The Adventures of Tom Sawyer연령 맞춤판

Tom Sawyer's Adventures Saturday was already gone by the time Tom stood there with a bucket of whitewash and a long, dripping brush. Aunt Polly's fence was thirty feet long and nine feet high, and it all had to be whitewashed by evening, she had said in that voice that left no room for argument.

It was a fence that could swallow many hours, and Tom felt as if it had already swallowed the whole day. He brushed a stripe of whitewash at the top, then another. The narrow, bright strip shone in the sun, and for a moment he felt clever. But all the bare, gray wood around it also shone, in its own sad way, and only discouraged him.

He sat down heavily on a wooden box and felt Saturday draining out of his body, like water through a sieve. The sounds of the town drifted in: laughter, a shout, a distant bark. All the other boys were out playing, while he sat here like a prisoner, tied to a broom.

Jim came out of the gate with a tin bucket and was on his way to the water pump. The children always gathered there, wrestling for fun, splashing, yelling, and mimicking the adults' chatter. The water pump was a whole world, and that world was two corners away.

Tom offered him a shiny marble if Jim would do some whitewashing for him instead. Aunt Polly had forbidden it, said Jim, glancing nervously back at the kitchen. But Tom had more tricks up his sleeve. He lured Jim by offering to show his sore toe, a big, swollen thing that looked truly dangerous and had made him think in bed that he might die from it.

Jim bent over curiously to look – and just then Aunt Polly flew out like a storm through the gate. Her skirt brushed the planks, her eyes flashed. Jim disappeared down the street like a shadow, and Tom got a smack on the rear and a stern look that said he was to work, not fool around. When adults looked like that, it was best to pretend you had always meant to do the right thing.

He worked. For a while. He looked at the fence as if it were a prison and he stood inside counting the days. Brushed paint, looked at the stripe, brushed more. He tried to cheer himself up by whistling, but the sound quickly died.

His thoughts grew darker and darker. Soon the boys would come by, free as birds, and make fun of him. He dug into his pockets and gathered all his worldly treasures – a broken clock that didn't work, a doorknob no door needed, four chipped marbles – but found he didn't own enough to buy a single hour of freedom, not a single stroke from a friendly soul. It stung.

Then the idea came. It rose slowly, so brilliant that Tom had to bite his cheek to keep from smiling. If only he could make the job seem rare. Something not everyone could do.

If he made it into art, no one would see it as drudgery. He took the brush again, shook it so the paint spread evenly, lifted his head, and painted slowly, carefully, as if it were a secret art form and not work. He squinted, let his hand hover in the air as if listening to something inside the paint.

Then Ben Rogers came dancing down the street, eating an apple and pretending to be the steamboat Big Missouri, with whistles and signals and all that belonged. He breathed heavily like a steam engine and steered between the cracks in the sidewalk. Tom didn't see him. Not at first.

He continued with the brush as if the outside world had vanished. Ben stopped and grinned, a boy who had just found someone worse off. "Up the stump, Tom?" He chewed his apple and shouted it like a ship's whistle. Tom looked seriously at the stripe he had just laid, took a small step back, lifted his chin, added a delicate touch here, one there. "Up the stump?" he said slowly, as if the word was new and a little surprising. "This suits Tom Sawyer." He had the voice of a painter who had just been honored to put the last stroke on a king's crown. Ben laughed. "Suits? You don't mean to say you like it?" Tom flinched, almost offended; frowned, as if Ben didn't understand the least of the great things in the world. "Like it? A boy doesn't get to whitewash a fence every day, Ben. It's something special." The words hung in the air and almost sparkled. Some words do, if someone believes them enough. Ben swallowed apple spittle. He looked at the fence, at the paint that lay smooth and fine, at Tom who lifted his head and regarded his own stroke as if appraising a diamond. Tom moved, looking at the work with his head cocked, correcting a detail in the corner. The silence between them thickened. Ben began to squirm. "Let me try a little," he said at last, as if it didn't matter, but it did. Tom hesitated. He pointed at the fence with a matter-of-fact seriousness he hadn't known he possessed. Aunt Polly was so particular. This side was right in front of the house – everyone saw it. It wasn't for just anyone. Only one boy in a thousand could do this right, maybe two in two thousand, if the sun stood right. Ben offered his apple core. Tom shook his head, almost sorrowfully, as if it were a pity to have to say no. Ben offered the whole apple. Tom let it hang in the air for a moment, like a fish on a hook, and then handed over the brush with a heavy expression, but inside he was dancing and singing without sound. He was free for a whole stroke. While Ben sweated in the sun, stood with his tongue behind his tooth, and worked like a grown-up, Tom dangled his legs on a barrel in the shade, chewing the apple and forging plans that got better with every bite.

More boys came to mock, but stayed to whitewash. For the chance to put on a single stroke, they paid with a kite, a dead rat on a string, a mouth harp piece, a tin soldier, two tadpoles, a brass doorknob, a one-eyed kitten – riches that made Tom's pockets jingle and bulge and made him stand a little taller. The fence got three coats, and suddenly stood there as if it had always been white.

