Starchy clothes very. You think youre a good deal of a big-bug, DONT you?
Maybe I am, maybe I aint, I says.
Dont you give me none o your lip[32], says he. Youve put on considerable many frills since I been away. Ill take you down a peg before I get done with you. Youre educated, too, they say can read and write. You think youre bettern your father, now, dont you, because he cant? ILL take it out of you. Who told you you might meddle with such hifalutn 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[33] about a thing that aint none of her business?
Nobody never told her.
Well, Ill learn her how to meddle. And looky here you drop that school, you hear? Ill learn people to bring up a boy to put on airs over his own father and let on to be bettern what HE is. You lemme catch you fooling around that school again, you hear? Your mother couldnt read, and she couldnt write, nuther, before she died. None of the family couldnt before THEY died. I cant; and here youre a-swelling yourself up like this. I aint the man to stand it you hear? Say, lemme hear you read.
I took up a book and begun something about General Washington[34] and the wars. When Id read about a half a minute, he fetched the book a whack with his hand and knocked it across the house. He says:
Its so. You can do it. I had my doubts when you told me. Now looky here; you stop that putting on frills. I wont have it. Ill lay for you, my smarty; and if I catch you about that school Ill tan you good. First you know youll get religion, too. I never see such a son.
He took up a little blue and yaller picture of some cows and a boy, and says:
Whats this?
Its something they give me for learning my lessons good. He tore it up, and says:
Ill give you something better Ill give you a cowhide[35].
He set there a-mumbling and a-growling a minute, and then he says:
AINT you a sweet-scented dandy, though? A bed; and bedclothes; and a lookn-glass; and a piece of carpet on the floor and your own father got to sleep with the hogs in the tanyard. I never see such a son. I bet Ill take some o these frills out o you before Im done with you. Why, there aint no end to your airs-they say youre rich. Hey? hows that?
They lie thats how.
Looky here mind how you talk to me; Im a-standing about all I can stand now so dont gimme no sass[36]. Ive been in town two days, and I haint heard nothing but about you bein rich. I heard about it away down the river, too. Thats why I come. You git me that money to-morrow I want it.
I haint got no money.
Its a lie. Judge Thatchers got it. You git it. I want it.
I haint got no money, I tell you. You ask Judge Thatcher; hell tell you the same.
All right. Ill ask him; and Ill make him pungle, too, or Ill know the reason why. Say, how much you got in your pocket? I want it.
I haint got only a dollar, and I want that to
It dont make no difference what you want it for you just shell it out.
He took it and bit it to see if it was good, and then he said he was going down town to get some whisky; said he hadnt had a drink all day. When he had got out on the shed he put his head in again, and cussed me for putting on frills and trying to be better than him; and when I reckoned 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 lay for me and lick me if I didnt drop that.
Next day he was drunk, and he went to Judge Thatchers and bullyragged him, and tried to make him give up the money; but he couldnt, and then he swore hed 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 be my guardian; but it was a new judge that had just come, and he didnt know the old man; so he said courts mustnt interfere and separate families if they could help it; said hed druther not take a child away from its father. So Judge Thatcher and the widow had to quit on the business.
That pleased the old man till he couldnt rest. He said hed cowhide me till I was black and blue if I didnt raise some money for him. I borrowed three dollars from Judge Thatcher, and pap took it and got drunk, and went a-blowing around and cussing and whooping and carrying on; and he kept it up all over town, with a tin pan, till most midnight; then they jailed him, and next day they had him before court, and jailed him again for a week. But he said HE was satisfied; said he was boss of his son, and hed 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 dinner and supper with the family, and was just old pie to him[37], so to speak. And after supper he talked to him about temperance and such things till the old man cried, and said hed been a fool, and fooled away his life; but now he was a-going to turn over a new leaf and be a man nobody wouldnt be ashamed of, 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 she cried again; pap said hed been a man that had always been misunderstood before, and the judge said he believed it. The old man said that what a man wanted that was down was sympathy, and the judge said it was so; so they cried again. And when it was bedtime the old man rose up and held out his hand, and says:
Look at it, gentlemen and ladies all; take a-hold of it; shake it. Theres a hand that was the hand of a hog; but it aint so no more; its the hand of a man thats started in on a new life, andll die before hell go back. You mark them words dont forget I said them. Its a clean hand now; shake it dont be afeard.
So they shook it, one after the other, all around, and cried. The judges wife she kissed it. Then the old man he signed a pledge made his mark. The judge said it was the holiest time on record, or something like that. Then they tucked the old man into a beautiful room, which was the spare room, and in the night some time he got powerful thirsty and clumb out on to the porch-roof and slid down a stanchion and traded his new coat for a jug of forty-rod[38], and clumb back again and had a good old time; and towards daylight he crawled out again, drunk as a fiddler[39], and rolled off the porch and broke his left arm in two places, and was most froze to death when somebody found him after sunup. And when they come to look at that spare room they had to take soundings before they could navigate it.
The judge he felt kind of sore. He said he reckoned a body could reform the old man with a shotgun, maybe, but he didnt know no other way.
Chapter VI
Well, pretty soon the old man was up and around again, and then he went for Judge Thatcher in the courts to make him give up that money, and he went for me, too, for not stopping school. He catched me a couple of times and thrashed me, but I went to school just the same, and dodged him or outrun him most of the time. I didnt want to go to school much before, but I reckoned Id go now to spite pap. That law trial was a slow business appeared like they warnt ever going to get started on it; so every now and then Id borrow two or three dollars off of the judge for him, to keep from getting a cowhiding. Every time he got money he got drunk; and every time he got drunk he raised Cain[40] around town; and every time he raised Cain he got jailed. He was just suited this kind of thing was right in his line[41].