Sister Carrie (Barnes & Noble Classics Series)

by Theodore Dreiser

  They ran the car to the end and both got off. Hurstwood went into the barn and sought a car step, pulling out his paper-wrapped lunch from his pocket. There was no water and the bread was dry, but he enjoyed it. There was no ceremony about dining. He swallowed and looked about, contemplating the dull, homely labour of the thing. It was disagreeable—miserably disagreeable—in all its phases. Not because it was bitter, but because it was hard. It would be hard to any one, he thought.

  After eating, he stood about as before, waiting until his turn came.

  The intention was to give him an afternoon of practice, but the greater part of the time was spent in waiting about.

  At last evening came, and with it hunger and a debate with himself as to how he should spend the night. It was half-past five. He must soon eat. If he tried to go home, it would take him two hours and a half of cold walking and riding. Besides, he had orders to report at seven the next morning, and going home would necessitate his rising at an unholy and disagreeable hour. He had only something like a dollar and fifteen cents of Carrie’s money, with which he had intended to pay the two weeks’ coal bill before the present idea struck him.

  “They must have some place around here,” he thought. “Where does that fellow from Newark stay?”

  Finally he decided to ask. There was a young fellow standing near one of the doors in the cold, waiting a last turn. He was a mere boy in years—twenty-one about—but with a body lank and long, because of privation. A little good living would have made this youth plump and swaggering.

  “How do they arrange this, if a man hasn’t any money?” inquired Hurstwood, discreetly.

  The fellow turned a keen, watchful face on the inquirer.

  “You mean eat?” he replied.

  “Yes, and sleep. I can’t go back to New York tonight.”

  “The foreman ’ll fix that if you ask him, I guess. He did me.”

  “That so?”

  “Yes. I just told him I didn’t have anything. Gee, I couldn’t go home. I live way over in Hoboken.”

  Hurstwood only cleared his throat by way of acknowledgment.

  “They’ve got a place upstairs here, I understand. I don’t know what sort of a thing it is. Purty tough, I guess. He gave me a meal ticket this noon. I know that wasn’t much.”

  Hurstwood smiled grimly, and the boy laughed.

  “It ain’t no fun, is it?” he inquired, wishing vainly for a cheery reply.

  “Not much,” answered Hurstwood.

  “I’d tackle him now,” volunteered the youth. “He may go ’way.”

  Hurstwood did so.

  “Isn’t there some place I can stay around here tonight?” he inquired. “If I have to go back to New York, I’m afraid I won’t—”

  “There’re some cots upstairs,” interrupted the man, “if you want one of them.”

  “That’ll do,” he assented.

  He meant to ask for a meal ticket, but the seemingly proper moment never came, and he decided to pay himself that night.

  “I’ll ask him in the morning.”

  He ate in a cheap restaurant in the vicinity, and, being cold and lonely, went straight off to seek the loft in question. The company was not attempting to run cars after nightfall. It was so advised by the police.

  The room seemed to have been a lounging place for night workers. There were some nine cots in the place, two or three wooden chairs, a soap box, and a small, round-bellied stove, in which a fire was blazing. Early as he was, another man was there before him. The latter was sitting beside the stove warming his hands.

  Hurstwood approached and held out his own toward the fire. He was sick of the bareness and privation of all things connected with his venture, but was steeling himself to hold out. He fancied he could for a while.

  “Cold, isn’t it?” said the early guest.

  “Rather.”

  A long silence.

  “Not much of a place to sleep in, is it?” said the man.

  “Better than nothing,” replied Hurstwood.

  Another silence.

  “I believe I’ll turn in,” said the man.

  Rising, he went to one of the cots and stretched himself, removing only his shoes, and pulling the one blanket and dirty old comforter over him in a sort of bundle. The sight disgusted Hurstwood, but he did not dwell on it, choosing to gaze into the stove and think of something else. Presently he decided to retire, and picked a cot, also removing his shoes.

