Sister Carrie by Theodore Dreiser

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 hardhearted, 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 ——” said 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.

A boy threw a clod of mud while he was thus reflecting and hit him upon the arm. It hurt sharply and angered him more than he had been any time since morning.

“The little cur!” he muttered.

“Hurt you?” asked one of the policemen.

“No,” he answered.

At one of the corners, where the car slowed up because of a turn, an ex-motorman, standing on the sidewalk, called to him:

“Won’t you come out, pardner, and be a man? Remember we’re fighting for decent day’s wages, that’s all. We’ve got families to support.” The man seemed most peaceably inclined.

Hurstwood pretended not to see him. He kept his eyes straight on before and opened the lever wide. The voice had something appealing in it.

All morning this went on and long into the afternoon. He made three such trips. The dinner he had was no stay for such work and the cold was telling on him. At each end of the line he stopped to thaw out, but he could have groaned at the anguish of it. One of the barnmen, out of pity, loaned him a heavy cap and a pair of sheepskin gloves, and for once he was extremely thankful.

On the second trip of the afternoon he ran into a crowd about half way along the line, that had blocked the car’s progress with an old telegraph pole.

“Get that thing off the track,” shouted the two policemen.

“Yah, yah, yah!” yelled the crowd. “Get it off yourself.”

The two policemen got down and Hurstwood started to follow.

“You stay there,” one called. “Some one will run away with your car.”

Amid the babel of voices, Hurstwood heard one close beside him.

“Come down, pardner, and be a man. Don’t fight the poor. Leave that to the corporations.”

He saw the same fellow who had called to him from the corner. Now, as before, he pretended not to hear him.

“Come down,” the man repeated gently. “You don’t want to fight poor men. Don’t fight at all.” It was a most philosophic and jesuitical motorman.

A third policeman joined the other two from somewhere and some one ran to telephone for more officers. Hurstwood gazed about, determined but fearful.

A man grabbed him by the coat.

“Come off of that,” he exclaimed, jerking at him and trying to pull him over the railing.

“Let go,” said Hurstwood, savagely.

“I’ll show you—you scab!” cried a young Irishman, jumping up on the car and aiming a blow at Hurstwood. The latter ducked and caught it on the shoulder instead of the jaw.

“Away from here,” shouted an officer, hastening to the rescue, and adding, of course, the usual oaths.

Hurstwood recovered himself, pale and trembling. It was becoming serious with him now. People were looking up and jeering at him. One girl was making faces.

He began to waver in his resolution, when a patrol wagon rolled up and more officers dismounted. Now the track was quickly cleared and the release effected.

“Let her go now, quick,” said the officer, and again he was off.

The end came with a real mob, which met the car on its return trip a mile or two from the barns. It was an exceedingly poorlooking neighbourhood. He wanted to run fast through it, but again the track was blocked. He saw men carrying something out to it when he was yet a half-dozen blocks away.

“There they are again!” exclaimed one policeman.

“I’ll give them something this time,” said the second officer, whose patience was becoming worn. Hurstwood suffered a qualm of body as the car rolled up. As before, the crowd began hooting, but now, rather than come near, they threw things. One or two windows were smashed and Hurstwood dodged a stone.