41 Stories

by O. Henry

  “ ‘Oh,’ says the nigger-man, proud to speak the English, ‘verree great revolution in Guatemala one week ago. General De Vega, him try be president. Him raise armee—one—five—ten thousand mans for fight at the government. Those one government send five—forty—hundred thousand soldiers to suppress revolution. They fight big battle yesterday at Lomagrande—that about nineteen or fifty mile in the mountain. That government soldier wheep General De Vega—oh, most bad. Five hundred—nine hundred—two thousand of his mans is kill. That revolution is smash suppress—bust—very quick. General De Vega, him r-r-run away fast on one big mule. Yes, carrambos! The general, him r-r-run away, and his armee is kill. That government soldier, they try to find General De Vega verree much. They want catchee him for shoot. You think they catchee that general, señor?’

  “ ‘Saints grant it!’ says I. ‘Twould be the judgment of Providence for settin’ the warlike talent of a Clancy to gradin’ the tropics with a pick and shovel. But ’tis not so much a question of insurrections now, me little man, as ‘tis of the hired-man problem. ’Tis anxious I am to resign a situation of responsibility and trust with the white wings department of your great and degraded country. Row me in your little boat out to that steamer, and I’ll give ye five dollars—sinker pacers—sinker pacers,’ says I, reducin’ the offer to the language and denomination of the tropic dialects.

  “ Cinco pesos,’ repeats the little man. ‘Five dollee, you give?’

  “ ‘Twas not such a bad little man. He had hesitations at first, sayin’ that passengers leaving the country had to have papers and passports, but at last he took me out alongside the steamer.

  “Day was just breakin’ as we struck her, and there wasn’t a soul to be seen on board. The water was very still, and the nigger-man gave me a lift from the boat, and I climbed onto the steamer where her side was sliced to the deck for loadin’ fruit. The hatches was open, and I looked down and saw the cargo of bananas that filled the hold to within six feet of the top. I thinks to myself, ‘Clancy, you better go as a stowaway. It’s safer. The steamer men might hand you back to the employment bureau. The tropic’ll get you, Clancy, if you don’t watch out.’

  “So I jumps down easy among the bananas and digs out a hole to hide in among the bunches. In an hour or so I could hear the engines goin‘, and feel the steamer rockin’, and I knew we were off to sea. They left the hatches open for ventilation, and pretty soon it was light enough in the hold to see fairl well. I got to feelin’ a bit hungry, and thought I’d have a light fruit lunch, by way of refreshment. I creeped out of the hole I’d made and stood up straight. Just then I saw another man crawl up about ten feet away and reach out and skin a banana and stuff it into his mouth. ‘Twas a dirty man, black-faced and ragged and disgraceful of aspect. Yes, the man was a ringer for the pictures of the fat Weary Willie in the funny papers. I looked again, and saw it was my general man—De Vega, the great revolutionist, mule-rider and pick axe importer. When he saw me the general hesitated with his mouth filled with banana and his eyes the size of cocoanuts.

  “ ‘Hist!’ I says. ‘Not a word, or they’ll put us off and make us walk. ”Veev la Liberty!” ’ I adds, copperin’ the sentiment by shovin’ a banana into the source of it. I was certain the general wouldn’t recognize me. The nefarious work of the tropics had left me lookin’ different. There was half an inch of roan whiskers coverin’ me face, and me costume was a pair of blue overalls and a red shirt.

  “ ‘How you come in the ship, senor?’ asked the general as soon as he could speak.

  “ ‘By the back door—whist!’ says I. ‘Twas a glorious blow for liberty we struck,’ I continues; ‘but we was overpowered by numbers. Let us accept our defeat like brave men and eat another banana.’

  “ ‘Were you in the cause of liberty fightin’, senor?’ says the general, sheddin’ tears on the cargo.

  “ ‘To the last,’ says I. ‘Twas I led the last desperate charge against the minions of the tyrant. But it made them mad, and we was forced to retreat. ’Twas I, general, procured the mule upon which you escaped. Could you give that ripe bunch a little boost this way, general? It’s a bit out of my reach. Thanks.’

