Telemachus, Friend

by O. Henry

　　

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Returning from a hunting trip, I waited at the little town of LosPinos, in New Mexico, for the south-bound train, which was one hourlate. I sat on the porch of the Summit House and discussed thefunctions of life with Telemachus Hicks, the hotel proprietor. Perceiving that personalities were not out of order, I asked him whatspecies of beast had long ago twisted and mutilated his left ear.Being a hunter, I was concerned in the evils that may befall one inthe pursuit of game. "That ear," says Hicks, "is the relic of true friendship." "An accident?" I persisted. "No friendship is an accident," said Telemachus; and I was silent. "The only perfect case of true friendship I ever knew," went on myhost, "was a cordial intent between a Connecticut man and a monkey.The monkey climbed palms in Barranquilla and threw down cocoanuts tothe man. The man sawed them in two and made dippers, which he sold fortwo /reales/ each and bought rum. The monkey drank the milk of thenuts. Through each being satisfied with his own share of the graft,they lived like brothers. "But in the case of human beings, friendship is a transitory art,subject to discontinuance without further notice. "I had a friend once, of the entitlement of Paisley Fish, that Iimagined was sealed to me for an endless space of time. Side by sidefor seven years we had mined, ranched, sold patent churns, herdedsheep, took photographs and other things, built wire fences, andpicked prunes. Thinks I, neither homocide nor flattery nor riches norsophistry nor drink can make trouble between me and Paisley Fish. Wewas friends an amount you could hardly guess at. We was friends inbusiness, and we let our amicable qualities lap over and season ourhours of recreation and folly. We certainly had days of Damon andnights of Pythias. "One summer me and Paisley gallops down into these San Andresmountains for the purpose of a month's surcease and levity, dressed inthe natural store habiliments of man. We hit this town of Los Pinos,which certainly was a roof-garden spot of the world, and flowing withcondensed milk and honey. It had a street or two, and air, and hens,and a eating-house; and that was enough for us. "We strikes the town after supper-time, and we concludes to samplewhatever efficacy there is in this eating-house down by the railroadtracks. By the time we had set down and pried up our plates with aknife from the red oil-cloth, along intrudes Widow Jessup with the hotbiscuit and the fried liver. "Now, there was a woman that would have tempted an anchovy to forgethis vows. She was not so small as she was large; and a kind of welcomeair seemed to mitigate her vicinity. The pink of her face was the /inhoc signo/ of a culinary temper and a warm disposition, and her smilewould have brought out the dogwood blossoms in December. "Widow Jessup talks to us a lot of garrulousness about the climate andhistory and Tennyson and prunes and the scarcity of mutton, andfinally wants to know where we came from. "'Spring Valley,' says I. "'Big Spring Valley,' chips in Paisley, out of a lot of potatoes andknuckle-bone of ham in his mouth. "That was the first sign I noticed that the old /fidus Diogenes/business between me and Paisley Fish was ended forever. He knew how Ihated a talkative person, and yet he stampedes into the conversationwith his amendments and addendums of syntax. On the map it was BigSpring Valley; but I had heard Paisley himself call it Spring Valley athousand times. "Without saying any more, we went out after supper and set on therailroad track. We had been pardners too long not to know what wasgoing on in each other's mind. "'I reckon you understand,' says Paisley, 'that I've made up my mindto accrue that widow woman as part and parcel in and to myhereditaments forever, both domestic, sociable, legal, and otherwise,until death us do part.' "'Why, yes,' says I, 'I read it between the lines, though you onlyspoke one. And I suppose you are aware,' says I, 'that I have amovement on foot that leads up to the widow's changing her name toHicks, and leaves you writing to the society column to inquire whetherthe best man wears a japonica or seamless socks at the wedding!' "'There'll be some hiatuses in your program,' says Paisley, chewing upa piece of a railroad tie. 