Studs Lonigan (12 page)

Studs tried to dissent, but he was inarticulate.

His incoherent protests were cut short by his mother suggesting that he ought to study for the priesthood. She said one could always change one's mind, up to the taking of the vows, and a priest got a wonderful education, and even if he didn't go on with it, he would be more educated than most people. She said it was, just as Father Gilhooley said, the duty of all parents to see if their children had the call. How would God and his poor Mother, and great St. Patrick, guardian saint of the parish, feel if Studs turned a deaf ear on the sacred call? Lonigan opened his mouth to say something, but Studs said decisively he didn't have the call. The mother said he should pray more, so he would know, and God would reveal to him if he had. Frances interrupted to say that Studs should go to Loyola, because everybody of any consequence was going there and it was the school to go to. They talked on, and it was decided, against Studs' wishes, that he go to Loyola.

Then the parents rose to retire, yawning.

Mrs. Lonigan put Martin to bed. She hugged the boy close to her meager bosom and said:

“Martin, don't you think you'd like to be a priest when you grow up, and serve God?”

“I want to be a grave digger,” Martin answered sleepily.

She left the room, her cheeks slightly wet with tears. She prayed to God that he would give one of her boys the call.

After they had left the parlor, Studs sat by the window. He looked out, watching the night strangeness, listening. The darkness was over everything like a warm bed-cover, and all the little sounds of night seemed to him as if they belonged to some great mystery. He listened to the wind in the tree by the window. The street was queer, and didn't seem at all like Wabash Avenue. He watched a man pass, his heels beating a monotonous echo. Studs imagined him to be some criminal being pursued by a detective like Maurice Costello, who used to act detective parts for Vitagraph. He watched. He thought of Lucy on the street and himself bravely rescuing her from horrors more terrible than he could imagine. He thought about the fall, and of the arguments for working that he should have sprung on the old man. He thought of himself on a scaffold, wearing a painter's overalls, chewing tobacco, and talking man-talk with the other painters; and of pay days and the independence they would bring him. He thought of Studs Lonigan, a free and independent working man, on his first pay night, plunking down some dough to the old lady for board, putting on his new straw katy, calling for Lucy, and taking her out stepping to White City, having a swell time.

Frances came in. She wore a thin nightgown. He could almost see right through it. He tried to keep looking away, but he had to turn his head back to look at her. She stood before him, and didn't seem to know that he was looking at her. She seemed kind of queer; he thought maybe she was sick.

“Do you like Lucy?”

“Oh, a little,” he said.

He was excited, and couldn't talk much, because he didn't want her to notice it.

“Do you like to kiss girls?”

“Not so much,” he said.

“You did tonight.”

“It was all in the game.”

“Helen must like Weary.”

“I hate her.”

“I don't like her either, but . . . do you think they did anything in the post office?”

“What do you mean?” he asked.

She wasn't going to pump him and get anything out of him.

She seemed to be looking at him, awful queer, all right.

“You know. Do you think they did anything that was fun . . . or that the sisters wouldn't want them to do . . . or that's bad?”

“I don't know.”

Dirty thoughts rushed to his head like hot blood. He told himself he was a bastard because . . . she was his sister.

“I don't know,” he said, confused.

“You think maybe they did something bad, and it was fun?”

He shrugged his shoulders and looked out the window so she couldn't see his face.

“I feel funny,” she said.

He hadn't better say anything to her, because she'd snitch and give him away.

“I want to do something . . . They're all in bed. Let's us play leap frog, you know that game that boys play where one bends down, and the others jump over him?” she said.

“We'll make too much noise.”

“Do you really think that Weary and Helen did anything that might be fun?” she asked.

She got up, and walked nervously around the room. She plunked down on the piano stool, and part of her leg showed.

He looked out the window. He looked back. They sat. She fidgeted and couldn't sit still. She got up and ran out of the room. He sat there. He must be a bastard . . . she was his sister.

He looked out the window. He wondered what it was like; he was getting old enough to find out.

He got up. He looked at himself in the mirror. He shadow-boxed, and thought of Lucy. He thought of Fran. He squinted at himself in the mirror.

