The Jacket (The Star-Rover)

by Jack London

“I guess you got good reasons to deny where you come from,” he next said, “you that drove the Lord’s people from Missouri .”

  Mother made no reply.

  “. . . Seein’,” he went on, after the pause accorded her, “as you’re now comin’ a-whinin’ an’ a-beggin’ bread at our hands that you persecuted.”

  Whereupon, and instantly, child that I was, I knew anger, the old, red, intolerant wrath, ever unrestrainable and unsubduable.

  “You lie!” I piped up. “We ain’t Missourians. We ain’t whinin’. An’ we ain’t beggars. We got the money to buy.”

  “Shut up, Jesse!” my mother cried, landing the back of her hand stingingly on my mouth. And then, to the stranger, “Go away and let the boy alone.”

  “I’ll shoot you full of lead, you damned Mormon!” I screamed and sobbed at him, too quick for my mother this time, and dancing away around the fire from the back-sweep of her hand.

  As for the man himself, my conduct had not disturbed him in the slightest. I was prepared for I knew not what violent visitation from this terrible stranger, and I watched him warily while he considered me with the utmost gravity.

  At last he spoke, and he spoke solemnly, with solemn shaking of the head, as if delivering a judgment.

  “Like fathers like sons,” he said. “The young generation is as bad as the elder. The whole breed is unregenerate and damned. There is no saving it, the young or the old. There is no atonement. Not even the blood of Christ can wipe out its iniquities.”

  “Damned Mormon!” was all I could sob at him. “Damned Mormon! Damned Mormon! Damned Mormon!”

  And I continued to damn him and to dance around the fire before my mother’s avenging hand, until he strode away.

  When my father, and the men who had accompanied him, returned, camp-work ceased, while all crowded anxiously about him. He shook his head.

  “They will not sell?” some woman demanded.

  Again he shook his head.

  A man spoke up, a blue-eyed, blond-whiskered giant of thirty, who abruptly pressed his way into the centre of the crowd.

  “They say they have flour and provisions for three years, Captain,” he said. “They have always sold to the immigration before. And now they won’t sell. And it ain’t our quarrel. Their quarrel’s with the government, an’ they’re takin’ it out on us. It ain’t right, Captain. It ain’t right, I say, us with our women an’ children, an’ California months away, winter comin’ on, an’ nothin’ but desert in between. We ain’t got the grub to face the desert.”

  He broke off for a moment to address the whole crowd.

  “Why, you-all don’t know what desert is. This around here ain’t desert. I tell you it’s paradise, and heavenly pasture, an’ flowin’ with milk an’ honey alongside what we’re goin’ to face.”

  “I tell you, Captain, we got to get flour first. If they won’t sell it, then we must just up an’ take it.”

  Many of the men and women began crying out in approval, but my father hushed them by holding up his hand.

  “I agree with everything you say, Hamilton ,” he began.

  But the cries now drowned his voice, and he again held up his hand.

  “Except one thing you forgot to take into account, Hamilton —a thing that you and all of us must take into account. Brigham Young has declared martial law, and Brigham Young has an army. We could wipe out Nephi in the shake of a lamb’s tail and take all the provisions we can carry. But we wouldn’t carry them very far. Brigham’s Saints would be down upon us and we would be wiped out in another shake of a lamb’s tail. You know it. I know it. We all know it.”

  His words carried conviction to listeners already convinced. What he had told them was old news. They had merely forgotten it in a flurry of excitement and desperate need.

  “Nobody will fight quicker for what is right than I will,” father continued. “But it just happens we can’t afford to fight now. If ever a ruction starts we haven’t a chance. And we’ve all got our women and children to recollect. We’ve got to be peaceable at any price, and put up with whatever dirt is heaped on us.”

  “But what will we do with the desert coming?” cried a woman who nursed a babe at her breast.

  “There’s several settlements before we come to the desert,” father answered. “Fillmore’s sixty miles south. Then comes Corn Creek. And Beaver’s another fifty miles. Next is Parowan. Then it’s twenty miles to Cedar City . The farther we get away from Salt Lake the more likely they’ll sell us provisions.”