'I'd give in to you,' says he, 'in 'mostany respect if it was secular affairs, but this is not so. The smilesof woman,' goes on Paisley, 'is the whirlpool of Squills andChalybeates, into which vortex the good ship Friendship is often drawnand dismembered. I'd assault a bear that was annoying you,' saysPaisley, 'or I'd endorse your note, or rub the place between yourshoulder-blades with opodeldoc the same as ever; but there my sense ofetiquette ceases. In this fracas with Mrs. Jessup we play it alone.I've notified you fair.' "And then I collaborates with myself, and offers the followingresolutions and by-laws: "'Friendship between man and man,' says I, 'is an ancient historicalvirtue enacted in the days when men had to protect each other againstlizards with eighty-foot tails and flying turtles. And they've kept upthe habit to this day, and stand by each other till the bellboy comesup and tells them the animals are not really there. I've often heard,'I says, 'about ladies stepping in and breaking up a friendship betweenmen. Why should that be? I'll tell you, Paisley, the first sight andhot biscuit of Mrs. Jessup appears to have inserted a oscillation intoeach of our bosoms. Let the best man of us have her. I'll play you asquare game, and won't do any underhanded work. I'll do all of mycourting of her in your presence, so you will have an equalopportunity. With that arrangement I don't see why our steamboat offriendship should fall overboard in the medicinal whirlpools you speakof, whichever of us wins out.' "'Good old hoss!' says Paisley, shaking my hand. 'And I'll do thesame,' says he. 'We'll court the lady synonymously, and without any ofthe prudery and bloodshed usual to such occasions. And we'll befriends still, win or lose.' "At one side of Mrs. Jessup's eating-house was a bench under sometrees where she used to sit in the breeze after the south-bound hadbeen fed and gone. And there me and Paisley used to congregate aftersupper and make partial payments on our respects to the lady of ourchoice. And we was so honorable and circuitous in our calls that ifone of us got there first we waited for the other before beginning anygallivantery. "The first evening that Mrs. Jessup knew about our arrangement I gotto the bench before Paisley did. Supper was just over, and Mrs. Jessupwas out there with a fresh pink dress on, and almost cool enough tohandle. "I sat down by her and made a few specifications about the moralsurface of nature as set forth by the landscape and the contiguousperspective. That evening was surely a case in point. The moon wasattending to business in the section of sky where it belonged, and thetrees was making shadows on the ground according to science andnature, and there was a kind of conspicuous hullabaloo going on in thebushes between the bullbats and the orioles and the jack-rabbits andother feathered insects of the forest. And the wind out of themountains was singing like a Jew's-harp in the pile of old tomato-cansby the railroad track. "I felt a kind of sensation in my left side--something like doughrising in a crock by the fire. Mrs. Jessup had moved up closer. "'Oh, Mr. Hicks,' says she, 'when one is alone in the world, don'tthey feel it more aggravated on a beautiful night like this?' "I rose up off the bench at once. "'Excuse me, ma'am,' says I, 'but I'll have to wait till Paisley comesbefore I can give a audible hearing to leading questions like that.' "And then I explained to her how we was friends cinctured by years ofembarrassment and travel and complicity, and how we had agreed to takeno advantage of each other in any of the more mushy walks of life,such as might be fomented by sentiment and proximity. Mrs. Jessupappears to think serious about the matter for a minute, and then shebreaks into a species of laughter that makes the wildwood resound. "In a few minutes Paisley drops around, with oil of bergamot on hishair, and sits on the other side of Mrs. Jessup, and inaugurates a sadtale of adventure in which him and Pieface Lumley has a skinning-matchof dead cows in '95 for a silver-mounted saddle in the Santa Ritavalley during the nine months' drought. "Now, from the start of that courtship I had Paisley Fish hobbled andtied to a post. Each one of us had a different system of reaching outfor the easy places in the female heart. Paisley's scheme was topetrify 'em with wonderful relations of events that he had either comeacross personally or in large print. I think he must have got his ideaof subjugation from one of Shakespeare's shows I see once called'Othello.' There is a coloured man in it who acquires a duke'sdaughter by disbursing to her a mixture of the talk turned out byRider Haggard, Lew Dockstader, and Dr. Parkhurst. But that style ofcourting don't work well off the stage. "Now, I give you my own recipe for inveigling a woman into that stateof affairs when she can be referred to as '/nee/ Jones.' Learn how topick up her hand and hold it, and she's yours. It ain't so easy. Somemen grab at it so much like they was going to set a dislocation of theshoulder that you can smell the arnica and hear 'em tearing offbandages. Some take it up like a hot horseshoe, and hold it off atarm's length like a druggist pouring tincture of asafoetida in abottle. And most of 'em catch hold of it and drag it right out beforethe lady's eyes like a boy finding a baseball in the grass, withoutgiving her a chance to forget that the hand is growing on the end ofher arm. Them ways are all wrong. "I'll tell you the right way. Did you ever see a man sneak out in theback yard and pick up a rock to throw at a tomcat that was sitting ona fence looking at him? He pretends he hasn't got a thing in his hand,and that the cat don't see him, and that he don't see the cat. That'sthe idea. Never drag her hand out where she'll have to take notice ofit. Don't let her know that you think she knows you