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 sensation--a 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 lay--he 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 eat--maybe 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 nurses--there 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 be were to find himself confronting Jesus in a long
white night-gown.
