Studs Lonigan (101 page)

“It's the wrong thing, Bill.”

Studs agreed with a meek nod. He could see that the old man had been hurt, all right. Lonigan turned on the radio.

Lonigan did not listen, but sat down in his chair, brooding, and forgetting, with that same blank, sleepy look on his face, that Studs had noticed so frequently these last months.

A snappy jazz band broke out, stirring Studs, making him want a good time, fun, dancing, drinking, whoopee. The loud fast rhythm seemed to be in his nerves. He beat his foot on the carpet, swayed his shoulders.

“You better sell out tomorrow, Bill, and bank that money. I'll see if I can't borrow a little on my Order of Christopher insurance. And with the Democrats back in power, I'm hoping that I can line up some contracts. In fact, I think I'll go see Barney McCormack about it tomorrow,” Lonigan said while an announcer eulogized a talcum powder. “You'll need what you got left out of it for your wedding. And these contracts or something will turn up.”

“I'm going to sell, all right, dad. But you're really welcome to the money. You better take it. Things will be much better by the time I'll need it, and you'll be able to pay me back then.”

“Bill, I hope to be able to give you much more than that when you're married, if I only get some good breaks. But I won't take this yet. You bank it. I'll get out of this hole, all right, and there has to be a pickup. America is too great and too rich a country to go to the dogs. And we'll ride right back up on the waves.”

Studs could see, though, that the old man was hit. He felt as if he'd stuck a knife in his dad's back. Judas Iscariot. He sank in his chair, dreamily listened to sugared sad music, feeling lousy.

SEEING the morning sunlight beyond the window, hearing the sounds of life in the alley, Studs was glad to be awake and to know that the distressing sadness he had been feeling was only a dream. He stretched himself out comfortably, and with his eyes on the ceiling tried to remember his dream. All he could remember was that he had been very sad and afraid in it. He sighed again because it had only been a dream, now it was morning, and he had a sunny day ahead of him with nothing to do but take it easy.

In the alley an automobile exhaust went off like a gun.

He guessed he might even wait a few days on his stock, and see if it didn't go up. Because if the market broke yesterday, it was only natural that there would be a little stabilization today. A man like Imbray with all his money would back up his stock, and if he waited a few days he would, anyway, not be out as much as he was.

He got up and stretched his arms. Looking down at the small, grassless, fenced-in square of a back-yard, watching an ice wagon pass, he thought of how good he felt this morning. And the sun slanting down the flat sides of the building across the alley! It was going to be a good day.

He took his time washing, and thought of how he would maybe go out in the park and sit in the sun. He dressed lazily and walked to the kitchen for breakfast.

“Your father looked very worried this morning,” Mrs. Lonigan said.

“Well, there won't be much business now maybe until fall, and he's worried. By then business will be going again.”

“I do hope that something does happen for your poor father's sake. He's like a changed and unhappy man these days.”

“It will.”

“You're not working today, are you?”

Studs stared at her, wondering. What was the idea of such a dumb question, because she knew he wasn't or he'd have been gone long before a quarter to nine.

“No.”

“Rest, then, and take it easy.”

“I am. I'm going to the park and get some sun.”

“You better not sit in the grass. It will be damp at this time of the year and you might catch cold. You must take care of yourself.”

“I will.”

After breakfast, he lounged in the parlor, reading the newspaper.

That sounded good.

He guessed Mussolini was a smart man, but flipped the pages to the funnies.

Throwing the newspaper aside, he left, thinking of how Moon Mullins was a real character. Slug Mason had been a little like Moon, poor Slug.

He drifted toward Seventy-first Street, looking upon himself as a man with business interests who was puzzled by the problem of selling out or holding onto his investments. Maybe if he held, he'd lose more. Maybe not. Best to think it over so as not to make a mistake.

And he hoped something interesting or exciting would happen in the park. He crossed over Sixty-seventh Street, cut through a path in the bushes and emerged at the extremity of the large golf course. A feeling of being lost and empty, with nothing to do, came upon him, and he stood with his eyes fixed on the sprouting green before him. He'd been anxious to get here, and now that he was in the park, what?

He hoped that he would meet some girl and that they'd get on together. He set off strolling along the edge of the course, with the image of a girl in his head as if she were walking beside him, tall and dark, and sexy, and if he took her rowing she would sit facing him, showing off her thighs, and if they sat on a lonely bench she would wait to be kissed and felt. Jesus Christ, he exclaimed, his desire reaching a painful point.

He looked around, the trees in front of him having grown larger as he approached, the sounds of automobiles as they skimmed through the park like an overtone. He had the feeling that something was going to happen, and he was nervous for it to hurry up, whatever it was. He picked up a branch, swished it, flung it aside. He thought, Christ, he did want a girl, hot, and pretty, and willing, who knew tricks that would set him nearly nuts, the kind that would go shiveringly crazy for him the moment he laid his hand on her. And they would lie around together in the park, or else at her apartment, where they would be stripped, and even maybe taking a bath together.

He saw a patch of grass with surprise, and realized that he had lost his sense of where he was. He felt as if he had just come from a hot time with a girl, and then realized that it had only been wishes, and he wished it had been the real article in the flesh. Across the golf course, so small that they were like images in a picture, he watched a man and woman pursuing golf balls they had just driven. He wondered who they were, what they were, were they in love, and did they sleep together, and were they well off and not bothered by worries over money? Envy of them grew in him, because they had something to do, and he hadn't. He grew dreamy, forgot them, lost consciousness of the fact that he was even walking, and imagined himself a golfer like Chick Evans or Bobby Jones, only greater, smashing records in a tournament, with a large gallery following to cheer him as he made impossible drives and shots with ease, and even made a hole in one.

