AN: I was reading jlbrew23's story on League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, and I saw the movie again. I think the plot of the movie was rather bad, but I like all the characters because I've read all their original literature except for Quartermain. For those of you who have not seen the movie but want to read my writing, go to Wikipedia and read a quick synopsis. For my story, Quartermain does not die (his death was rather uncertain anyway), and he lives to see the end of the battle against M.
For my story, I am mainly focusing the first few chapters on Tom Sawyer (my first fictional love ever since I read the book at age 9) and Allen Quartermain. I plan to add other characters as I go along. Of course, the main problem with Tom is that he was supposed to live in the American South around 1830's, but the movie takes place in 1899, but Tom shows up anyway. So I'm writing this story to take place in 1899 like the movie which means that the Civil War has occurred and slavery had ended though the South is still dealing with racial problems as it did and would continue to do for the next hundred-odd years.
Some of the dialogue (especially Tom's) I'm writing phonetically – mainly dropping the end G's in words ending in –ing. Before anyone nails me for berating the South, I will say that I am Southern, live in the South, and love the South. I like the Southern, country dialogue and have studied linguistics in grad school so it interests me to think what British man Quartermain would think of the rural South. Besides, as I said, I love Tom Sawyer and Mark Twain used phonetic spelling heavily in his writing.
Enough about me, on to my story. I don't know how long this storyline will be, but I'm having fun writing Aunt Polly
Disclaimer: I do not own.
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If there was one thing Tom Sawyer dreaded at the end of their adventure, it was returning home to Aunt Polly. He had set her up rather nicely before going off – all the money from the buried treasure had come to him when he came of age. He had taken some of that money to put his aunt in a nicer house. His cousin Mary had married a nice fellow and moved up the Mississippi River a few towns; his half-brother Sid had gone to college so it was Aunt Polly all alone in the house.
After two years at the university, Tom had come back to the house – a clean two-stories building with four rooms downstairs and three upstairs, a palace as Aunt Polly had declared, but Tom had only stayed there a few weeks before leaving.
One humid evening after she had gone to bed, he wrote a note saying he would be back at some future date, and then he climbed out the window with a knapsack full of food and money and headed for the riverboat. Every so often he wrote to her to tell her he was all right, but he never left a forwarding address, mainly because he never knew where he would go next.
However, after the battle with M or the Fantom as they had called him, Allen Quartermain had started asking about his home life, and Tom found himself telling the older man about his childhood growing up in the South. And though Quartermain had listened attentively, even smiling when Tom told some of the foolish things he had done as a young boy, at the end of the tale, Quartermain announced it was time for Tom to return to his aunt.
Tom had protested, of course. He had declared that he had given her plenty of money, and he was his own man and he didn't see why he had to go back to his aunt.
But Quartermain was firm, telling him that it was not befitting a gentleman to worry elderly relatives, and before Tom could put up a good excuse about not being a gentleman, Quartermain had arranged that he would return with Tom to visit the American South for a while. The whole League was breaking up for a while anyway – Nemo agreed to take them to the bottom of Louisiana to catch the river boat, but then the captain planned to set out for the far reaches of the North, hoping to find the North Pole. Mr. Skinner wanted to travel to America was well, but he had a desire to see New England, and Dr. Jekyll volunteered to go with the invisible man and help cover for him. Mina Harker was mysterious about her plans, but she agreed to go to American at some later time. Quartermain thought that they were all good plans, and they all agreed to meet up in New York in five months.
That was all very well for Skinner, Jekyll, and Mina, Tom reflected as he stood on the river boat, because they did not have to go visit their crotchety aunt in the middle of the rural South where everyone was as smart as the cows they owned. Tom felt a twinge of guilt for thinking something so mean about his hometown, about the people who had watched him grow up, but Hannibal was such a small trite place after Tom had seen so much of the world. After London, Paris, Rome, Venice – streets paved with cobblestone and building stretching up to touch the sky – Hannibal would seem so miserable and small with its dirt lanes and houses patched together with loose logs and tar.
Tom leaned on the railing of the steam boat, watching the edge of river and the trees sliding by. Occasionally a cabin would show through the trees, but for the most part, Tom could only see the landscape of trees and underbrush.
A slap sounded behind Tom, and he turned to see Quartermain brushing off his face. "Damn mosquitoes," the older man grumbled. "And it's damp and hot here, like a steam bath."
"Welcome to the South," Tom muttered. "And we only take baths on Saturday night . . . if then."
"This may be a short visit for me," Quartermain said.
"I'm not staying any longer than you," Tom protested. "I don't know why I had to come in the first place. Aunt Polly is fine without me – I guarantee by tomorrow she'll be sayin' how much trouble I am and how she glad she is that her poor sister ain't alive to see me now."