When the lime ran out, Tom had nearly bankrupted the whole boy village and felt a warmth spread from his chest outward. He said to himself that he had discovered a great law, which only those who see and dare may perceive: work is what one is forced to do; play is what one is not forced to do. To be able to turn it around was almost like magic.

Aunt Polly was surprised when he called out that he was finished. She thought he had long run off after some adventure. "All?" "All," said Tom, standing straight as a soldier.

She went out to check, first with the expression of one expecting the worst. But she stood still. The fence was white, neat, even a little extra scattered on the ground where the drips had dried like small moons. "You can when you want to, Tom." She gave him a good apple from the pantry – the best one, the one at the back – and a little sermon about how sweets taste best after honest work. Tom nodded respectfully and attentively, as if he had never thought otherwise. And he grabbed a doughnut on his way out, casually and affectionately, as some boys do when the world is good. Freedom tasted sweet and crisp like a fresh doughnut.

He saw Sid leaving the back porch with his ever-clean collar and ever-clear conscience, and in an instant a shower of mud clods flew around his brother's ears. They splattered like small stars against the wood. Before anyone could raise a finger, Tom was over the fence and gone, light in body, at peace with his soul – the revenge for Sid's tattling about the black thread was taken. The thread could always be reattached. Pride was worse.

On the square, two "armies" of boys were drawn up, crooked caps and sticks as swords. Tom was general of one, his friend Joe Harper of the other. The two generals sat high on their barrels and gave orders through adjutants who ran like wild horses. The battle was long and glorious, with much shouting and inventive dying. Tom's army won, first a little, then a lot, and finally everything.

He walked home victorious with a bent sword (a stick with the bark peeled off), and passed the house of Jeff Thatcher. In the garden stood a new girl, as if the sun fell differently on her. Blue eyes, yellow hair in two braids, white dress, embroidered pantalets peeking out when she moved so you could see someone had taken the trouble. Suddenly everything in Tom changed, as when the wind turns without warning. Amy Lawrence, who had recently been his whole world, evaporated like a dream at sunrise. He showed off, hung on fence posts, stood on his hands, did all the strange boyish movements he knew, all that usually worked. The girl looked and looked away, and then again, as is proper when something is new. She tossed a little pansy over the fence as she walked away, a flower so light it barely hit the ground. Tom crept over, picked it up with his toes so as not to bend too much, hid it under his jacket near his heart, and dreamed his way home, slowly, like one carrying something that can barely be carried. The following Sunday he was deeply offended by injustice. Aunt Polly had thrashed him for a sugar bowl that Sid had broken. And Sid had stood there like an angel with praying hands. It burned inside Tom. He sat in a corner and pictured his own death with great pathos, as boys can, with details that sting a little in the stomach: Aunt Polly's tears, Sid's remorse that would never come, the town's quiet whispering about how good a boy Tom really had been, and what a pity no one had seen it before. When his cousin Mary came tripping home from the country, with clean hands and something calm in her walk, he went out darkly so as not to be seen. That evening he lay under the window of the unknown girl, crossed his arms like a hero in a book, folded his hands over his chest like one soon to be carried, and waited to die in the night air – and got a bucket of dirty wash water over him and broke a window in the commotion. That was how reality often met his dreams: with a bucket of cold water. He crept in later, went to bed without evening prayer, ashamed and bitter at once, and Sid noticed with his precise eyes. Mary helped him memorize Bible verses on Sunday morning.

She had patience like a little river; she just flowed and flowed until the words lay right. Tom chose the Sermon on the Mount because he hoped it was short. It wasn't. The words stood like tall trees. Mary promised him a Barlow knife if he stuck it out. It was dull and clumsy and cut poorly, but it said "Barlow" on it, and that was enough. Something can be enough just because the right word is on it. At Sunday school he traded for tickets of all colors – blue, red, yellow – using buckets of white tickets from the day before and all the tradecraft he owned. Ten blue made one red, ten red made one yellow, ten yellow made a Bible, and Bibles were only given to miracle children who had collected for years. The boys knew what was possible and not possible, but Tom carried new possibilities in his pockets. When Judge Thatcher and his family came to visit, the silence fell like a blanket. Some stars have a way of quieting the sound around them. The little girl in the party was her, the garden angel. Tom "showed off" with all his might, and every muscle was in it. If he could toss his hat just right, maybe she would see him. And maybe she smiled. Maybe. Then something happened that made Mr. Walters, the superintendent, stiffen with joy and suspicion at once: Tom Sawyer turned in nine yellow, nine red, and ten blue tickets. A Bible, please. Everyone whispered. Walters presented it with great emotion, as if he were a king granting land to a vassal, but felt an unease inside that he couldn't shake. Something was right – and something was wrong. Judge Thatcher, the town's great man that morning, placed his hand on Tom's head, gentle and heavy, and asked him to name the first two disciples. Tom twisted a button and didn't have a word. In such moments a boy shrinks to his smallest size. "David and Goliath!" burst out. A merciful veil fell over the rest. Some smiled in their beards, some clicked their tongues. Church began soon after. Tom sat with Aunt Polly, far from the summer window that beckoned with light. A hundred adults crowded in, the model boy Willie Mufferson leading his mother like a fragile porcelain statue, and the hymn Old Hundred lifted the beams when it was al

