Tobin’s Palm - O. Henry

  Tobin and me, the two of us, went down to Coney one day, for there was four dollars between us, and Tobin had need of distractions. For there was Katie Mahorner, his sweetheart, of County Sligo, lost since she started for America three months before with two hundred dollars, her own savings, and one hundred dollars from the sale of Tobin’s inherited estate, a fine cottage and pig on the Bog Shannaugh. And since the letter that Tobin got saying that she had started to come to him not a bit of news had he heard or seen of Katie Mahorner. Tobin advertised in the papers, but nothing could be found of the colleen.

  So, to Coney me and Tobin went, thinking that a turn at the chutes and the smell of the popcorn might raise the heart in his bosom. But Tobin was a hardheaded man, and the sadness stuck in his skin. He ground his teeth at the crying balloons; he cursed the moving pictures; and, though he would drink whenever asked, he scorned Punch and Judy, and was for licking the tintype men as they came.

  So I gets him down a side way on a board walk where the attractions were some less violent. At a little six by eight stall Tobin halts, with a more human look in his eye.

  “’Tis here,” says he, “I will be diverted. I’ll have the palm of me hand investigated by the wonderful palmist of the Nile, and see if what is to be will be.”

  Tobin was a believer in signs and the unnatural in nature. He possessed illegal convictions in his mind along the subjects of black cats, lucky numbers, and the weather predictions in the papers.

  We went into the enchanted chicken coop, which was fixed mysterious with red cloth and pictures of hands with lines crossing ’em like a railroad centre. The sign over the door says it is Madame Zozo the Egyptian Palmist. There was a fat woman inside in a red jumper with pothooks and beasties embroidered upon it. Tobin gives her ten cents and extends one of his hands. She lifts Tobin’s hand, which is own brother to the hoof of a drayhorse, and examines it to see whether ’tis a stone in the frog or a cast shoe he has come for.

  “Man,” says this Madame Zozo, “the line of your fate shows—”

  “’Tis not me foot at all,” says Tobin, interrupting. “Sure, ’tis no beauty, but ye hold the palm of me hand.”

  “The line shows,” says the Madame, “that ye’ve not arrived at your time of life without bad luck. And there’s more to come. The mount of Venus—or is that a stone bruise?—shows that ye’ve been in love. There’s been trouble in your life on account of your sweetheart.”

  “’Tis Katie Mahorner she has references with,” whispers Tobin to me in a loud voice to one side.

  “I see,” says the palmist, “a great deal of sorrow and tribulation with one whom ye cannot forget. I see the lines of designation point to the letter K and the letter M in her name.”

  “Whist!” says Tobin to me, “do ye hear that?”

  “Look out,” goes on the palmist, “for a dark man and a light woman; for they’ll both bring ye trouble. Ye’ll make a voyage upon the water very soon, and have a financial loss. I see one line that brings good luck. There’s a man coming into your life who will fetch ye good fortune. Ye’ll know him when ye see him by his crooked nose.”

  “Is his name set down?” asks Tobin. “’Twill be convenient in the way of greeting when he backs up to dump off the good luck.”

  “His name,” says the palmist, thoughtful looking, “is not spelled out by the lines, but they indicate ’tis a long one, and the letter ‘o’ should be in it. There’s no more to tell. Good-evening. Don’t block up the door.”

  “’Tis wonderful how she knows,” says Tobin as we walk to the pier.

  As we squeezed through the gates a nigger man sticks his lighted segar against Tobin’s ear, and there is trouble. Tobin hammers his neck, and the women squeal, and by presence of mind I drag the little man out of the way before the police comes. Tobin is always in an ugly mood when enjoying himself.

  On the boat going back, when the man calls “Who wants the good-looking waiter?” Tobin tried to plead guilty, feeling the desire to blow the foam off a crock of suds, but when he felt in his pocket he found himself discharged for lack of evidence. Somebody had disturbed his change during the commotion. So we sat, dry, upon the stools, listening to the Dagoes fiddling on deck. If anything, Tobin was lower in spirits and less congenial with his misfortunes than when we started.

  On a seat against the railing was a young woman dressed suitable for red automobiles, with hair the colour of an unsmoked meerschaum. In passing by, Tobin kicks her foot without intentions, and, being polite to ladies when in drink, he tries to give his hat a twist while apologising. But he knocks it off, and the wind carries it overboard.

  Tobin came back and sat down, and I began to look out for him, for the man’s adversities were becoming frequent. He was apt, when pushed so close by hard luck, to kick the best dressed man he could see, and try to take command of the boat.

  Presently Tobin grabs my arm and says, excited: “Jawn,” says he, “do ye know what we’re doing? We’re taking a voyage upon the water.”

