Pelley The Fog A Novel

1. Auflage 2023
ISBN: 978-3-98826-306-3
Verlag: OTB eBook publishing
Format: EPUB
Kopierschutz: 0 - No protection

E-Book, Englisch, 499 Seiten

Reihe: Classics To Go

The Fog is a novel written by William Dudley Pelley and published in 1933. The book tells the story of a young man named David Carrington who is on a quest to find the meaning of life. As he travels through the United States, Carrington encounters a series of characters who challenge his beliefs and help him to see the world in a new way. The novel begins with Carrington's disillusionment with his comfortable life as a wealthy young man in New York City. He decides to leave his privileged existence and sets out on a journey of self-discovery. Along the way, he meets a variety of characters, including a disillusioned war veteran, a group of unemployed workers, and a socialist organizer. As Carrington travels deeper into the heart of the country, he becomes increasingly aware of the suffering and injustices that exist in American society. He begins to question his own beliefs and values, and struggles to find a sense of purpose and meaning in his life. Throughout the book, Pelley explores themes of social inequality, political corruption, and the search for spiritual enlightenment. He also offers a critique of the American Dream and the values that underpin it. Overall, The Fog is a thought-provoking novel that challenges readers to question their own assumptions and beliefs about the world. Through the character of David Carrington, Pelley offers a powerful critique of American society and the values that shape it.

Autoren/Hrsg.

