PREFACE

Well, I warn't about to start a new book, all on my account, as writing's a hard, grueling work and I layed I'd give myself an early retirement. Books is plenty good, and why I wish'd I'd learned to read 'em sooner, but laws if they ain't the blamedest things while you're trying to write one. So you see I warn't much in a hurry to start up another.

But there was a person who convinced me. She was visiting town and happened to see me fishing by the side of the river. Well she recognized me straight off, asked if I was Huck to which I said I was, and was right amiable with me. She said she loved Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, and told me I had quite the way with words (though I reckon she was mistaken, as I never design to put words anywhere but just where they sorter naturally fall), and asked if I would write another book. Well I already did, I told her, two, in fact; those being Tom Sawyer Abroad and Tom Sawyer, Detective. Well yes, says she, but those are mostly about Tom, as they've got his name in the titles; Tom and his dragging you around in foolish business. Won't you write another book about you? Well, gosh, I says, kinder bashful-like, I don't know, as I reckon Tom's a great deal more interesting than I am. But she wouldn't stand for that, and told me I was plenty interesting, and had other qualities besides that Tom didn't have—like personalness and general honesty. She loved Tom, too, of course, but it was me she wanted to hear about.

So, I took up writing again, and here comes this book as a result, about the year before that whole business with Injun Joe. And I tell you, writing's lousy, awful work, even if the finished product more'n makes up for it.

Huckleberry Finn

One of the best things about life, or ruther the way I lived it, was that a body never had to get up before noon, and could sleep as late as he pleased. See, with no mother around, nor no pap neither (for I hadn't seen him about three months or so), just who could tell a body what to do?

But sometimes it warn't the case. Lots of mornings I would find myself being shook awake early by Tom, because he would be heading off to school—or supposed to be heading there, anyway, but lots of times he'd stop to talk to me first. He knowed which hogsheads it was that I was particular towards, and which doorsteps, and though I switched it up often enough, he could find me most every time. 'Hain't you supposed to be in school,' I often says, and then Tom says right back, 'I don't know, hain't you?' Well that was a pretty good answer, because I could be in school if I wanted to, but I didn't want to, and there was no one to make me, so I wasn't. And it warn't no sense to bother no one else about something I was guilty of, too.

So Tom would talk to me in the mornings, and every now and then let on that he'd be going off to school in just a couple minutes more, but sometimes he didn't never go off to school, and just decided to play hooky instead. You could sort of see it in his eyes when he thought it over in his head, but he always just pretended that he'd lost track of time.

Tom was a good pretender, but lord was he an awful grand storyteller. It was all because of those books he read—Tom would complain up and down if he was made to read something, by Aunt Polly, or his schoolteacher, or his Sunday school teacher, or whoever—but any book that he found himself, why he'd read it all up and know it by heart next morning. That way he could tell it to me, too, and I wouldn't be missing out on nothing. But he read too much about pirates and thieves and muskiturrs and such. So many pirates and thieves are just fine, but after you've heard about so many, them stories they start to sound all the same. But Tom he didn't mind, and I tried not to either, because Tom knowed how to tell the stories as to keep a body on the edge of his seat, no matter how many times he'd already heard them before.

One morning Tom comes after me, a shouting my name, and I roll over in my sugar hogshead and pretend to be asleep, because I was used to sleeping late into the day—you get that way when there ain't nobody to wake you up, as I've said before. Well Tom he wouldn't leave me alone, and he was mighty excited, and so I finally gave up pretending to sleep and looked at him.

"What is it, Tom?" I says, unfriendly-like. "Can't a body get some rest?"

Tom didn't back off one bit but he set down at the entrance of my barrel so I couldn't get away from him. "Why, you can rest all you want after I've gone to school, Huck," says he, real eager and without a care, "but I've got something to ask you."

"Well, go on an' ask," I told him, all ornery.

"Is it true that your mam was an angel?"

