Huck and Miss Liberty

By Roger Rosenblatt

You don't know about me without your having read a book by the name of The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, but that ain't no matter. A lot of school- taught folks been talkin' about that story since Mark Twain made it up, about me and Jim floatin' on our raft down that monstrous big river, and Jim escapin' from slavery and me hiding him out. They say I did a big heroic thing in helpin' Jim get free, but that weren't it. Truth is, Jim helped me git free, 'cause if he hadn't made me realize that it was better to do something wrong that felt right, no matter how many educated people said it was wrong, like helpin' a runaway slave, then I wouldn't never have known what it means to be free.

I hear tell that they're throwin' a birthday party for the Statue of Liberty, which has been around 'bout as long as my book, so I sort of feel it's my party too. A hundred years now that statue has said to folks all the way from Europe, and even France, that when they came to America they were not alone. But I think they knew they were alone. Everyone who escapes to freedom has to come alone, 'cause you are makin' your way from home, no matter how unfree home may be. You got to decide for yerself to leave home. Ain't nothin' lonelier than that.

What settles things for you in the end is whether you feel lonelier in what other folks call the right place or in the wrong place that belongs to you, even if it's all dark and spooky like the river. Depends on how much you want yer freedom. Americans do some things pretty well, like playing games and making machines and movies, but what they do best is gettin' free. Of course freedom gits folks into a mess of trouble too, 'cause when everybody's free, they're free to fall on their faces, and if no one cares to pick 'em up, they're free to drown. I know that some important folks say different, but if you ask me there ain't no excuse fer a land rich as this to be hearing hungry babies cry. Some people are free to poison the rivers too, which gits to me and Jim, or to let the schools go to seed 'cause kids don't got no vote. I know lots of folks who think a darn sight better than they read, but if they knew how to read, they'd think a whole lot better still. Americans also git into trouble by being too free of the past. They never really did feel part of the world anyway, I guess, but it's too late for hiding out now. Sometimes I can feel the whole country rockin' on the raft with Jim and me, pretendin' that there ain't no shore, and that the river flowed from nowhere.

Not that I'm down on Americans, you understand. They're mostly good and almost normal once you git to know 'em. I'm never too down on Americans or too up. This ole raft of ours has covered a heap of territory since that Mississippi ride, and I seen too many changes, too many wars, to feel much like flag wavin' or flag burnin'. One thing I come to know is that bein' alone makes you 'preciate the help of others when you need them, and makes you 'preciate the lonesomeness of others too, when they need you. Maybe Americans tend to be generous because they recognize lonesomeness in everybody, and through that lonesomeness they've learned that folks are pretty much worth the same, that we're all in the same boat. At sundown I'll haul the raft to a lake in the middle of some town, and watch the lights pop on one by one like signal fires, like the town was findin' its mind in the dark.

Don't know yet if Jim and I'll drag the ole raft down to the New York harbor for the celebrations this week. Most likely we'd git swamped by the fat ferries or the fancy tall ships, and maybe the big grinnin' dignitaries wouldn't want lowlife there like me and Jim. We still don't dress for Sunday School, and you may remember that I was never much for bathing.

Course, if the dignitaries really would object to our being at the party, that'd make a mighty fine reason for going. Anyway, we wouldn't be going for them--jest for us, and for the Statue of Liberty. I'd like to have a look at that woman close up. She's supposed to stand for welcome with that new torch of hers. But to me she also stands for searching. Another foreigner on the water searching for who she is. I could be wrong 'bout that o' course. I been wrong before.