(MUSIC. FIDDLE AND PIANO)
GK: Well, Jim. If it isn't my old Jim. Dog my cats, Jim, it's good to see you. I sure do appreciate your coming.
JEJ: Hello, Huck.
GK: I heard you was coming into town and I left word at the hotel --- my, don't you look fine. That is some suit, Jim.
JEJ: You like this suit, Huck?
GK: Dadblame it, if that ain't the finest looking suit I ever saw. Why that's a suit good enough, a man could get married or buried in it, either one. You get that suit in Paris?
JEJ: That's right.
GK: So that's true, all what they said, that after we reached New Orleans, you sailed for Marseilles, France, on a freighter, as a deckhand and went to live in France, in Paris and Lyon and Nice and all over.
JEJ: That's all true, Huck.
GK: Ain't that somethin. Well. I left word at the hotel to let you know that ole Huck was nearby and they said, "Well, how will he ever know where to find you, Mr. Finn?" And I said, "Oh don't worry, old Jim knows where I am. Jim always knew where I was. You can't fool ole Jim."
JEJ: I figured you'd be on an island, downriver from town --- in a cabin in the woods. Someplace near a swamp. Someplace where, if anyone came looking for you, you could run off and hide.
GK: I guess you got me read like a book, Jim.
JEJ: I got tired of hiding, Huck. All I ever did on our trip was hide. I'm done with hiding now. When people come looking for me, they find me, big as life. No secrets, no lies.
GK: Well, I can see that. A body don't get a suit like that by hiding in among the cypresses, I reckon I know that.
JEJ: I have to tell you I'm not particularly nostalgic about our trip down the river, Huck. So --- if that's why you wanted to see me --- so we could sit down and swap stories about the raft and the moonlight and the collision with the steamboat and the Duke and the Dauphin and all --- I'm sorry. It wasn't my favorite time. Runaway slave isn't anything a person would do for fun.
GK: Well, that's fine, Jim, whatever you say, you know best ---
JEJ: I did read your book though.
GK: Oh? You did?
JEJ: I didn't care that much for it, to tell you the truth.
GK: Well, you know that weren't my book, Jim. Sure, it had my name on it, but it was written by Mr. Mark Twain.
JEJ: The hell it was.
GK: Well, it was so, Jim, everybody knows Mark Twain wrote that book.
JEJ: How could he write it? He wasn't there. He didn't see those things.
GK: Well, I told him a good many of them basically. He just filled in the details. He got a lot of it wrong, I grant you, and of course he stretched some to make it sell, but ---
JEJ: You invented Mark Twain, Huck. You invented him so you could hide behind him and say those lies about me.
GK: What lies, Jim?
JEJ: Lots of lies, Huck. Look here. Page 53.
GK: Oh, you brought a copy with you ---
JEJ: Listen to this. You're quoting me here. This is me talking. "Ole Missus, she pecks on me all de time, en treats me pooty rough, but she awluz said she wouldn' sell me down to Orleans. But I noticed dey wuz a nigger trader roun' de place considable, lately, en I begin to git oneasy. Well, one night I creeps to de do', pooty late, en de do' warn't quite shet, en I hear Ole Missus tell de widder she gwyne to sell me down to Orleans, but she didn' want to, but she could git eight hund'd dollars for me, en it uz sich a big stack o' money, she couldn' resis'. I lit out mighty quick, I tell you."
GK: Well, I remember that passage, yes, I do, Jim ---
JEJ: Huck, I didn't talk like that.
GK: Well, I'm sorry if I got that wrong, Jim....
JEJ: Huck, I may have been a slave, but I was very particular about grammar and enunciation. "I begin to git oneasy" --- I didn't talk like that, Huck.
GK: Well, I do apologize....
JEJ: I counted them, Huck ---- you've got me saying "gwyne" about two hundred-thirty-eight times in that book.
GK: I never stopped to add them up....
JEJ: I didn't say "gwyne," Huck.
GK: Well, if I can I'll go back and change it, Jim. I'll make it right.
JEJ: You got one thing right, though.
GK: What's that, Jim?
JEJ: You almost turned me in that one time.
