Short Fiction by O. Henry (librera reader txt) 📕

Mr. Obadiah Patterson,
Dalesburg, Miss.

Dear Sir: In reply to your favor of July 2nd, 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 Vilabora. 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 is 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 Vibora

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 estafeta with it. The Ariadne takes the mail out tomorrow if they make up that load of fruit today.”

The night programme in Vibora never varied. The recreations of the populace were soporific and flat. The people wandered about, barefoot, aimless, and silent, each with lighted cigar or cigarette. Looking down the dimly lighted ways you seemed to see a threading maze of brunette ghosts tangled with an accompanying 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 vacant, and all were abed.

Nor at the consulate was there often a change of bill. Keogh came there nightly, for Vibora is close to the gratings of Avernus, and its one cool place was the consul’s little porch overlooking the sea. The brandy would be kept moving, and by ten o’clock sentiment would begin to stir in the heart of the self-exiled Johnny. Then he would relate to Keogh the story of his ended romance. Each night Keogh would be ready with untiring sympathy.

“But don’t think for a minute”⁠—thus would Johnny always conclude his woeful tale⁠—“that I’m grieving about that girl, Billy. I’ve forgotten her. She hardly ever enters my mind. If she would walk in 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! Had a 500-acre farm, though, and that counted. Maybe I’ll get back at him some day. He told Rosine all about how wild I was, and kept her posted. All right. I never did anything low-down. Everybody in Mississippi 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 300 times.

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

At this point Johnny would fall into a gentle slumber, and Keogh would saunter out to his own shack under the calabash tree at the edge of the plaza.

In a day or two the letter from the Dalesburg postmaster and its answer had been forgotten by the Vibora exiles. But on the 26th day of the July the fruit of the reply appeared upon the tree of events.

The Andador, a fruit steamer that visited Vibora regularly, drew into the harbor and anchored. The beach was lined with spectators while the quarantine doctor and the customhouse crew rowed out to attend to their duties.

An hour later Billy Keogh lounged into the consulate, clean and cool in his linen clothes, and grinning like a pleased shark.

“Guess what?” he said to Johnny, lounging in his hammock.

“Too hot to guess,” said Johnny, lazily.

“Your shoe-store man’s come,” said Keogh, rolling the sweet morsel on his tongue, “with a stock of goods big enough to supply the continent as far down as Tierra del Fuego. They’re carting his cases over to the customhouse now. Six barges full they brought ashore and have paddled back for the rest. Oh, ye saints in glory! won’t there be regalements in the air when he gets on to the joke and has an interview with Mr. Consul? It’ll be worth nine years in the tropics just to witness that one joyful moment.”

Keogh loved to take his mirth easily. He selected a clean place on the matting and lay upon the floor. The walls shook with his enjoyment. Johnny turned half over and blinked.

“Don’t tell me,” he said, “that anybody was fool enough to take that letter seriously.”

“Four-thousand-dollar stock of goods!” gasped Keogh, in ecstasy. “Talk about coals to Newcastle! Why didn’t he take a shipload of palm-leaf fans to Spitzbergen while he was about it? Saw the old codger on the beach. You ought to have been there when he put on his specs and squinted at the 500 or so barefooted citizens standing around.”

“Are you telling the truth, Billy?” asked the consul, weakly.

“Am I? You ought to see the buncoed gentleman’s daughter he brought along. Looks! She’d stack up like a thousand bricks at an inaugural ball. She makes the brick-dust señoritas here look like tar-babies.”

“Go on,” said Johnny, “if you can stop that asinine giggling. I hate to see a