l over for the day – but not before a poodle had chewed Tom's pinchbug and turned the service into a brief, unforgettable chaos where some laughed during the hymn and some dared not breathe. Monday Tom hated, as all Mondays. He woke and felt the weight of the week in his whole body. He thought of illnesses and hoped for one with prolonged bed rest, one that made him pale in an interesting way, and that softened Aunt Polly's heart. He lifted a sore toe, groaned as loud as he could, woke Sid and yelled that his toe was mortified. Sid looked at him with his studying eyes and shushed him, as if one could shush pain. Aunt Polly saw right through him when he came with the toe. She had seen many boys in her house and even more girls' tears. He mentioned the tooth. She came with silk thread and a glowing coal, and her heart was as firm as her hands. She tied the thread around the tooth and the bedpost and thrust the coal toward his face. Tom jerked back – and the tooth hung and swayed like a bell that had just rung its fill. On the way to school he blew proudly through the new hole, a whistle that said: I have been through something. On the road he met Huckleberry Finn, the town's vagabond and everyone's envy. Huck came and went as he pleased, slept on doorsteps, never went to school or church, could swear masterfully and start spring in bare feet. He always carried with him a little of the night, even in full sunlight. Tom was forbidden to play with him, so they played when they could, in shadows and back alleys, where prohibitions become golden streets. Huck had a dead cat. It was supposed to cure warts. Tom thought spunk-water was better, but let himself be convinced that a dead cat at midnight, in the graveyard, when the devils come to carry away a villain, would surely work too. "Old Hoss Williams is being buried tonight," said Huck, "I'll meow-signal at eleven." The words meow-signal made Tom feel like part of a secret army. They traded Tom's newly pulled tooth for Huck's tick and parted. Tom came late to school. The teacher in the wicker chair asked why, and his voice was sleepy and dangerous. Tom saw two light braids in front of an empty seat on the girls' side,

and everything decided itself almost on its own. "I stopped to talk with Huckleberry Finn," he said. The teacher reddened with disbelief and the whole class drew a breath. Whipping, and seat next to Becky Thatcher. Thus one loses freedom and gains something entirely different. He drew on her slate – a lopsided house, a chimney smoke that coiled like a corkscrew, a stiff little lady with a fan. Becky looked, smiled, blushed, and Tom wrote I love you in tiny strokes and hid it with his hand. She begged and laughed, he let her read, and she hit him with her fingertips and was happy at the same time. Sometimes children don't need big words to understand what is going on between two hearts. Eventually the teacher caught him by the ear in the midst of happiness, and the class laughed as they always did when it was safe to laugh. Tom still floated on air. In the sleepiest hour, he let a tick walk on his desk. Joe Harper and he divided the tick into fair halves using a chalk line – whoever got the tick onto his side without touching it owned it until the next exchange. It was a game with rules, and the rules were half the fun. Time passed, their pulse slowed, and they forgot the world around them.

A heavy slap on both backs announced that the teacher had seen everything. Some slaps settle into the skin, some into pride. These did both.

At recess, Tom and Becky borrowed the school for themselves. They chewed the same piece of gum in turn, the little luxury reminding them of circuses and cotton candy, and talked about the future as if it were a garden where they could walk paths. They got engaged according to Tom's recipe: say you will never have anyone else, and then kiss. Becky promised, Tom promised.

The world stood still for a moment. Then it slipped out, as it does for someone who has had many plans: "Amy Lawrence and I…" Becky's eyes filled with tears faster than he could take back his words. "I'm not the first!" She stormed off, and her shoes hit the floor like little spikes in his heart.

Tom walked away proudly so as not to seem small, but the pride was thin as paper. When the pride was empty, he was just lonely. Later he dug for a hidden marble, tried an old spell to get all the lost ones back. It didn't work, and his faith hung and dangled like a loose tooth, but he blamed witches and threw another marble after it with "Brother, find thy brother." Then two marbles lay together, and the world was again just orderly enough to endure.

