Short Fiction O. Henry (comprehension books TXT) 📖

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 there’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 travellings 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 favour of July 2nd, I have the honour 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 honour 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

Johnny

“I throw in that postscript,” explained the consul, “so Uncle Obadiah won’t take offence at the official tone of the letter! Now, Billy, you get that correspondence fixed up, and send Pancho to the post-office with it. The Ariadne takes the mail out tomorrow if they make up that load of fruit today.”

The night programme in Coralio never varied. The recreations of the people were soporific and flat. They wandered about, barefoot and aimless, speaking lowly and smoking cigar or cigarette. Looking down on the dimly lighted ways one seemed to see a threading maze of brunette ghosts tangled with a procession of insane fireflies. In some houses the thrumming of lugubrious guitars added to the depression of the triste night. Giant tree-frogs rattled in the foliage as loudly as the end man’s “bones” in a minstrel troupe. By nine o’clock the streets were almost deserted.

Nor at the consulate was there often a change of bill. Keogh would come there nightly, for Coralio’s one cool place was the little seaward porch of that official residence.

The brandy would be kept moving; and before midnight sentiment would begin to stir in the heart of the self-exiled consul. Then he would relate to Keogh the story of his ended romance. Each night Keogh would listen patiently to the tale, and be ready with untiring sympathy.

“But don’t you think for a minute”⁠—thus Johnny would always conclude his woeful narrative⁠—“that I’m grieving about that girl, Billy. I’ve forgotten her. She never enters my mind. If she were to enter that door right now, my pulse wouldn’t gain a beat. That’s all over long ago.”

“Don’t I know it?” Keogh would answer. “Of course you’ve forgotten her. Proper thing to do. Wasn’t quite OK of her to listen to the knocks that⁠—er⁠—Dink Pawson kept giving you.”

“Pink Dawson!”⁠—a world of contempt would be in Johnny’s tones⁠—“Poor white trash! That’s what he was. Had five hundred acres of farming land, though; and that counted. Maybe I’ll have a chance to get back at him some day. The Dawsons weren’t anybody. Everybody in Alabama knows the Atwoods. Say, Billy⁠—did you know my mother was a De Graffenreid?”

“Why, no,” Keogh would say; “is that so?” He had heard it some three hundred times.

“Fact. The De Graffenreids of Hancock County. But I never think of that girl any more, do I, Billy?”

“Not for a minute, my boy,” would be the last sounds