Studs Lonigan (16 page)

When the guys were out looking for Hennessey, Johnny O‘Brien told Studs to come along with him, so they ditched the gang. They returned to Indiana, and met old man O'Brien. He took them with him in his Chalmers. He was a husky, grayish man, starting to get a goodly paunch. They went first to the O'Brien coal yards at Sixty-second and Wabash, and then they toured the south side while O'Brien checked up on coal deliveries.

As they were driving east on Sixty-third, old man O'Brien said, his voice exaggeratedly rough:

“Who's the hardest guy in the gang?”

“Studs,” said Johnny.

Studs blushed a little, and wanted to say something to make it appear like he wasn't so awful tough after all, but he was secretly pleased. He sat there, trying to think of something to say, and he couldn't get hold of a word.

“Well, some day, Studs, let's you and I mix. I'm not so young as I used to be, and maybe I'll be a little bit slow and will get winded, but just let's you and I mix. I'll tell you what I'll do. I'll tie my knees together, have one arm tied behind my back, and throw a gunny sack over my head. Now is that square?” old man O'Brien said.

They laughed. Studs thought that old man O'Brien was a pretty tough one when he got going. He remembered that night when they had all been standing at the corner of Fifty-eighth and Indiana. They had just been talking there, not doing a thing out of the way. And MacNamara, the lousy cop, came around. He blew his bazoo off, and told them to get a move on, and not be hanging around corners molesting the peace. They said they weren't doing anything. He blew his bazoo off again, and told them not to talk back to him or he'd run the whole damn bunch of them in. He said they weren't no good anyhow, and wanted to know what kind of fathers they had that would let them be out on the streets at night, molesting decent people and disturbing the peace. He told them to get a move on, and he grabbed Johnny's arm and started to shove him. Old Man O'Brien had been in the drug store, and he'd taken the whole show in. He got sore as a boil and stepped up to the lousy flatfoot. He told him where to get off at in regular he-man's language. He said he was the kind of a father these boys had, and what was there to say about it? And he told MacNamara that those boys would stand on the corner as long as they pleased, and as long as they were behaving, as they had been then, no one would try and bully them . . . not while he was around. And no cop could think that he was going to get away with pushing his son. And he told the damn bluecoat that if he would take off the star, he'd punch him all over the corner, and when he got through, wipe the street with him. MacNamara had walked away like a whipped dog, mumbling apologies. If he had cracked a wise one, Old Man O'Brien would have socked him. And if he had run Old Man O'Brien in, with Mr. O‘Brien being in the right like he was, well, he would have been in a jam, because old man O'Brien had money and a pull. Studs and all the guys had wished they had an old man like Johnny had. Now, riding in the car, Studs thought what a swell old man he was. He remembered Johnny saying his dad never once hit him. And he gave Johnny plenty of spending money. He was a real old man, all right.

They drove down South Park Avenue. Old man O'Brien said he'd take Studs and Johnny to White City some time. He and his wife had been there only last week, and had had a dandy time. Studs felt that Mr. O'Brien was different from his own gaffer. He wasn't a putter-off, but when he said he'd do something, he did it. Old Man O'Brien turned, and said:

“Hell, you kids ain't as tough as kids used to be in my days. When we fought then, we fought. And we all had to use brass knuckles.”

“You wouldn't fool us, Gov'nor, would you?” kidded Johnny.

Studs thought it wasn't every guy who could kid with his old man, like Johnny could. Most old men were, like his own, always serious, and always demanding that you show them respect and listen to everything they said, and never contradict them or think they were in the wrong. And they never understood a kid.

Johnny had some old man, all right.

“Yeh, and when I was a kid, we used to fight Indians, and if we made a slip then, well, we'd have been tommy-hawked.”

“No!” Studs exclaimed with surprise. He knew what old man O‘Brien said couldn't be true, and yet he half-believed it was. He had an imaginary picture of Mr. O'Brien wading through a field of Indians, throwing a whole tribe of them up for grabs.

“Yeah, I was once near tommy-hawked at the place where White City now stands.”

“He's always trying to bunk a guy,” Johnny said.

“That's the trouble with this kid of mine. He never believes anything I say,” Mr. O'Brien said.