  “And if they won’t?” the same woman persisted.

  “Then we’re quit of them,” said my father. “ Cedar City is the last settlement. We’ll have to go on, that’s all, and thank our stars we are quit of them. Two days’ journey beyond is good pasture, and water. They call it Mountain Meadows. Nobody lives there, and that’s the place we’ll rest our cattle and feed them up before we tackle the desert. Maybe we can shoot some meat. And if the worst comes to the worst, we’ll keep going as long as we can, then abandon the wagons, pack what we can on our animals, and make the last stages on foot. We can eat our cattle as we go along. It would be better to arrive in California without a rag to our backs than to leave our bones here; and leave them we will if we start a ruction.”

  With final reiterated warnings against violence of speech or act, the impromptu meeting broke up. I was slow in falling asleep that night. My rage against the Mormon had left my brain in such a tingle that I was still awake when my father crawled into the wagon after a last round of the night-watch. They thought I slept, but I heard mother ask him if he thought that the Mormons would let us depart peacefully from their land. His face was turned aside from her as he busied himself with pulling off a boot, while he answered her with hearty confidence that he was sure the Mormons would let us go if none of our own company started trouble.

  But I saw his face at that moment in the light of a small tallow dip, and in it was none of the confidence that was in his voice. So it was that I fell asleep, oppressed by the dire fate that seemed to overhang us, and pondering upon Brigham Young who bulked in my child imagination as a fearful, malignant being, a very devil with horns and tail and all.

  * * * * *

  And I awoke to the old pain of the jacket in solitary. About me were the customary four: Warden Atherton, Captain Jamie, Doctor Jackson, and Al Hutchins. I cracked my face with my willed smile, and struggled not to lose control under the exquisite torment of returning circulation. I drank the water they held to me, waved aside the proffered bread, and refused to speak. I closed my eyes and strove to win back to the chain-locked wagon-circle at Nephi. But so long as my visitors stood about me and talked I could not escape.

  One snatch of conversation I could not tear myself away from hearing.

  “Just as yesterday,” Doctor Jackson said. “No change one way or the other.”

  “Then he can go on standing it?” Warden Atherton queried.

  “Without a quiver. The next twenty-four hours as easy as the last. He’s a wooz, I tell you, a perfect wooz. If I didn’t know it was impossible, I’d say he was doped.”

  “I know his dope,” said the Warden. “It’s that cursed will of his. I’d bet, if he made up his mind, that he could walk barefoot across red-hot stones, like those Kanaka priests from the South Seas .”

  Now perhaps it was the word “priests” that I carried away with me through the darkness of another flight in time. Perhaps it was the cue. More probably it was a mere coincidence. At any rate I awoke, lying upon a rough rocky floor, and found myself on my back, my arms crossed in such fashion that each elbow rested in the palm of the opposite hand. As I lay there, eyes closed, half awake, I rubbed my elbows with my palms and found that I was rubbing prodigious calluses. There was no surprise in this. I accepted the calluses as of long time and a matter of course.

  I opened my eyes. My shelter was a small cave, no more than three feet in height and a dozen in length. It was very hot in the cave. Perspiration noduled the e
ntire surface of my body. Now and again several nodules coalesced and formed tiny rivulets. I wore no clothing save a filthy rag about the middle. My skin was burned to a mahogany brown. I was very thin, and I contemplated my thinness with a strange sort of pride, as if it were an achievement to be so thin. Especially was I enamoured of my painfully prominent ribs. The very sight of the hollows between them gave me a sense of solemn elation, or, rather, to use a better word, of sanctification.

  My knees were callused like my elbows. I was very dirty. My beard, evidently once blond, but now a dirt-stained and streaky brown, swept my midriff in a tangled mass. My long hair, similarly stained and tangled, was all about my shoulders, while wisps of it continually strayed in the way of my vision so that sometimes I was compelled to brush it aside with my hands. For the most part, however, I contented myself with peering through it like a wild animal from a thicket.