  “ ‘Say you so, brave patriot?’ said the general, again weepin’. ‘Ah, Dios! And I have not the means to reward your devotion. Barely did I my life bring away. Carrambos! what a devil’s animal was that mule, senor! Like ships in one storm was I dashed about. The skin on myself was ripped away with the thorns and vines. Upon the bark of a hundred trees did that beast of the infernal bump, and cause outrage to the legs of mine. In the night to Port Barrios I came. I dispossess myself of that mountain of mule and hasten along the water shore. I find a little boat to be tied. I launch myself and row to the steamer. I cannot see any mans on board, so I climbed one rope which hang at the side. I then myself hide in the bananas. Surely, I say, if the ship captains view me, they shall throw me again to those Guatemala. Those things are not good. Guatemala will shoot General De Vega.

  Therefore, I am hide and remain silent. Life itself is glorious. Liberty, it is pretty good; but so good as life I do not think.’

  “Three days, as I said, was the trip to New Orleans. The general man and me got to be cronies of the deepest dye. Bananas we ate until they were distasteful to the sight and an eyesore to the palate, but to bananas alone was the bill of fare reduced. At night I crawls out, careful, on the lower deck, and gets a bucket of fresh water.

  “That General De Vega was a man inhabited by an en gorgement of words and sentences. He added to the monotony of the voyage by divestin’ himself of conversation. He believed I was a revolutionist of his own party, there bein‘, as he told me, a good many Americans and other foreigners in its ranks. ’Twas a braggart and a conceited little gabbler it was, though he considered himself a hero. ’Twas on himself he wasted all his regrets at the failin’ of his plot. Not a word did the little balloon have to say about the other misbehavin’ idiots that had been shot, or run themselves to death in his revolution.

  “The second day out he was feelin’ pretty braggy and uppish for a stowed-away conspirator that owed his existence to a mule and stolen bananas. He was tellin’ me about the great railroad he had been buildin‘, and he relates what he calls a comic incident about a fool Irishman he inveigled from New Orleans to sling a pick on his little morgue of a narrow-gauge line. ’Twas sorrowful to hear the little, dirty general tell the opprobrious story of how he put salt upon the tail of that reckless and silly bird, Clancy. Laugh, he did, hearty and long. He shook with laughin’, the black-faced rebel and outcast, standin’ neck-deep in bananas, without friends or country.

  “ ‘Ah, señor,’ he snickers, ‘to the death you would have laughed at that drollest Irish. I say to him: ”Strong, big mans is need very much in Guatemala.” “I will blows strike for your down-pressed country,” he say. “That shall you do,” I tell him. Ah! it was an Irish so comic. He sees one box break upon the wharf that contain for the guard a few gun. He think there is gun in all the box. But that is all pick-axe. Yes. Ah! senor, could you the face of that Irish have seen when they set him to the work!’

  “ ‘Twas thus the ex-boss of the employment bureau contributed to the tedium of the trip with merry jests and anecdote. But now and then he would weep upon the bananas and make oration about the lost cause of liberty and the mule.

  “ ‘Twas a pleasant sound when the steamer bumped against the pier in New Orleans. Pretty soon we heard the pat-a-pat of hundreds of bare feet, and the Dago gang that unloads the fruit jumped on the deck and down into the hold. Me and the general worked a while at passin’ up the bunches, and they thought we were part of the gang. After about an hour we managed to slip off the steamer onto the wharf.

  “ ‘Twas a great honor on the hands of an obscure Clancy, havin’ the entertainment of the representative of a great foreign filibusterin’ power. I first bought for the general and myself many long drinks and things to eat that were not bananas. The general man trotted along at my
side, leavin’ all the arrangements to me. I led him up to Lafayette Square and set him on a bench in the little park. Cigarettes I had bought for him, and he humped himself down on the seat like a little fat, contented hobo. I look him over as he sets there, and what I see pleases me. Brown by nature and instinct, he is now brindled with dirt and dust. Praise to the mule, his clothes is mostly strings and flaps. Yes, the looks of the general man is agreeable to Clancy.

  “I ask him, delicate, if, by any chance, he brought away anybody’s money with him from Guatemala. He sighs and bumps his shoulders against the bench. Not a cent. All right. Maybe, he tells me, some of his friends in the tropic outfit will send him funds later. The general was as clear a case of no visible means as I ever saw.

  “I told him not to move from the bench, and then I went up to the corner of Poydras and Carondelet. Along there is O‘Hara’s beat. In five minutes along comes O’Hara, a big, fine man, red-faced, with shinin’ buttons, swingin’ his club. ‘Twould be a fine thing for Guatemala to move into O’Hara’s precinct. ’Twould be a fine bit of recreation for Danny to suppress revolutions and uprisin’s once or twice a week with his club.

