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The Story of a Patriot
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The Story of a Patriot
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Prolific author and political activist Upton Sinclair throws the upheaval of the early twentieth century into sharp relief in 100%: The Story of a Patriot. In a matter of instants, a bomb blast transmutes Peter Gudge's entire existence into chaos, and in the resulting pandemonium, he's forced to reexamine all of his values and beliefs.
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Informations
Ăditeur
The Floating PressAnnée
2014ISBN
9781776531813
Section 1
*
Now and then it occurs to one to reflect upon what slender threads
of accident depend the most important circumstances of his life; to
look back and shudder, realizing how close to the edge of
nothingness his being has come. A young man is walking down the
street, quite casually, with an empty mind and no set purpose; he
comes to a crossing, and for no reason that he could tell he takes
the right hand turn instead of the left; and so it happens that he
encounters a blue-eyed girl, who sets his heart to beating. He meets
the girl, marries herâand she became your mother. But now, suppose
the young man had taken the left hand turn instead of the right, and
had never met the blue-eyed girl; where would you be now, and what
would have become of those qualities of mind which you consider of
importance to the world, and those grave affairs of business to
which your time is devoted?
Something like that it was which befell Peter Gudge; just such an
accident, changing the whole current of his life, and making the
series of events with which this story deals. Peter was walking down
the street one afternoon, when a woman approached and held out to
him a printed leaflet. "Read this, please," she said.
And Peter, who was hungry, and at odds with the world, answered
gruffly: "I got no money." He thought it was an advertising dodger,
and he said: "I can't buy nothin'."
"It isn't anything for sale," answered the woman. "It's a message."
"Religion?" said Peter. "I just got kicked out of a church."
"No, not a church," said the woman. "It's something different; put
it in your pocket." She was an elderly woman with gray hair, and she
followed along, smiling pleasantly at this frail, poor-looking
stranger, but nagging at him. "Read it some time when you've nothing
else to do." And so Peter, just to get rid of her, took the leaflet
and thrust it into his pocket, and went on, and in a minute or two
had forgotten all about it.
Peter was thinkingâor rather Peter's stomach was thinking for him;
for when you have had nothing to eat all day, and nothing on the day
before but a cup of coffee and one sandwich, your thought-centers
are transferred from the top to the middle of you. Peter was
thinking that this was a hell of a life. Who could have foreseen
that just because he had stolen one miserable fried doughnut, he
would lose his easy job and his chance of rising in the world?
Peter's whole being was concentrated on the effort to rise in the
world; to get success, which means money, which means ease and
pleasureâthe magic names which lure all human creatures.
But who could have foreseen that Mrs. Smithers would have kept count
of those fried doughnuts every time anybody passed thru her pantry?
And it was only that one ridiculous circumstance which had brought
Peter to his present misery. But for that he might have had his
lunch of bread and dried herring and weak tea in the home of the
shoe-maker's wife, and might have still been busy with his job of
stirring up dissension in the First Apostolic Church, otherwise
known as the Holy Rollers, and of getting the Rev. Gamaliel Lunk
turned out, and Shoemaker Smithers established at the job of pastor,
with Peter Gudge as his right hand man.
Always it had been like that, thru Peter's twenty years of life.
Time after time he would get his feeble clutch fixed upon the ladder
of prosperity, and then something would happenâsome wretched thing
like the stealing of a fried doughnutâto pry him loose and tumble
him down again into the pit of misery.
So Peter walked along, with his belt drawn tight, and his restless
blue eyes wandering here and there, looking for a place to get a
meal. There were jobs to be had, but they were hard jobs, and Peter
wanted an easy one. There are people in this world who live by their
muscles, and others who live by their wits; Peter belonged to the
latter class; and had missed many a meal rather than descend in the
social scale.
Peter looked into the faces of everyone he passed, searching for a
possible opening. Some returned his glance, but never for more than
a second, for they saw an insignificant looking man, undersized,
undernourished, and with one shoulder higher than the other, a weak
chin and mouth, crooked teeth, and a brown moustache too feeble to
hold itself up at the corners. Peters' straw hat had many straws
missing, his second-hand brown suit was become third-hand, and his
shoes were turning over at the sides. In a city where everybody was
"hustling," everybody, as they phrased it, "on the make," why should
anyone take a second glance at Peter Gudge? Why should anyone care
about the restless soul hidden inside him, or dream that Peter was,
in his own obscure way, a sort of genius? No one did care; no one
did dream.
It was about two o'clock of an afternoon in July, and the sun beat
down upon the streets of American City. There were crowds upon the
streets, and Peter noticed that everywhere were flags and bunting.