  Just at the tunnel-like mouth of my dim cave the day reared itself in a wall of blinding sunshine. After a time I crawled to the entrance, and, for the sake of greater discomfort, lay down in the burning sunshine on a narrow ledge of rock. It positively baked me, that terrible sun, and the more it hurt me the more I delighted in it, or in myself rather, in that I was thus the master of my flesh and superior to its claims and remonstrances. When I found under me a particularly sharp, but not too sharp, rock-projection, I ground my body upon the point of it, rowelled my flesh in a very ecstasy of mastery and of purification.

  It was a stagnant day of heat. Not a breath of air moved over the river valley on which I sometimes gazed. Hundreds of feet beneath me the wide river ran sluggishly. The farther shore was flat and sandy and stretched away to the horizon. Above the water were scattered clumps of palm-trees.

  On my side, eaten into a curve by the river, were lofty, crumbling cliffs. Farther along the curve, in plain view from my eyrie, carved out of the living rock, were four colossal figures. It was the stature of a man to their ankle joints. The four colossi sat, with hands resting on knees, with arms crumbled quite away, and gazed out upon the river. At least three of them so gazed. Of the fourth all that remained were the lower limbs to the knees and the huge hands resting on the knees. At the feet of this one, ridiculously small, crouched a sphinx; yet this sphinx was taller than I.

  I looked upon these carven images with contempt, and spat as I looked. I knew not what they were, whether forgotten gods or unremembered kings. But to me they were representative of the vanity of earth-men and earth-aspirations.

  And over all this curve of river and sweep of water and wide sands beyond arched a sky of aching brass unflecked by the tiniest cloud.

  The hours passed while I roasted in the sun. Often, for quite decent intervals, I forgot my heat and pain in dreams and visions and in memories. All this I knew—crumbling colossi and river and sand and sun and brazen sky—was to pass away in the twinkling of an eye. At any moment the trumps of the archangels might sound, the stars fall out of the sky, the heavens roll up as a scroll, and the Lord God of all come with his hosts for the final judgment.

  Ah, I knew it so profoundly that I was ready for such sublime event. That was why I was here in rags and filth and wretchedness. I was meek and lowly, and I despised the frail needs and passions of the flesh. And I thought with contempt, and with a certain satisfaction, of the far cities of the plain I had known, all unheeding, in their pomp and lust, of the last day so near at hand. Well, they would see soon enough, but too late for them. And I should see. But I was ready. And to their cries and lamentations would I arise, reborn and glorious, and take my well-earned and rightful place in the City of God .

  At times, between dreams and visions in which I was verily and before my time in the City of God , I conned over in my mind old discussions and controversies. Yes, Novatus was right in his contention that penitent apostates should never again be received into the churches. Also, there was no doubt that Sabellianism was conceived of the devil. So was Constantine , the arch-fiend, the devil’s right hand.

  Continually I returned to contemplation of the nature of the unity of God, and went over and over the contentions of Noetus, the Syrian. Better, however, did I like the contentions of my beloved teacher, Arius. Truly, if human reason could determine anything at all, there must have been a time, in the very nature of sonship, when the Son did not exist. In the nature of sonship there must have been a time when the Son commenced to exist. A father must be older than his son. To hold otherwise were a blasphemy and a belittlement of God.

  And I remembered back to my young days when I had sat at the feet of Arius, who had been a presbyter of the city of Alexandria , and who had been robbed of the bishopric by the blasphemous and heretical Alexander. Alexander the Sabellianite, that is what he was, and his feet had fast hold of hell.

  Yes, I had been to the Council of Nicea, and seen it avoid the issue. And I remembered when the Emperor Constantine had banished Arius for his uprightness. And I remembered when Constantine repented for reasons of state and policy and commanded Alexander—the other Alexander, thrice cursed, Bishop of Constantinople —to receive Arius into communion on the morrow. And that very night did not Arius die in the street? They said it was a violent sickness visited upon him in answer to Alexander’s prayer to God. But I said, and so said all we Arians, that the violent sickness was due to a poison, and that the poison was due to Alexander himself, Bishop of Constantinople and devil’s poisoner.

  And here I ground my body back and forth on the sharp stones, and muttered aloud, drunk with conviction:

  “Let the Jews and Pagans mock. Let them triumph, for their time is short. And for them there will be no time after time.”

