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Mitch Miller, a novel by Edgar Lee Masters |
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Chapter 10 |
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_ CHAPTER X The next day as I was helpin' Myrtle bury her doll, Mitch came by and whistled. I had made a coffin out of a cigar box, and put glass in for a window to look through at the doll's face, and we had just got the grave filled. I went out to the front gate and there was Charley King and George Heigold with Mitch. They were big boys about fourteen and knew a lot of things we didn't. They hunted with real guns and roasted chickens they hooked over in Fillmore's woods. They carried slings and knucks and used to go around with grown men, sometimes Joe Pink. I didn't like to have Mitch friends with these boys. It hurt me; and I was afraid of something, and they were not very friendly to me for some reason. But a few times I went to Charley King's to stay all night. His mother was a strange woman. She petted Charley like the mother did in the "Fourth Reader" whose boy was hanged because he had no raisin' and was given his own way about everything. Mrs. King used to look at me and say I had pretty eyes and take me on her lap and stroke my head. She was a queer woman, and Charley's father was off somewhere, Chandlerville, or somewhere, and they said they didn't live together. My ma stopped me goin' to Mrs. King's, and so as Charley ran with George Heigold, that's probably why I didn't like Mitch to be with them, as I wasn't very friendly any more with Charley on account of this. These two boys went off somewhere and left us when we got to the square. And then I took Mitch to see something. The tables was now turned. I did most of the talkin'--though Mitch was more interestin' than me, and that's why he says more than I do in this book. We went to that corner where we was the day before, and I says to Mitch: "Look at this house partly in the street, and look at the street how it jogs. Well, Linkern did that. You see he surveyed this whole town of Petersburg. But as to this, this is how it happened. You see it was after the Black Hawk War in 1836, and when Linkern came here to survey, he found that Jemima Elmore, which was a widow of Linkern's friend in the war, had a piece of land, and had built a house on it and was livin' here with her children. And Linkern saw if the street run straight north and south, a part of her house would be in the street. So to save Jemima's house, he set his compass to make the line run a little furder south. And so this is how the line got skewed and leaves this strip kind of irregular, clear through the town, north and south. This is what I call makin' a mistake that is all right, bein' good and bad at the same time." And Mitch says: "A man that will do that is my kind. And yet pa used to say that freein' the slaves was not the thing; and maybe Linkern skewed the line there and left a strip clear across the country that will always be irregular and bad." "Anyway," said Mitch, "do you know what I think? I think there ain't two boys in the world that live in as good a town as this. What's Tom Sawyer's town? Nothin' without Tom Sawyer--no great men but Tom Sawyer, and he ain't a man yet. There ain't anybody in his book that can't be matched by some one in this town--but there's no one in his book to equal Linkern, and this is Linkern's town. And I've been thinkin' about it." I says: "There you have it, Mitch. It's true. We're the luckiest boys in the world to live here where Linkern lived, and to hear about him from people who knew him, to see this here house where he made a mistake, though doin' his best, to hear about them books, and to walk over the ground where he lived at Salem, and more than that, to have all this as familiar to us as Nigger Dick or Joe Pink." "It's too familiar," said Mitch. "My pa says we won't appreciate it or understand it all for years to come." So I went on tellin' Mitch how my grandpa hired Linkern once in a lawsuit; then we went to the court house, for I wanted to show Mitch some things I knew about. The court house was a square brick building with a hall running through it, and my pa's office, the coroner's office, the treasurer's office on each side of the hall. And there was a big yard around the court house, with watermelon rinds scattered over the grass; and a fence around the yard and a hitch rack where the farmers tied their teams. And at one side there was a separate building where the clerks of the courts had their offices. I knew all the lay of the land. So I took Mitch into the clerk's office and showed him papers which Linkern had written and signed. At first he wouldn't believe it. So while we