  “There now,” says I; “subdue yeself. The boat’ll land in ten minutes more.”

  “Look,” says he, “at the light lady upon the bench. And have ye forgotten the nigger man that burned me ear? And isn’t the money I had gone—a dollar sixty-five it was?”

  I thought he was no more than summing up his catastrophes so as to get violent with good excuse, as men will do, and I tried to make him understand such things was trifles.

  “Listen,” says Tobin. “Ye’ve no ear for the gift of prophecy or the miracles of the inspired. What did the palmist lady tell ye out of me hand? ’Tis coming true before your eyes. ‘Look out,’ says she, ‘for a dark man and a light woman; they’ll bring ye trouble.’ Have ye forgot the nigger man, though he got some of it back from me fist? Can ye show me a lighter woman than the blonde lady that was the cause of me hat falling in the water? And where’s the dollar sixty-five I had in me vest when we left the shooting gallery?”

  The way Tobin put it, it did seem to corroborate the art of prediction, though it looked to me that these accidents could happen to any one at Coney without the implication of palmistry.

  Tobin got up and walked around on deck, looking close at the passengers out of his little red eyes. I asked him the interpretation of his movements. Ye never know what Tobin has in his mind until he begins to carry it out.

  “Ye should know,” says he, “I’m working out the salvation promised by the lines in me palm. I’m looking for the crooked-nose man that’s to bring the good luck. ’Tis all that will save us. Jawn, did ye ever see a straighter-nosed gang of hellions in the days of your life?”

  ’Twas the nine-thirty boat, and we landed and walked up-town through Twenty-second Street, Tobin being without his hat.

  On a street corner, standing under a gas-light and looking over the elevated road at the moon, was a man. A long man he was, dressed decent, with a segar between his teeth, and I saw that his nose made two twists from bridge to end, like the wriggle of a snake. Tobin saw it at the same time, and I heard him breathe hard like a horse when you take the saddle off. He went straight up to the man, and I went with him.

  “Good-night to ye,” Tobin says to the man. The man takes out his segar and passes the compliments, sociable.

  “Would ye hand us your name,” asks Tobin, “and let us look at the size of it? It may be our duty to become acquainted with ye.”

  “My name” says the man, polite, “is Friedenhausman—Maximus G. Friedenhausman.”

  “’Tis the right length,” says Tobin. “Do you spell it with an ‘o’ anywhere down the stretch of it?”

  “I do not,” says the man.

“Can ye spell it with an ‘o’?” inquires Tobin, turning anxious.

“If your conscience,” says the man with the nose, “is indisposed toward foreign idioms ye might, to please yourself, smuggle the letter into the penultimate syllable.”

“’Tis well,” says Tobin. “Ye’re in the presence of Jawn Malone and Daniel Tobin.”

“Tis highly appreciated,” says the man, with a bow. “And now since I cannot conceive that ye would hold a spelling bee upon the street corner, will ye name some reasonable excuse for being at large?”

  “By the two signs,” answers Tobin, trying to explain, “which ye display according to the reading of the Egyptian palmist from the sole of me hand, ye’ve been nominated to offset with good luck the lines of trouble leading to the nigger man and the blonde lady with her feet crossed in the boat, besides the financial loss of a dollar sixty-five, all so far fulfilled according to Hoyle.”

  The man stopped smoking and looked at me.

  “Have ye any amendments,” he asks, “to offer to that statement, or are ye one too? I thought by the looks of ye ye might have him in charge.”

  “None,” says I to him, “except that as one horseshoe resembles another so are ye the picture of good luck as predicted by the hand of me friend. If not, then the lines of Danny’s hand may have been crossed, I don’t know.”

  “There’s two of ye,” says the man with the nose, looking up and down for the sight of a policeman. “I’ve enjoyed your company immense. Good-night.”

  With that he shoves his segar in his mouth and moves across the street, stepping fast. But Tobin sticks close to one side of him and me at the other.

  “What!” says he, stopping on the opposite sidewalk and pushing back his hat; “do ye follow me? I tell ye,” he says, very loud, “I’m proud to have met ye. But it is my desire to be rid of ye. I am off to me home.”

  “Do,” says Tobin, leaning against his sleeve. “Do be off to your home. And I will sit at the door of it till ye come out in the morning. For the dependence is upon ye to obviate the curse of the nigger man and the blonde lady and the financial loss of the one-sixty-five.”

  “’Tis a strange hallucination,” says the man, turning to me as a more reasonable lunatic. “Hadn’t ye better get him home?”

