Studs Lonigan (13 page)

“Hello, there,” sighed Leon.

“Hello!” said Studs, turning sharply, a little surprised.

Studs looked at Leon; he almost looked a hole through him.

Leon was middle-aged and fat. He had a meaty rump that always made the guys laugh, and a pair of breastworks like a woman. His skin was smooth and oily, his eyes dark and cowy, his lips thick and sensuous, his nose Jewish. Leon was a music teacher, and Studs always felt that he was goofy enough to be . . . just a music teacher.

“I say! Why do boys look backward? I always wanted to know,” he said in a half-lisp.

“I was just lookin' to see if any of the guys were down the street.”

“Well, you know, it's the funniest thing. It really is. Because I see so many boys looking backward, and I'm always asking myself why they do it. Never for the life of me have I been able to understand,” said Leon.

Studs shrugged his shoulders.

Leon placed his hand on Studs' shoulder, and patted his head with the other hand. It made Studs feel a little queer; he felt as if Leon's hands were dirty, or his stomach was going to turn, or something like that. Sometimes his mother tried to hold him and kiss him, and that made him feel goofy. This was a hundred times worse. Once over in the park, an old man sat down by him and asked if he liked the girls, or ever took them over on the wooded island at night, and he tried to feel Studs. The guy had been goofy, and Studs had had an awful feeling that he couldn't describe. He hadn't gone to the park for over a week, and every time he thought of the old guy, and wondered what the bastard had wanted, his thoughts turned sour. He felt the same way with Leon, only Leon was funny and he could laugh at him.

“When are you going to come and see me and let me teach you how to play the piano; you know, you little rascal, that I offered to give you lessons free.”

“Oh, some time,” Studs said.

“You're missing a wonderful opportunity, my boy. You don't understand now, but you will some day, how fine music can make a life beautiful,” persuaded Leon.

What the hell is the damn fool talking about? Where in hell did he get that way? Studs said to himself.

Leon had taken his hands off Studs. Now he patted his head.

Studs stepped back a little.

“You're young now, but I'll bet you're an artist. If you let me teach you, I'll make a musician out of you.”

Studs thought he might as well string the guy along a little.

“Then I can play in movie houses?”

“No, not that. I only do that to make a living. I mean a real musician. An artist.”

Studs wondered what he meant by artist. He thought an artist was a guy who painted pictures, and always raved like a maniac because nobody liked his pictures.

Holy Jumpin' Jimminy! Studs almost laughed right in the guy's face.

“You must come over now and start those lessons.”

“Some time I will,” said Studs.

“Don't hesitate. He who hesitates is lost. You have your opportunity now, my boy, and opportunity strikes but once. Now tomorrow morning I'll be free. My mother will be out at eleven, and suppose you come then, and we'll be all alone, and there won't be no one to bother us, and we'll be free . . . for our first lesson.”

Leon placed his arm around Studs' shoulder.

“Well, tomorrow, I gotta beat rugs for my mother.”

“But mother might let you off if you say it's to take music lessons.”

“You don't know my mother.”

“But mothers can be convinced. Now, I know. I have a mother who still tries to boss me.”

Studs didn't have any answer for Leon. Leon tried to convince Studs. Then he had to rush to get to a lesson. He gave Studs a final pat, and told him to think it over. As he started to wriggle his rump along, he turned and said:

“Well, ta, ta! Now, don't forget the lessons . . . and don't do anything naughty-nasty . . . like tickling the girlies. Ta! Ta!”

He waved his arm womanishly, and went on. Studs watched him. He laughed. He felt a little queer. He wondered why Leon was always placing his hands on a guy.

Studs kept futzing around until Helen Shires came out with her soccer ball. Then they dribbled back and forth on the paving in front of her place. She lived next door to the Scanlans. It was a drearily lazy June morning now, and they played. Helen was a lean, muscular girl, tall and rangy, with angular Swedish features, blue eyes and yellowish white hair. She was tanned, and wore a blue wash dress, which was constantly ruffling up, so that her purplish-blue wash bloomers showed. She looked very healthy.

