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On account of his adventures on the raft with Jim, and the ensuing difficulties which it circumstanced, Huck had set out for the West to try his luck. Though I’d ‘come accustomed to Huck’s meanderings, now it ‘peared he was gone for good. That left me right bored ‘round St. Petersburg come springtime. For a time, I ran about town by my lonesome, quarrelling, fighting, and skylarking as the opportunities presented. But there weren’t much ‘venture in it no more, so I set out on the road of my own enterprise to see what truck I might meet, and ‘ventually found myself in New Orleans, a grander place’n I’d ever seen.
With all that walking and without a whit to eat all day, I was powerful hungry, so I set down in a tavern for a spell to have some lunch and survey the goings on. I ordered cornbread, fried catfish and a glass of ale. By jings, was it mighty tasty to my mortified belly!
By and by, as I was just wiping the last bits of grease off my chin with my shirtsleeve, a man with an eye patch and long scraggly beard came in. He cut an odd figure, the man did, with one eye patched and the other whiter than a bully taw. I thought he must be blind, but he weren’t, at least he seemed not, as he came presently to my bench and set himself down, tossing his hammy arms on the table as he did so.
“Yer lookin’ fer ‘ventures, no doubt,” the man with the eye patch said.
“I reckon it depends on who’s askin’.”
“Jinky Snipe,” said the man with the eye patch as he extended his paw for to shake in good faith.
“What you got?”
“Follow me.”
I finished my ale and and followed Jinky Snipe out the back of the tavern, through a mired alley and around the corner. We came to a rickety staircase and set up it. Jinky knocked on the door and a slot opened up. Two eyes peered out and a moment later, the door opened. I followed Jinky Snipe into a big room of high living, a sivilized sort of place with lace curtains and soft couches.
“Don’t look like much of a place for a ‘venture,” I said. There were a few other boys there, the sort who wore shoes and clean clothes, even though it was a weekday.
Jinky opened a door and led me into a small, dark bedroom.
“Your ‘venture will be right in,” he said as he left.
I relished the thought of fighting pirates or perhappenstance finding another stash of robber’s gold, but just what sort of ‘venture a boy could have in a dark bedroom was beyond me. Maybe Jinky Snipe was full of sand. I figured I’d wait a short spell more, and if some sort of ‘venture didn’t show up presently, I’d make tracks. But no sooner had this plan settled in my mind than the door flew open and a fat old man came in, naked as the day he was born, with a powerful erection of the his Billy bat, and a farcical look on his filthy face.
Date Written: April 12, 2005
Author: Ewan Snow
Average Vote: 3.8889