GK: That's right, I did. I'm ashamed to say it, but I did.
JEJ: I was left on the raft and you took the canoe to town and as you left, I told you that you were my only friend in the world, and you paddled away and I hid in the wigwam and I heard some men call out to you. They were in a skiff, and they said they were looking for runaway slaves. They said, "Do you have any men on that raft yonder?" And I said, "Yes. I've got one." And they said, "Is he white or is he black?"
GK: I remember that.
JEJ: It took you awhile to come up with an answer, Huck.
GK: I said, "He's white."
JEJ: Yes, but there was a long pause before you decided to lie and protect me.
GK: Well, I never claimed to be a saint, Jim. I am what I am.
JEJ: Apparently so. I imagine you earned quite a bit from that book.
GK: No, not really. Mark Twain got almost all the money and he lost it on that typesetting machine. That's the honest truth, Jim. This is all I got. Cabin and a few chairs and a bed an a air conditioner. That's all. But tell me about you --- you got to France and what happened?
JEJ: I went into the theater.
GK: No! Just like the Duke and the Dauphin.
JEJ: The Dauphin was the one who got me thinking about France - you remember how they came running down to the river with a posse chasing them and we took the two of them aboard the raft?
GK: Right, and after awhile the young one started in weeping about his hard life and how he had fallen from a high position, and he allowed he was the Duke of Bridgewater, and then the old one started weeping and he said life had been hard on him, too, that he was the exiled Dauphin, the rightful heir to the throne of France ----- couple of humbugs and rapscallions ---
JEJ: You remember, I asked the Dauphin to speak some French so I could hear what it sounded like?
GK: Yes, and he said he couldn't remember any, he'd been away so long and he'd suffered so much --- I remember that, Jim.
JEJ: Anyway, from New Orleans I went to Paris and I went into the theater. Slavery is good training for a life in the theater, Huck. I went into the theater, and I started in to learn French. Learning a language is basically like picking cotton, except that you get to keep the cotton. And when I had French, I became an actor. I astonished them. I was black and I had an ear for Moliere and Racine and I was excellent! Especially playing royalty. I played kings and dukes.
GK: You played kings and dukes!
JEJ: I became wealthy playing kings and dukes. I did Shakespeare too. Lear, Othello, Richard the Second, Henry the Fourth....
GK: Just like the Duke and the Dauphin on the raft....
JEJ: Yes, but I'm better than they were. Much better.
GK: They were pretty poor, weren't they. Remember Hamlet's soliloquy that the Duke taught the Dauphin....
JEJ: I remember it by heart.
GK: You do?
JEJ: It's the sort of thing a person doesn't forget.
GK: I forgot. How does it go?
JEJ: To be, or not to be; that is the bare bodkin
That makes calamity of so long life;
For who would fardels bear, til Birnam Wood do come to Dunsinane,
But that fear of something after death
Murders the innocent sleep,
Great nature's second course,
And makes us rather sling the arrows of outrageous fortune
Than fly to others that we know not of.
There's the respect must give us pause:
Wake Duncan with they knocking! I would thou couldst;
For who would bear the whips and scorns of time,
The oppressor's wrong, the proud man's contumely,
The law's delay, and the quietus which his pangs might take,
In the dead waste and middle of the night, when churchyards yawn
In customary suits of solemn black.
Tis a consummation devoutly to be wished. But soft you, the fair Ophelia:
Ope not they ponderous and marble jaws,
But get thee to a nunnery ---- go!
GK: That's fine, Jim, that's just first-rate. I can see why they took to you in France, you've got a real splendor about you, Jim. The Duke and the Dauphin would be proud if they could see what a fine actor you turned out to be. Remember the Royal Nonesuch?
JEJ: I sure do.
GK: They went to do Shakespeare in that little town in Arkansas and they were goin to do the balcony scene from Romeo and Juliet, the Hamlet soliloquy and the swordfight from Richard the Third....They billed themselves as David Garrick the Younger and Edmund Kean the elder direct from Drury Lane. And nobody came to the show...
JEJ: Twelve people...
GK: Twelve people came. So the Duke and the Dauphin decide, "Well, we'll try something else and they put up posters all over town for The Royal Nonesuch, starring David Garrick the Younger and Edmund Kean the Elder.