  While he was doing so, the youth who had advised him to come here entered, and, seeing Hurstwood, tried to be genial.

  “Better’n nothin’,” he observed, looking around.

  Hurstwood did not take this to himself. He thought it to be an expression of individual satisfaction, and so did not answer. The youth imagined he was out of sorts, and set to whistling softly. Seeing another man asleep, he quit that and lapsed into silence.

  Hurstwood made the best of a bad lot by keeping on his clothes and pushing away the dirty covering from his head, but at last he dozed in sheer weariness. The covering became more and more comfortable, its character was forgotten, and he pulled it about his neck and slept.

  In the morning he was aroused out of a pleasant dream by several men stirring about in the cold, cheerless room. He had been back in Chicago in fancy, in his own comfortable home. Jessica had been arranging to go somewhere, and he had been talking with her about it. This was so clear in his mind, that he was startled now by the contrast of this room. He raised his head, and the cold, bitter reality jarred him into wakefulness.

  “Guess I’d better get up,” he said.

  There was no water on this floor. He put on his shoes in the cold and stood up, shaking himself in his stiffness. His clothes felt disagreeable, his hair bad.

  “Hell!” he muttered, as he put on his hat.

  Downstairs things were stirring again.

  He found a hydrant, with a trough which had once been used for horses, but there was no towel here, and his handkerchief was soiled from yesterday. He contented himself with wetting his eyes with the ice-cold water. Then he sought the foreman, who was already on the ground.

  “Had your breakfast yet?” inquired that worthy.

  “No,” said Hurstwood.

  “Better get it, then; your car won’t be ready for a little while.”

  Hurstwood hesitated.

  “Could you let me have a meal ticket?” he asked, with an effort.

  “Here you are,” said the man, handing him one.

  He breakfasted as poorly as the night before on some fried steak and bad coffee. Then he went back.

  “Here,” said the foreman, motioning him, when he came in. “You take this car out in a few minutes.”

  Hurstwood climbed up on the platform in the gloomy barn and waited for a signal. He was nervous, and yet the thing was a relief. Anything was better than the barn.

  On this the fourth day of the strike, the situation had taken a turn for the worse. The strikers, following the counsel of their leaders and the newspapers, had struggled peaceably enough. There had been no great violence done. Cars had been stopped, it is true, and the men argued with. Some crews had been won over and led away, some windows broken, some jeering and yelling done; but in no more than five or six instances had men been seriously injured. These by crowds whose acts the leaders disclaimed.

  Idleness, however, and the sight of the company, backed by the police, triumphing, angered the men. They saw that each day more cars were going on, each day more declarations were being made by the company officials that the effective opposition of the strikers was broken. This put desperate thoughts in the minds of the men. Peaceful methods meant, they saw, that the companies would soon run all their cars and those who had complained would be forgotten: There was nothing so helpful to the companies as peaceful methods.

  All at once they blazed forth, and for a week there was storm and stress. Cars were assailed, men attacked, policemen struggled with, tracks torn up, and shots fired, until
at last street fights and mob movements became frequent, and the city was invested with militia.

  Hurstwood knew nothing of the change of temper.

  “Run your car out,” called the foreman, waving a vigorous hand at him. A green conductor jumped up behind and rang the bell twice as a signal to start. Hurstwood turned the lever and ran the car out through the door into the street in front of the barn. Here two brawny policemen got up beside him on the platform—one on either hand.

  At the sound of a gong near the barn door, two bells were given by the conductor and Hurstwood opened his lever.

  The two policemen looked about them calmly.

  “’Tis cold, all right, this morning,” said the one on the left, who possessed a rich brogue.

  “I had enough of it yesterday,” said the other. “I wouldn’t want a steady job of this.”

  “Nor I.”

  Neither paid the slightest attention to Hurstwood, who stood facing the cold wind, which was chilling him completely, and thinking of his orders.

