The Day We Celebrate

by O. Henry

　　

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"In the tropics" ("Hop-along" Bibb, the bird fancier, was saying to me)"the seasons, months, fortnights, week-ends, holidays, dog-days, Sundays,and yesterdays get so jumbled together in the shuffle that you never knowwhen a year has gone by until you're in the middle of the next one." "Hop-along" Bibb kept his bird store on lower Fourth Avenue. He was anex-seaman and beachcomber who made regular voyages to southern ports andimported personally conducted invoices of talking parrots and dialecticparoquets. He had a stiff knee, neck, and nerve. I had gone to him tobuy a parrot to present, at Christmas, to my Aunt Joanna. "This one," said I, disregarding his homily on the subdivisions of time --"this one that seems all red, white, and blue -- to what genus of beastsdoes he belong? He appeals at once to my patriotism and to my love ofdiscord in colour schemes." "That's a cockatoo from Ecuador," said Bibb. "All he has been taught tosay is "Merry Christmas." A seasonable bird. He's only seven dollars; andI'll bet many a human has stuck you for more money by making the samespeech to you." And then Bibb laughed suddenly and loudly. "That bird," he explained, "reminds me. He's got his dates mixed. Heought to be saying '_E pluri bus unum_,' to match his feathers, instead oftrying to work the Santa Claus graft. It reminds me of the time me andLiverpool Sam got our ideas of things tangled up on the coast of CostaRica on account of the weather and other phenomena to be met with in thetropics. "We were, as it were, stranded on that section of the Spanish main with nomoney to speak of and no friends that should be talked about either. Wehad stoked and second-cooked ourselves down there on a fruit steamer fromNew Orleans to try our luck, which was discharged, after we got there, forlack of evidence. There was no work suitable to our instincts; so me andLiverpool began to subsist on the red rum of the country and such fruit aswe could reap where we had not sown. It was an alluvial town, calledSoledad, where there was no harbour or future or recourse. Betweensteamers the town slept and drank rum. It only woke up when there werebananas to ship. It was like a man sleeping through dinner until thedessert. "When me and Liverpool got so low down that the American consul wouldn'tspeak to us we knew we'd struck bed rock. "We boarded with a snuff-brown lady named Chica, who kept a rum-shop and aladies' and gents' restaurant in a street called the _calle de los_Forty-seven Inconsolable Saints. When our credit played out there,Liverpool, whose stomach overshadowed his sensations of _noblesse oblige_,married Chica. This kept us in rice and fried plantain for a month; andthen Chica pounded Liverpool one morning sadly and earnestly for fifteenminutes with a casserole handed down from the stone age, and we knew thatwe had out-welcomed our liver. That night we signed an engagement withDon Jaime McSpinosa, a hybrid banana fancier of the place, to work on hisfruit preserves nine miles out of town. We had to do it or be reduced tosea water and broken doses of feed and slumber. "Now, speaking of Liverpool Sam, I don't malign or inexculpate him to youany more than I would to his face. But in my opinion, when an Englishmangets as low as he can he's got to dodge so that the dregs of other nationsdon't drop ballast on him out of their balloons. And if he's a LiverpoolEnglishman, why, fire-damp is what he's got to look out for. Being anatural American, that's my personal view. But Liverpool and me had muchin common. We were without decorous clothes or ways and means of existence; and, as the saying goes, misery certainly does enjoy the society ofaccomplices. "Our job on old McSpinosa's plantation was chopping down banana stalks andloading the bunches of fruit on the backs of horses. Then a nativedressed up in an alligator hide belt, a machete, and a pair of AA sheetingpajamas, drives 'em over to the coast and piles 'em up on the beach. "You ever been in a banana grove? It's as solemn as a rathskeller atseven A. M. It's like being lost behind the scenes at one of thesemushroom musical shows. You can't see the sky for the foliage above you;and the ground is knee deep in rotten leaves; and it's so still that youcan hear the stalks growing again after you chop 'em down. "At night me and Liverpool herded in a lot of grass huts on the edge of alagoon with the red, yellow, and black employes of Don Jaime. There welay fighting mosquitoes and listening to the monkeys squalling and thealligators grunting and splashing in the lagoon until daylight with onlysnatches of sleep between times. "We soon lost all idea of what time of the year it was. It's just abouteighty degrees there in December and June and on Fridays and at midnightand election day and any other old time. Sometimes it rains more than atothers, and that's all the difference you notice. A man is liable to livealong there without noticing any fugiting of tempus until some day theundertaker calls in for him just when he's beginning to think aboutcutting out the gang and saving up a little to invest in real estate. "I don't know how long we worked for Don Jaime; but it was through two orthee rainy spells, eight or ten hair cuts, and the life of thee pairs ofsail-cloth trousers. All the money we earned went for rum and tobacco;but we ate, and that was something. "All of a sudden one day me and Liverpool find the trade of committingsurgical operations