was lookin' at them papers, John Armstrong came in to pay his taxes or somethin' and he knew me because him and my pa had played together as boys. He was a brother of Duff which Linkern had defended for murder, and I tried to get him to tell Mitch and me about the trial, but he didn't have time, and he said: "The next time you come to your grandpap's, come over to see me. I live about 7 miles from your grandpap. And I'll tell you and play the fiddle for you." "When can we come?" says Mitch. "Any time," says John. "To-morrow," says Mitch. "Wal, to-morrow I'm goin' to Havaner--But you just get your grandpap to drive you and Mitch over some day, and we'll have a grand visit." So he went away. Then as we was comin' out of the clerk's office, Sheriff Rutledge stepped up and read a subpoena to Mitch and me to appear before the Grand Jury in August, about Doc Lyon. "We won't be here," says Mitch. "Why not?" says the sheriff. "Where'll you be?" This stumped Mitch--he didn't want to say. The sheriff walked away and Mitch says: "Now I see what we have to do. We must clean up that Peter Lukins' cellar right off and get off to Hannibal to see Tom. One thing will happen after another if we let it, and we'll never get away, and never see Tom. I wish this here Doc Lyon was in Halifax." Says I, "Who wanted to talk to him in the jail, you or me?" "Why, I did," said Mitch. "Well, then, you made the tangle, Mitch, and we'll have to stick. For it's a jail offense to run away from a subpoena, my pa says so, and we are witnesses, and will have to stick." "Well, then," says Mitch, "if we do, and the whole month of August goes by, and school commences before we get off, we'll throw the school and go anyway. My mind is made up. Dern it, I never dreamed of gettin' tangled in the law for a little thing like seein' Doc Lyon in jail. It's awful. Look here, you go to your pa and get me off and get off yourself." I knew I couldn't do that, that pa wouldn't do it, and I said so. And Mitch looked terribly worried. And he said, "Let's go out to Salem and finish up Peter Lukins'--right now." The air seemed to sing with the heat, and it was awful hot down in that place among the weeds. We worked like beavers getting the weeds away so we could pick into the stones and the dirt. My, it was hard work. And we hadn't been there more'n an hour when I heard some one cryin' and hollerin'. We looked over the edge of the cellar and here came Heine Missman's brother, wringin' his hands and cryin', and actin' like he was crazy. "Heine's drowned," he cried, "Heine's drowned." We climbed out of the cellar as quick as we could and ran down to the mill, for John, Heine's brother, said that Heine had stepped into the mill race. "Is the mill runnin'?" said Mitch. "No," said John. "Because if it is," said Mitch, "he's all ground up by now in the wheels." But the mill hadn't run that day, so if we could get Heine out, we could save him maybe. John couldn't swim, nor Heine. And John said that Heine had stepped into the race, thinkin' he could wade over to the dam, and he went down and down, and then didn't come up any more. John had tried to catch him by the hair, but couldn't. We were good divers, both Mitch and me, and finally I dived and got a hold of his shirt and brought him up. But he was all swelled, and blue in the face, and was dead. He'd been in about an hour before we got him. [Illustration: I Brought Heine Up] Just then the miller came up and saw what had happened. He went and got his wagon and put Heine's body in it, and we all drove into town; and finally to Heine's house, where his mother fainted and cried so you could hear her all over town. Then Mitch and me started for home. Mitch was awful solemn and said, "That might have been you or me, Skeet. What does it mean, anyway? Here's Heine just growin' up, just been around this town with us boys a few years, and now he's drowned and gone for good. Why, I can remember when he wore short dresses, and now it's all over, and it looks like life is just nuthin'." Then, after a bit, he said, "I have a presentiment." "What's that?" I asked. "Why, it's when you know somethin' is goin' to happen." "Do you mean somethin' 's goin' to happen, to you or me, Mitch?" "Well, nothin' like drownin' or dyin'," said Mitch. "I don't get it that way. But I just feel we'll never dig any more at Old Salem." "But we ain't finished there," says I. "That may be," he says, "but to-morrow is Sunday, and I've always noticed that the next week after Sunday ain't the same." We got to my gate now, and Mitch hardly said "good-by"--just went on lookin' down at the ground. I watched him till he got up the hill and up to Tom White's, then I turned in. _ |
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