Looking Straight up into the Sky
After supper, we walked out by the river. We waited till about eight o'clock and then took a swim, and I was beginnin' to think where we was goin' to sleep. But Mitch had decided that. There was a shed near the shore with the slant away from the river, and Mitch says, "That's the place. The water moccasins won't bother us there, and the mosquitoes won't, after a bit, and we can see down the river for miles, and see the City of Peoria when she first turns the bend down there." So we got up on the shed and lay down lookin' straight up into the sky at the stars. It was a clear night and as quiet as a graveyard, only now and then we heard a voice, or a dog bark, or the dip of an oar in the river. And Mitch lay with his hands under his head lookin' up at the stars and not sayin' anything. After a while he says: "Skeet, I told you there was somethin' on my mind, and there is. There's more than one thing on my mind, but I'm just wonderin' whether I'll tell you all of it or not."
"Why not?" says I.
"Because about one thing I don't know what I'm goin' to do myself, and if I talk about it, I'm likely to say I'll do this or that, and then if I don't you'll wonder; and I believe until I know just what I'm goin' to do, I'd better keep still. And as far as that goes, this goin' to see Tom Sawyer might have something to do with it. We might not come back—or get back in time for this thing that's in my mind. Although it don't take long to come back. And so, considerin' everything, I decided I'd take a chance, for we must see Tom Sawyer, Skeet; it must be and it has to be now. You see I'm a little mixed up after all; and ain't grown folks mixed up? I never see anybody more mixed about what to do than my pa sometimes. But I'll tell you this much, Skeet, we wouldn't be here to-night, and we wouldn't be on our way now to see Tom Sawyer if it warn't for one thing."
"What's that?" says I.
"Zueline," says Mitch. Then Mitch began to shake, and I knew he was cryin', and he took his hands from under his head and put them over his eyes, and everything was so still it scared me. Then Mitch quit shakin' and took his hands off his eyes and looked straight up and was still for a long while. I couldn't guess what was the matter. Had Zueline died, maybe, or gone visitin', or quarreled with Mitch? So after a bit I says: "Well, Mitch, you know me—I'm true blue, and I'll stand by you, and if you want to tell me, just tell me, and I'll never peach as long as I live."
So Mitch says: "Well, Skeet, I have a different feelin' toward you from what I have towards Zueline. You see I don't want to protect you, or take care of you, and of course I'd fight for you, or help you any way I could. But it's different with Zueline—I'd die for her, and sometimes I want to, specially if she'd die at the same time, and our funerals could be together and we could be buried in the same grave. I have the same feelin' about her that I have when I look at them stars, I just get full in the throat, and don't know what I am or where I am, or what to do."
"Well," says I, "I know that, Mitch, leastways I suspicioned it—or somethin' like it, from the way you always treated Zueline, but tell me what in the world has happened."
"The worst has happened," says Mitch. "They've taken her away from me."