He turned and smiled good-naturedly at them. In the moment that he turned, the car had swerved, and he had a narrow escape from hitting a rattling Ford.

He got sore, and cursed after the other driver, telling him to take his junk in the alley where it belonged, and to try riding a bicycle until he learned how to drive.

“They ought to prohibit those goddamn Fords from being driven in the streets. They are nothing but a pile of junk.”

“They are automobile fleas,” Johnny said.

Studs told a joke he had read in a Ford joke book. A rag man was going down the alley one day, and he was called in a back yard. The man who had called him said how much will you give me for this, and he pointed to a Ford. The rag man looked, and looked, and he looked some more. Then he said vel if you give me fife dollair, I'll take it avay for you. They laughed at the joke. Old Man O'Brien said it was a pretty good one.

Old Man O'Brien spoke of the good old days, gone by, of the Washington Park racetrack, with its Derby day in the middle of June and the huge crowds it attracted, its eighty acres, its race course with a gentle slope from east and north that made it a faster track than a dead level one, its artificial lakes and garden works on the inner sides of the main track, its triple deck stands, its bandstand at one end of the stand, why, it was a dream. And all the color and noise and foment, and the crowds shouting, the betting and the excitement, when Burns, or Turner, or Burnett would lead a horse into the home stretch. And some of them horses, too, they were beauts, Hurley Burley, Enchanter, Imp, and them two horses that were goddamn good nags, Ben Hadad and Saint Cataline. Johnny's mother knew how good them horses were, because she had had a good time more than once on their winnings, right after she got married, and yes, sir, them horses had bought Johnny's sister Mary something when she was learning to walk. Yes, sir. And he told them of Garrison. Garrison, he said, was the jockey who was such a good man in the home stretch that they took the word, Garrison-finish, from the way he rode a horse. He'd seen Garrison ride, and Sloan, too. And he spoke of the trolley parties and picnics of yore, and the dances and prize fights at Tattersalls. All the kids used to sneak in, the way kids always sneak in. They had a million ways of crashing the gate. One of their tricks was to bribe a stable man to let them in through the stables. Well, one night during a big fight, all the lights in the place went out and the management had to give tickets for the next night. Well, you should have seen the crowd that came. Every newsboy and teamster in town must have had a five-dollar ringside seat. And of all the old fighters he'd seen in action, Bob Fitzsimmons, Jimmy Britt, Jim Jeffries, Gentleman Jim Corbett, who could wiggle a mean tongue, and don't think old Gentleman Jim didn't know how to curse. Terrible Terry McGovern, ah, there was a sweet fighting harp for you, a real fighting turkey with dynamite in each mitt and a fighting heart that only an Irishman could own. Young Corbett, who was born with a horse shoe in his hands and a four leaf clover in his hair, and who put a jinx on Terrible Terry; Benny Yanger; the Tipton Slasher whom old man O'Brien knew personally; Stanley Ketchell who didn't know when to quit fighting even when he had a gun jammed against him; Joe Wolcott, Dixon, Joe Gans, Young Griffo, the most scientific fighter of all times with maybe the exception of Nonpareil Jack Dempsey, who came before Mr. O'Brien's time; Tom Sharkey—all of them old boys. They didn't have fighters like that nowadays. None of 'em were no-fight champions like Jess Willard, and most of them were real Irish, lads who'd bless themselves before they fought; they weren't fake Irish like most of the present-day dagoes and wops and sheenies who took Hibernian names. None of them were no-fight champions like Jess Willard, the big elephant. Why, an old timer like Philadelphia Jack O'Brien or Kid McCoy could have spotted the big elephant all his blubber and laid him low in a round. Now, McCoy was the trickiest fighter that ever lived. He had a brain and a corkscrew punch that made the big boys see stars once it landed. Once he was fighting some big bloke, and he suddenly pointed down and told the big ham his shoe laces were untied. The ham looked down, and the old corkscrew snapped across, and the big bum was rolling in the resin; and another time, McCoy pointed to the gallery, and the big dummy he was fighting looked up, and the old corkscrew right went over and the dummy started trilling to the daisies. And the baseball games in the old days of Spike Shannon, Mike Donlin, Fred Tenney, Jimmy Collins, Cy Young, Pat Dougherty, Fielder Jones of the Hitless Wonders, and even earlier when he was a kid, and they had the Baltimore Orioles, and he used to see Kid Gleason pitch, and there was Hit-Em-Where-They-Ain't Willie Keeler, Eh Yah Hughie Jennings, Muggsy McGraw, old Robby, Pop Anson, Brothers and the Delehantys. Hell, even Ty Cobb wasn't as good as Willie Keeler.

