Rediscovering Huck

“Now, we’ll start this band of robbers and call it Tom Sawyer’s Gang. Everybody that wants to join has got to take an oath and write his name in blood.” From “Our Gang’s Dark Oath”, Chapter 2 in The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain

Recently, I picked off my book shelf The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn and, after a 30-some-year hiatus, began to read it again. I had to read it my junior year of high school and our teacher, Mrs. Rafoth, seemed to have skipped or disregarded the author’s warning that appears immediately prior to Page 1 warning that “persons attempting to find a motive in this narrative will be prosecuted; persons attempting to find a moral in it will be banished; persons attempting to find a plot in it will be shot.” Mrs. Rafoth must have figured that was Twain’s way of being witty. Honestly, she ruined that book for me for many years by forcing my classmates and me to look for plots and subplots and motives and morals within the narrative, the very thing Clemmons seemed death on. I have a memory of lamenting aloud in her class one afternoon after she summoned us to look for yet another theme in the book, “Do you really think Mark Twain was thinking of all this stuff when he wrote the thing?” I might have been a 16-year-old, but as it turns out I wasn’t too far off the mark. As far as Twain was concerned, he was more Finn’s amanuensis than author or so he believed.

In any case, 32 years later I’m reading Huckleberry again but this time simply for the fun of it. I have no term paper to turn in, I care not if I find a theme or a motive or a plot. The book is more episodic than I remember it and given my penchant for read-alouds at Roselawn Elementary, I’ve found some new material for next year. You could read just a chapter from it and appreciate the taste even if you never got farther than Cairo (Illinois.) In fact, this past weekend while we were camping in the Green Bay area, I found myself chuckling aloud while reading about the forming of Tom Sawyer’s gang. Linda and Ed were sitting by the fire so I got out of the camper and went and sat by them and asked if I could read a portion of Chapter 2 to them. For the next 15 minutes or so, we sat around the fire enjoying the company of a good book and laughing aloud at the antics of a bunch of country boys who might have lived in pre-Civil War Missouri.

In the middle of the night, Tom Sawyer, forever the ring leader, summons his companions to a secret cave to form a gang of cutthroats. There is a dire oath that each must swear on pain of death as well as the death of their nearest kin should they leave the gang. And here’s where they reach their first impasse because unlike his fellow conspirators, Huck has no family to take revenge on.

            They talked it over and they was going to rule me out, because they said every

            boy must have a family or somebody to kill, or else it wouldn’t be fair and square

            for the others. Well, nobody could think of anything to do – everybody was

            stumped, and set still. I was most ready to cry, but all at once I thought of a way

            and so I offered them Miss Watson – they could kill her. Everybody said:

           “Oh, she’ll do. That’s all right. Huck can come in.” Then they all stuck a pin in their

            fingers to get blood to sign with, and I made my mark on the paper.

I’ve read that passage now three times in the last few days and it still makes me laugh. But the rest of the chapter is just delightfully good reading as Tom, Huck and the Gang work out just what kind of gang they’re going to be. According to Tom, their line of business was going to be “nothing only robbery and murder.” But unlike stealing cattle and robbing houses (“We ain’t burglars. That ain’t no sort of style,” says Tom), they will be highwaymen. “We stop stages and carriages on the road, with masks on, and kill the people and take their watches and money.” But while Tom is of the opinion that killing those you hold up is best, allowances can be made for those you keep until they are ransomed. The only problem is nobody quite seems to know what that involves. All that matters to Tom is that whatever they do should be done “by the books.”

Sitting by the fire, reading to my wife and son, I discovered, perhaps for the first time, the joy of Huckleberry Finn. Sure, there are plots and witticisms and themes that run through the story but if you stop too long to look for them, it’s like Huck’s raft getting caught up on a snag. The current is pushing you down river and your raft is straining to get loose.

At the close of the chapter, they reach yet another obstacle in the forming of their gang: just when were they going to start their murdering and thieving ways?

            …[Tom] said we would all go home and meet next week and rob somebody and

            kill some people. Ben Rogers said he couldn’t get out much, only Sundays,

            and so he wanted to begin next Sunday, but all the boys said it would be

            wicked to do it on Sunday and that settled the thing. They agreed to get

            together and fix a day as soon as they could…

I don’t know if Twain is commenting on the foolishness of those who talk about doing great deeds but never do anything or just letting us eavesdrop on boys at make believe. Perhaps it is both. But I don’t have to turn in anything to Mrs. Rafoth any time soon so if they’re there, well and good. I laughed out loud in Chapter 3 (“We Ambuscade the A-rabs”) when the gang lay in wait for what Tom has told them will be a large troupe of “Spanish merchants and rich A-rabs” coming to Cave Hollow with “two hundred elephants and six hundred camels” all loaded down with “di’monds.”

              …when we got the word we rushed out of the woods and down the hill. But there

              warn’t no Spaniards and A-rabs and there warn’t no camels nor no elephants.

              it warn’t anything but a Sunday-school picnic, and only a primer class at that.

             We busted it up and chased the children up the hollow, but we never got anything

              but some doughnuts and jam, though Ben Rogers got a rag doll and Joe Harper

             got a hymn book and a tract, and then the teacher charged in and made us drop

             everything and cut. I didn’t see no di’monds, and I told Tom Sawyer so.

Somehow, I’d forgotten these episodes from Huck’s story. It’s good to read them again. Better to read them aloud in the company of people you love and who love you. And I can’t wait until this fall when I’ll be reading again at Roselawn to share a chapter or two from this book with kids who really need to hear this stuff before an English teacher comes along and sours the milk way before they’ve even developed a taste for it.