  “Keep a steady gait,” the foreman had said. “Don’t stop for any one who doesn’t look like a real passenger. Whatever you do, don’t stop for a crowd.”

  The two officers kept silent for a few moments.

  “The last man must have gone through all right,” said the officer on the left. “I don’t see his car anywhere.”

  “Who’s on there?” asked the second officer, referring, of course, to its complement of policemen.

  “Schaeffer and Ryan.”

  There was another silence, in which the car ran smoothly along. There were not so many houses along this part of the way. Hurstwood did not see many people either. The situation was not wholly disagreeable to him. If he were not so cold, he thought he would do well enough.

  He was brought out of this feeling by the sudden appearance of a curve ahead, which he had not expected. He shut off the current and did an energetic turn at the brake, but not in time to avoid an unnaturally quick turn. It shook him up and made him feel like making some apologetic remarks, but he refrained.

  “You want to look out for them things,” said the officer on the left, condescendingly.

  “That’s right,” agreed Hurstwood, shamefacedly.

  “There’s lots of them on this line,” said the officer on the right.

  Around the corner a more populated way appeared. One or two pedestrians were in view ahead. A boy coming out of a gate with a tin milk bucket gave Hurstwood his first objectionable greeting.

  “Scab!” he yelled. “Scab!”

  Hurstwood heard it, but tried to make no comment, even to himself. He knew he would get that, and much more of the same sort, probably.

  At a corner farther up a man stood by the track and signalled the car to stop.

  “Never mind him,” said one of the officers. “He’s up to some game.”

  Hurstwood obeyed. At the corner he saw the wisdom of it. No sooner did the man perceive the intention to ignore him, than he shook his fist.

  “Ah, you bloody coward!” he yelled.

  Some half dozen men, standing on the corner, flung taunts and jeers after the speeding car.

  Hurstwood winced the least bit. The real thing was slightly worse than the thoughts of it had been.

  Now came in sight, three or four blocks farther on, a heap of something on the track.

  “They’ve been at work, here, all right,” said one of the policemen.

  “We’ll have an argument, maybe,” said the other.

  Hurstwood ran the car close and stopped. He had not done so wholly, however, before a crowd gathered about. It was composed of ex-motormen and conductors in part, with a sprinkling of friends and sympathisers.

  “Come off the car, pardner,” said one of the men in a voice meant to be conciliatory. “You don’t want to take the bread out of another man’s mouth, do you?”

  Hurstwood held to his brake and lever, pale and very uncertain what to do.

  “Stand back,” yelled one of the officers, leaning over the platform railing. “Clear out of this, now. Give the man a chance to do his work.”

  “Listen, pardner,” said the leader, ignoring the policeman and addressing Hurstwood. “We’re all working men, like yourself. If you were a regular motorman, and had been treated as we’ve been, you wouldn’t want any one to come in and take your place, would you? You wouldn’t want any one to do you out of your chance to get your rights, would you?”

  “Shut her off! shut her off!” urged the other of the policemen roughly. “Get out of this, now,” and he jumped the railing and landed before the crowd and began shoving. Instantly the other officer was down beside him.

  “Stand back, now,” they yelled. “Get out of this. What the hell do you mean? Out, now.”

  It was like a small swarm of bees.

  “Don’t shove me,” said one of the strikers, determinedly. “I’m not doing anything.”

  “Get out of this!” cried the officer, swinging his club. “I’ll give ye a bat on the sconce. Back, now.”

  “What the hell!” cried another of the strikers, pushing the other way, adding at the same time some lusty oaths.

  Crack came an officer’s club on his forehead. He blinked his eyes blindly a few times, wabbled on his legs, threw up his hands, and staggered back. In return, a swift fist landed on the officer’s neck.

  Infuriated by this, the latter plunged left and right, laying about madly with his club. He was ably assisted by his brother of the blue, who poured ponderous oaths upon the troubled waters. No severe damage was done, owing to the agility of the strikers in keeping out of reach. They stood about the sidewalk now and jeered.