At first I was just struck dumb by what he said because I couldn't make sense of it at all. So I told him to ask it again.

"I said, was your mother an angel?" says Tom.

Well that was just ridiculous, and I thought ol' Tom was playing jokes on me, trying to get me to say something foolish. I don't remember my mam too well, but I knowed she never had no wings, and I told him so. Tom just stuck up his chin at me.

"Why Huck, an angel don't have to have wings, because sometimes they disguise themselves—didn't you know that?" asks Tom, like he knowed everything in the world. "An angel'll sometimes make herself out to be a human, so's to test how nice people are. It's true—Aunt Polly read me a verse on it last Sunday."

That made me nervous, because I had been plenty unfriendly and downright ornery to lots of people, and I never once reckoned any of them might be an angel waiting to test me. I wondered if all the angels in the sky were just waiting to pounce on me.

"But if they make themself out to be human, how's a body s'posed to know if they're really an angel?" I asked Tom, because I figured that would be mighty useful to know. That way I could see who was an angel and who wasn't, and make sure to treat all the angels wonderful good, and not give a hoot about all the others.

Tom started to say something, but then he shut his mouth, and pretended he had never meant to speak in the first place. Then he cast his eyes over my head, and I knowed he was thinking, because I looked behind me and there warn't nothing interesting back there. I reckoned that Tom didn't really know how to see if someone was an angel, but he was just too stubborn to say so.

After a minute or so Tom finally owned up to his not knowing, and so the two of us together racked our brains. Of course we knowed how to tell if somebody was a witch, everyone knows that, and besides there are plenty of ways. We reckoned that since a witch was the opposite of an angel, witches being all bad and angels all good, all the signs of a witch must be opposite for an angel. For example if there are ever any stray cats in town, and a witch walks by, why a whole herd of cats will take up following her, but only the black ones. Here Tom and me fell into some disargument: Tom reckoned that an angel would be followed by cats just the same way, only she would be followed by the white ones, but I reckoned that there wouldn't be no cats following her at all, because the angel had made herself out to be a regular human and how would a dumb cat be able to tell she warn't just a regular person? We argued that one back and forth, Tom and me, until I called Tom a bad name, and he got mad, and said he'd ruther hurry along to school than keep talking with the likes of me, and then I begged him not to, because I didn't want to be lonesome—only I didn't tell him that part, just told him that this talk about angels was mighty interesting and I hated to have it cut short.

Well Tom he stayed, and I reckoned he was bluffing the whole time, because I knowed Tom didn't like school enough to go to it when he could be talking to me instead. He was probably just glad I had taught him the bad name anyway. But he pretended to be real reluctant about the whole thing, and finally sighed and said he'd stay if I was sorry, and besides, we'd never got around to deciding if my mam was really an angel or not.

I asked him where he'd got the idea of it in the first place, and he said he heard it from the church ladies last Sunday.

"They was talking about you, Huck," Tom told me. "How it starts out is this: one of them ladies says, 'That poor Finn boy, without a home and with no one to take him to school, nor church, nor nothing!'"

Tom did such a good church lady voice that we just about bust ourselves laughing before he could start up again. Finally I told him to keep going with his story, so he did.

"Well they went on talkin' about you for a while, first about how so poor and awful it is that you're alone, and then just about how downright terrible you are, Huck—why, one of the ladies reckoned that you'd c'rupted half of the schoolchildren in St. Petersburg."

"What's c'rupted, Tom?" I asked.

"I don't know, but it sure sounds mighty, don't it?"

It did sound mighty, and I told him so. Tom looked proud for having been the one to deliver me such a compliment.

"So I listened in, only because it's ever so marvelous how much of a reputation you've got, Huck! I wish I were half so talked about. But anyway—after they were all through complaining about you, one of them ladies started talking about your pap—"

I wrinkled my nose all of a sudden, because I hadn't thought of him for so long, not until Tom had to go and bring him up. Why, I had quite nearly forgotten him up till now. I wouldn't have minded one bit if I never saw pap again, and now that Tom had went and mentioned him, I got to feeling antsy like we had just summoned him.