on banana stalks turning to aloes and quinine in ourmouths. It's a seizure that often comes upon white men in Latin andgeographical countries. We wanted to be addressed again in language andsee the smoke of a steamer and read the real estate transfers and gents'outfitting ads in an old newspaper. Even Soledad seemed like a centre ofcivilization to us, so that evening we put our thumbs on our nose at DonJaime's fruit stand and shook his grass burrs off our feet. "It was only twelve miles to Soledad, but it took me and Liverpool twodays to get there. It was banana grove nearly all the way; and we gottwisted time and again. It was like paging the palm room of a New Yorkhotel for a man named Smith. "When we saw the houses of Soledad between the trees all my disinclinationtoward this Liverpool Sam rose up in me. I stood him while we were twowhite men against the banana brindles; but now, when there were prospectsof my exchanging even cuss words with an American citizen, I put him backin his proper place. And he was a sight, too, with his rum-painted noseand his red whiskers and elephant feet with leather sandals strapped tothem. I suppose I looked about the same. "'It looks to me,' says I, 'like Great Britain ought to be made to keepsuch gin-swilling, scurvy, unbecoming mud larks as you at home instead ofsending 'em over here to degrade and taint foreign lands. We kicked youout of America once and we ought to put on rubber boots and do it again.' "'Oh, you go to 'ell,' says Liverpool, which was about all the repartee heever had. "Well, Soledad, looked fine to me after Don Jaime 's plantation.Liverpool and me walked into it side by side, from force of habit, pastthe calabosa and the Hotel Grande, down across the plaza toward Chica'shut, where we hoped that Liverpool, being a husband of hers, might workhis luck for a meal. "As we passed the two-story little frame house occupied by the AmericanClub, we noticed that the balcony had been decorated all around withwreaths of evergreens and flowers, and the flag was flying from the poleon the roof. Stanzey, the consul, and Ark-right, a gold-mine owner, weresmoking on the balcony. Me and Liverpool waved our dirty hands toward 'emand smiled real society smiles; but they turned their backs to us and wenton talking. And we had played whist once with the two of 'em up to the time when Liverpool held all thirteen trumps for four hands in succession.It was some holiday, we knew; but we didn't know the day nor the year. "A little further along we saw a reverend man named Pendergast, who hadcome to Soledad to build a church, standing under a cocoanut palm with hislittle black alpaca coat and green umbrella. "'Boys, boys!' says he, through his blue spectacles, 'is it as bad asthis? Are you so far reduced?' "'We're reduced,' says I, 'to very vulgar fractions.' "'It is indeed sad,' says Pendergast, 'to see my countrymen in suchcircumstances.' "'Cut 'arf of that out, old party,' says Liverpool. 'Cawn't you tell amember of the British upper classes when you see one?' "'Shut up,' I told Liverpool. 'You're on foreign soil now, or thatportion of it that's not on you.' "'And on this day, too!' goes on Pendergast, grievous -- 'on this mostglorious day of the year when we should all be celebrating the dawn ofChristian civilization and the downfall of the wicked.' "'I did notice bunting and bouquets decorating the town, reverend,' saysI, 'but I didn't know what it was for. We've been so long out of touchwith calendars that we didn't know whether it was summer time or Saturdayafternoon.' "'Here is two dollars,' says Pendergast digging up two Chili silver wheelsand handing 'em to me. 'Go, my men, and observe the rest of the day in abefitting manner.' "Me and Liverpool thanked him kindly, and walked away. "'Shall we eat?' I asks. "'Oh, 'ell!' says Liverpool. 'What's money for?' "'Very well, then,' Isays, 'since you insist upon it, we'll drink.' "So we pull up in a rum shop and get a quart of it and go down on thebeach under a cocoanut tree and celebrate. "Not having eaten anything but oranges in two days, the rum has immediateeffect; and once more I conjure up great repugnance toward the Britishnation. "'Stand up here,' I says to Liverpool, 'you scum of a despot limitedmonarchy, and have another dose of Bunker Hill. That good man, Mr.Pendergast,' says I, 'said we were to observe the day in a befittingmanner, and I'm not going to see his money misapplied.' "'Oh, you go to 'ell!' says Liverpool, and I started in with a fineleft-hander on his right eye. "Liverpool had been a fighter once, but dissipation and bad company hadtaken the nerve out of him. In ten minutes I had him lying on the sandwaving the white flag. "'Get up,' says I, kicking him in the ribs, 'and come along with me.' "Liverpool got up and followed behind me because it was his habit, wipingthe red off his face and nose. I led him to Reverend Pendergast's shackand called him out. "'Look at this, sir,' says I -- 'look at this thing that was once a proudBritisher. You gave us two dollars and told us to celebrate the day. Thestar-spangled banner still waves. Hurrah for the stars and eagles!' "'Dear me,' says Pendergast, holding up his hands. 'Fighting on this dayof all days! On Christmas day, when peace on --' "'Christmas, hell!' says I. 'I thought it was the Fourth of July.'" "Merry Christmas!" said the red, white, and blue cockatoo. "Take him for six dollars," said Hop-along Bibb. "He's got his dates andcolours mixed."

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