  “Listen, man,” says I to him. “Daniel Tobin is as sensible as he ever was. Maybe he is a bit deranged on account of having drink enough to disturb but not enough to settle his wits, but he is no more than following out the legitimate path of his superstitions and predicaments, which I will explain to you.” With that I relates the facts about the palmist lady and how the finger of suspicion points to him as an instrument of good fortune. “Now, understand,” I concludes, “my position in this riot. I am the friend of me friend Tobin, according to me interpretations. ’Tis easy to be a friend to the prosperous, for it pays; ’tis not hard to be a friend to the poor, for ye get puffed up by gratitude and have your picture printed standing in front of a tenement with a scuttle of coal and an orphan in each hand. But it strains the art of friendship to be true friend to a born fool. And that’s what I’m doing,” says I, “for, in my opinion, there’s no fortune to be read from the palm of me hand that wasn’t printed there with the handle of a pick. And, though ye’ve got the crookedest nose in New York City, I misdoubt that all the fortune-tellers doing business could milk good luck from ye. But the lines of Danny’s hand pointed to ye fair, and I’ll assist him to experiment with ye until he’s convinced ye’re dry.”

  After that the man turns, sudden, to laughing. He leans against a corner and laughs considerable. Then he claps me and Tobin on the backs of us and takes us by an arm apiece.

  “’Tis my mistake,” says he. “How could I be expecting anything so fine and wonderful to be turning the corner upon me? I came near being found unworthy. Hard by,” says he, “is a café, snug and suitable for the entertainment of idiosyncrasies. Let us go there and have drink while we discuss the unavailability of the categorical.”

  So saying, he marched me and Tobin to the back room of a saloon, and ordered the drinks, and laid the money on the table. He looks at me and Tobin like brothers of his, and we have the segars.

  “Ye must know,” says the man of destiny, “that me walk in life is one that is called the literary. I wander abroad be night seeking idiosyncrasies in the masses and truth in the heavens above. When ye came upon me I was in contemplation of the elevated road in conjunction with the chief luminary of night. The rapid transit is poetry and art: the moon but a tedious, dry body, moving by rote. But these are private opinions, for, in the business of literature, the conditions are reversed. ’Tis me hope to be writing a book to explain the strange things I have discovered in life.”

  “Ye will put me in a book,” says Tobin, disgusted; “will ye put me in a book?”

  “I will not,” says the man, “for the covers will not hold ye. Not yet. The best I can do is to enjoy ye meself, for the time is not ripe for destroying the limitations of print. Ye would look fantastic in type. All alone by meself must I drink this cup of joy. But, I thank ye, boys; I am truly grateful.”

  “The talk of ye,” says Tobin, blowing through his moustache and pounding the table with his fist, “is an eyesore to me patience. There was good luck promised out of the crook of your nose, but ye bear fruit like the bang of a drum. Ye resemble, with your noise of books, the wind blowing through a crack. Sure, now, I would be thinking the palm of me hand lied but for the coming true of the nigger man and the blonde lady and—”

  “Whist!” says the long man; “would ye be led astray by physiognomy? Me nose will do what it can within bounds. Let us have these glasses filled again, for ’tis good to keep idiosyncrasies well moistened, they being subject to deterioration in a dry moral atmosphere.”

  So, the man of literature makes good, to my notion, for he pays, cheerful, for everything, the capital of me and Tobin being exhausted by prediction. But Tobin is sore, and drinks quiet, with the red showing in his eye.

  By and by we moved out, for ’twas eleven o’clock, and stands a bit upon the sidewalk. And then the man says he must be going home, and invites me and Tobin to walk that way. We arrives on a side street two blocks away where there is a stretch of brick houses with high stoops and iron fences. The man stops at one of them and looks up at the top windows which he finds dark.

  “’Tis me humble dwelling,” says he, “and I begin to perceive by the signs that me wife has retired to slumber. Therefore I will venture a bit in the way of hospitality. ’Tis me wish that ye enter the basement room, where we dine, and partake of a reasonable refreshment. There will be some fine cold fowl and cheese and a bottle or two of ale. Ye will be welcome to enter and eat, for I am indebted to ye for diversions.”

  The appetite and conscience of me and Tobin was congenial to the proposition, though ’twas sticking hard in Danny’s superstitions to think that a few drinks and a cold lunch should represent the good fortune promised by the palm of his hand.

  “Step down the steps,” says the man with the crooked nose, “and I will enter by the door above and let ye in. I will ask the new girl we have in the kitchen,” says he, “to make ye a pot of coffee to drink before ye go. ’Tis fine coffee Katie Mahorner makes for a green girl just landed three months. Step in,” says the man, “and I’ll send her down to ye.”

(The Four Million, by O. Henry)