"—about how dreadful drunk he gets when he's in town, and how ain't nobody seen him in so long, and 'good riddance,' one of them said. Well then they got to talking about your mam, Huck. Says one of the ladies, 'Why, I remember when that Finn child was born, and it was just the same, with ol' Finn going 'round getting drunk and leaving his poor missus all alone to care for the child.'"

Tom's talk was making me feel kinder uncomfortable, because I didn't much like it that he was so easy talking about me. But of course it was all true, and I knowed it, so why did I feel so dreadful ashamed?

"One of the women reckoned that your mam was...oh, what did she say?—a harlot."

"What's a harlot, Tom?" I asked, uneasy. I didn't reckon it was a good thing, because I heard people talk about me all the time, and nobody never had nice things to say about me or my family.

"Don't know, but that don't matter, because right after that the other lady jumps in and says, 'Why, no, no, that ain't it at all! She was an angel, a regular angel, and she come right down from heaven, as far as I'm concerned. Never minded her own self, bless that soul, even with a little boy she never hardly cared for herself.' And then she went on telling how your mam always sewed up clothes for children, and gave things to folks who needed it, even when she had almost nothing, and even though your pap was always a-wasting money—"

"Never mind pap," I cut in, since I knowed enough about pap already. "Go on about my mother."

Tom he agreed, and concluded that my mam was an all-around wonderful person who always helped everybody, which I knowed sort of, but had maybe forgot, it had been so long. I reckon that the rest of St. Petersburg had forgotten it too, just because pap was so bad that he about erased anything good my family ever did. And me—well, a body can forget all about a body with time enough. Why it even took me a while just to get the picture of my mother in my head. Mostly I just remembered that she was angry at pap all the time, and he was angry at her, and that one time he hit her right in front of me and she cried but pap wouldn't let me come near her after she got hit. And I remembered I got caught in their fights sometimes, and sometimes mam would say 'Huckleberry agrees with me,' even when I hadn't a clue what they were fighting about. And pap would say 'Boy, if you go on agreeing with her you'll fetch yourself a mighty whipping,' and I'd run over to pap's side every time though I was scared of him so much.

I hadn't thought of pap and my mother in such a long time, because it's so easy to forget all those things that hurt you when you keep yourself busy and don't let yourself have no time to stop and think. Whatever thoughts had crept into my mind during all that time were poor ones, and bad ones, and ones that made me forget all about whatever good things my mam did when she was alive. I got to wondering what she'd think of me now, what with my smoking and swearing, but that made me feel right ashamed and like curling up and hiding and I warn't about to do that with Tom setting right there.

Tom had been talking and talking, but somewhere along I had stopped listening, and hadn't realized when he asked me a question. He had to ask it two or three times before I listened to him again.

"Didn't you never notice anything special about your ma, Huck? Don't you reckon that she could have been an angel?" Tom was asking for the fourth time. Well suddenly all this talk about my mam felt sour like when you eat something bad, and I didn't want to talk about her no more.

"She warn't no angel, Tom," I told him, cross. "If she had been, she would've flew away a long time ago, away from pap."

Tom reminded me real smartly that an angel in disguise didn't have no wings.

"Well then," I argued, "if she was an angel, she wouldn't have died."

"How do you know she didn't just disappear and go back to heaven where she come from?"

Well now I was starting again to reckon that Tom was making fun of me, and my mother too, and I couldn't stand for that. But after a second I knowed that Tom warn't making fun, he was just being thickheaded.

"Of course she's dead, Tom," I told him, impatient. "I was there when she got sick and I was there when she died and I was there when they buried her. She's dead, and she warn't never no angel, and by God, Tom Sawyer, I wish you wouldn't talk to me so."

