I had closed the door, and when I turned around, there he was. I used to be scared of him all the time, because he beat me so much. But after the first shock, I saw that I wasn’t really scared of him now.
He was almost fifty, and he looked it. His long black hair was greasy and hung down over his eyes. His face was a sickly white, like the belly of a fish. His clothes were rags, and two of his toes stuck out of a broken boot. He looked me all over, and then he said:
“Fine clothes, very fine. You think you’re a big man now, don’t you? And you can read and write, they say. You think you’re better than your father because he can’t. Who told you to do that kind of foolishness?”
“The widow.”
“Well, I’ll teach her to mind her own business. And you stop going to that school, you hear? Your mother couldn’t read or write. I can’t. Now let me hear you read.”
I began to read something about General Washington. After half a minute, he knocked the book across the room.
“It’s true. You can do it. If I catch you near that school, I’ll give you a good beating. And they say you’re rich. That’s why I came. You get me that money tomorrow.”
“I haven’t got any money. Ask Judge Thatcher.”
“All right, I’ll ask him. How much have you got in your pocket? I want it.”
“I’ve only got a dollar, and I want it to—”
“It doesn’t matter what you want it for. Give it to me.”
He took it, bit it to see if it was good, and went to town to buy whiskey. The next day he went to Judge Thatcher and shouted at him to give up the money. When the judge wouldn’t, Pap swore he would make the law force him.
The judge and the widow went to court to take me away from Pap. But there was a new judge in town who didn’t know the old man. He said he would rather not take a child away from its father. So they had to give up, and Pap was very pleased.
Then the new judge said he was going to make a new man of Pap. He took him to his own house, gave him clean clothes and had him eat with the family. After supper he talked to him about drinking until the old man cried and said he had been a fool, but now he was going to start a new life. The judge and his wife cried too.
At bedtime the old man stood up and held out his hand. “Look at it, ladies and gentlemen. Shake it. That was the hand of a pig, but it isn’t any more. It’s the hand of a man who has started a new life and will die before he goes back. It’s a clean hand now. Shake it. Don’t be afraid.”
So they all shook it and cried, and the judge’s wife kissed it. Pap made his mark on a paper, promising never to drink again. Then they put him to bed in their beautiful spare room. But in the night he got very thirsty. He climbed out onto the porch roof, slid down a post and traded his new coat for a jug of whiskey, and climbed back into his room. Toward morning he crawled out again, completely drunk, rolled off the porch roof and broke his left arm in two places. When somebody found him after sunrise, he was almost frozen to death.
The judge felt rather hurt. He said maybe somebody could reform the old man with a shotgun, but he didn’t know any other way.