They played. Helen took the ball to dribble. She strode down about six yards, turned around, and dribbled forward, straight and fast, with the form and force of a star basketball player. All the guys used to say she was a natural athlete. Studs stood squat, his hands spread fan-wise, his body awkwardly tensed for sudden effort. As she approached him, she feinted toward her right, changed her stroke from left to right hand, and passed him on his right, making him look quite sick.

Studs side-glanced up at the Scanlan parlor window. He'd never before been jealous of Helen's athletic skill, but now he was. Maybe Lucy had been peeping behind the curtain. He had hoped she was. Now he changed his wish.

“I don't like basketball so well,” he said, grinning weakly.

“You will after you learn the game,” she answered, dribbling back.

She dribbled again, and Studs, with a chance swing of the right arm, batted the ball out into the street. He changed his wish, and covertly side-glanced at the Scanlan window. Helen complimented him on his good guarding.

It was his turn. He came forward, awkward, clumsier than usual because he tried to show form. He bounced the ball too hard and too high, and he was slowed down. He lost control of the ball before he reached her, and it bounded onto the grass.

It was good he was only pretending that Lucy watched him. They kept dribbling, and she kept making him look sick. She was having a better time than he, because she could do the thing, and she could get the satisfaction one gets out of doing a thing right. But he stuck on.

Once when they paused, she said:

“You ought to make the football team at Loyola.”

“I'd like to,” he said.

“You will,” she said.

They talked for a while, and resumed dribbling. She dribbled and he guarded. He took a turn, and she snatched the ball from him, pivoted gracefully, and dribbled down the other way. They alternated, and he kept side-glancing at the Scanlan window.

After a half-hour, they were both a little fagged, and they sat on Helen's front steps.

“Say, Studs, there's a can house around on Fifty-seventh Street,” she said.

“There is?”

“Yeh.”

“You sure?”

“Sure! Paulie Haggerty was around the other day, and he told me about it, and I went and looked the other night, and saw a lot of cars parked there and a lot of men enterin' and leavin'. One guy even wore a silk hat.”

“Whereabouts was it?”

“The flat building on the other side of the alley on Fifty-seventh. It's on the first floor,” said she.

“The red one where we climbed on the front porch that afternoon when it was rainin' and shot craps?” he asked.

“No. Next door to it,” she said.

“We'll all go round there some night and look in,” said Studs.

“All right,” said Helen.

“Say, Weary hasn't been around. I wonder if he's workin'?” said Studs.

“I don't like him,” she said.

“I don't care so much for him,” Studs said.

“He's too fresh,” she said.

“Yeh?”

“Yeh, he's too darn fresh.”

“Why?”

“Well, he tries to take liberties with girls. You know what he tried to do to me, don't you?”

“No?”

“Well, one day he asked me to let him see my kid sister's playhouse in the back, and I did. Then he went and tried ... well, you know what he wanted to do to me, and I wouldn't let him. I don't care to do that sort of thing. I like to play with fellahs because, generally, they're fellahs like you an' Dan and Tubby, and they're square and decent, and not rats like those guys from Fifty-eighth Street, or like Weary Reilley, and they're not fussy and babyish, like girls. Girls are always tattling, and squealing, and snitching, and I can't stand them. With decent guys, you can be . . . well, you can be yourself. Anyway, he tried to do that to me, and I wouldn't let him. He kept arguin' with me, and grabbin' me, and I wouldn't let him fool around and have a feel-day, so he lost his temper like he always does, and he got sore as blazes, and I was afraid, so I rushed out. He tried to get me to come back, and said he was only foolin' and he didn't mean anything, and all that sort of bull. But I didn't fall for it, so he left me, sore as blazes, and sayin' he'd get me some time.”

“I never knew that,” Studs said.

“Well, he did. I don't like him; I hate him, the skunk; he's a bastard,” she said.