Quartermain gave him a close, searching look, frowning slightly.
"What?" Tom shifted, wondering what he had done.
"The closer we get to this town of yours, the more your language changes," Quartermain observed. "In Europe when I met you, I knew you were from the South, but that was nothing compared to this dialect you've slipped into."
"I don't speak no dialect," Tom retorted. "I speak English."
"Not English English," Quartermain stood his ground. "I should dearly like to meet your schoolmaster who taught you to speak like you do."
"Ha," Tom scoffed, "the only thing I learned form that old miser was that a ruler hurt less than a bundle of hickories."
"Ah, the old kind of schoolmaster," Quartermain smiled, almost with nostalgia. "A firm believer in discipline."
"Yeah," Tom frowned as he remembered, "the kind who believed if you weren't in mischief, you were just plottin' it."
"Was that true for your case?" Quartermain lifted an eyebrow.
Tom smiled sheepishly. "Might have been. One time, at the very end of school, right before summer, we were givin' a reciting, all the students, you know, and I was up to do a bit. I couldn't remember a lick because we were busy riggin' a fishin' hook on a string that we dangled over the schoolmaster's head and yanked his wig off at the end. It was grand fun until come fall and he was crosser than a coon dog in a briar patch."
Quartermain shook his head – whether in disproval of the story or of Tom's way of talking, Tom was not sure. He knew he sounded like he was from the South; everyone told him that when he first left and went north, and he heard mutters of "country boy" and "backwoods bumpkin" for the first few months. Gradually, he had learned to imitate the way everyone else talked, but here on the steamboat with its great turning wheel, drawing him closer and closer to the place where he spend his carefree days of boyhood, Tom felt his language returning. It felt good to slow down his words, drawl out his sentences, and grin when Quartermain spoke to him in clipped British words.
"It's a small place Hannibal," Tom admitted, letting his upper body rest on the railing, stretching out the muscles between his shoulder blades. "Tiny, really. The biggest thing that happened would be the Sunday School Superintendent showin' up for church and everyone runnin' round to feel important. When me and Becky got lost in the caves and found the gold and Injun Joe died, the news was so big some of them cronies fainted and folks took the day off to bend their ear over the news though Huck said it weren't no surprise, me runnin' off to have an adventure without him. He was sore from the time when we went to our own funerals and nobody cared that he had died 'til I told Aunt Polly someone had to care and he rankled from it."
"Who are you, boy?" Quartermain demanded. "All these yarns about your childhood, and your accent is getting so bad I can barely make out a word you're saying."
"Just wait," Tom grinned. "I'll be runnin' barefoot along the river 'fore you can say 'Stuck pig in a barrel'."
Quartermain shook his head. He wandered how much of this he could take before he ordered the young man to return to his role of gunman Agent Sawyer and not the backwoods boy who let his suspenders hang loose around his knees. Tom had worn the suspenders that way on mission, but now down in the humid South, Quartermain frowned at the boy's sloppy way of dressing and holding himself, the way Tom leaned against everything rather than standing up straight.
"Better shape up, Sawyer," he said gruffly. "I can see the port ahead."
Tom squinted up the river, and even with the glare of the sun on the water, he could see the rough wood of the pier sticking out from the land. For one awful moment, Tom wanted to run. He wanted to jump over the railing and swim in the opposite direction. He even grasped the top of the railing and lifted himself up on his toes until he caught Quartermain's eyes.
"Just joshin' you," Tom laughed, but Quartermain gave him a look that said to behave.
Thirty minutes later they stood on the pier among with their luggage, a brass-bound trunk for Quartermain and a small leather suitcase for Tom. Quartermain was not surprised, seeing as how he thought Tom had almost worn the same clothes everyday. The League had reaped some money from the successful mission, but Tom had not spent money on anything besides a bag full of bullets in London and two pieces of hore-hound candy from the concession woman when they first boarded the steam boat. Quartermain had watched Tom lick the sticks of candy away and then insisted he go wash his hands though Tom had seemed perfectly willing to lick them clean as well.
"Which way to your aunt's –" Quartermain began when suddenly as woman cried out,
"Why, Tom Sawyer, I declare. Is that you? Can that be you, Tom?"
"Mrs. Fords," Tom smiled, but everyone had stopped and began approaching him.
Quartermain stepped back to let the people give Tom a proper greeting, and Tom got pulled towards the center of the small town as the townsfolk talked to him, shook his hand, and even kissed his cheek. He responded to the warm greeting, calling people by name and patting the heads of little children who swarmed around him to see what all the excitement was for.
But finally Tom pulled back long enough to ask, "Where's Aunt Polly?"