“And you know who was the greatest of them all?” asked Old Man O'Brien.

“Who?” asked Studs.

Studs usually didn't give a damn about baseball. Danny O'Neill was the one who knew all about it. But when Old Man O'Brien talked of baseball, it was as exciting as going to see a movie serial, like that one a long time ago,
The Adventures of Kathleen
. And the ball players he named were like heroes, as great as generals.

“Well, old Rube Waddell. Rube was a guy. He was a left-hander, and all left-handers are cracked.”

Old Man O'Brien paused. Then he said:

“Studs, you ain't left-handed, are you?”

“No, sir!”

“Don't call me sir . . . Well, my kid there ain't either . . . but he ought to be.”

“YEAH!” kidded Johnny.

He told them all the familiar Rube Waddell stories. Then he said that poor Rube ruined his health, and practically killed himself because he was left-handed. It was Rube's left-handedness that made him always want to run after a fire like a kid. Well, Rube was always leaving Connie Mack and joining up with some hick fire department, and Connie' d have to send his scouts out to find the southpaw. Once Rube got himself in with the hook and ladder crew in St. Louis or somewhere, and went to a fire. When Rube was in fighting the fire, a floor caved in on him and he got lost with some others under the wreckage, and they turned the hose on him. It was funny, but that was what put the kibosh on poor Rube's lungs. Studs sat listening, enchanted, imagining himself a great guy like Rube Waddell.

Old Man O'Brien talked on:

“But I ain't so much interested in sports as I used to be. Baseball's the only clean game we got left. The Jews killed all the other games. The kikes dirty up everything. I say the kikes ain't square. There never was a white Jew, or a Jew that wasn't yellow. And there'll never be one. Why, they even killed their own God. . . . And now I'll be damned if they ain't comin' in spoiling our neighborhood. It used to be a good Irish neighborhood, but pretty soon a man will be afraid to wear a shamrock on St. Patrick's day, because there are so many noodle-soup drinkers around. We got them on our block. I even got one next door to me. I'd never have bought my property if I knew I'd have to live next door to that Jew, Glass's his name. But I don't speak to him anyway. And he's tryin' to make a gentleman of that four-eyed kid of his . . . as if a Jew could be a gentleman.”

Johnny and Studs laughed, and told him that the Glass kid was nothing but a sissy. They had nothing to do with him.

“Well, don't . . . unless it's maybe to paste him one.”

A pause.

“And say, Studs, you got 'em over your way, too. What does your old man think of 'em?”

“Well, he's always talking of selling. My father thinks they are ruining the neighborhood.”

“They are . . . only, say . . . listen . . . can that my father stuff. Both of you kids know damn well that when you're alone you say . . . my old man . . . come on, act natural . . .”

Studs told himself that Johnny's old man was like a regular pal to a kid.

They stopped in an alley at Fifty-second and Prairie. Old Man O'Brien bawled hell out of a sweating Negro who was putting in a load of coal. The Negro was grimed with coal dust, and perspiration came out of him in rivers. He worked slowly but steadily, shoveling the coal into a wheelbarrow, pushing it down a board and emptying it down a chute through a basement window.

They drove on, and Mr. O'Brien said:

“You got to put pepper on the tails of these eight-balls. They're lazy as you make ‘em. A Jew and a nigger. Never trust 'em farther than you can see ‘em. But some niggers are all right. These southern ones that know their place are only lazy. But these northern bucks are dangerous. They are getting too spry here in Chicago, and one of these days we're gonna have a race riot, and then all the Irish from back of the yards will go into the black belt, and there'll be a lot of niggers strung up on lampposts with their gizzards cut out . . . My kid here wanted to wrestle in that tournament over at Carter Playground last winter, and I'da let him, but he'd of had to wrestle with niggers. So I made him stay out. You got to keep these smokes in their place and not let 'em get gay.”