  “ ‘Is 5046 workin’ yet, Danny?’ says I, walkin’ up to him.

  “ ‘Overtime,’ says O‘Hara, lookin’ over me suspicious. ’Want some of it?’

  “Fifty-forty-six is the celebrated city ordinance authorizin’ arrest, conviction, and imprisonment of persons that succeed in concealin’ their crimes from the police.

  “ ‘Don’t ye know Jimmy Clancy?’ says I. ‘Ye pink-gilled monster.’ So, when O‘Hara recognized me beneath the scandalous exterior bestowed upon me by the tropics, I backed him into a doorway and told him what I wanted, and why I wanted it. ‘All right, Jimmy,’ says O’Hara. ‘Go back and hold the bench. I’ll be along in ten minutes.’

  “In that time O‘Hara strolled through Lafayette Square and spied two Weary Willies disgracin’ one of the benches. In ten minutes more J. Clancy and General De Vega, late candidate for the presidency of Guatemala, was in the station house. The general is badly frightened, and calls upon me to proclaim his distinguishments and rank.

  “ ‘The man,’ says I to the police, ‘used to be a railroad man. He’s on the bum now. ’Tis a little bughouse he is, on account of losin’ his job.’

  “ ‘Carrambos!’ says the general, fizzin’ like a little soda-water fountain, ‘you fought, señor, with my forces in my native country. Why do you say the lies? You shall say I am the General De Vega, one soldier, one caballero—’

  “ ‘Railroader,’ says I again. ‘On the hog. No good. Been livin’ for three days on stolen bananas. Look at him. Ain’t that enough?’

  “Twenty-five dollars or sixty days, was what the recorder gave the general. He didn’t have a cent, so he took the time. They let me go, as I knew they would, for I had money to show, and O‘Hara spoke for me. Yes; sixty days he got. ’Twas just so long that I slung a pick for the great country of Kam—Guatemala.”

  Clancy paused. The bright starlight showed a reminiscent look of happy content on his seasoned features. Keogh leaned in his chair and gave his partner a slap on his thinly-clad back that sounded like the crack of the surf on the sands.

  “Tell ’em, you divil,” he chuckled, ‘how you got even with the tropical general in the way of agricultural maneuvrings.”

  “Havin’ no money,” concluded Clancy, with unction, “they set him to work his fine out with a gang from the parish prison clearing Ursulines Street. Around the corner was a saloon decorated genially with electric fans and cool merchandise. I made that me headquarters, and every fifteen minutes I’d walk around and take a look at the little man filibusterin’ with a rake and shovel. ‘Twas just such a hot broth of a day as this has been. And I’d call at him ‘Hey, monseer!’ and he’d look at me black, with the damp showin’ through his shirt in places.

  “ ‘Fat, strong mans,’ says I to General De Vega, ‘is needed in New Orleans. Yes. To carry on the good work. Carrambos! Erin go bragh!’ ”

  Shoes

  John de Graffenreid Atwood ate of the lotus, root, stem, and flower. The tropics gobbled him up. He plunged enthusiastically into his work, which was to try to forget Rosine.

  Now, they who dine on the lotus rarely consume it plain. There is a sauce au diable that goes with it; and the distillers are the chefs who prepare it. And on Johnny’s menu card it read “brandy.” With a bottle between them, he and Billy Keogh would sit on the porch of the little consulate at night and roar out great, indecorous songs, until the natives, slipping hastily past, would shrug a shoulder and mutter things to themselves about the “Americanos diablos.”

  One day Johnny’s mozo brought the mail and dumped it on the table. Johnny leaned from his hammock, and fingered the four or five letters dejectedly. Keogh was sitting on the edge of the table chopping lazily with a paper knife at the legs of a centipede that was crawling among the stationery. Johnny was in that phase of lotus-eating when all the world tastes bitter in one’s mouth.

  “Same old thing!” he complained. “Fool people writing for information about the country. They want to know all about raising fruit, and how to make a fortune without work. Half of ‘em don’t even send stamps for a reply. They think a consul hasn’t anything to do but write letters. Slit those envelopes for me, old man, and see what they want. I’m feeling too rocky to move.”