"Lord's sake," one woman declared, "your aunt thinks you're arrivin' tomorrow and she set herself up in her kitchen baking like the prophets themselves are comin' to visit. She'll be fit to tie when she knows you've come a day earlier and she ain't here to see you."
"Maybe I should wait," Tom said doubtfully.
"Ha!" a man with a shabby straw hat burst out a short laugh. "If your aunt knows you got here early and don't hightail it to her like a rifle shot, it'll be your grave we'll be prayin' over. Get yourself goin' and don't waste no more time, boy."
Tom grinned and grabbed his suitcase.
"None of that," another man called out. "We'll be bringin' your stuff and the gentleman's soon as we get a cart. Least we can do fer two such fine fellows. Where'd you say you were from, sir? England?"
"Yes," Quartermain replied. "I service Her Majesty along with the rest of Great Britain."
"Don't know what was so great about it," another man muttered. "Seein' as how we whipped yer hides a hundred years ago in the Revolution."
"That ain't polite," a woman, probably his wife, declared as she hit the man with the back of her hand. "He's a guest and if he wants to call his country great, he can do it."
Quartermain thought about explaining to the woman that Great Britain meant more than just England, but Tom was already making his way up the street.
Quartermain had been to small towns before, but he had to admit that Hannibal was rather less than what he had expected. Not a paved road in sight, children running around barefoot (even some of the girls), and many homes looking shabby and worn and in need of painting.
Tom turned onto a second street and went towards a two-story house that Quartermain had to confess was much smaller than he had expected. It was a squarish house, two windows in the front with a gabled half window peering through the roof, but the house could do with painting, a new roof, a new walkway, and new shutters for the windows.
Tom avoided the front door and began to walk along the side.
"Where are you going?" Quartermain asked.
"If I knocked on the front door, she'd think something terrible happened," Tom explained. "Front door's only for emergencies, and actually we've never opened it before so it might not even open. No one goes to the front door round here – folks would think yer puttin' on airs if you did."
"We're dealing with this new talk of yours soon," Quartermain warned, but Tom had already ducked under the string of the hanging wash lines and headed for the back door.
It was open, and Quartermain could smell fresh bread wafting out of the doorway. Tom paused by the door and knocked his knuckles against the wood loosely.
"Aunt Polly, I'm home."
Over Tom's shoulder, Quartermain could see a woman in her fifties or perhaps sixties with dark gray hair, bending over a table to stir a bowl of something. But she looked up at Tom's voice, and for a moment she just stared at the tall blond-haired young man.
"Tom?" she whispered. "Tom? Oh, Tom!"
She rushed towards him and flung her arms around her, reaching to draw him tight to her. She might have been laughing or crying, probably both, as she hugged him. Quartermain felt a twinge of pain – he blamed it on the long weeks of traveling that he was getting too old for rather than the touching scene between the aunt and the nephew.
"Aunt Polly," Tom's own voice was choked up as he hugged her back tightly.
She pulled back to look him in the face, and her bottom lip trembled. She embraced him one more time, sniffing loudly.
But when she drew back again, her eyes were flashing and the wrinkles of her mouth were fixed in a furious scowl.
"Thomas Sawyer!" the name rang through the kitchen. "Where have you been? You reckless, thoughtless, childish, foolish, wicked boy! Trying to worry me into an early grave. Wake up one morning, and you're gone with a scrap of a letter as the only assurance that you hadn't been killed. I've been sitting here, breaking my heart over you, and you're out flittin' free as a bird. If my poor sister could see you now – well, it be enough to kill her if she weren't already dead. Wretched boy!"
Aunt Polly grabbed a clean wooden spoon from the table and gave him a solid whack on the seat of his trousers.
"Aunt Polly!" Tom gestured frantically to Quartermain, trying not to rub. For an old lady breaking her heart over him, she had a lot of strength in her arm.
"And you're brought a gentleman into the house without informin' me or givin' me a chance to tidy up," Aunt Polly went on, pointing the spoon right under Tom's nose. Though he was several inches taller than she was, she seemed to tower over him as she lectured. "I have never been more ashamed of you and your thoughtlessness."
"But I saved the world," Tom protested. "I'm a hero."
"Making up games at your age is disgraceful," Aunt Polly did not pause for breath. "You know better, and I ain't about to let you off for leavin' the way you did. And you should be thankful you brought a gentleman to visit, or we'd be takin' a trip out to the woodshed and seein' if a skinned hickory don't lay some sense into you."
Tom flushed, but he did not dare look at Quartermain. He had known Aunt Polly would be upset, but Tom had hoped having his friend and mentor there would keep Aunt Polly from lighting into him.
