Studs Lonigan (22 page)

They laughed together, and Studs said that Kenny had real style. Kenny laughed, and said it was nothing to cop things from drug stores. Studs told himself that Killarney was a guy, all right.

They put their suits on under their clothes at Studs'. The suit fitted Kenny. They went over to South Park and bummed rides to Fifty-first, and did the same thing along Fifty-first and Hyde Park Boulevard. They had fun on Hyde Park Boulevard. It was a ritzy neighborhood where everybody had the kale and all the men wore knickers and played tennis and golf, and all the guys were sissies. Kenny had chalked his K.K. initials all over the Fifty-eighth Street neighborhood, so he started putting mysterious K.K. signs on the Boulevard. And he kept walking on the grass, making fun of the footmen and wriggling his ears at the well-dressed women. They saw one hot dame, in clothes that must have cost a million bucks, and Kenny commented on the large breastworks she had. He spoke too loud, and she heard him. She went up in the air like a kite, and talked very indignantly about ragamuffins from the slums. When they got out of her hearing, they laughed.

The lake was very calm, and way out it was as blue as the sky on a swell summer evening. And the sun came down over it like a blessing. And they were tanned, so they didn't have to worry about getting sunburned and blistered. They ran out from the lockers with feelings of animal glee. The first touch of the water was cold, and they experienced sharp sensations. But they dove under water, and then it was warm. The lake was just right. They went out, splashing, diving under water, trying to duck each other, laughing and shouting. The diving board was crowded but they climbed up and took some dives. Kenny did all kinds of dippy dives, back flaps and rolls. The people about the diving board watched them and thought Kenny was pretty good. He started a stump-the-leader game on the board but he was too good for them, so they all lost interest.

Kenny and Studs swam out where it was cold and deep, and there was no one around them. They dove, splashed, floated, splashed, swam, snorted. They were like happy seals. Studs got off by himself and wheeled and turned over in the water like a rolling barrel. He called over to Kenny that it was the nuts. Kenny yelled back that boy it was jake. They swam breast-stroke, and it was nice and easy; then they did the crawl. They went out further. Only the lake was ahead of them, vast and blue-gray and nice with the sun on it; and it gave them feelings they couldn't describe. Studs floated, and looked up at the round sky, his head resting easy on the water line, himself just drifting, the sun firing away at his legs. It was too nice for anything. He just floated and didn't have anything to think about. He looked up at the drifting clouds. He felt just like a cloud that didn't have any bothers and just sailed across the sky. He told himself: Gee, it was a big sky. He asked himself: I wonder why God made the sky? He floated. He floated, and suddenly he liked himself a lot. Sometimes he was ashamed of his body, like when the old man came in to use the bathroom when he was taking a bath and didn't have anything on, or like on the night he graduated, when he was in bed and had a time trying to sleep. Now he liked his body, and wasn't at all ashamed of it. It moved through the water like a slow ship that just went along and didn't have any place in particular to go and just sailed. About ten yards away he heard Kenny wahooing and singing about Captain Decker who sailed on the bounding main, and lost his . . . and Kenny seemed almost as far away as if he was on the other side of the lake. He splashed with his hands. Then he held his toes up and tried to wiggle them, but he got a mouthful. He turned and swam a little way, taking in a mouthful of water and holding it. He turned over and floated, spouting the water, pretending he was the most powerful whale in all the seas and oceans, floating along, minding its business, because all the sharks were leery of attacking it. He had a sudden fear that he might get cramps and drown, and he was afraid of drowning and dying, so he turned over and swam. But he wasn't afraid for long. Then he and Kenny tried to see who could stay under water the longest, and they waved in to attract attention, so people on the diving board might think they were drowning and get all excited. He dove down, imagining he was a submarine, and the water kept getting cooler, and he kept his eyes open but could only see the water, clear, all around him. He felt far away from all the world now, and he didn't care. He came up, choking for air, and it was like coming to out of a goofy dream where you are falling or dying or something. Kenny was up before him, and Studs, after he had gotten a good breath, told Kenny he wasn't so good.

“Drowning ain't my specialty. That's not my trick!” Kenny yelled back.

They swam slowly in.

