When I got there it was all quiet and Sunday-like, and hot and sunny; the workers was gone to the fields; and there was them kind of soft sounds of flies in the air that makes it seem so empty and like everybody’s dead and gone; and if a little wind shakes the leaves it makes you feel sad, because you feel like it’s spirits whispering -- spirits that’s been dead ever so many years -- and you always think they’re talking about you. As a general thing it makes a body wish he was dead, too, and done with it all.
Phelps’s was one of those little one-horse cotton farms, and they all look the same. A timber fence around a yard; steps over the fence made out of vertical logs in the ground, like barrels of different lengths, to climb over the fence with; some places in the big yard with a little sick grass growing in it, but mostly just smooth dirt, like an old hat with the soft part rubbed off; big log house for the white people -- with the holes stopped up with mud that had been white-washed some time or another; log kitchen, with a big wide, roofed footpath joining it to the house; log smoke-house back of the kitchen; three little log servant cabins in a line t’other side of the smoke-house; one little room all by itself away down against the back fence, and some other buildings down a piece the other side; box for ashes and a big kettle to make soap by the little room; bench by the kitchen door, with a bucket of water; dog asleep there in the sun; more dogs asleep around about; about three trees away off in a corner; some berry bushes in one place by the fence; outside of the fence a garden and a field of watermelons; then the cotton fields starts, and after the fields the trees.
I went around and climbed over the steps by the box of ashes, and started for the kitchen. When I got a little ways I heard the quiet sound of a spinning-wheel going up and then coming down again; and then I knowed for sure I wished I was dead -- for that IS the saddest sound in the whole world.
I went right along, not fixing up any special plan, but just trusting to God to put the right words in my mouth when the time come; for I’d learned that He always did put the right words in my mouth if I left it alone.
When I got half-way, first one dog and then another got up and went for me, and so I stopped and faced them, and didn’t move. And such a lot of noise they made! In a few seconds I was kind of the middle of a wheel, as you may say, with a circle of fifteen dogs pointing at me in the centre, with their necks and noses reaching up toward me, making all kinds of noise; and more a-coming; you could see them sailing over fences and around corners from everywhere.
A black woman come running out of the kitchen with a stick in her hand, singing out, "Stop that you Tiger! you Spot! get out of here!" and she hit first one and then another of them with the stick and sent them running off crying, and then the others followed; and the next second half of them come back, shaking their tails around me, and making friends with me. There ain’t no bad in a dog, no way.
And behind the woman comes a little black girl and two little black boys without anything on but shirts, and they was hanging onto their mother’s dress, and looked out from behind her at me, shy, the way they always do. And here comes the white woman running from the house, about forty-five or fifty years old, with a stick in her hand too; and behind her comes her little white children, acting the same way the little black ones did. She was smiling all over so she could hardly stand -- and says: "It’s you, at last! -- ain’t it?"
I out with a "Yes ma'am" before I thought.
She took me and hugged me tight; and then held me by both hands and shook and shook; and the tears come in her eyes, and run down over; and she couldn’t seem to hug and shake enough, and kept saying, "You don’t look as much like your mother as I thought you would; but I’m not worried about that, I’m so glad to see you! My, my, it does seem like I could eat you up! Children, it’s your cousin Tom! -- tell him hello."
But they dropped their heads, and put their fingers in their mouths, and went behind her. So she run on: "Lize, hurry up and get him a hot breakfast right away -- or did you get your breakfast on the boat?"
I said I had got it on the boat. So then she started for the house,leading me by the hand, and the children coming after. When we got there she sat me down in a chair, and sat herself down on a little box in front of me, holding both of my hands, and says:
"Now I can have a good look at you; and, my, my, I’ve been hungry for it many a time, all these long years, and it’s come at last! We been thinking you would be here for two days and more. What kept you? -- boat go to ground?"
"Yes ma'am -- she -- "
"Don’t say ma'am; say Aunt Sally. Where’d she go to ground?"
I didn’t really know what to say, because I didn’t know if the boat would be coming up the river or down. But I go a good lot on feelings; and my feeling said she would be coming up -- from down toward New Orleans. But that didn’t help me much, because I didn’t know the names of the sand bars down that way. I needed to make up a name, or forget the name, or -- Now I knew what to do and I did it:
"It weren’t the grounding -- that didn’t keep us back but a little. We blowed up a motor."
"Good Lord! Anyone hurt?"
"No ma'am. Killed a slave."