have the leastidea she is aware you are holding her hand. That was my rule oftactics; and as far as Paisley's serenade about hostilities andmisadventure went, he might as well have been reading to her a time-table of the Sunday trains that stop at Ocean Grove, New Jersey. "One night when I beat Paisley to the bench by one pipeful, myfriendship gets subsidised for a minute, and I asks Mrs. Jessup if shedidn't think a 'H' was easier to write than a 'J.' In a second herhead was mashing the oleander flower in my button-hole, and I leanedover and--but I didn't. "'If you don't mind,' says I, standing up, 'we'll wait for Paisley tocome before finishing this. I've never done anything dishonourable yetto our friendship, and this won't be quite fair.' "'Mr. Hicks,' says Mrs. Jessup, looking at me peculiar in the dark,'if it wasn't for but one thing, I'd ask you to hike yourself down thegulch and never disresume your visits to my house.' "'And what is that, ma'am?' I asks. "'You are too good a friend not to make a good husband,' says she. "In five minutes Paisley was on his side of Mrs. Jessup. "'In Silver City, in the summer of '98,' he begins, 'I see JimBatholomew chew off a Chinaman's ear in the Blue Light Saloon onaccount of a crossbarred muslin shirt that--what was that noise?' "I had resumed matters again with Mrs. Jessup right where we had leftoff. "'Mrs. Jessup,' says I, 'has promised to make it Hicks. And this isanother of the same sort.' "Paisley winds his feet round a leg of the bench and kind of groans. "'Lem,' says he, 'we been friends for seven years. Would you mind notkissing Mrs. Jessup quite so loud? I'd do the same for you.' "'All right,' says I. 'The other kind will do as well.' "'This Chinaman,' goes on Paisley, 'was the one that shot a man namedMullins in the spring of '97, and that was--' "Paisley interrupted himself again. "'Lem,' says he, 'if you was a true friend you wouldn't hug Mrs.Jessup quite so hard. I felt the bench shake all over just then. Youknow you told me you would give me an even chance as long as there wasany.' "'Mr. Man,' says Mrs. Jessup, turning around to Paisley, 'if you wasto drop in to the celebration of mine and Mr. Hicks's silver wedding,twenty-five years from now, do you think you could get it into thatHubbard squash you call your head that you are /nix cum rous/ in thisbusiness? I've put up with you a long time because you was Mr. Hicks'sfriend; but it seems to me it's time for you to wear the willow andtrot off down the hill.' "'Mrs. Jessup,' says I, without losing my grasp on the situation asfiance, 'Mr. Paisley is my friend, and I offered him a square deal anda equal opportunity as long as there was a chance.' "'A chance!' says she. 'Well, he may think he has a chance; but I hopehe won't think he's got a cinch, after what he's been next to all theevening.' "Well, a month afterwards me and Mrs. Jessup was married in the LosPinos Methodist Church; and the whole town closed up to see theperformance. "When we lined up in front and the preacher was beginning to sing outhis rituals and observances, I looks around and misses Paisley. Icalls time on the preacher. 'Paisley ain't here,' says I. 'We've gotto wait for Paisley. A friend once, a friend always--that's TelemachusHicks,' says I. Mrs. Jessup's eyes snapped some; but the preacherholds up the incantations according to instructions. "In a few minutes Paisley gallops up the aisle, putting on a cuff ashe comes. He explains that the only dry-goods store in town was closedfor the wedding, and he couldn't get the kind of a boiled shirt thathis taste called for until he had broke open the back window of thestore and helped himself. Then he ranges up on the other side of thebride, and the wedding goes on. I always imagined that Paisleycalculated as a last chance that the preacher might marry him to thewidow by mistake. "After the proceedings was over we had tea and jerked antelope andcanned apricots, and then the populace hiked itself away. Last of allPaisley shook me by the hand and told me I'd acted square and on thelevel with him and he was proud to call me a friend. "The preacher had a small house on the side of the street that he'dfixed up to rent; and he allowed me and Mrs. Hicks to occupy it tillthe ten-forty train the next morning, when we was going on a bridaltour to El Paso. His wife had decorated it all up with hollyhocks andpoison ivy, and it looked real festal and bowery. "About ten o'clock that night I sets down in the front door and pullsoff my boots a while in the cool breeze, while Mrs. Hicks was fixingaround in the room. Right soon the light went out inside; and I satthere a while reverberating over old times and scenes. And then Iheard Mrs. Hicks call out, 'Ain't you coming in soon, Lem?' "'Well, well!' says I, kind of rousing up. 'Durn me if I wasn'twaiting for old Paisley to--' "But when I got that far," concluded Telemachus Hicks, "I thoughtsomebody had shot this left ear of mine off with a forty-five. But itturned out to be only a lick from a broomhandle in the hands of Mrs.Hicks."

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