"And while of course it behooves a man to break the head of any Mexican kept in blind ignorance who's been shipped in to steal your job," preached the Reverend Moss Gatlin, who, never one to forgo a good fight, had been here since the strike was called, "we must also understand how eminently practical in the long term is Christian forbearance, if by it we may thus further the dumb scab's education, just as your own insulted heads at Cripple and the San Juans once got beaten into them the lesson that a job however obtained is sacred, even a scab's job, for it carries the ironclad obligation to resist from then on the forces of ownership and the mills of evil, with whatever means are available unto you all."
(...)
"I saw the Death Special, Ma." This was a rumored and widely feared armored motorcar, with two colt machine guns on it, mounted fore and aft, that the Naldwin-Felts "detective" agency had come up with for penetrating, controlling, and thinning down the size of ill disposed crowds.
(...)
... one look at these red faces and bulging eyes and he understood that if it should come down to it, he would not be able to save his life, or his mother's or Dunn's, by appealing to anything these grownups might feel for kids, even kids of their own.... Pretending to have a friendly chat with potential targets or their Death Special was a level of evil neither boy had quite suspected in adults till now.
(...)
"With a rifle it's too personal," one of the Guardsmen said, "when you're sighting 'em in one by one, gives you a minute to get to know them 'fore you do your deed, but this 'sucker time it takes to get your finger off of the trigger it's already fired ten or twenty rounds, so there's no question of careful aiming , you just pick out what they call a zone you want to tear up, even shut your eyes if you want, don't matter, it's all done for you."
(...)
"Even if they surrounded it, shot out the tires, we could hold out inside till help showed up."
"Or plow a path right through 'em and out the other side," added the other one, "and escape that way."
Thomas Pynchon, Against the Day (2006)
No comments:
Post a Comment