In his description of saying goodbye to Johnny—finally handing him over to his father after the failed kidnapping attempt—the narrator Sam uses three separate similes:
When the kid found out we were going to leave him at home he started up a howl like a calliope and fastened himself as tight as a leech to Bill’s leg. His father peeled him away gradually, like a porous plaster.
The first simile here—“he started up a howl like a calliope”—captures the intensity of Johnny’s resistance to going home to his father Ebenezer. The calliope is an organ-like instrument known for its high-pitched whistle sounds and, in comparing Johnny’s howls to these sounds, O. Henry is encouraging readers to imagine how loudly Johnny is wailing.
The second simile—in which Sam describes how Johnny “fastened himself as tight as a leech to Bill’s leg”—again communicates Johnny’s desperate desire to stay with his kidnappers. Leeches, O. Henry assumes his readers will know, notoriously suction themselves to humans and animals in order to suck their blood. Johnny’s desire to attach himself like this to the men who kidnapped him shows how neglectful (and possibly abusive) his father is in comparison.
The final simile—“His father peeled him away gradually, like a porous plaster”—shows how, even in the face of his father’s active attempt to separate him from his kidnappers, Johnny continues to resist. His persistent resistance highlights how, even though Sam and Bill are the supposedly violent criminals in the story, the Ebenezer’s poor parenting is the true source of violence in the story.