  Keogh, acclimated beyond all possibility of ill-humor, drew his chair to the table with smiling compliance on his rose-pink countenance, and began to slit open the letters. Four of them were from citizens in various parts of the United States who seemed to regard the consul at Coralio as a cyclopædia of information. They asked long lists of questions, numerically arranged, about the climate, products, possibilities, laws, business chances, and statistics of the country in which the consul had the honor of representing his own government.

  “Write ‘em, please, Billy,” said that inert official, “just a line, referring them to the latest consular report. Tell ’em the State Department will be delighted to furnish the literary gems. Sign my name. Don’t let your pen scratch, Billy; it’ll keep me awake.”

  “Don’t snore,” said Keogh, amiably, “and I’ll do your work for you. You need a corps of assistants, anyhow. Don’t see how you ever get out a report. Wake up a minute! —here’s one more letter—it’s from your own town, too—Dalesburg.”

  “That so?” murmured Johnny, showing a mild obligatory interest. “What’s it about?”

  “Postmaster writes,” explained Keogh. “Says a citizen of the town wants some facts and advice from you. Says the citizen has an idea in his head of coming down where you are and opening a shoe store. Wants to know if you think the business would pay. Says he’s heard of the boom along this coast, and wants to get in on the ground floor.”

  In spite of the heat and his bad temper, Johnny’s hammock swayed with his laughter. Keogh laughed too; and the pet monkey on the top shelf of the bookcase chattered in shrill sympathy with the ironical reception of the letter from Dalesburg.

  “Great bunions!” exclaimed the consul. “Shoe store! What’ll they ask about next, I wonder? Overcoat factory, I reckon. Say, Billy—of our 3,000 citizens, how many do you suppose ever had on a pair of shoes?”

  Keogh reflected judicially.

  “Let’s see—there’s you and me and—”

  “Not me,” said Johnny, promptly and incorrectly, holding up a foot encased in a disreputable deerskin zapato. “I haven’t been a victim to shoes in months.”

  “But you’ve got ‘em, though,” went on Keogh. “And there’s Goodwin and Blanchard and Geddie and old Lutz and Doc Gregg and that Italian that’s agent for the banana company, and there’s old Delgado—no; he wears sandals. And, oh, yes; there’s Madama Ortiz, ‘what kapes the hotel’—she had on a pair of red slippers at the baile the other night. And Miss Pasa, her daughter, that went to school in the States—she brought back some civilized notions in the way of footgear. And th
ere’s the comandante’s sister that dresses up her feet on feast-days—and Mrs. Geddie, who wears a two with a Castilian instep—and that’s about all the ladies. Let’s see—don’t some of the soldiers at the cuartel—no that’s so; they’re allowed shoes only when on the march. In barracks they turn their little toeses out to grass.”

  “ ‘Bout right,” agreed the consul. “Not over twenty out of the three thousand ever felt leather on their walking arrangements. Oh, yes; Coralio is just the town for an enterprising shoe store—that doesn’t want to part with its goods. Wonder if old Patterson is trying to jolly me! He always was full of things he called jokes. Write him a letter, Billy. I’ll dictate it. We’ll jolly him back a few.”

  Keogh dipped his pen, and wrote at Johnny’s dictation. With many pauses, filled in with smoke and sundry travel lings of the bottle and glasses, the following reply to the Dalesburg communication was perpetrated:

  Mr. Obadiah Patterson, Dalesburg, Ala.

  Dear Sir: In reply to your favor of July 2d, I have the honor to inform you that, according to my opinion, there is no place on the habitable globe that presents to the eye stronger evidence of the need of a first-class shoe store than does the town of Coralio. There are 3,000 inhabitants in the place, and not a single shoe store! The situation speaks for itself. This coast is rapidly becoming the goal of enterprising business men, but the shoe business is one that has been sadly overlooked or neglected. In fact, there are a considerable number of our citizens actually without shoes at present.

  Besides the want above mentioned, there is also a crying need for a brewery, a college of higher mathematics, a coal yard, and a clean and intellectual Punch and Judy show. I have the honor to be, sir,

  Your Obt. Servant,

  John de Graffenreid Atwood,

  U. S. Consul at Coralio.

  P.S.—Hello! Uncle Obadiah. How’s the old burg racking along? What would the government do without you and me? Look out for a green-headed parrot and a bunch of bananas soon, from your old friend