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Chapter II
Saturday morning came, and all the summer world was bright and fresh. There was a song in every heart and a smile on every face.
But Tom was not very happy when he appeared in the street with a bucket of whitewash and a brush with a long handle. When he looked at the fence, so long and high, he felt depressed. Sighing, he dipped his brush and passed it along the top plank; repeated the motion; did it again; compared the insignificant whitewashed streak with the enormous continent of unwhitewashed fence, and sat down in the shade, discouraged.
Then he saw Jim, a slave boy, who was running out of the gate with a bucket. Tom himself had always hated bringing water from the town pump. But it seemed better than whitewashing. Tom said:
“I say, Jim, I’ll bring the water if you whitewash a part of the fence.”
Jim shook his head and said:
“I can’t, master Tom. Your aunt said you had to do it all. She’ll be angry if she learns that I helped you.”
“Oh, never you mind what she said, Jim. That’s the way she always talks. Gimme the bucket—I will be gone only a minute. She won’t ever know.”
When the boys noticed Aunt Polly coming out of the house Jim ran away with his bucket and Tom got back to whitewashing. But his energy did not last. He began to think of the fun he had planned for this day. He got out his wealth out of his pocket and examined it—bits of toys, marbles, and trash; enough to buy an exchange of work, maybe, but not enough to buy even half an hour of pure freedom.
At this dark and hopeless moment he found a way out.
He took up his brush and went to work. Ben Rogers—the very boy, of all boys, whose ridicule Tom had been dreading—was walking along the street eating an apple. From time to time he produced melodious sounds: ding-dong-dong, ding-dong-dong, for he was impersonating a steamboat. As he came closer, he called:
“Tom!”
No answer. Tom was whitewashing the fence; he surveyed his last touch with the eye of an artist, then gave his brush another gentle sweep and surveyed the result, as before. Tom’s mouth watered for the apple, but he continued working. Ben said:
“Hello, old chap!”
Tom turned to Ben.
“Why, it’s you, Ben! I didn’t notice you.”
“I’m going swimming. Don’t you wish you could? But of course you’d rather work—wouldn’t you? Course you would!”
“What do you call work?”
“Why, isn’t THAT work?”
Tom continued his whitewashing, and answered carelessly:
“Well, maybe it is, and maybe it isn’t. All I know is it suits Tom Sawyer.”
“Don’t say you LIKE it. I won’t believe you!”
The brush continued to move.
“Like it? Well, does a boy get a chance to whitewash a fence every day?’
That put the thing in a new light. Ben stopped biting his apple. He was watching Tom’s every move and was getting more and more interested. At last he said:
“Tom, let ME whitewash a little.”
Tom considered it, and then said:
“If it was the back fence I wouldn’t mind and Aunt Polly wouldn’t. But it’s the front fence; it must be done very carefully. There isn’t one boy in a thousand, maybe two thousand, that can do it the way it should be done.”
“Oh, let me just try. Only just a little. I’ll give you the core of my apple.”
Tom considered it. He said:
“No—no—It wouldn’t do, Ben. You see, Aunt Polly’s awful particular about this fence—right here on the street, you know—but if it was the back fence I wouldn’t mind and _she_ wouldn’t. Yes, she’s awful particular about this fence; it’s got to be done very careful; I think there ain’t one boy in a thousand, maybe two thousand, that can do it the way it’s got to be done.”
“No—is that so? Oh come, now—lemme just try. Only just a little.”
“Ben, I’d like to, but Aunt Polly—well, Jim wanted to do it, but she wouldn’t let him; Sid wanted to do it, and she wouldn’t let Sid. If you do a bad job—”
“I’ll be just as careful. Now lemme try. Say—I’ll give you the core of my apple.”
“No, Ben, I’m afraid—”
“I’ll give you ALL of it!”
Tom gave the brush to Ben with reluctance in his face, but cheerfulness in his heart . And while the boy worked and sweated in the sun, the retired artist sat on a barrel in the shade close by, dangled his legs, ate his apple, and planned. By the time Ben got tired, Tom had traded the next chance to Billy Fisher for a kite; and when he finished, Johnny Miller bought in for a dead rat and a string to swing it with—and so on, and so on, hour after hour. By the afternoon, Tom had become a wealthy boy. Besides the before mentioned things, he had twelve marbles, a piece of blue bottle-glass to look through, a key that wouldn’t unlock anything, a tin soldier, a kitten with only one eye, the handle of a knife, and a lot of other valuable things.
He had had a nice, good, time, plenty of company—and the fence had three coats of whitewash on it.
Tom said to himself that it was not such a hollow world, after all. He had discovered a great law of human action, without knowing it—namely, that in order to make a man or a boy want something, it is only necessary to make it difficult to obtain.