He met Joe Harper in the woods. They played Robin Hood as the book commanded. Joe shot Tom with an arrow, Tom died gloriously – long, with sighs and last words – until he lied himself straight up out of a nettle and swore more real than heroic. Such are some heroes when an ant crawls up their knees. At night Tom sneaked out and meowed under Huck Finn's window. Together they went to the graveyard – a raised hill with leaning fences and sun-faded boards over sunken graves. The grass was blacker there than elsewhere. The wind whispered in the trees like old voices that had much on their hearts but couldn't say it right. They were at a fresh mound when a lantern and three shadows came through the darkness. "Devils," breathed Huck. Tom held his breath until his chest ached. But it was Muff Potter, the ragged drunkard, the deaf-mute Spaniard who had been around town – and a young doctor: Robinson. They began to dig up the coffin, the iron scraping the earth with a sound that made their spines ice. They argued. The doctor knocked Muff to the ground with a grave board. The "deaf-mute" – Injun Joe – rose silently, took Potter's knife, crept like a cat and thrust it into the doctor's chest. The doctor fell without a sound, like a tent without pegs. Injun Joe put the knife in Potter's right hand. Potter woke up, confused, sobbed and believed he was the murderer. He begged Joe to keep quiet, and Joe nodded gravely, like a friend in mourning. The boys ran until their legs could barely carry them, with their hearts in their throats and the world turned upside down. In the shadow of the old tannery, they cut small drops of blood from their thumbs, pressed them onto a piece of birch bark and wrote in blood: "Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn swear to keep silent, and may they fall dead if they break the oath." The words trembled, not just from the blood, but from all they had seen. They buried it behind the wall. A dog howled outside and cut into their hearts. They peered out: the dog stood with its snout toward Muff Potter, who snored in the grass, a tired man with no evil thoughts in his sleep. "Oh, dear – it's him!" they whispered. Now everything was in motion, but their mouth

s were locked. That lock felt heavy like the gate to a fortress.

Early next day Potter was arrested. The bloody knife was found beside him. Injun Joe stood by the corpse and told his lie coldly about the fight and how Potter had stabbed. Potter believed him. The whole town believed him, because Joe spoke calmly, and there is something about calm that resembles truth.

Tom and Huck said not a word, but their nights were full of knife flashes and brown faces with eyes without mercy. Sid said at breakfast that Tom talked in his sleep and screamed "It's blood!" Aunt Polly told him to stop frightening her, but she kept her hand on her chest long after. Tom tied a scarf around his jaw and pretended to have a toothache for a whole week to avoid questions. He became a little shadow, even in daylight.

Something did a little good: Tom sneaked to the jail window and gave Muff Potter tobacco, matches, and small items. Potter cried until his beard trembled. "You're kinder than all the ones I helped before," he said, and his voice was like a moldy cellar full of remorse. "I deserve punishment, I must have done something awful when I was drunk, but you – you must never get drunk, boys." Tom walked away with a lump in his throat heavy as lead, and it stayed there like an extra throat all day.

Becky was absent from school for a week, sick. Tom lost interest in everything – war, pirates, everything that used to bubble in him. Aunt Polly tried new cures: ice-cold water, hot baths, mustard plasters, and finally a "painkiller" that burned like fire in liquid form and smelled like something a cat wouldn't cross. Tom pretended to love the medicine. He asked for it all the time and poured the rest into a crack in the floor, with a sly ear to how the sound was when the drops disappeared. One day he fed the cat Peter with it. The cat hit the ceiling in two leaps, raced around as if hell were burning, danced on its hind legs, stood with its back arched like a bow and claws like little swords, and flew out the window along with the flowerpots.

Aunt Polly understood what had happened, because one understands much when one sees both cat and boy. "Why torment the cat?" "Out of pity. He didn't have an aunt." She had to laugh and wiped her eyes with her apron. The medicine disappeared for good, and the house breathed a sigh of relief.

One day while he stood at the school gate, Becky returned. Everything in him jumped and clamored to be seen, and he threw a boy's hat onto the roof out of sheer eagerness. Becky turned away and called him someone who always had to "show off." She stressed the words as only a few can, and Tom stiffened, grew cold, and decided to become a criminal.

Something big. Something no one could overlook. He recruited Joe Harper and Huck Finn with looks that said more than words. They met at the riverbank at midnight, whispered the password "Blood!" and pushed a raft from the shore.

The moon floated like silver in the river. Tom was the Black Avenger of the Spanish Main, Huck Red-Handed, Joe Terror of the Seas. They drifted into the night toward Jackson's Island. The fire they stole from a timber raft lit their faces red and made them older. They fried bacon and fish, swam naked in the river, rolled in warm sand, smoked pipes and turned green in the face and infinitely brave, as only boys can be when no adults are watching. Freedom! No school, no soap, no itchy collars. Nothing at all, except a faint wind and soft sounds. When they heard a cannon shot far away on the river, they stopped and looked at each other with mouths slightly open. The ferry shot across the water. Loaves of bread with quicksilver were towed along the current, creaking in the ropes. "Someone's drowned," said Huck, calmly and with a sting that made his voice thin. Tom realized it in the same moment as joy made a leap: "It's us!" Their hearts swelled at the thought of mothers, aunts, and the whole town mourning, of black clothes and words like "they were good boys deep down." It is a strange thing to be missing: it makes you warm, even in the shade. In the evening Tom sneaked home with a piece of bark in his pocket. He slipped under Aunt Polly's bed and heard her sobbing over him together with Mrs. Harper. The two women remembered how good the boys really were, behind all the pranks. They remembered small hands that carried in wood, and looks that said "sorry" without words. Tom lay still as a mouse and swallowed hard. He crept out when the house slept, laid the bark by the candle – and took it back after an idea he didn't want to lose: the three of them would appear in the middle of their own funeral. It would be a memory that wouldn't go away even if one grew old. On the island a storm fell like a wall of water and noise. The sail they used as a tent tore loose and flew like a ghost. The boys ran between lightning and sharp thunderclaps, and found shelter under a large oak. Lightning split the tree they stood by in two, but not before they had left it. The air sang afterward. When the storm was over, they lit their fire again under the big log, with wet fingers and per

severance. They sat wet, as happy as heroes who had passed a test, and ate more bacon and fish and talked about everything they had experienced as if they had been gone for years.