Pelley, William Dudley

Leseproben

VII
Outside of school, our lives were tied up intimately with the Methodist Church. We had no movies or theaters to speak of in those days, few sports, certainly no parties or dances,—at least for Nathan. The only party he ever attended, with parental sanction, up to the time of his majority, was little Bernice-Theresa’s of previous record and that largely because it fell within the scope of a school affair. We went to church morning and evening on Sunday and to Junior League at four o’clock. We went to Tuesday-night class meeting and were scared nearly out of our wits at being called to stand up and testify how much we loved God when we didn’t know whether we loved Him or not. And on Thursday nights we sat through those long, distressing silences between testimonies when forty people waited for the spirit to move the brethren and lips whispered silently, committing sentiments to memory which were uttered parrot-like once the whisperers were on their feet. We knew before we started in who was going to pray the longest and for what he was going to pray; who was going to sing the loudest and what he was going to “call for” in the matter of hymns; who was going to testify the hardest and what his remarks were going to include. My only comment on these weekly spiritual gatherings, in so far as two growing boys were made to attend under pressure, was that they did us no lasting harm. The red-letter days in our lives, however, were the Friday-night “sociables” and bean suppers, or the concerts given for Easter, Harvest and Christmas. Absolutely forbidden company or contact with the other sex by narrow parental decree, the boy Nathan, being a normal, healthy youngster, had either to repress natural maturing emotions until they found outlet in clandestine, perverted channels, or he had to gain worldly knowledge and sex-poise by the hard, raw route of searing experience when John was no longer able to make his decree effective. John Forge’s argument was that sex, as well as money, being a basic root of all human evil, the way to keep a boy from disaster was to prohibit him the company of sex altogether. John Forge had married unhappily, therefore all marriages were unhappy. Nat should not duplicate his father’s mistake if John had to kill him to save him from it. If Nathan attended any school or neighborhood gathering and his father heard of it afterward, the man had two questions ready for his son: (1) “Were there any girls present?” and (2) “Did you kiss ’em?” John Forge had a crazed obsession about his boy kissing a girl. In the school yard and even at church “sociables” we often played asinine childish games, “Ring Around the Rosy”, “Copenhagen” and “Drop the Pillow.” But Nathan, fearing his father’s wrath, was ever the wallflower. And he was deeply in love with Bernice-Theresa, or thought he was. Other boys kissed their “girls.” Why shouldn’t he? “I’ve got to kiss her! I’ve just simply got to kiss her!” he consequently affirmed to me; no emperor ever planned the ravishing of a rival kingdom with the sangfroid with which Nathan deliberated upon the necessity for osculatory assault on the Dresden Doll. “The thing to do,” I advised gravely, “is to get her alone where she can’t scream or bring help. And it’s got to be done in such a way that she don’t tell her folks! Because then they’ll tell your folks and your dad will just simply kill you!” This might seem impossible, but to fourteen nothing is impossible. We thought of intriguing Bernice into the woods at the edge of town, into the haunted dwelling next to the tannery, into all sorts of lonely, lugubrious places. But the difficulty lay in enticing her to the rendezvous and operating on her rosebud lips without scaring the Dresden Doll half out of her senses and bringing a boomerang back upon ourselves. Ultimately we resolved upon a bold maneuver: We would kiss Bernice Gridley in church! “We could send her and Elinore a note,” I planned, “asking ’em to wait after the Easter concert. I could keep Elinore and send Bernie out into the vestibule. Just as she comes through the door you could grab her and do it! Then run like the devil!” This was bold. It was terribly bold! Yet it was feasible. We had yet to learn that the ecstasy of osculation consists largely in the warmth and passion of reciprocity. We were midget cavemen, Nathan and I. Bernice-Theresa had to be kissed if our lives were forfeit. I blush now when I consider the terms of endearment in which our letters of those days were penned. Hours we spent writing them. The most indiscreet scion of Pittsburgh aristocracy never committed himself more idiotically (to repent subsequently in curses and coin) than Nathan and I described our holiest, hottest feelings for the edification of those little snobs. So the intriguing epistles were indited and delivered. The kissing of Bernice-Theresa was on! Nathan and I sensed little of that concert. We were too much occupied visioning the epochal thing to ensue as its aftermath. The concert began, ran its course and ended. And the Dresden Doll never appeared more bewitching than she did upon that platform. Two small boys caught each other’s eyes and wiped perspiration from youthful brows. The fatal day and hour had come. Did we have the nerve to go through with it? Only the fear of each thinking the other cowardly held us from fleeing that church when the organist began the postlude. It had been a beautiful spring afternoon and during the concert a thunderstorm played above the village. But later the sun broke through upon a sweet and dripping world, and the weather gave our elders no cause to tarry. The two girls, silly and giggling, held converse with other little girls up near the altar rail. They had signified by signs and semaphoring to which grown folk have no code-book, that they would wait and consider the momentous things we had to propound. And the church continued to empty and the janitor to close the windows. Nathan and I stood waiting in the vestry. It was shadowed out there. I occupied a doorway at one side. I saw the two little girls finally coming down the center aisle, and made a sign to Nat. He nodded. His limbs were turning to tallow; he was hoping he would not faint at the peak of the conspiracy when nerve alone was required to see it through. At the next to the last pew the two girls parted. Elinore sidled off between the seats to make her way to my door. Bernie kept on and stepped into the vestry. The instant she appeared, all the pent-up intrigue of weeks galvanized in Nathan. I am not certain where he kissed her, but at the shock of a small boy hurtling himself dramatically from the shadows, the Dresden Doll recoiled and shrieked and wilted. Nathan exploded his kiss, trusting it to hit its mark. He sensed much talcum powder and cologne in his nostrils, contact with adolescent flesh, sweet and soft and warm. Then, at the instant of glorious success, the wrath of God broke from the heavens and consumed him as the fire that blasted Sodom. From the skies above, from the earth, from the waters beneath the earth, from somewhere came a Voice, a terrible, blasting, annihilating Voice: “Here! Here! Here! What the devil’s comin’ off here, anyhow?” Nat snapped up into the air. Then he assumed a Direction. Luckily the open church door was ahead. Into the soft spring dusk he shot and began to tread the world beneath him crazily. His not to reason why, his but to flee or die; Nathan cleared the doorstep into thin air and zoomed for the horizon. I was close behind him. We negotiated the walk, the curb and the street. We made the opposite walk and kept on going. We went through Pat Larkin’s side yard and Mrs. Larkin’s choicest roses. A lot of sweet-pea vines came next, with most of them trailing behind us. Nat stepped on a cucumber frame and I plowed through a couple of yards of hen wire. Thereupon we got through the Alderman property into Adams Street. But we did not stop there. We went through Adams Street, through Pine and Walnut. Then out of town by the pumping station. We covered two miles that night before we finally plunged into Bancroft’s Woods far down the river. There we crawled into the underbrush and squatted on our haunches. Said Nathan, “Who was it?” Said I, “It was Mr. Gridley!” Sickening silence! “Where’d he come from?” Nathan finally found strength to ask. “He came down the belfry stairs! I remember now there was something the matter with the bell-rope this morning. He must have gone up with John Chase to fix it.” “Her father!” groaned Nathan. “Billy—this is the end!” “Not on your tintype it ain’t! It’s only the beginning!” I retorted. “Billy—what are we going to do?” So Guy Fawkes must have queried his lieutenants when the well-known Gunpowder Plot went slightly awry. “I dunno, Nathan. It’s a cinch we can’t go home! We can’t ever go home again!” “That’s right,” agreed Nathan. “Maybe Mr. Gridley is at my house right this minute, tellin’ it all to dad!” “It looks, Nathan, as if we’d have to leave this place for good and all. Have you got any money?” “Twenty cents,” said my friend, totaling his pockets. “I’ve got a dollar-seventy in my bank at home, if I could sneak in and get it out.” “That’d be a dollar-ninety. We could live a long time on a dollar-ninety.” “Where’d we go?” I asked. “West, I guess. Everybody goes west. Nap Taro went west and come back rich. Maybe...