Once or twice he heard the strains of distant music, and wondered
what was "up." Peter had not been reading the newspapers; all his
attention had been taken up by the quarrels of the Smithers faction
and the Lunk faction in the First Apostolic Church, otherwise known
as the Holy Rollers, and great events that had been happening in the
world outside were of no concern to him. Peter knew vaguely that on
the other side of the world half a dozen mighty nations were locked
together in a grip of death; the whole earth was shaken with their
struggles, and Peter had felt a bit of the trembling now and then.
But Peter did not know that his own country had anything to do with
this European quarrel, and did not know that certain great interests
thruout the country had set themselves to rouse the public to
action.
This movement had reached American City, and the streets had broken
out in a blaze of patriotic display. In all the windows of the
stores there were signs: "Wake up, America!" Across the broad Main
Street there were banners: "America Prepare!" Down in the square at
one end of the street a small army was gatheringâold veterans of
the Civil War, and middle-aged veterans of the Spanish War, and
regiments of the state militia, and brigades of marines and sailors
from the ships in the harbor, and members of fraternal lodges with
their Lord High Chief Grand Marshals on horseback with gold sashes
and waving white plumes, and all the notables of the city in
carriages, and a score of bands to stir their feet and ten thousand
flags waving above their heads. "Wake up America!" And here was
Peter Gudge, with an empty stomach, coming suddenly upon the
swarming crowds in Main Street, and having no remotest idea what it
was all about.
A crowd suggested one thing to Peter. For seven years of his young
life he had been assistant to Pericles Priam, and had traveled over
America selling Priam's Peerless Pain Paralyzer; they had ridden in
an automobile, and wherever there was a fair or a convention or an
excursion or a picnic, they were on hand, and Pericles Priam would
stop at a place where the crowds were thickest, and ring a dinner
bell, and deliver his super-eloquent message to humanityâthe elixir
of life revealed, suffering banished from the earth, and all
inconveniences of this mortal state brought to an end for one dollar
per bottle of fifteen per cent opium. It had been Peter's job to
handle the bottles and take in the coin; and so now, when he saw the
crowd, he looked about him eagerly. Perhaps there might be here some
vender of corn-plasters or ink-stain removers, or some three card
monte man to whom Peter could attach himself for the price of a
sandwich.
Peter wormed his way thru the crowd for two or three blocks, but saw
nothing more promising than venders of American flags on little
sticks, and of patriotic buttons with "Wake up America!" But then,
on the other side of the street at one of the crossings Peter saw a
man standing on a truck making a speech, and he dug his way thru the
crowd, elbowing, sliding this way and that, begging everybody's
pardonâuntil at last he was out of the crowd, and standing in the
open way which had been cleared for the procession, a seemingly
endless road lined with solid walls of human beings, with
blue-uniformed policemen holding them back. Peter started to run
acrossâand at that same instant came the end of the world.
Section 2
*
One who seeks to tell about events in words comes occasionally upon
a fundamental difficulty. An event of colossal and overwhelming
significance may happen all at once, but the words which describe it
have to come one by one in a long chain. The event may reveal itself
without a moment's warning; but if one is to give a sense of it in
words, one must prepare for it, build up to it, awaken anticipation,
establish a climax. If the description of this event which fate
sprung upon Peter Gudge as he was crossing the street were limited
to the one word "BANG" in letters a couple of inches high across the
page, the impression would hardly be adequate.
The end of the world, it seemed to Peter, when he was able to
collect enough of his terrified wits to think about it. But at first
there was no thinking; there was only sensationâa terrific roar, as
if the whole universe had suddenly turned to sound; a blinding white
glare, as of all the lightnings of the heavens; a blow that picked
him up as if he had been a piece of thistledown, and flung him
across the street and against the side of a building. Peter fell
upon the sidewalk in a heap, deafened, blinded, stunned; and there
he layâhe had no idea how long-until gradually his senses began to
return to him, and from the confusion certain factors began to stand
out: a faint gray smoke that seemed to lie upon the ground, a bitter
odor that stung the nostrils and tongue, and screams of people,
moaning and sobbing and general uproar. Something lay across Peter's
chest, and he felt that he was suffocating, and struggled
convulsively to push it away; the hands with which he pushed felt
something hot and wet and slimy, and the horrified Peter realized
that it was half the body of a mangled human being.
Yes, it was the end of the world. Only a couple of days previously
Peter Gudge had been a devout member of the First Apostolic Church,
otherwise known as the Holy Rollers, and had listened at
prayer-meetings to soul-shaking imaginings out of the Book of
Revelations. So Peter knew that this was it; and having many sins
upon his conscience, and being in no way eager to confront his God,
he looked out over the bodies of the dead and the writhing wounded,
and saw a row of boxes standing against the building, having been
placed there by people who wished to see over the heads of the
crowd. Peter started to crawl, and found that he was able to do so,
and wormed his way behind one of these packing-boxes, and got inside
and lay hidden from his God.
