The Apostate Page #6

"The Apostate" is a novella by Jack London that explores themes of faith, doubt, and the struggle for personal authenticity. The story revolves around the protagonist, a man grappling with his beliefs as he confronts the doctrines of religion and society. Through a journey of introspection and conflict, London delves into the complexities of the human spirit, the search for truth, and the implications of rejecting accepted norms. The narrative highlights the tension between individual conviction and collective belief, making it a poignant exploration of existential themes.

• Novel

								

He had had his fill of sleep all the week, and awoke easily. He made no
struggle, nor did he attempt to hold on to the bedding when she stripped
it from him. He lay quietly, and spoke quietly.

"It ain't no use, ma."

"You'll be late," she said, under the impression that he was still
stupid with sleep.

"I'm awake, ma, an' I tell you it ain't no use. You might as well lemme
alone. I ain't goin' to git up."

"But you'll lose your job!" she cried.

"I ain't goin' to git up," he repeated in a strange, passionless voice.

She did not go to work herself that morning. This was sickness
beyond any sickness she had ever known. Fever and delirium she could
understand; but this was insanity. She pulled the bedding up over him
and sent Jennie for the doctor.

When that person arrived, Johnny was sleeping gently, and gently he
awoke and allowed his pulse to be taken.

"Nothing the matter with him," the doctor reported. "Badly debilitated,
that's all. Not much meat on his bones."

"He's always been that way," his mother volunteered.

"Now go 'way, ma, an' let me finish my snooze."

Johnny spoke sweetly and placidly, and sweetly and placidly he rolled
over on his side and went to sleep.

At ten o'clock he awoke and dressed himself. He walked out into the
kitchen, where he found his mother with a frightened expression on her
face.

"I'm goin' away, ma," he announced, "an' I jes' want to say good-bye."

She threw her apron over her head and sat down suddenly and wept. He
waited patiently.

"I might a-known it," she was sobbing.

"Where?" she finally asked, removing the apron from her head and gazing
up at him with a stricken face in which there was little curiosity.

"I don't know--anywhere."

As he spoke, the tree across the street appeared with dazzling
brightness on his inner vision. It seemed to lurk just under his
eyelids, and he could see it whenever he wished.

"An' your job?" she quavered.

"I ain't never goin' to work again."

"My God, Johnny!" she wailed, "don't say that!"

What he had said was blasphemy to her. As a mother who hears her child
deny God, was Johnny's mother shocked by his words.

"What's got into you, anyway?" she demanded, with a lame attempt at
imperativeness.

"Figures," he answered. "Jes' figures. I've ben doin' a lot of figurin'
this week, an' it's most surprisin'."

"I don't see what that's got to do with it," she sniffled.

Johnny smiled patiently, and his mother was aware of a distinct shock at
the persistent absence of his peevishness and irritability.

"I'll show you," he said. "I'm plum' tired out. What makes me tired?
Moves. I've ben movin' ever since I was born. I'm tired of movin', an' I
ain't goin' to move any more. Remember when I worked in the glass-house?
I used to do three hundred dozen a day. Now I reckon I made about ten
different moves to each bottle. That's thirty-six thousan' moves a day.
Ten days, three hundred an' sixty thousan' moves. One month, one million
an' eighty thousan' moves. Chuck out the eighty thousan'"--he spoke with
the complacent beneficence of a philanthropist--"chuck out the eighty
thousan', that leaves a million moves a month--twelve million moves a
year.

"At the looms I'm movin' twic'st as much. That makes twenty-five million
moves a year, an' it seems to me I've ben a movin' that way 'most a
million years.

"Now this week I ain't moved at all. I ain't made one move in hours an'
hours. I tell you it was swell, jes' settin' there, hours an' hours,
an' doin' nothin'. I ain't never ben happy before. I never had any time.
I've ben movin' all the time. That ain't no way to be happy. An' I ain't
going to do it any more. I'm jes' goin' to set, an' set, an' rest, an'
rest, and then rest some more."

"But what's goin' to come of Will an' the children?" she asked
despairingly.

"That's it, 'Will an' the children,'" he repeated.

But there was no bitterness in his voice. He had long known his mother's
ambition for the younger boy, but the thought of it no longer rankled.
Nothing mattered any more. Not even that.

"I know, ma, what you've ben plannin' for Will--keepin' him in school to
make a book-keeper out of him. But it ain't no use, I've quit. He's got
to go to work."

"An' after I have brung you up the way I have," she wept, starting to
cover her head with the apron and changing her mind.

"You never brung me up," he answered with sad kindliness. "I brung
myself up, ma, an' I brung up Will. He's bigger'n me, an' heavier, an'
taller. When I was a kid, I reckon I didn't git enough to eat. When he
come along an' was a kid, I was workin' an' earnin' grub for him too.
But that's done with. Will can go to work, same as me, or he can go to
hell, I don't care which. I'm tired. I'm goin' now. Ain't you goin' to
say goodbye?"

She made no reply. The apron had gone over her head again, and she was
crying. He paused a moment in the doorway.

"I'm sure I done the best I knew how," she was sobbing.

He passed out of the house and down the street. A wan delight came
into his face at the sight of the lone tree. "Jes' ain't goin' to do
nothin'," he said to himself, half aloud, in a crooning tone. He glanced
wistfully up at the sky, but the bright sun dazzled and blinded him.

It was a long walk he took, and he did not walk fast. It took him past
the jute-mill. The muffled roar of the loom room came to his ears, and
he smiled. It was a gentle, placid smile. He hated no one, not even the
pounding, shrieking machines. There was no bitterness in him, nothing
but an inordinate hunger for rest.

The houses and factories thinned out and the open spaces increased as
he approached the country. At last the city was behind him, and he was
walking down a leafy lane beside the railroad track. He did not walk
like a man. He did not look like a man. He was a travesty of the human.
It was a twisted and stunted and nameless piece of life that shambled
like a sickly ape, arms loose-hanging, stoop-shouldered, narrow-chested,
grotesque and terrible.

He passed by a small railroad station and lay down in the grass under a
tree. All afternoon he lay there. Sometimes he dozed, with muscles that
twitched in his sleep. When awake, he lay without movement, watching the
birds or looking up at the sky through the branches of the tree above
him. Once or twice he laughed aloud, but without relevance to anything
he had seen or felt.

After twilight had gone, in the first darkness of the night, a freight
train rumbled into the station. When the engine was switching cars on to
the side-track, Johnny crept along the side of the train. He pulled open
the side-door of an empty box-car and awkwardly and laboriously climbed
in. He closed the door. The engine whistled. Johnny was lying down, and
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