Tom was surprised by my getting cross with him, and I could see from his face he never meant me no harm, but I didn't feel like apologizing so instead I just crawled a little ways to the end of my barrel and set there all stubborn with my back to him. A minute later Tom made it up to me by giving me a thimble out of his right trousers pocket. It was his Aunt Polly's thimble but he'd snitched it, it was so pretty. It was the loveliest thimble I ever did see, and had tiny vines all around it, and so of course I was all right with Tom after that.

"At any rate, Huck, I reckon your mam's an angel now, even if she warn't before," Tom said nice-like.

I shrugged, and said I didn't know, because Tom had told me before that a body couldn't get to heaven without having never read the Bible, and my mam she never learned how to read. Besides, what was a body supposed to believe, when there warn't never anyone dead coming back and telling us what it was like? Since the last time I saw mam was when she got put in the ground, I always figured she was sort of like some kind of pretty earthworm, swimming through all the dirt real graceful and pushing up flowers and grasses and sweet berry bushes everywhere. Tom laughed when I told him that, and he said I didn't know nothing. That made my face go hot—especially because I didn't think she was a worm anymore, it's just that it was what I thought when I was little and didn't know better. But he was right, I didn't know nothing, and maybe mam was an angel instead of a worm.

By and by Tom's Aunt Polly came into town for some shopping, but she saw Tom with me, and she yanked Tom away real quick and gave me a yelling (and Tom a hiding, he later told me, both for playing hooky and for talking to me). There ain't a single grownup in St. Petersburg who likes me, which is just as well because I don't like none of them either.

Well that night I got to thinking, which I usually didn't do because I just always went straight to sleep after smoking my pipe in the evening. I reckoned that my mother couldn't have been an angel when she was living, because if angels pretended to be human just to test how nice people were, why mam she would have struck pap down in a second because there warn't never one single bit of nice in him. And besides, who would ever believe it, that I was the son of an angel? Folks always called me a 'son of a devil,' which I reckon is closer to the truth.

But for a body who warn't an angel, she did all right, and suddenly I could begin to remember again that I had loved mam, and that she had loved me. I could remember when she would wrap a blanket around me at night and peck me on the head, and how she'd bathe me in the river and take me aside and cut my hair every now and then. My hair was always uncommon raggedy long, now, and I was always covered up in dirt 'cept for when I went swimming and some of it washed off. It was such a long time ago that mam died, it seemed to me—I'd growed so much since then I didn't hardly think mam would recognize me, if she saw me now. 'Why, you're so big, Huckleberry,' she'd say sometimes, and then other times she'd call me 'my little Huckleberry,' and then sometimes she'd call me 'Huckleberry pie,' which I hated so, especially because then she'd kiss me all wet and slobbery. And with so much remembering I came to realize that I missed mam, and I felt so dreadful alone all by myself.

It was so much easier to just lump my memories of mam in with my memories of pap, and think of both of them as ornery and mean, even if it was only pap who was, mostly. Maybe I didn't know nothing, like Tom always said, but I sure knowed that it was easier to hate a body than it was to love a body. I wondered if mam liked it, being an angel. I wondered if she followed me around all day, or if she was right here beside me in the sugar hogshead.

Well that didn't do me no good because it started me thinking about ghosts, and pretty soon I felt more lonesome than ever, and I wished I still had mam, though it made me feel babyish to wish so. And I cried a little, and worried that ghosts would come to spook me in the night, and so I crossed my heart three times to ward off the spirits. I promised myself that in the morning, I wouldn't think of mam or pap no more, and I would head off to do some fishing and maybe filch an apple or two and just be Huck again.

But maybe Tom Sawyer was right, and maybe my mother was an angel, because suddenly I felt right comfortable and just like my old self. And when a wind blew suddenly, why it blew one little feather right into my hogshead. I picked it up and looked at it, and sure enough, it was white. Everyone knows that when you find a white feather, it means someone dead is thinking of you.

I stuck that feather in my trousers pocket, and that night I slept all warm and cozy.