A frown suddenly settled on his face, and like a gloomy cloud the thought of his stocks came back to him. He walked in an aimless course, grabbed a handful of budding leaves off the bushes, scattered them, picked up a piece of broken branch, peeled the bark off with his finger nails, dropped it.

He lit a cigarette and looked around him, seeing with suddenness, and as if for the first time, the earth, grass in sunlight, with a few sparkles of dew, and in the distance, over trees, a light sky. A desire as if to catch these things he saw came on him, and then again the worry about money and stocks returned to fill his mind. He stopped to stare at an oak, its limbs rattling a trifle in the wind, hoping that by concentrating on it he would drive the worry away.

Christ, he was getting goofy as a loon! Studs Lonigan was a poet and didn't know it.

“Fore. Fore.”

He turned to see golfers shouting and waving at him, and briskly returned to the bushes by the edge of the course. He saw a golf ball land, scud along the ground, stop. He saw grass and earth stretching away, people moving over the course, and, as he glanced upward, a bank of clouds smothering the sun and draping shadows over the park.

He had a sense he had often felt as a kid walking around in Washington Park, looking and wishing for something to do. But then he had had no real responsibilities, and he'd expected any damn thing to happen any minute. And now.

He saw in his mind, but not so clearly as he wanted to, the old Studs in short pants, playing indoors, on the small gravel diamond of the Washington Park playground, swinging, smacking the ball over the iron picket fence. And he remembered a rainy day when he was alone in the playground, and Miss Tyson, the playground director, had brought him into her office which was between the boys' and girls' cans in a rough-edged stone building. She had talked to him about what he wanted to be in life, and he'd felt that she was looking at him in a funny way. And when the rain had come down harder, she had closed the door, and she had sat with her legs crossed, letting him get a good eyeful, and she'd run her hand through his hair. Why had he been so dumb and innocent? He dropped onto a bench along the walk that he and Catherine had passed last Sunday, and meditatively puffed at a cigarette. He felt as if he was the old Studs Lonigan, and he would see Dan Donoghue or Helen Shires before the day was out and. . . .

“Got a light, lad?”

Studs looked up and saw a sandy-haired fellow with a seedy suit and blue shirt.

“What?”

“Got a match?”

“Sure. I was just sort of sitting here and forgot where I was, and didn't hear you. Here.”

“Thanks,” the stranger said, accepting the book of matches and lighting a cigarette.

“I suppose you're out of work like the rest of us.”

“Well, in a way.”

“I know I've been carrying the banner during these days of Hoover prosperity.”

“Yes, it seems pretty tough, but things ought to get better, and Hoover probably won't be elected next year.”

“Things won't get better for me, not under this system.”

“How come? There's no use throwing up the sponge,” Studs said, thinking that, hell, the guy looked on the level, and like a white man and just down on his luck, and he might just as well try to cheer the guy up a little.

“I'm not throwing up the sponge. I'm just learning things, and I've learned, this last winter, that a guy like me isn't worth any more than a rusty piece of machinery.”

Studs lit a cigarette and tried to think of something to say. The guy seemed sore at the world, the way he had just made that last crack.

“If you're a workingman, buddy, none of those Democrats or Republicans mean anything for you.”

“Well, what's the matter with Al Smith?”

“The same thing that's the matter with all of them. They don't mean any good to me. I've carried the banner all winter. And by God, I'm not going to carry the banner forever, sleeping in that Hooverville under Wacker Drive.”

“Things can't always go down.”

“I know it. They can come up in war.”

“Who do you think we'll go to war with, Japan or Russia?”

“By God, if the U. S. goes to war with Russia, I don't shoulder a gun.”

Jesus, a Red!

“But you wouldn't be a traitor to your country?”

“My country, what do I own here?”

“Aren't you an American?”

“I was born here, but if I had the fare I'd go to Russia tomorrow.”

“But aren't they Reds and anarchists there? Don't you read the papers?”

“Sure, I read the papers. Lies. Lad, they're filling us full of lies so they can rob us all. We got to wake up.”

“But Bolshevism means revolution.”

“How else are we going to win the means of production for ourselves?”

“But that's anarchy.”

“What is it when guys like me all over the country carry the banner, sleep in Hoovervilles? What is it when they shoot down coal miners?”

“I'm not a Bolshevik. It's against the country and the church.” Studs wished the fellow would go away. If he was his size and in better health, he might sock him. He got up.

“I got to be traveling. But you'll never get anywhere with those ideas, fellow.”

“Yes, I'll never carry a musket.”

“So long.”

Studs laughed at the crazy bastard. A Bolshevik. He supposed the guy was a nigger lover, too. Well, let the Bolsheviks get tough. They'd be taken care of, just the same as the shines were during the race riots of '19.

He felt tired, and the hell with that nutty guy. He had been thinking about old times, too, when the fellow had interrupted him to give that phony Bolshevik spiel.

Studs stood on the grass edge of the large, rectangular skin-dirt athletic field, hearing the crack of a baseball bat while a group of fellows snapped through infield practice, and a lad in a khaki shirt fungoed flies to five others in the outfield. About five yards from him a group of four sat watching.

The third baseman, a lank lad in a faded blue shirt, fozzled a ground ball, and, seeking hurriedly to pick it up, kicked it around in the dirt.

“The bush leagues for you, Spunk.”

“Get off your can and come out here and do better.”

“The bushes, boy. You're getting old.”

“All right, Cal, get the lead out of your tail,” one of the fungo hitters called, lifting a long high fly which was easily caught by a swarthy left-handed fellow in a white shirt.