When they got on the beach, they gazed about and ran all around, looking for Iris and eyeing all the women to get some good squints. Kenny said it would be swell, like heaven, if all women wore the same kinds of swimming suits that Annette Kellerman did. Studs said it would be better if they didn't wear anything. Kenny said women sometimes did go swimming without anything on. Studs said he'd give his ear to see them.

Finally, they sprawled face downward in the sand, the sun fine and warm on their backs, evaporating all the wet. They didn't talk. They just sprawled there. It was too good to talk. Studs forgot everything, and felt almost as good as when he had been by himself way out in the deep water. He just lay there and pretended that he wasn't Studs or anybody at all, and he let his thoughts take care of themselves. He was far away from himself, and the slap of the waves on the shore, the splash of people in the water, all the noise and shouts of the beach were not in the same world with him. They were like echoes in the night coming from a long way off. He was snapped out of it by Kenny cursing the goddamn flies and the kids who ran scuffing sand all over everybody. Studs looked up. Then he looked out over the lake where the water and sky seemed to meet and become just nothing. He thought of swimming far, far out, farther than he and Kenny had, swimming out into the nothingness, and just floating, floating with nothing there, and no noises, no fights, no old men, no girls, no thinking of Lucy, no nothing but floating, floating. Kenny broke off his thoughts. He talked about swimming across the lake, arguing that a good life guard could swim all the way to Michigan City or Benton Harbor. Studs said that Kenny was nuts, but then he couldn't talk as fast as Killarney, so he lost the argument. Kenny just talked anyway, and it didn't matter what he talked about or make him less funny.

At six they went home, and moving along Hyde Park Boulevard, trying to bum rides and cursing everybody who passed them by, Kenny said:

“It was swell today.”

“Yeh! it was swell,” Studs said.

“Only I wish Iris had been there,” said Kenny.

“Yeh,” said Studs.

“I'm so hungry, I could eat a horse,” said Kenny.

“Wouldn't it have been nice to have had her there and have her let us lay our heads in her lap, and have a feel-day, or go out with her way out, or swim around to the breakwater, where nobody was, and out there get our ashes hauled,” said Studs.

“Almost as nice as eating a steak would be this very minute,” said Kenny.

“Sure,” said Studs.

They walked on. When Studs had been lying in the sand, he had been at peace, almost like some happy guy in a story, and he hadn't thought that way about girls, and it hadn't bothered him like it did other times, or made him do things he was ashamed of way deep down inside himself. Now his peace was all gone like a scrap of burned-up paper. He was nervous again, and girls kept coming into his mind, bothering all hell out of him. And that made him feel queer, and he got ashamed of the thoughts he had . . . because of Lucy. And he couldn't think of anything else.

At home they had steak, and Studs, like a healthy boy, forgot everything but the steak put before him.

The July night leaked heat all over Fifty-eighth Street, and the fitful death of the sun shed softening colors that spread gauze-like and glamorous over the street, stilling those harshnesses and commercial uglinesses that were emphasized by the brighter revelations of day. About the street there seemed to be a supervening beauty of reflected life. The dust, the scraps of paper, the piled-up store windows, the first electric lights sizzling into brightness. Sammie Schmaltz, the paper man, yelling his final box-score editions, a boy's broken hoop left forgotten against the elevated girder, the people hurrying out of the elevated station and others walking lazily about, all bespoke the life of a community, the tang and sorrow and joy of a people that lived, worked, suffered, procreated, aspired, filled out their little days, and died.

And the flower of this community, its young men, were grouped about the pool room, choking the few squares of sidewalk outside it. The pool room was two doors east of the elevated station, which was midway between Calumet and Prairie Avenues. It had barber poles in front, and its windows bore the scratched legend, Bathcellar's Billiard Parlor and Barber Shop. The entrance was a narrow slit, filled with the forms of young men, while from inside came the click of billiard balls and the talk of other young men.

Old toothless Nate shuffled along home from his day's work.

“Hello, Nate!” said Swan, the slicker, who wore a tout's gray checked suit with narrow-cuffed trousers, a pink silk shirt with soft collar, and a loud purplish tie; his bright-handed straw hat was rakishly angled on his blond head.

