what it's doin'," Johnson had responded once to a well meaning lady. "There's many ways to make a livin', and this, this fits me, you hear?"
Tom hadn't questioned it before, and he was sure grateful for the place now. Sure enough, as he approached the shady shack, Pap's voice boomed in indignation at other men. He couldn't make out the whole conversation, but 'dirty cheat' and 'askin' for it' stuck out. So Pap wasn't too smooth at his attempts at swindling money. Tom couldn't be less shocked.
The commotion grew to an all out yelling match, then escalated to a fight. Big as he may be, Pap didn't stand a chance in his inebriated state against more than one man. By the time the rest of the men stormed from Miller's house, Tom could hear the ragged man's hoarse breathing and wet coughs. Perfect.
He pushed open the heavy door and stood, glaring at the crumpled man. Pap was even more of a mess than usual. Blood leaked from his sneering mouth into his scraggly black beard. Patches of his dark hair were ripped from his head, and his clothes were nearly all torn away, giving Providence and whoever came into contact with him a much too detailed portrait. Even from his distance, Tom could see the redness of Pap's eyes and the swelling of his left cheek. The annoyance on Pap's face slowly morphed into apprehension at the sight of the shot gun.
While the heroes in his books would have a dramatic dialogue on hand at a time like this, Tom found himself speechless. Pap was helpless before him, drunk out of his mind, but Tom couldn't see him. He saw instead a striking familiarity in the man's face. He saw Huck.
Maybe it was the dark hair or the tan complexion. Perhaps the fractured English language that he spoke reminded the young man. It could've just been the blood that connected them, the dysfunctional father and son whose presences were feared and loathed in his small town. Whatever it was made Tom hesitate.
Then Pap began to curse at him.
There was the hatred exclusive to the older man; the malice and evil that his son lacked shone as darkly prominent as ever. He spat out every name in the book, cursing Tom and his family and threatening him as if he wasn't the one at the boy's mercy. It took until that moment for Tom to realize that Huck was gone-that the monster he faced then held only the thin connection of blood and appearance. He had the source of he and his friend's pain and misery in close range.
Memories of Huck's bruises and scars prompted Tom to lift the gun.
Years of adventures that were cut way too short made the young man aim at the messily retreating man.
Tom thought of his friend's smile and realized that he'd never hear Huck's laugh again. He gritted his teeth and pulled the trigger.
Years of abuse and burden were taken care of in a split second.
"Off you go, Mr. Finn," Tom murmured softly. The crumpled body did not respond. "You's Providence's problem now."
Tom vacated the house while Pap laid motionless, finally dead.
The night concluded as quietly as it began. Tom slowly walked home, glancing at the lonely barrel for a moment before continuing on. Once the shotgun was returned to its original spot, the young man crept back into bed.
The hurt in Tom's heart didn't go away. In fact, the pain seemed as prominent as ever, but something had shifted. Deep down he knew that it didn't matter if people forgot about Huck. It wouldn't matter if he wasn't mentioned nor alluded to at all, because Tom would always think of him, remember him, and be grateful for his friendship.
Tom brought his friend justice, and nothing could ever take that away.