Short Fiction O. Henry (comprehension books TXT) 📖

in the curve of a little half-moon harbor. It lay on a narrow strip of alluvial deposit hemmed in by morose mountains at its rear, and by the sea in front. The population was Carib, Spanish-Indian half-breeds, and negroes, with a disturbing leaven of the froth and scum of half a dozen other nations. The streets were merely grass-grown spaces between the red-tiled, squatty houses. Through the grass were crisscrossing paths made by the bare feet of the dwellers. Two or three Americans and four or five Germans and French represented the more enlightened races. The sole source of the town’s life and income was the exportation of fruit, a little rubber, and a few of the valuable woods.

John De Graffenreid Atwood, the newly appointed consul, plunged into his work, which was principally to sprawl in a hammock, and to try to forget Rosine Hemstetter. We are to suppose that he has been thus occupied for one year. Then will begin the story of the exploit that made Johnny a hero in commerce, agriculture, and love.

Johnny ate of the lotus, root, stem, and flower. The tropics gobbled him up. They who dine on the lotus rarely consume it plain, as a healthy salad should be eaten. 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 and the native red rum. His particular friend in Vibora was Billy Keogh, an American, who was interested in mahogany. The two would sit on the little porch of the consulate at night and roar out great, indecorous songs, until the natives, slipping past in the grass outside, would shrug a shoulder and mutter things in Spanish to themselves about the “diablos Americanos.”

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 had come over from his bamboo shack in pajamas, although it was nearly noon, and was smoking and chopping lazily with a paper-knife at the legs of a centipede that crawled across the table. Johnny was in that mood of lotus-eating when 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 coffee and fruit, and how to make a fortune without work. Half of ’em don’t even send stamps for an answer. They must think a consul has nothing to do but write letters. Open those letters 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 Vibora as a cyclopaedia 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 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 and 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 six months.”

“You’ve got ’em, anyhow,” went on Keogh. “And there’s Bridger, and Henschel, and Lutz, and Blanchard, and the two Lecouvres, and the quarantine doctor, and that Italian that’s agent for the banana company, and old Delgado⁠—no; he wears sandals. The comandante wears boots on parade day, and the juez politico wears cloth gaiters when he holds court. And⁠—oh, yes⁠—la Madama Mercedes Quintero Tomabilla Oliveras y Guerrera had on a pair of red kid slippers at the baile the other night. That’s about all. Don’t the soldiers at the cuartel?⁠—no, that’s so⁠—they are allowed shoes only when on the march. In town they turn their little toeses out to grass.”

“ ’Bout right,” agreed the consul. “Not over twenty out of the 3,000 ever felt leather on their walking arrangements. Oh, yes, Vibora is just the town for an enterprising shoe store⁠—that doesn’t want to part with its shoes. Wonder if old Patterson is trying to jolly me. He always was full of things he called jokes. We’ll jolly him back a few.”

Keogh dipped his pen, and wrote at Johnny’s dictation. Around many pauses, filled in with smoke and sundry travellings of the bottle and glasses, the following answer