  I talked to myself aloud a great deal on that rocky shelf overlooking the river. I was feverish, and on occasion I drank sparingly of water from a stinking goatskin. This goatskin I kept hanging in the sun that the stench of the skin might increase and that there might be no refreshment of coolness in the water. Food there was, lying in the dirt on my cave-floor—a few roots and a chunk of mouldy barley-cake; and hungry I was, although I did not eat.

  All I did that blessed, livelong day was to sweat and swelter in the sun, mortify my lean flesh upon the rock, gaze out of the desolation, resurrect old memories, dream dreams, and mutter my convictions aloud.

  And when the sun set, in the swift twilight I took a last look at the world so soon to pass. About the feet of the colossi I could make out the creeping forms of beasts that laired in the once proud works of men. And to the snarls of the beasts I crawled into my hole, and, muttering and dozing, visioning fevered fancies and praying that the last day come quickly, I ebbed down into the darkness of sleep.

  * * * * *

  Consciousness came back to me in solitary, with the quartet of torturers about me.

  “Blasphemous and heretical Warden of San Quentin whose feet have fast hold of hell,” I gibed, after I had drunk deep of the water they held to my lips. “Let the jailers and the trusties triumph. Their time is short, and for them there is no time after time.”

  “He’s out of his head,” Warden Atherton affirmed.

  “He’s putting it over on you,” was Doctor Jackson’s surer judgment.

  “But he refuses food,” Captain Jamie protested.

  “Huh, he could fast forty days and not hurt himself,” the doctor answered.

  “And I have,” I said, “and forty nights as well. Do me the favour to tighten the jacket and then get out of here.”

  The head trusty tried to insert his forefinger inside the lacing.

  “You couldn’t get a quarter of an inch of slack with block and tackle,” he assured them.

  “Have you any complaint to make, Standing?” the Warden asked.

  “Yes,” was my reply. “On two counts.”

  “What are they?”

  “First,” I said, “the jacket is abominably loose. Hutchins is an ass. He could get a foot of slack if he wanted.”

  “What is the other count?” Warden Atherton asked.r />
  “That you are conceived of the devil, Warden.”

  Captain Jamie and Doctor Jackson tittered, and the Warden, with a snort, led the way out of my cell.

  * * * * *

  Left alone, I strove to go into the dark and gain back to the wagon circle at Nephi. I was interested to know the outcome of that doomed drifting of our forty great wagons across a desolate and hostile land, and I was not at all interested in what came of the mangy hermit with his rock-roweled ribs and stinking water-skin. And I gained back, neither to Nephi nor the Nile , but to—

  But here I must pause in the narrative, my reader, in order to explain a few things and make the whole matter easier to your comprehension. This is necessary, because my time is short in which to complete my jacket-memoirs. In a little while, in a very little while, they are going to take me out and hang me. Did I have the full time of a thousand lifetimes, I could not complete the last details of my jacket experiences. Wherefore I must briefen the narrative.

  First of all, Bergson is right. Life cannot be explained in intellectual terms. As Confucius said long ago: “When we are so ignorant of life, can we know death?” And ignorant of life we truly are when we cannot explain it in terms of the understanding. We know life only phenomenally, as a savage may know a dynamo; but we know nothing of life noumenonally, nothing of the nature of the intrinsic stuff of life.

  Secondly, Marinetti is wrong when he claims that matter is the only mystery and the only reality. I say and as you, my reader, realize, I speak with authority—I say that matter is the only illusion. Comte called the world, which is tantamount to matter, the great fetich, and I agree with Comte.

  It is life that is the reality and the mystery. Life is vastly different from mere chemic matter fluxing in high modes of notion. Life persists. Life is the thread of fire that persists through all the modes of matter. I know. I am life. I have lived ten thousand generations. I have lived millions of years. I have possessed many bodies. I, the possessor of these many bodies, have persisted. I am life. I am the unquenched spark ever flashing and astonishing the face of time, ever working my will and wreaking my passion on the cloddy aggregates of matter, called bodies, which I have transiently inhabited.