Homesickness came like a soft hand and pressed a little on their chests, but Tom pulled out his secret like a magician pulling a handkerchief from his sleeve. They would go home – to their own funeral. Brand new heroes. No one could take that from them.

The town's bell tolled solemnly when Sunday came. The church was full of black dresses, dried eyes, and deep sighs. The preacher spoke about the three boys – how good they really had been, what he had never quite noticed before, and his voice grew warm in the right places. Tears flowed.

Then the gallery door creaked. One, two, three boys came marching down the aisle, muddy and disheveled, with faces trying to be humble but failing because the smile couldn't be silenced. The aunts and mothers threw themselves upon them. Some said they would never hear Old Hundred sung so true again, for now the tones carried both sorrow and laughter at once. Tom received caresses, scoldings, and hugs all day, and everything was good in the same second and a little painful in the next, as homecomings often are.

The next morning he told Aunt Polly that he had "dreamed" about the visit that night and repeated word for word what she and Mrs. Harper had said.

She clung to him, her fingers tight in his shirt, and Sid tried to say something pouty and moral, but was silenced. Tom kissed his aunt, a little awkwardly and a little nicely, and slipped out. She stood for a while with his old pirate jacket in her hands, moved and scared, searched the pocket and found the piece of bark.

She cried and smiled at the same time. She could forgive a boy a million sins for something like that, and maybe one more for the rest of the day. Tom became a hero. He walked with a swagger and smoked a pipe in broad daylight, while smaller boys flocked around him trying to puff out smoke like men. Becky watched him turn his back on her with a calm he didn't feel. He chatted with Amy Lawrence until she turned red with joy and Becky's eyes grew bright. Becky called out about a grand picnic she was going to hold, and invited everyone – except Tom and Amy, and her words landed like little stones on the sidewalk. Tom flirted harder with Amy, but when he saw Becky sitting with Alfred Temple and a picture book, jealousy choked him like a collar too tight. He drifted back to burn his eyes on the sight, because it is better to know exactly how much it hurts. Finally he ran home. He couldn't bear being big and small in the same body anymore. Later Alfred poured ink into Tom's spelling book for revenge. Becky saw it, but decided to keep quiet – Tom deserved a whipping for not meeting her eyes when she tried to make peace in the hallway. Nothing is as hard as the little justice we hand out to those we love. Aunt Polly confronted Tom about not having "dreamed," but actually having been home that night. Tom said he had wanted to write a note, but then they talked about the funeral and he couldn't spoil such a great plan. "Did you kiss me that night?" she asked, and her face softened. "Yes." They were reconciled in the heart, as one is when truth and tenderness finally find the same place. At school, fate made itself ready. Principal Dobbins had a locked book in his desk – a thick anatomy with colored plates. All the children wanted to see it, because no one was allowed.

One day the key was in the lock, as if the book itself had breathed and opened a door a crack. Becky looked around, opened it, flipped through, and there – a large, colored naked picture that burned like a shame without words. Her shadow fell over the page just as Tom came in. Becky pulled the book toward her and tore the page right across in fright. The paper snapped like a whip. She burst into tears with her hands over her face.

"You're going to tell!" Tom's mouth tightened, but his eyes were soft. He thought about how it would all happen: The principal would stand heavily and ask, "Who?" No one would answer. He would ask one by one, and when he got to Becky he would see it. She would be whipped for the first time, and he knew how that felt.

School went on. Alfred's ink was discovered. The principal pressed Tom hard with questions and looks and breaths, and Tom denied it and took a beating for "principle." It stung and pricked, but inside Tom something grew that was bigger than skin.

Then Dobbins fell asleep in his chair, woke with a start, unlocked the desk, and pulled out the book. He flipped through – and stopped with the kind of silence that always follows lightning. "Who did this?" He went from face to face.

Becky turned almost transparent. Then Tom jumped up. "I did it!" he said loud enough for his heart to hear. He took the whipping silently, with teeth biting into his lip. Becky looked at him with a look that was all gratitude and awe and something new that might be something else.