  “Where is the conductor?” yelled one of the officers, getting his eye on that individual, who had come nervously forward to stand by Hurstwood. The latter had stood gazing upon the scene with more astonishment than fear.

  “Why don’t you come down here and get these stones off the track?” inquired the officer. “What you standing there for? Do you want to stay here all day? Get down.”

  Hurstwood breathed heavily in excitement and jumped down with the nervous conductor as if he had been called.

  “Hurry up, now,” said the other policeman.

  Cold as it was, these officers were hot and mad. Hurstwood worked with the conductor, lifting stone after stone and warming himself by the work.

  “Ah, you scab, you!” yelled the crowd. “You coward! Steal a man’s job, will you? Rob the poor, will you, you thief? We’ll get you yet, now. Wait.”

  Not all of this was delivered by one man. It came from here and there, incorporated with much more of the same sort and curses.

  “Work, you blackguards,” yelled a voice. “Do the dirty work. You’re the suckers that keep the poor people down!”

  “May God starve ye yet,” yelled an old Irish woman, who now threw open a nearby window and stuck out her head.

  “Yes, and you,” she added, catching the eye of one of the policemen. “You bloody, murtherin’ thafe! Crack my son over the head, will you, you hard-hearted, murtherin’ divil? Ah, ye—”

  But the officer turned a deaf ear.

  “Go to the devil, you old hag,” he half muttered as he stared round upon the scattered company.

  Now the stones were off, and Hurstwood took his place again amid a continued chorus of epithets. Both officers got up beside him and the conductor rang the bell, when, bang! bang! through window and door came rocks and stones. One narrowly grazed Hurstwood’s head. Another shattered the window behind.

  “Throw open your lever,” yelled one of the officers, grabbing at the handle himself.

  Hurstwood complied and the car shot away, followed by a rattle of stones and a rain of curses.

  “That————hit me in the neck,” said one of the officers. “I gave him a good crack for it, though.”

  “I think I must have left spots on some of them,” said the other.

  “I know that big guy that called us a————,” s
aid the first. “I’ll get him yet for that.”

  “I thought we were in for it sure, once there,” said the second.

  Hurstwood, warmed and excited, gazed steadily ahead. It was an astonishing experience for him. He had read of these things, but the reality seemed something altogether new. He was no coward in spirit. The fact that he had suffered this much now rather operated to arouse a stolid determination to stick it out. He did not recur in thought to New York or the flat. This one trip seemed a consuming thing.

  They now ran into the business heart of Brooklyn uninterrupted. People gazed at the broken windows of the car and at Hurstwood in his plain clothes. Voices called “scab” now and then, as well as other epithets, but no crowd attacked the car. At the downtown end of the line, one of the officers went to call up his station and report the trouble.

  “There’s a gang out there,” he said, “laying for us yet. Better send some one over there and clean them out.”

  The car ran back more quietly—hooted, watched, flung at, but not attacked. Hurstwood breathed freely when he saw the barns.

  “Well,” he observed to himself, “I came out of that all right.”

  The car was turned in and he was allowed to loaf a while, but later he was again called. This time a new team of officers was aboard. Slightly more confident, he sped the car along the commonplace streets and felt somewhat less fearful. On one side, however, he suffered intensely. The day was raw, with a sprinkling of snow and a gusty wind, made all the more intolerable by the speed of the car. His clothing was not intended for this sort of work. He shivered, stamped his feet, and beat his arms as he had seen other motormen do in the past, but said nothing. The novelty and danger of the situation modified in a way his disgust and distress at being compelled to be here, but not enough to prevent him from feeling grim and sour. This was a dog’s life, he thought. It was a tough thing to have to come to.

  The one thought that strengthened him was the insult offered by Carrie. He was not down so low as to take all that, he thought. He could do something—this, even—for a while. It would get better. He would save a little.