"Well, it’s lucky; because sometimes people do get hurt when that happens. Two years ago last Christmas your Uncle Silas was coming up from New Orleans on the old Lally Rook, and she blowed up a motor and crippled a man. And I think he died later. He was a Baptist. Your uncle’s been up to the town every day to meet you. And he’s gone again, not more than an hour ago; he’ll be back any minute now. You must a met him on the road, didn’t you? -- older man, with a -- "
"No, I didn’t see nobody, Aunt Sally. The boat landed just as the sun was coming up. I left my bags there and went looking around town and out a piece in the country, to put in the time and not get here too soon; and so I come down the back way."
"Who’d you give the bags to?"
"Nobody."
"Why, child, it’ll be robbed!"
"Not where I put it, I think it won’t," I says.
"How’d you get your breakfast so early on the boat?"
It was kind of thin ice, but I says: "The driver seen me standing around, and told me I better have something to eat before I landed; so he took me in to where he and the others eat, and give me all I wanted."
I was getting so worried I couldn’t listen well. I was thinking about the children; I wanted to get them to one side and pump them a little, and find out who I was. But I couldn’t get no show, Mrs. Phelps kept it up and run on so. She made my blood run cold, when she says: "But here we’re a-running on this way, and you ain’t told me a word about my sister, or any of them. Now I’ll rest my mouth a little, and you start up yours; just tell me everything -- tell me all about ‘em all, every one of ‘em; and how they are, and what they’re doing, and what they told you to tell me; every last thing you can think of."
Well, I see I was up a tree – and up it good. God had stood by me this far all right, but I was hard and tight trapped now. I see it weren’t no use to try to go ahead -- I’d got to throw up my hand. So I says to myself, here’s another place where I got to tell the truth. I opened my mouth to start; but she took hold of me and pulled me in behind the bed, and says: "Here he comes! pull your head down lower -- there, that’ll do; you can’t be seen now. Don’t you let on you’re here. I’ll play a joke on him. Children, don’t you say a word."
I see I was in a trap now. But it weren’t no good to worry; there weren’t nothing to do but just try and be ready to stand from under when the lightning hit.
I had just one little look of the old man when he come in; then the bed was between me and him. Mrs. Phelps she jumps for him, and says:
"Has he come?"
"No," says her husband.
"My, my!" she says. "What on earth has become of him?"
"I can’t think," says the old man; "and I must say it makes me very worried."
"Worried?" she says; "I’m ready to go crazy! He must a come; and you’ve missed him. I know it’s so -- something tells me."
"Why, Sally, I couldn’t of missed him along the road – you know that."
"But oh, my, my, what will my sister say! He must a come! You must a missed him. He -- "
"Oh, don’t trouble me any more than I’m already troubled. I don’t know what in the world to make of it. I’m at the end of what I can do, and the truth is I’m right down scared. But there’s no hope that he’s come; for he couldn’t come and me miss him. Sally, it’s awful -- just awful -- something’s happened to the boat, sure!"
"Why, Silas! Look there, up the road! Ain’t that someone?"
He jumped to the window at the head of the bed, and that give Mrs. Phelps what she wanted. She leaned down quickly at the foot of the bed and give me a pull, and out I come; and when he turned back from the window there she stood, smiling like a house on fire, and me standing shy and scared beside her. The old man looked, and says: "Why, who’s that?"
"Who do you think it is?"
"I ain’t never seen him. Who is it?"
"It’s Tom Sawyer!"
I almost fell through the floor! But there weren’t no time to change knives; the old man took me by the hand and shook, and kept on shaking; and all the time how the woman did dance around and laugh and cry; and then how they both did fire off questions about Sid, and Mary, and the rest of the family.
But if they was happy, it weren’t nothing to what I was; for it was like being born again, I was so glad to find out who I was. Well, they stayed at it for two hours; and at last, when my mouth was so tired it couldn’t hardly go any more, I had told them more about my family -- I mean the Sawyer family -- than ever happened to any six Sawyer families. And I told all about how we blowed a motor up at the mouth of White River, and it took us three days to fix it. Which was all right, and worked well; because they didn’t know but what it would take three days to fix it. If I’d a said a screw fell off it would a done just as well.
Now I was feeling pretty comfortable all down one side, and pretty much the opposite all up the other. Being Tom Sawyer was easy and comfortable, and it stayed easy and comfortable until by and by I hear a river-boat coughing along down the river. Then I says to myself, what if Tom Sawyer come down on that boat? And what if he steps in here any minute, and sings out my name before I can throw him a wink to keep quiet?
Well, I couldn’t have it that way; it wouldn’t do at all. I must go up the road and stop him. So I told them I would go up to the town and bring down my bags. The old man was for going along with me, but I said no, I could drive the horse myself, and I didn’t want him to take no trouble about me.