In the evening she whispered, "How could you be so noble!" in his ear, and Tom slept with the words as a lullaby and as a ring around his chest. Exams came. The girls read out compositions with big words and mournful subjects, full of morals at the end. People clapped because they are kind and because they forget how much it hurts to write for the teacher. The teacher drew a map of America on the board with a trembling hand. There were states that floated a little, but that didn't matter. Then his wig was pulled off by a cat that the boys lowered on a string from the loft hatch. The wig revealed a gleaming bald head that the sign painter's boy had gilded one night, and the light from the windows caught it and made it worse. The meeting broke up, laughter rang out, and vacation came with a sudden change like the taste of cold water on a hot day. Muff Potter's trial began. Tom hung around outside the courthouse with one eye on the door and the rest on the ground, as if he could read the future in the dust. The evidence piled heavily on the unfortunate man, and the silence in the room pressed into everyone's ears. Injun Joe pointed with a stone face toward Potter and repeated his story. It was smooth as something he had practiced. When Potter sank, Tom's courage rose. On the third day the defense lawyer called "Thomas Sawyer." The whole courtroom gasped. Tom felt his knees, but they carried him. With a trembling voice he told about the night in the graveyard. When he came to the blow and the stabbing, Injun Joe sprang toward the window, pushed aside those in his way, and vanished like a shadow finding a crack. Muff Potter was acquitted and pressed Tom to his heart, and it was like being held by one who was afraid to fall. Tom appeared in the newspaper as a hero, but at night Injun Joe stood in all his dreams. When the window creaked, it became a knife. When the moon moved, it became a face. Summer lay lazy and sticky, with flies and slow afternoons. Tom was in the temperance movement for a while to wear a fancy sash at Judge Frazer's funeral, but the judge stayed just alive too long. When he finally died, Tom marched proudly in the procession – then he quit and los

t the desire to swear and drink, because there was no longer a sash to win. A measles struck him down for three weeks, and when he came out, the "revival" was over. His friends were back in their old tracks, and the world preferred to be as it was. He met Huck. Digging for treasures sounded better than anything, because there is always a place underground where a secret rests. They started under a dead tree at midnight, where the shadow fell right and the air stood still. The treasure would hear them coming, said Huck, and Tom said quiet words he had learned from a boy who had read a book about pirates. Saying the right words in the dark can make a child braver. They found nothing. The next day they chose the haunted house. They whispered through the doorway, checked the first floor, dared to go up the stairs. It creaked as if it were alive and trying to scare them into changing their minds. They lay on their stomachs and peered through knot holes in the floor down into the living room. Two men came in. One was ragged. The other with green glasses, white chin whiskers and a serape, the one who pretended to be a deaf-mute Spaniard in town. He spoke. They gasped without making a sound: Injun Joe. Something about the way he held his face was enough. He fell asleep, woke up, ate, looked for a place to hide silver coins. They lifted a hearthstone and found a bag that clinked with a cheerful sound that didn't match the dark room. Then his knife struck wood. A rotten chest. "Man, that's gold!" said his partner, and his voice became low and rough. They laughed low, lifted, rattled. Something about the dirt on the pick and spade made Injun Joe suspicious. "Someone's been digging here recently. We won't take the chance. We'll take it all to Number Two, under the cross." They were about to leave. Joe tried the stairs. They almost gave way, like everything old and tired. He swore and decided they should go right away. Tom and Huck waited until they were gone, sneaked out and trembled like leaves in a wind that wasn't there. Number Two. Where? A room number at an inn, said Tom, with the voice he used when plans grew inside him like bread. He found out that the "Two" at the f

ine hotel was occupied by a young lawyer, but at the smaller one, number two was always locked, with light in there at night. That must be it. When something shines at the wrong time, it shines with meaning. They made a plan. Tom took keys from home, a whole bunch of metal hopes, Huck stood watch with a tin lantern hidden in a sugar barrel. The night was as black as tar, and the sound of the river was thick and slow. Tom crept into the back alley of the tavern, on toes that were barely there. Huck stood alone with his heart hammering in his throat and his eyes jumping between bushes. Time bent and became long as an eternity, as it does when something is about to happen and won't. Suddenly he saw a faint flicker, and Tom rushed past like a bird that had almost been shot. "Run!" he shouted, "run for your life!" They ran to an abandoned slaughterhouse. The storm broke at the same time, and the sky was suddenly full of water and light. Their breath stood in white, frightened clouds in front of them when they stopped. Tom told that the door hadn't been locked. Inside on the floor, by a bottle and a tin mug, Injun Joe had been lying asleep, his hands like two snares. Tom had almost stepped on his hand. "One bottle isn't enough to get him safely drunk," said Tom, "we have to wait until he goes out and then steal the chest."

It was easy to say there in the slaughterhouse, harder to do in the real night. Huck slept in the hayloft at Ben Rogers' during the day and kept watch every night. He slept little, ate poorly, was alone in the dark with feelings bigger than he had words for. He knew that some adult words existed, like courage and duty, but they were still a little too big for his mouth. Still, he carried them.

While Tom went on the picnic at Judge Thatcher's with Becky and friends, and wagons rolled and girls laughed, Huck waited at the tavern. Tom promised to come if Huck needed him, and some promises shine a little in a boy's heart. But the evening grew black and heavy, and when the back door of the tavern slid open cautiously, Huck let Tom sleep. Two men slipped out carrying a box. Huck slid after them like a cat, barefoot on the sumac path, every shadow an enemy and friend.

They passed the Welshman's house on Cardiff Hill and on to a gate. "We'll wait until the light goes out," whispered one – Injun Joe. The other wanted to give up, because he was less evil, or maybe just more scared.