There was blood on him, and he did not know whether it was his own
or other peoples'. He was trembling with fright, his crooked teeth
were hammering together like those of an angry woodchuck. But the
effects of the shock continued to pass away, and his wits to come
back to him, and at last Peter realized that he never had taken
seriously the ideas of the First Apostolic Church of American City.
He listened to the moans of the wounded, and to the shouts and
uproar of the crowd, and began seriously figuring out what could
have happened. There had once been an earthquake in American City;
could this be another one? Or had a volcano opened up in the midst
of Main Street? Or could it have been a gas-main? And was this the
end, or would it explode some more? Would the volcano go on
erupting, and blow Peter and his frail packing-box thru the walls of
Guggenheim's Department-store?
So Peter waited, and listened to the horrible sounds of people in
agony, and pleading with others to put them out of it. Peter heard
voices of men giving orders, and realized that these must be
policemen, and that no doubt there would be ambulances coming. Maybe
there was something the matter with him, and he ought to crawl out
and get himself taken care of. All of a sudden Peter remembered his
stomach; and his wits, which had been sharpened by twenty years'
struggle against a hostile world, realized in a flash the
opportunity which fate had brought to him. He must pretend to be
wounded, badly wounded; he must be unconscious, suffering from shock
and shattered nerves; then they would take him to the hospital and
put him in a soft bed and give him things to eatâmaybe he might
stay there for weeks, and they might give him money when he came
out.
Or perhaps he might get a job in the hospital, something that was
easy, and required only alert intelligence. Perhaps the head doctor
in the hospital might want somebody to watch the other doctors, to
see if they were neglecting the patients, or perhaps flirting with
some of the nursesâthere was sure to be something like that going
on. It had been that way in the orphans' home where Peter had spent
a part of his childhood till he ran away. It had been that way again
in the great Temple of Jimjambo, conducted by Pashtian el Kalandra,
Chief Magistrian of Eleutherinian Exoticism. Peter had worked as
scullion in the kitchen in that mystic institution, and had worked
his way upward until he possessed the confidence of Tushbar Akrogas,
major-domo and right hand man of the Prophet himself.
Wherever there was a group of people, and a treasure to be
administered, there Peter knew was backbiting and scandal and
intriguing and spying, and a chance for somebody whose brains were
"all there." It might seem strange that Peter should think about
such things, just then when the earth had opened up in front of him
and the air had turned to roaring noise and blinding white flame,
and had hurled him against the side of a building and dropped the
bleeding half of a woman's body across his chest; but Peter had
lived from earliest childhood by his wits and by nothing else, and
such a fellow has to learn to use his wits under any and all
circumstances, no matter how bewildering. Peter's training covered
almost every emergency one could think of; he had even at times
occupied himself by imagining what he would do if the Holy Rollers
should turn out to be right, and if suddenly Gabriel's trumpet were
to blow, and he were to find himself confronting Jesus in a long
white night-gown.
Section 3
*
Peter's imaginings were brought to an end by the packing-box being pulled out from the wall. "Hello!" said a voice.
Peter groaned, but did not look up. The box was pulled out further, and a face peered in. "What you hidin' in there for?"
Peter stammered feebly: "Wh-wh-what?"
"You hurt?" demanded the voice.
"I dunno," moaned Peter.
The box was pulled out further, and its occupant slid out. Peter looked up, and saw three or four policemen bending over him; he moaned again.
"How did you get in there?" asked one.
"I crawled in."
"What for?"
"To g-g-get away from theâwhat was it?"
"Bomb," said one of the policemen; and Peter was astounded that for a moment he forgot to be a nervous wreck.
"Bomb!" he cried; and at the same moment one of the policemen lifted him to his feet.
"Can you stand up?" he demanded; and Peter tried, and found that he could, and forgot that he couldn't. He was covered with blood and dirt, and was an unpresentable object, but he was really relieved to discover that his limbs were intact.
"What's your name?" demanded one of the policemen, and when Peter answered, he asked, "Where do you work?"
"I got no job," replied Peter.
"Where'd you work last?" And then another broke in, "What did you crawl in there for?"
"My God!" cried Peter. "I wanted to get away!"
The policemen seemed to find it suspicious that he had stayed hidden so long. They were in a state of excitement themselves, it appeared; a terrible crime had been committed, and they were hunting for any trace of the criminal. Another man came up, not dressed in uniform, but evidently having authority, and he fell onto Peter, demanding to know who he was, and where he had come from, and what he had been doing in that crowd. And of course Peter had no very satisfactory answers to give to any of these questions. His occupations had been unusual, and not entirely credible, and his purposes were hard to explain to a suspicious questioner. The man was big and burly, at least a foot taller than Peter, and as he talked he stooped down and stared into Peter's eyes as if he were looking for dark secrets hidden back in the depths of Peter's skull. Peter remembered t...