JEJ: And at the bottom of the poster, in big letters, they wrote: "Ladies And Children Not Admitted."
GK: They sure knew Arkansas. That line pulled 'em in! The theater was packed for the first night. The Duke came out and introduced the show and talked it up for awhile and then up came the curtain and out came the Dauphin, stark naked, painted all sorts of colors, and he jumped around on stage and ran off and the curtain came down. And people were going to lynch them both right then, but someone said, No, then we'd be the laughingstocks of the town --- let's go out and talk up this show and get all the others to come, so we'll all be in the same boat. So the first night audience went out and talked up the show, and the second night, the theater was packed again, and the Dauphin came out naked and pranced around and the curtain came down, and then the third night....
JEJ: The third night everyone came who'd come the first two nights....
GK: You remember.. And they brought eggs and cabbage and rotten tomatoes and dead cats with them.
JEJ: It was a pretty ripe crowd....
GK: And after the Duke sold all the tickets, he says to me, "Light out for the raft," and the both of us came running down to the raft where you and the Dauphin were waiting, and off we went. They cleaned out that town. Four hundred dollars.
JEJ: They laughed half the night over that.
GK: They were a couple of scoundrels all right.
JEJ: Oh, I don't know. For white folks, they weren't that bad.
GK: I'm goin to just ignore that comment, Jim. Jim, it's good to see you, and that's the truth.
JEJ: It's good to see you, Huck.
GK: I'm glad for your every success, Jim, and I do mean that. I've read about you and your mansion over there in France and your cars and your summer house and I'm glad for all of it, Jim, and your prosperity...
JEJ: Huck ---
GK: ...and your success - yes?
JEJ: You're about to ask me for money, aren't you.
GK: Yes, I am, Jim.
JEJ: Don't bother. Here. I put it in an envelope. It's for you.
GK: This isn't a check, is it? Cause if it is, I'd prefer cash.
JEJ: This is cash.
GK: Thank you, Jim. I appreciate it. God bless you. You're a good man, I always said so. I'm sorry if you didn't care for the book, Jim. I'll go back and try to fix it up. I promise. I'll get to work on it tomorrow.
JEJ: No. Don't bother with it, Huck. It's history. It's yesterday. You can't change it. You know, when I said I wasn't nostalgic about the raft --- I meant it, but there was one time ---
GK: What's that, Jim?
JEJ: You remember, we were drifting along on the raft, and it was midnight, and the islands were going by in the dark, and the lights of little towns, and we lay on our backs and looked up at the stars, and I started humming a tune, and you joined in, and it turned out we both knew the words. You remember that?
GK: I remember that, Jim.
JEJ: You still remember it?
GK: I reckon I do.
JEJ: "Come and sit by my side if you love me.
Do not hasten to bid me adieu.
Just remember the Red River Valley
And the cowboy who loves you so true."
GK: That's the song.
THEY SING:
From this valley they say you are gong.
We will miss your bright eyes and sweet smile,
For they say you are taking the sunshine
That has brightened our pathway a while.
COME AND SIT BY MY SIDE IF YOU LOVE ME
DO NOT HASTEN TO BID ME ADIEU
BUT REMEMBER THE RED RIVER VALLEY
AND THE COWBOY WHO LOVES YOU SO TRUE.
Won't you think of the valley you're leaving,
Oh how lovely, how sad it will be?
Oh think of the fond hearts you're breaking
And the grief you are causing to me.
COME AND SIT BY MY SIDE IF YOU LOVE ME
DO NOT HASTEN TO BID ME ADIEU
BUT REMEMBER THE RED RIVER VALLEY
AND THE COWBOY WHO LOVES YOU SO TRUE. As we ride up the trail from the river,
How we wish we could ride up it too.
Can you leave us behind unprotected
When we love no other but you? COME AND SIT BY MY SIDE IF YOU LOVE ME
DO NOT HASTEN TO BID ME ADIEU
BUT REMEMBER THE RED RIVER VALLEY
AND THE COWBOY WHO LOVES YOU SO TRUE.
© 1996 by Garrison Keillor