“I don't care so much for him, either. But you got to give him credit for being a damn good scrapper. He ain't yellow.”

“You can fight him, can't you?”

“I'm not afraid of him,” Studs said.

“Sure, you can lick him,” she said.

“Well, I never backed out of a fight with him,” Studs said.

“Say, let's get a soda,” Helen suggested.

“I'm broke,” Studs said.

“I'll treat,” she said.

They walked down to Levin's drug store at the corner of Fifty-eighth and Indiana and they had double chocolate sodas; they sipped with their spoons, so that the sodas would last longer. Studs told himself that there was something very fine about Helen. She was a square shooter, and she understood things. If he tried to sip a soda with a spoon before anybody else, they would laugh at him. When he and Lucy got to be sweethearts, she'd understand things, like Helen did. A guy couldn't find a pal like Helen every day. They sat, and Studs mentioned Lucy, saying that she was a nice-looking kid. Helen smiled like a person who knew too much. She said she liked Lucy, because she was a sweet kid, and full of fun, and not an old ash can like Helen Borax, who was too stuck up to live on a street like Indiana. She said it served Helen right that she had gotten a crush on a guy like Weary, because Weary would take some of the snootiness out of her and, well, Weary would probably make her do you-know with him, and it would be a good thing for her to be ruined, because she might come down off her high horse, and it would be a swell chance to talk about her, instead of having her talk about everyone else. But Lucy was a good kid for a guy to like, she said; and Studs said he wasn't so sure how much he liked her. She said, well, a guy like Studs was better off liking a girl like Lucy, and going with the bunch around Indiana Avenue, than he was, say, hanging out with the gang around Fifty-eighth Street. Red Kelly, Tommy Doyle, Davey Cohen and those guys were all louses; the only decent one among them was Paulie Haggerty; and Paulie had been better off when he used to come around Indiana and he was sweet on Cabby Devlin. Studs said he didn't give two whoops in hell for them; but he wasn't afraid of any of 'em.

Finishing their sodas, they returned toward Helen's. They paused before the clapboard frame house of the O'Callaghans. It was set about twenty yards back from the sidewalk, with a well-kept lawn and a large oak in front. Studs and Helen wondered why people lived in such an old-fashioned house, especially when they were rich like the O'Callaghans were. They were stumped by this. Studs tried to think what the neighborhood had been like when Old Man O'Callaghan first settled there and built his house, cutting down trees and living alone just like a pioneer. It must have been like a forest. That must have been good except for the wind at night. Even now, when you lived in a brick house that was all burglar-locked, and there weren't any trees for the wind to blow through, the wind at night was something you almost couldn't stand to hear. What must it have been then? It must have sounded like a horde of ghosts rising from a rainy cemetery, or an army of devils and demons; and he didn't know how Old Man O'Callaghan and his wife stood it. And what about the pioneers? The wind in the trees all around their houses must have sounded like Indians, and they must have jumped out of bed every five minutes and grabbed their guns. He would have liked to be a pioneer and go out to fight Indians and build log cabins. He would have had a swell time, pot-shotting Indians, rescuing girls like Lucy from them, and from smugglers and hold-ups. Or maybe he'd have been an outlaw like Jesse James. That would have been the real stuff, and no outlaw as tough as he would have been would have feared the wind. No, sir!

They played kicking goals between two lampposts. A punt passing over the goal line untouched was a point, and a drop kick was three. They were about even as kickers, and gave each other a good match, and they trusted each other and knew there was no cheating, so they could go ahead and play, not having any squabbles or having to talk and chew the rag a lot. It was swell for Studs to play, kicking, watching the ball soar up and away, and maybe fall in back of the goal line, knowing he had made that good kick and scored that point, or to make a drop kick, or to run back and pick one of Helen's southpaw kicks out of the air. And just to go ahead playing, not bothering to talk or to think of anything, except now and then to imagine that Lucy was in the window watching. They played a long time, and winded themselves; when they quit, Studs was leading thirty to twenty-five.

They sat on Helen's front steps.