The Grapes of Wrath

Chapter 129 The Grapes of Wrath

On the street, where the cold wind howled, Arthur reached into the inside pocket of his coat. There was a letter inside.

The letter was delivered to his apartment by the postman yesterday evening.

The letter was sent by Father Els of St. Peter's Church in Scranton, Pennsylvania.

It was this letter that made him feel completely unmoved, even annoyed, as he sat here today listening to Elizabeth relay the Republican Party's recruitment offer.

Father Els began his letter by writing:

Arthur, your mother, Mary Kennedy, passed away early yesterday morning at her home on Montage Street.

Upon seeing this sentence, his body's instinctive reaction caused him to feel a pang of sorrow.

Arthur is not short of money now.

With the sales of The New York Herald soaring and the royalties from the books, he had a huge sum of money in his bank account.

He would send a living allowance to Scranton every month on time.

This amount of money is enough for an average family to live a very comfortable life in a small city, enough to pay for high-end food, ample fuel, and quality medical services.

Despite this protection, Arthur's original mother still died prematurely.

Father Els explained it this way:

Arthur, I've been giving her the money you send back every month on time.

She used the money to buy plenty of food. She could eat fresh meat and vegetables every day. The stove in the house was also running around the clock, and she bought the highest grade smokeless coal.

Her living conditions were the best in the mining area.

However, her lungs have developed severe pneumoconiosis due to inhaling dust in the mining area over the past two decades.

This disease requires continuous medical intervention and oxygen supply.

Since the stock market crash last October, all of Scranton’s major anthracite coal mines have been shut down.

The coal company's funding chain completely broke down, and it subsequently filed for bankruptcy protection in Pennsylvania.

Subsequently, the bank took over the company's properties that were used as collateral.

The bank hired a security team to enforce the eviction order. Tens of thousands of miners and their families were evicted from their dormitories by the coal company's security forces.

They didn't have the money to rent a place elsewhere, so they could only set up temporary tents on an open space outside the mining area using discarded planks and tarpaulins.

The temperature in Scranton is extremely low right now. Every day I go to the tent area to register the names of those who have frozen or starved to death, and then officiate at their funerals. Most of the dead are elderly people and children.

Similarly, Scranton's healthcare system also completely ceased functioning.

The affiliated hospitals established by the coal company were the first to be affected.

Because the parent company stopped allocating operating funds, the affiliated hospital was unable to pay doctors' salaries or pay utility bills.

A month ago, the affiliated hospital officially closed all wards, dismissed all registered doctors and nurses, and sealed the gates.

The situation is equally bad at private clinics.

Because the miners were all unemployed and lost their source of income, no one could afford medical expenses.

Bad debt rates at private clinics are skyrocketing. Doctors and nurses have left Scranton en masse in search of jobs and to pay off their own bank loans, heading to major cities like New York or Philadelphia.

The pharmacy's drug supply chain has also been disrupted.

Upstream pharmaceutical wholesalers, fearing they wouldn't receive payments, are requiring all pharmacies to settle in cash and are no longer offering any credit lines.

However, as you know, the Scranton coal mining company doesn't pay its workers in dollars; the tokens they offer are simply not enough to entice pharmaceutical companies at this time.

Your mother suddenly fell ill two days ago and had severe difficulty breathing.

I took the US dollars you sent back and ran all over five blocks of Scranton.

I found three clinics that used to be open, but they were all closed.

I finally found a retired doctor who hadn't left yet in the suburbs. He followed me to your mother's bedside.

After examining your mother, the doctor said she needed to receive emergency medication and be put on oxygen immediately.

I placed a thick wad of US dollars in front of him and told him that money was not a problem.

But the doctor told me it wasn't about the money.

There isn't a single one of those emergency medications or a single usable oxygen tank in the entire city of Scranton.

Your mother passed away peacefully in her bed. She kept mentioning your name as she passed away.

Fortunately, she was not suffering from hunger or cold.

In the last paragraph of his letter, Father Els informed Arthur of the time of his funeral:

I used the money you sent to buy a high-end solid wood coffin for your mother and paid all the funeral expenses.

If you have the time, I believe you will, please come back for your mother's funeral.

The event is scheduled for 10:00 AM next Monday at St. Peter's Church.

Arthur walked back to his apartment, feeling very annoyed.

Tens of thousands of dollars were sitting in his bank account.

He just used a newspaper investigative report to force New York City Mayor Jimmy Walker to resign, changing the political landscape of New York.

But he felt a deep sense of powerlessness.

Individual success and the accumulation of wealth cannot mask the massive systemic crisis unfolding in this country.

In other words, when systemic social mechanisms cease to function, personal wealth serves no purpose.

When hospitals close, doctors leave, and supply chains break down, the dollar loses its ability to purchase healthcare services.

He had money, but he couldn't buy the medical resources to save his mother's life.

In New York, politicians are still exchanging favors for votes in the presidential election. The Republican Party is trying to use his reputation to secure victory in the next mayoral election and control the administrative resources of City Hall.

Their concerns were about the distribution of power and the consolidation of their political position.

Meanwhile, in Pennsylvania, just hours' drive from New York, tens of thousands of Americans are dying in droves due to healthcare collapse and homelessness.

Arthur believes that his writing of Animal Farm and his reporting on political scandals do not address the real problems the country is experiencing.

Exposing corruption and bureaucracy only scratches the surface of politics. The political struggles in New York are merely localized power shifts. He needs to document those truly facing existential crises.

He had to leave New York.

He was going to the mining areas of Pennsylvania to investigate the collapse of the medical and housing systems.

He was going to go to bankrupt farms in the Midwest to understand the economic mechanisms by which agricultural loan defaults caused farmers to lose their land.

He was going to the highway leading to California to conduct fieldwork and write.

These materials will become the next chapter in his battle with words.

He has already decided on the direction of his next book: the greatest left-wing novel to record the Great Depression.

In real history, this book alone caused panic among the rulers of all the states in the United States.

Its title comes from the lyrics of "The Battle Song of the Republic," which is called "The Grapes of Wrath."