Joe began to talk about revenge, not the money. The widow Douglas's husband had humiliated him, let him be whipped like a prisoner, and now he wanted to "work on her looks." Cut off her nose, slit her ears. "If I have to kill you for helping, I'll kill her too." The words were like knives in the dark. Huck felt them find their way through the bushes to him. Huck trembled, but he ran. He ran with his whole body and everything he had learned from being free.

He knocked at the Welshman's house. "Tell me everything, and no one will know it was you," said the old man with a look as sharp as flint and kind as a chair in the kitchen. Soon the Welshman and his sons crept up the path with weapons.

They sneezed too loudly and scared the villains. Shots, shouts, then silence. The men vanished into the woods and away into the darkness that swallows everything.

The sheriff was woken and guards were set along the river. At dawn the widow Douglas came to thank the Welshman, who did not reveal Huck's name.

Some adults know how to keep the most important things. The same Sunday a cry went up in church. Judge Thatcher's wife didn't have Becky at home. Aunt Polly looked around for Tom with such a shadow on her face that even Sid fell silent.

No one knew if he had been on the ferry. It was whispered in panic, and some said the two had been left in the cave. The light in the church suddenly grew whiter, as when one becomes frightened.

Tom and Becky had gone deep into the darkness with the others, written their names in smoke soot on the walls and laughed, before the game of hide-and-seek had separated them as a game often does, suddenly and without malice. They had found a small stone Niagara that had built a magnificent staircase of limestone. It looked like something a queen might walk down.

They climbed, and the hunters in them awoke. They set small smoke crosses to remember the way back, like crumbs in a fairy-tale forest. Bats knocked out Becky's candle in big clouds; they fled into a passage and laughed a little too loudly. They laughed for a while, pointed at stalactites that glittered like white bones and ice balls, found an underground lake, sat down and listened. The silence was so deep it pressed on the eardrums and made the voice small if one tried it.

"I don't hear the others," said Becky. "We're just a little further down," said Tom, trying to sound brave, but inside he no longer knew the way. He blew out one candle to save it, with a calm he didn't fully own.

They wandered, set marks, called out – and heard the echoes laugh back without warmth. Hunger came. Tom had a leftover cake slice from the picnic, which was shared in an instant. They drank water from a small spring, cold as shadow.

When the flame of the last candle stood upright and died, the darkness was complete, and it was like standing with eyes closed and arms tied. They slept, woke, cried, strengthened each other with empty words that become full when someone says them with your hand in theirs, walked and waited.

Sound became an enemy and a friend, for everything you cannot see becomes larger. Someone called far away, so far it was barely a voice. Tom pulled Becky after him toward the sound, but a deep chasm stopped them like a new sea. The calls faded, as if someone had closed a door.

Becky sat in black apathy and said she would stay there to die, and her voice was so calm that Tom turned icy. He forced himself to hold her hand and be calm, because when one is afraid, the other needs calm more than anything.

When she slept, he tied the end of a kite string to a rock and crawled. He let his body become eyes. A bend that turned, a little breeze on his cheek, like a finger from the world outside, then – a speck, like light. He pushed through an opening as small as a keyhole. The Mississippi. Daylight that almost hurt. He pulled himself back to Becky, talked his way through her disbelief, and before it grew completely dark outside again, he got her out. Hands became knees, knees became hands. A boat came by like salvation in a song. People took them on board and gave them food and rest, and drove them home in triumph, and the town breathed out so deeply it was almost audible. The week after, Judge Thatcher ordered the great cave door to be covered with iron and locked with three strong locks, so no more children would be lost in that labyrinth. Old men nodded. Mothers slept a little better. When Tom happened to hear about it, he turned white in an instant. "Injun Joe is in there," he gasped, and soon a whole crowd of men went to open it. Inside the vestibule, at the stone jump of the door, lay the half-breed man stiff with his face turned toward the narrow strip of freedom outside. Beside him lay the bowie knife, the blade broken on the stone. The great door sill was notched by hours of fruitless work. He had sought out candles stuck in the cracks and eaten them. He had caught bats and eaten them, only the claws remained like narrow signs. He had broken off the top of a small stalagmite, hollowed a stone and set it under a stalactite, to catch one drop every three minutes – a tablespoon of water in a day. That same drop had been falling since before the Romans, the men said, and still falls today. Tourists stand still before it and look at the drip and think of the man who waited, but they also think of how quietly the world goes its way when no one rules over it. The whole district came to the funeral.

Some said it was almost as good as a hanging. Especially those who had just signed a petition to pardon him. Of such there are many in the world. People often like to see others get what they deserve, and forget how quickly opinions can turn.

The next morning Tom took Huck aside. Injun Joe was dead, but one thing had not been told to everyone: the treasure. "It's in the cave," said Tom, and it was as if someone opened a treasure map inside Huck. Huck's eyes lit up. "Under the cross."

They borrowed a small skiff, rowed miles down the river and landed at a particular thicket where Tom had sneaked out last. The water gurgled as if laughing at them, but was friendly. They pushed in through the bushes and the opening, tied several kite strings into a longer line, and walked, cautious as foxes.