“Hello, Moneybags!” said Jew Percentage, a middle-aged, vaguely corpulent, brown-suited, purple-shirted guy with a cigar stuck in his tan, prosperous-looking mug.

“Hello, Nate! How's the answer to a K. M.'s prayer on this fine evenin'?” asked Pat Coady, a young guy dressed like a race-track follower.

“How're the house maids?” asked young Studs Lonigan, who stood with the big guys, proud of knowing them, ashamed of his size, age and short breeches.

The older guys all laughed at Young Lonigan's wise-crack. Slew Weber, the blond guy with the size-eleven shoes, looked up from his newspaper and asked Nate if he was still on the trail of the house maids.

Nate had been holding a dialogue with himself. He interrupted it to tell them that he was getting his.

Slew Weber went back to his newspaper. He said:

“Say, I see there's six suicides in the paper tonight.”

“Jesus, I knew it,” said Swan.

“This guy Weber is a guy, all right. All he needs to do is smell a paper, and he can tell you how many birds has croaked themselves. He's got an eagle eye fur suicides,” said Pat Coady.

Nate started to talk; he said:

“Say, goddamnit, I'm tired. I'm tired. I'm gonna quit this goddamn wurk. Jesus Christ! the things people wancha tuh do. Now, today I was hikin' an order, and some old bitch without a stitch on . . .”

“Naughty! Naughty! Naughty Nate!” interrupted Percentage, crossing his fingers in a child's gesture of shame.

“She was without a stitch on, and she wants me to go an get her a pack of cigarettes, an I looks at her, and I said, I said . . . but Jesus, it was funny, because I coulda killed her with the look I gave her; but I said, I said, Lady I'm workin' since seven this mornin', and I still gotta store full of orders to deliver. Now Lady how do you expect me ever to get finished, and Lady if I go runnin' for Turkish Trophies for every one that wants 'em . . . Well, sir! Ha! Ha! She shuts up like a clam. And then I always gotta deal with these nigger maids dat keep yellin' for you tuh wipe yer feet. I said, give uh nigger an inch, and dey wants a hull mile. And my rheumatism is botherin' me again. But say you oughta see the chicken I got today . . .”

Saliva and browned tobacco juice trickled down Nate's chin.

“Well Nate, the first hundred years is the hardest,” said Percentage.

“Yeh, Nate, it's a tough life if you don't weaken,” said Swan.

“Say, Nate, did you ever buy a tin lizzie?” said Studs, trying to be funny like the older guys.

“Think yuh'll ever amount to much, Nate?” asked Pat Coady.

“Say, listen, when you guys is as old as me you'll be in the ground,” said Nate.

“Say, I'll bet Nate's got the first dollar he ever earned,” said Slew.

“And a lot more,” said Pat.

Nate told them never to mind; then he started to talk of the Swedish maid he had on the string. He poked Slew confidentially, and said that every Thursday afternoon, you know. Then he said he was getting in a new stock of French picture cards, and tried to collect in advance, but they told him to bring them around first.

A girl passed, and they told Nate there was something for him. Nate turned and gaped at her with a moron's excited eyes.

Percentage told Nate he had a swell new tobacco which he was going to let him try. Nate asked the name and price. Percentage said it was a secret he couldn't reveal, because it was not on the market yet, but he was going to give him a pipeful. He asked Nate for his pipe, and Nate handed him the corncob. Percentage held the pipe and started to thumb through his pockets. He winked to Swan, who poked the other guys. They crowded around Nate so he couldn't see, and got him interested in telling about all the chickens he made while he delivered groceries. Percentage slipped the pipe to Studs, and pointed to the street. Studs caught on, and quickly filled the pipe with dry manure. Percentage made a long funny spiel, and gave the pipe to Nate. The guys had a hell of a time not laughing, and nearly all of them pulled out handkerchiefs. Studs felt good, because he'd been let in on a practical joke they played on someone else; it sort of stamped him as an equal. Nate fumbled about, wasting six matches trying to light the pipe. He cursed. Percentage said it was swell tobacco, but a little difficult to light, and again their faces went a-chewing into their handkerchiefs. Nate said they must all have colds. Nate said that whenever he had a cold he took lemon and honey. Percentage said that once you got this tobacco going, it was a swell smoke, and all the colds got suddenly worse.