He turned the light out and started down the hallway. Fran called him. She was lying in bed without the sheets over her.

“It's hot here. Awful hot. Please put the window up higher.”

“It's as high as it'll go.”

“I thought it wasn't.”

He looked at Fran. He couldn't help it.

“And please get me some real cold water.”

He got the water. It wasn't cold enough. She asked him to let the water run more. He did. He handed the water to her. As she rose to drink, she bumped her small breast against him.

She drank the water. He started out of the room. She called him to get her handkerchief.

“I'm not at all tired,” she said.

He left, thinking what a bastard he must be.

He went to the bathroom.

Kneeling down at his bedside, he tried to make a perfect act of contrition to wash his soul from sin.

He heard the wind, and was afraid that God might punish him, make him die in the night. He had found out he was old enough, but ... his soul was black with sin. He lay in bed, worried, suffering, and he tossed into a slow, troubled sleep.

STUDS awoke to stare sleepily at a June morning that crashed through his bedroom window. The world outside the window was all shine and shimmer. Just looking at it made Studs glad that he was alive. And it was only the end of June. He still had July and August. And this was one of those days when he would feel swell; one of his days. He drowsed in bed, and glanced out to watch the sun scatter over the yard. He watched a tomcat slink along the fence ledge; he stared at the spot he had newly boarded so that his old man wouldn't yelp about loose boards; he looked about at the patches in the grass that Martin and his gang had worn down playing their cowboy and Indian games. There was something about the things he watched that seemed to enter Studs as sun entered a field of grass; and as he watched, he felt that the things he saw were part of himself, and he felt as good as if he were warm sunlight; he was all glad to be living, and to be Studs Lonigan. Because when he came to think of it, living had been pretty good since he had graduated. Every morning he could lie in bed if he wanted to, or else he could hop up and go over and goof around Indiana Avenue and see the guys and . . . Lucy.

He reclined in bed and thought about looking for a job; he did this almost every morning, and usually he had good intentions. Then he would start pretending, as if his good intentions had been carried out and he was working, earning his own living, and independent, so that his old man couldn't boss him. But every morning he would forget his good intentions before he got out of bed. And a morning like this was too nice a one to be wasted going downtown and trying to find a job, and maybe not finding it; and anyway, it was a little late, and most of the jobs for guys like him had been probably grabbed up by other kids.

Studs got up. He thought about saying his morning prayers, but he decided to wait and say them while he was washing; a wise guy could always kill two birds with one stone. He knelt down by the open window and took ten inhales; on colder mornings, when the temperature of the room was not the same as the temperature outside, it was swell and invigorating taking inhales, and Studs liked to do it because it made him feel good, but in summer like now, it was only a physical culture measure that he took, because some day Studs Lonigan was going to become big and strong and ... tough. He turned and went over to the dresser, thinking about how tough a guy he might become. He studied Studs Lonigan in the mirror, and discovered that he wasn't such a bad-looking guy, and that maybe he even looked older than he was. He took a close-up squint at his mug and decided that it was, after all, a pretty good mug, even if he almost had a sheeny's nose. He twisted his lips in sneers, screwed up his puss, and imagined himself telling some big guy where to get off at. He said, half aloud:

See, bo, I don't take nobody's sass. And get this, bo, the bigger they are, de harder dey fall. See, bo!

He took his pajama top off and gave his chest the double-o. It was broad and solid, all right. He practiced expanding his chest, flexing and unflexing his muscles to feel their hardness, tautening his abdomen to see if he had a cast-iron gut. He told himself that Studs Lonigan was one pretty Goddamn good physical specimen. Scowling like a real bruiser ought to scowl, he shadow-boxed with tip-toed clumsiness, cleaving the air with haymakers, telling himself that he was not only tough and rough, but that he was also a scientific boxer. He swung and swished himself into a good perspiration, knocking out imaginary roughnecks as if they were bowling pins, and then he sat down, saying to himself that he was Young Studs Lonigan, or maybe only Young Lonigan, the Chicago sensation, now in training for the bout when he would kayo Jess Willard for the title.