At a steep clay bank, Tom held up the candle: On the bedrock, a black cross was carved. "He would never come near a cross," said Tom, trying to reassure Huck, who was more afraid of the dead man's spirit than of stone and darkness. Fear of God and fear of ghosts are not the same, but they resemble each other in a child's body.

They climbed down, tried once, twice, thrice. Tom saw wax on the stone, finger marks of tallow. He dug, found planks. Under them a crack that went further, like a mouth that hadn't finished speaking. They squeezed in, and there, hidden, stood a chest and a powder keg and two old guns.

The boys thrust their hands in. Gold. Coins that were cold and heavy and worn. Silver that glittered without sun. Almost too much to see at once.

They filled two small sacks so full they could barely lift them, but lifted them anyway, together, with a look that said: we share. "Now we're rich," said Huck, solemnly as an adult who had just bought land. "We are rich," said Tom, and in the same moment thought of a robber gang he would start – proper, with real rules, midnight, and all that goes with it.

Riches taste extra good when they can be part of a plan. They stuffed the sacks in the woodshed loft of the widow Douglas, because some secrets must stay sheltered a while. The Welshman took them to dinner at the widow's house. Huck wanted to flee – for he didn't know table manners, and fine clothes made him stiff and small – but Tom held him back with promises and looks.

It was a party for the Welshman and his sons. Sid, as always, had tattled everything and more, for it was in him to bring order to the world with words. In the middle of the speech of thanks, when the Welshman told how an unknown runner had saved the widow's face that night, Tom jumped up. He couldn't sit still with a secret that would make a friend great.

"Huck doesn't need a reward. He is rich." People laughed, looked at each other, thought of cats and boys. Tom disappeared, came back with the sacks, and poured the gold onto the table so it clinked against the wood and everyone stood up. "Half to Huck, half to me."

It took a good while to count over twelve thousand dollars. Each coin had come a long way to lie there that evening. Now the town went from funeral ale to gold fever. Every "haunted house" was turned over by well-dressed gentlemen with blue-black fingernails and sounds they didn't usually make.

Tom and Huck were admired as if they had invented money. Aunt Polly put Tom's money out at six per cent with Judge Thatcher, the widow Douglas did the same with Huck's. The boys had a dollar a day and half a dollar on Sundays, more than any preacher could hope to see in his hand in a week. Money rolls differently in a boy's pocket. Judge Thatcher also heard how Tom had taken the punishment for Becky. He called it a lie that walked shoulder to shoulder with George Washington's honesty. Not everyone thought that way, but the judge did, and some grown-ups' warmth reaches far. Huck tried living with the widow. He was washed, dressed, put in clean sheets that smelled of sun and soap, woken at the same hour every morning, sent to school and church, bound by napkins, knife and fork. Half the words he had to use sat like stones in his mouth. He missed wind on his face and freedom in his feet. After three weeks it was enough. He ran away to an old barrel behind the slaughterhouse. There he lay, smoking a pipe and eating stolen leftovers from a back door, breathing like someone who had traveled all the way home. No one told him when to go to bed. No one asked him to fold his hands. The silence was a friend. Tom found him, as he finds what he wants. "Come back. The widow will die of grief." "I don't fit," said Huck quietly, and his gaze slid away as gazes do when the thought has gone ahead. "Sunday-school shoes flay me alive. Being rich is not what they say. It's just worries and wanting to be dead." He said it without wanting to be dramatic; he said it because it was true for him just then. Tom saw the chance, and when Tom sees a chance, he uses it like a ladder. "There's something you'll miss if you aren't respectable," he said. "You can't be in my gang. We're going to be robbers. Real ones. With initiation at midnight, blood on a coffin, an oath that stings and words no one outside gets to hear. We'll carry off prisoners and live on ransoms. We'll have passwords and secret signs. No snitching. Ever."

Huck sat for a while. The world felt too big, but just right for a dream. "I'll stay," he said. "I'll stay with the widow for a month, two if needed – as long as it takes to become a robber. And when I'm a robber, she'll be proud she saved me."

His words tasted a little better in his mouth than the previous ones. It was as if he found a bridge between two lives.

Thus ends this long story of a boy who fought and lied and saved and loved, and who almost always meant well, even when he showed off. Tom learned that play can become work if someone forces you to do it, and that work can become play if you just make it rare and do it your way. He saw that a small boy can stand in the way of an evil man, with words alone, and that friendship can endure a blood oath and tales not all adults get to hear. He learned how dark a cave can be – and how great the daylight in a speck can become for someone who needs it most. He learned that love can make you foolish and brave at the same time, that shame can sting and yet teach you to stand up, that it is possible to be proud and good in one and the same heart, even if it is hard.

And tonight, when the moon hangs over the Mississippi and crickets sing in the grass, maybe three boys whisper the password "Blood!" under the oak by the field and dream of crossed swords, secret caves, and a gang that never betrays one another. Most dreams grow up by being shared. Some become stories that last. This is one of them.