Short Fiction O. Henry (comprehension books TXT) 📖

“ ‘Hunky,’ he says, putting one hand on my shoulder and one on the statue’s, ‘I’m in the holy temple of my ancestors.’

“ ‘Well, if looks goes for anything,’ says I, ‘you’ve struck a twin. Stand side by side with buddy, and let’s see if there’s any difference.’

“There wasn’t. You know an Indian can keep his face as still as an iron dog’s when he wants to, so when High Jack froze his features you couldn’t have told him from the other one.

“ ‘There’s some letters,’ says I, ‘on his nob’s pedestal, but I can’t make ’em out. The alphabet of this country seems to be composed of sometimes a, e, i, o, and u, but generally z’s, l’s, and t’s.’

“High Jack’s ethnology gets the upper hand of his rum for a minute, and he investigates the inscription.

“ ‘Hunky,’ says he, ‘this is a statue of Tlotopaxl, one of the most powerful gods of the ancient Aztecs.’

“ ‘Glad to know him,’ says I, ‘but in his present condition he reminds me of the joke Shakespeare got off on Julius Caesar. We might say about your friend:

“ ‘Imperious what’s-his-name, dead and turned to stone⁠—
No use to write or call him on the phone.’

“ ‘Hunky,’ says High Jack Snakefeeder, looking at me funny, ‘do you believe in reincarnation?’

“ ‘It sounds to me,’ says I, ‘like either a cleanup of the slaughterhouses or a new kind of Boston pink. I don’t know.’

“ ‘I believe,’ says he, ‘that I am the reincarnation of Tlotopaxl. My researches have convinced me that the Cherokees, of all the North American tribes, can boast of the straightest descent from the proud Aztec race. That,’ says he, ‘was a favorite theory of mine and Florence Blue Feather’s. And she⁠—what if she⁠—’

“High Jack grabs my arm and walls his eyes at me. Just then he looked more like his eminent co-Indian murderer, Crazy Horse.

“ ‘Well,’ says I, ‘what if she, what if she, what if she? You’re drunk,’ says I. ‘Impersonating idols and believing in⁠—what was it?⁠—recarnalization? Let’s have a drink,’ says I. ‘It’s as spooky here as a Brooklyn artificial-limb factory at midnight with the gas turned down.’

“Just then I heard somebody coming, and I dragged High Jack into the bedless bedchamber. There was peepholes bored through the wall, so we could see the whole front part of the temple. Major Bing told me afterward that the ancient priests in charge used to rubber through them at the congregation.

“In a few minutes an old Indian woman came in with a big oval earthen dish full of grub. She set it on a square block of stone in front of the graven image, and laid down and walloped her face on the floor a few times, and then took a walk for herself.

“High Jack and me was hungry, so we came out and looked it over. There was goat steaks and fried rice-cakes, and plantains and cassava, and broiled land-crabs and mangoes⁠—nothing like what you get at Chubb’s.

“We ate hearty⁠—and had another round of rum.

“ ‘It must be old Tecumseh’s⁠—or whatever you call him⁠—birthday,’ says I. ‘Or do they feed him every day? I thought gods only drank vanilla on Mount Catawampus.’

“Then some more native parties in short kimonos that showed their aboriginees punctured the near-horizon, and me and High had to skip back into Father Axletree’s private boudoir. They came by ones, twos, and threes, and left all sorts of offerings⁠—there was enough grub for Bingham’s nine gods of war, with plenty left over for the Peace Conference at The Hague. They brought jars of honey, and bunches of bananas, and bottles of wine, and stacks of tortillas, and beautiful shawls worth one hundred dollars apiece that the Indian women weave of a kind of vegetable fibre like silk. All of ’em got down and wriggled on the floor in front of that hard-finish god, and then sneaked off through the woods again.

“ ‘I wonder who gets this rake-off?’ remarks High Jack.

“ ‘Oh,’ says I, ‘there’s priests or deputy idols or a committee of disarrangements somewhere in the woods on the job. Wherever you find a god you’ll find somebody waiting to take charge of the burnt offerings.’

“And then we took another swig of rum and walked out to the parlor front door to cool off, for it was as hot inside as a summer camp on the Palisades.

“And while we stood there in the breeze we looks down the path and sees a young lady approaching the blasted ruin. She was barefooted and had on a white robe, and carried a wreath of white flowers in her hand. When she got nearer we saw she had a long blue feather stuck through her black hair. And when she got nearer still me and High Jack Snakefeeder grabbed each other to keep from tumbling down on the floor; for the girl’s face was as much like Florence Blue Feather’s as his was like old King Toxicology’s.

“And then was when High Jack’s booze drowned his system of ethnology. He dragged me inside back of the statue, and says:

“ ‘Lay hold of it, Hunky. We’ll pack it into the other room. I felt it all the time,’ says he. ‘I’m the reconsideration of the god Locomotorataxia, and Florence Blue Feather was my bride a thousand years ago. She has come to seek me in the temple where I used to reign.’

“ ‘All right,’ says I. ‘There’s no use arguing against the rum question. You take his feet.’

“We lifted the three-hundred-pound stone god, and carried him into the back room of the café⁠—the temple, I mean⁠—and leaned him against the wall. It was more work than bouncing three live ones from an all-night Broadway joint on New-Year’s Eve.

“Then High Jack ran out and brought in a couple of them Indian silk shawls and began to undress himself.

“ ‘Oh, figs!’ says I. ‘Is it thus? Strong drink is an adder and subtractor, too. Is it the heat or the call of the wild that’s got you?’

“But High