He snapped out of it, and went to the bathroom. He washed in clear, cold water, snorting with his face lowered in the filled bowl. It felt good, and it also felt good to douse water on his chest. After drying himself with a rough bath towel, he stood up close to the mirror and looked to see if there were any hairs on his upper lip. If he wasn't so light, maybe he'd have to shave now. He imagined himself with the guys, walking, and him saying well, he wouldn't be able to get around so early that night because he had to shave, and shaving was one lousy pain. And maybe girls would be there, and he'd say the same thing, only he wouldn't curse. Himself letting Lucy know he shaved by complaining of it, or by talking about how he cut himself with the razor, or about how it had been hard because the razor was dull. Well, anyway, he could trim a lot of guys who did shave. He was nobody's slouch. And some day he'd be shaving, and have hair on the chest, too. It was like that Uncle Josh piece on the victrola, I'm old but I'm awfully tough. Well, for him it was: I'm small but I'm awfully tough.

Studs left home immediately after breakfast so he could get away from the old lady. She was always pestering him, telling him to pray and ask God if he had a vocation. And maybe she'd have wanted him to go to the store, beat rugs, or clean the basement out. He didn't feel like being a janitor. He would work, but he wouldn't be a janitor. Janitor's jobs were for jiggs, and Hunkies, and Polacks, anyway. He'd asked the old man again to take him to work, but the old man was the world's champion putter-off. Every year since Studs could remember, he'd been promising that he was going to take the old lady to Riverview Park, and he was still promising. That was just like the old boy. Studs walked along, glancing about him, feeling what a good morning it was, walking in the sun that was spinning all over the street like a crazy top. He could feel the warmness of the sun; it entered him, became part of himself, part of his walk, part of his arms swinging along at his side, part of his smile, his good feelings, his thoughts. It was good. He walked along, and he thought about the family; families were goddamn funny things; everybody's old man and old woman were the same; they didn't want a guy or a girl to grow up. His mother was always blowing off her bazoo about him being her blue-eyed baby, and his old man was always giving advice, bossing, instructing him as if he was a ten-year-old. Well, he was growing up in spite of them; and it wouldn't be long now before he had long britches on every day. Let 'em do their damnedest; Studs Lonigan would tell the world that he was growing up.

He goofed around for a while in the vacant lot just off the corner of Fifty-eighth and Indiana. He batted stones. He walked around kicking a tin can, imagining it was something very important, some sort of thing like an election or a sporting contest that got on the front page. Then he thought about Indiana Avenue. It was a better street than Wabash. It was a good block, too, between Fifty-seventh and Fifty-eighth. Maybe when his old man sold the building, he'd buy one in this block. It was nearer the stores, and there were more Catholics on the street, and in the evening the old man could sit on the front porch talking with Old Man O'Brien, and his old lady could gossip with Mrs. O'Brien and Dan's mother, and Mrs. Scanlan. The house next to Scanlans' would be a nice one to live in. Some people named Welsh owned it, but they were pretty old and they'd be kicking the bucket soon. There were more trees on Indiana, too, and no shines, and only a few kikes. The building on the right of the lot was the one where yellowbelly Red O'Connell lived, the big redhead. Studs wondered if he could fight him. He'd love to paste O'Connell's mush, but Red was big. Maybe the old man would buy the building and kick the O'Connells out. Down two doors was the wooden frame house where the O'Callaghans lived. Old Man O'Callaghan had been one of the first guys to live in the neighborhood, and he was supposed to be lousy with dough. And then the apartment buildings where the Donoghues lived. And then the series of two-story bricks, where Lucy, Helen Shires and the O'Briens lived. And then the home where those Jews, the Glasses, lived, and then the apartment buildings on the corner, where punk Danny O'Neill, and Helen Borax, and goofy Andy lived, and they had that bastard of a janitor, George, who was always shagging kids. Some Hallowe'en they were going to get him, good. If Studs lived on Indiana, he'd see more of Lucy. He walked down Indiana, thinking he might call for some of the bunch; but then, he was an independent guy, the best scrapper of the gang; let ‘em call for him. He stopped at Johnny O'Brien's gangway and checked himself when he was on the verge of shouting up for Johnny. He came out on the sidewalk, and looked back toward Fifty-eighth. He walked backward.