"I declare, Tom," she put her hands on her hips, still holding the spoon, "if I didn't love you so much I'd have killed you long ago. What won't you put me through? The rest of 'em don't give me half the trouble you cause. Mary's gone and married a banker, Sid's in college and makin' me proud, but you – you're enough to kill a body just by bein' you!"
"I said I was sorry in the note," Tom objected weakly. "And wrote to tell you I was still breathin'."
"Those letters," Aunt Polly pointed to the clean side of the table where a handful of letters lay open, evidence of Tom's poor communication over the last few months.
"I am sorry," he tried to look as apologetic as possible, but Aunt Polly would not relent.
"And just look at you now – ragged clothes, still thin as a rail, hair too long, white as a sheet with yer cheeks all red. Almost on yer deathbed, not able to take care of yerself. Well, we'll just see about that."
She grabbed onto his ear and began to pull towards the table. For a moment, Tom made a motion to yank away, but then he followed her without protest, trying not to wince at her tight hold. Aunt Polly pushed him into a seat and let go of his ear.
"Move from this chair," she warned, gesturing with the spoon, "and I'll give you a tannin' like you'd never believe."
Aunt Polly smacked the table with the spoon for emphasis, but then she turned back to the doorway where Quartermain waited awkwardly.
"I beg yer pardon, sir, for makin' you see that little scene. I can't thank you enough for lookin' out fer the boy and bringin' him home safely to me. He's a right naughty one, he is, but he never means to be cruel."
"Believe me, madam," Quartermain took of his hat, "your nephew has shown incredible skills and courage in the face of adversity. We all owe him a debt of gratitude, myself included."
"See?" Tom pointed out.
"You be quiet while the gentlemen is talkin'!" Aunt Polly ordered. "I'm sorry, sir."
"Please, it's Allen Quartermain, at your service, Mrs. –?"
"Ah, just call me Miss Polly like everyone else," she told him, her cheeks slightly pink at Quartermain's manners. "And you must be starvin'. Tom telegraphed to say you would be comin' tomorrow – a telegraph for me, what excitement that caused. Four people done come to deliver it, marched right up to my door with it in hand. But here he brings you a day early, and I got no supper prepared at all. I'll pull you something together, but of course Tom don't ever think about these things."
"We got to the steamboat a day early. Did you want me to wait a day before comin'?" Tom asked, not moving from his seat.
"Don't you bother about that," Aunt Polly insisted. "And where are your things? Probably toppled overboard while you were dancing round the boat deck."
"Someone promised to deliver his bag in the cart," Quatermain explained. "I will have them take mine to a hotel. You do have a hotel here?"
"The idea," Aunt Polly shook her head. "I wouldn't dare let you say in the hotel. You may have our guest room – I had it laid out the moment Tom telegraphed that he was bringin' a guest. No, Mr. Quartermain, I wouldn't dream of lettin' you stay in the hotel – what would people say? Oh, there goes the milk cart. I'll be right back. The bread don't come out for another ten minutes. Tom, don't you move."
Aunt Polly rushed for the door, waving her spoon to get the attention of the horse-drawn milk cart.
"Charming lady," Quartermain smiled.
Tom snorted. "Worst than I could imagine. She'll be on me about everything. Don't dare tell her about the fightin' – she never liked guns and I never wrote about bein' an agent. She thinks I took off and travel 'cause I like to keep movin'. And don't say nothin' about Huck neither. She thinks he took off to California to dig for gold."
"This is going to be rather difficult," Quartermain frowned. "Your aunt might ask how we met and why I decided to accompany you back. How will you avoid telling her that you were a part of the League, that you fought about side a vampire, an invisible man, and a man that can turn into a monster?"
"I'll think of something," Tom promised. "Right now, I got to get through the next few days without her seeing how banged I am from the fight."
"The ship's doctor looked you over," Quartermain frowned. "Nemo said you had a clean bill of health."
"But if she sees the scars, I'm done," Tom lowered his voice to a whisper. "She'll have me up in my bed, bein' rubbed with that nasty liniment while she fusses over me. You see that apron?"
Tom pointed, and Quartermain turned to see the wooden knobs on the wall.
"There are three aprons hanging there," Quartermain protested. "And she's wearing one as well."
"She's wearin' her bakin' one," Tom explained. "The tan one is when she tends the garden, the brown one is for cleanin' house, and the white one is for sickness. If she puts on the white apron, it means I'll be on my way up-stairs for a scrubbin', medicine, and bed along with any other awful things she thinks up. She gets all these medical magazines that tell her how to help sick people. Torture sick people is more like it! So you watch – if she goes for the white apron, run and save yerself 'cause I'm done."
"You know," Quartermain observed as he straightened his collar, "for simple country folk, you are all rather complicated."
Tom sat nothing, just nodded in glum agreement.