When I took a candle and went up to my room that night there sat pap himself!
I had shut the door to. Then I turned around. and there he was. I used to be scared of him all the time, he hit me so much. I thought I was scared now, too; but in a minute I seen I was wrong -- that is, after the first surprise, as you may say, when my breathing kind of stopped, he being so not what I was thinking would be there; then right away after, I seen I wasn’t scared of him worth worrying about.
He was most fifty, and he looked it. His hair was long and messy and dirty, and was hanging down so you could see his eyes looking through like he was behind vines. It was all black, no grey; so was his long, confused beard. There weren’t no colour in his face, where his face showed; it was white; not like another man’s white, but a white to make a body sick, a white to make a body’s skin turn cold -- a tree-frog white, a fish-stomach white. As for his clothes -- just pieces of broken cloth, that was all. He had one ankle resting on the other knee; the shoe on that foot was broken open, and two of his toes were sticking through, and he worked them now and then. His hat was lying on the floor -- an old black hat with a concave top.
I stood a-looking at him; he sat there a-looking at me, with his chair leaning back a little. I put the candle down. I could see the window was up; so he had climbed in by the tool room. He kept a-looking me all over. By and by he says: "Straight clothes -- very. You think you’re the best part of a big head now, don’t you?"
"Maybe I am, maybe I ain’t," I says.
"Don’t you give me none of your lip," says he. "You’ve put on way too many airs since I been away. I’ll take you down a step or two before I get done with you. You’re educated, too, they say -- can read and write. You think you’re better than your father, now, don’t you, because he can’t? I’ll take it out of you. Who told you you might be part of such high minded foolishness, hey? -- who told you you could?"
"The widow. She told me."
"The widow, hey? -- and who told the widow she could put in her shovel about a thing that ain’t none of her business?"
"Nobody never told her."
"Well, I’ll learn her to mix things up. And you drop that school, you hear? I’ll learn people to bring up a boy to put on airs over his own father and let on to be better than what he is. Don't let me catch you going to that school again, you hear? Your mother couldn’t read, and she couldn’t write either, before she died. None of the family couldn’t before they died. I can’t; and here you’re a-lifting yourself up like this. I ain’t the man to stand it -- you hear?"
Then he says, "Say, let me hear you read."
I took up a book and started something about George Washington and the wars. When I’d read about half a minute, he give the book a hit and knocked it across the room. He says: "It’s so. You can do it. I didn’t believe it when you told me. Now look here; you stop that putting on airs. I won’t have it. I’ll be watching, and if I catch you at that school I’ll whip you good. First thing you know, you’ll get religion, too. Never seen such a son."
He took up a little blue and yellow picture of some cows and a boy, and says: "What’s this?"
"It’s something they give me for learning my school work."
After tearing it up, he says: "I’ll give you something -- I’ll turn your skin to leather.
He sat there making angry talk a minute, and then he says: "Ain’t you a sweet-smelling little girl? A bed; blankets; a mirror; and a rug on the floor -- and your own father got to sleep with the pigs in the leather yard. I never seen such a son. I’ll take some of these ways out of you before I’m done with you. Why, there ain’t no end to your airs -- they say you’re rich. How’s that?"
"They lie -- that’s how."
"Look here -- mind how you talk; I’ve taken about all I can. Don’t give me no back talk. I been in town two days, and ain’t heard nothing but about you being rich. I heard about it way down the river, too. It’s why I come. You get me that money tomorrow."
"I ain’t got no money."
"It’s a lie. Judge Thatcher’s got it."
"You get it. I want it."
"I ain’t got no money, I tell you. Ask Judge Thatcher; he’ll tell you the same."
"All right. I’ll ask him; and I’ll make him give out, too, or I’ll know the reason why. Say, how much you got in your pocket now?"
"I ain’t got only a dollar, and I want that to -- "
"Don’t make no difference what you want it for; give it over." He took a bite of it to see if it was good, then said he was going to town to get some whiskey; said he hadn’t had a drink all day. When he had got out on the tool room roof he put his head in again, and told me off for putting on airs and trying to be better than him. When I thought he was gone he come back and put his head in again, and told me to mind about that school, because he was going to be looking for me and whip me if I didn’t drop it.
Next day he was drunk, and he went to Judge Thatcher’s and argued with him, and tried to make him give up the money; but he couldn’t; then pap promised he’d make the law force him.
The judge and the widow went to law to get the court to take me away from him and let one of them take care of me; but it was a new judge that had just come, and he didn’t know my old man; so he said courts must not force their way in and separate families if they could help it; said it was best not to take a child away from its father. So Judge Thatcher and the widow had to quit on the business.
That pleased the old man until he couldn’t rest. He said he’d whip me until I was black and blue if I didn’t get some money for him. I asked for three dollars from Judge Thatcher, and pap took it and got drunk, and went a-blowing around and using bad words and shouting and carrying on; and he kept it up all over town, with a tin pan, until almost midnight; then they locked him up, and next day they had him before court, and put him away again for a week. But he said he was okay; said he was boss of his son, and he’d make it warm for him.
When he got out the new judge said he was a-going to make a man of him. So he took him to his own house, and dressed him up clean and nice, and had him to breakfast and lunch and dinner with the family, and was just old pie to him, so to speak. And after dinner he talked to him about not drinking and such things until the old man cried, and said he’d been foolish, and wasted his life; but now he was a-going to turn over a new leaf and be a man nobody would be embarrassed by, and he hoped the judge would help him and not look down on him. The judge said he could hug him for them words; so he cried, and his wife cried again; pap said he’d always been a man that no one had understood before, and the judge said he believed it. The old man said that a man that was down wanted trust and love, and the judge said it was so; so they cried again. And when it was time for bed pap got up and held out his hand, and says: "Look at it, everyone; take it, hold it, and shake it. There’s a hand that was the hand of a pig; but it ain’t so no more; it’s the hand of a man that’s started in on a new life, and will die before he’ll go back. You mark them words -- just remember I said them. It’s a clean hand now; shake it -- don’t be afraid."
So they shook it, one after the other, all around, and cried. The judge’s wife she kissed it. Then the old man he signed a promise -- made his mark. The judge said it was the holiest time in history, or something like that. Then they put the old man into a beautiful room, which was the extra room, and in the night some time he got powerful thirsty and climbed out onto the roof and down the side and sold his new coat for a bottle of whiskey, and climbed back again and had a good old time; and toward morning he climbed out again, drunk as could be, and fell off the roof and broke his left arm in two places, and was almost dead from the cold when someone found him after sun-up. And when they come to look at that extra room they had a devil of a job putting it all back together.
The judge he felt kind of angry. He said it seemed the only way a body could change the old man was with a gun.