Studs Lonigan (29 page)

“Well, you'd make good if you went out regularly,” said Paulie.

“It ain't worth it,” said Studs.

They walked on. Paulie got soft, and told about how he liked Cabby Devlin, but he couldn't get to first base with her since he'd been such a damn fool at young O'Neill's party. Weary said love was the bunk.

They sat down in leaves by the stepping stones. They talked a while. Then they were silent. Finally Weary said:

“It's swell here.”

“Yeh,” they answered.

Darkness came, feather-soft. The park grew lonely, and the wind beat more steadily, until its wail sounded upon Studs' ears like that of many souls forever damned. It ripped through the empty branches. It curved through the dead leaves on the ground, whipped bunches of them, rolled them across bare stretches of earth, until they resembled droves of frightened, scurrying animals. Studs wanted to get out of the park now.

They said so long, and each trooped moodily home. As he was leaving the park, Studs saw a tin can. He commenced kicking it, and stopped. He was wearing his long pants every day now, and only kids, punks, kicked tin cans along. He started walking on. He turned. He looked at the tin can. He came back and kicked it. He walked on. No one saw him. He thought about the day. He wondered about other days, and wished he had a lot of them back. He wished that he was back at St. Patrick's, instead of being in high school and in dutch for bumming. He wished that he and Lucy were together, instead of being like strangers. He guessed she knew about Iris.

At supper they had a quarrel, as usual. And his mother asked him to pray so he could decide about his vocation. And the old man told him he ought to go to confession, because he hadn't been there since June. Then they kicked at Martin not having his finger nails cleaned and Loretta and Frances squabbled. After supper, he went to sit by the parlor window. Frances sat down to do her homework. The old man asked him didn't he have homework. Studs said he had done it in a study period at school. The old man said it would be good to get ahead. Studs said he didn't know what homework they'd have ahead. Frances called in to ask him if he knew what declension “socius” belonged to. He said he didn't. The mother said she guessed the girls learned more rapidly than boys did, and they went ahead faster in their lessons. The old man put on his house slippers. He listened to
Uncle Josh Joins the Grangers
on the Vic. Then he opened his
Chicago Evening Journal.
Looking over his paper once, he said:

“Well, Mary, now that the kids are coming along, we'll have to take more time to ourselves, and next summer we'll have to do a little gallivantin' of our own, and go out and make a night of it at Riverview Park.”

Studs sat looking out of the parlor window, listening to night sounds, to the wind in the empty tree outside. He told himself that he felt like he was a sad song. He sat there, and hummed over and over to himself . . .
The Blue Ridge Mountains of Virginia.

1929-1931

THE
baby bawled. Lee heard a final sob from his wife. He slammed the door. Cursing in disgust, he walked along Calumet Avenue. He joined the lads in the barber shop, front of Charlie Bathcellar's poolroom, and smiled with a lightened mood.

STUDS LONIGAN walked north along Indiana Avenue. His cap was on crooked, a cigarette hung from the corner of his mouth, and his hands were jammed into the pockets of his long jeans.

Warm sun sifted dozily through an April wind, making him feel good. He liked spring and summer. There were things in winter that were all right—ice skating, plopping derbies with snowballs—but spring and summer, that was his ticket. Soon now, there would be long afternoons ahead, at the beach and over in Washington Park, where they would all drowse in the shade, gassing, telling jokes, goofing the punks, flirting with the chickens and nursemaids, fooling around and having swell times. Like last summer, only this one was going to be even better. He was a year older now, bigger, and he knew what it was all about. After June, he wouldn't have that worry about school. It sure was a black cloud over his head. Gee, he didn't know what night he would go home to supper and learn that his old man had found out. How would he face it? If only he hadn't done it!

But he'd lied, and had had to go on telling more lies until now he was so damn mixed up in lies about it, that he didn't know what to do. He hadn't wanted to go to high school anyway. Well, it was the old man's fault. And if the old man did find out, all right. Studs Lonigan would let him know that
he
was his own boss. It was a black cloud always hanging over his head.

He shrugged his shoulders, because Wilson was going to declare war any one of these days, and maybe the war would get him out of it. He might be able to go. In a few months he'd be sixteen. Next fall, he might be doing his bit for Uncle Sam, and then all his troubles about school would be forgotten kid worries.

Praying in church, at Stations of the Cross, he'd learned something about himself, and about praying. Whenever he prayed for something he really wanted, and he could see the thing he wanted clearly in his own mind, he could pray good, concentrating on God and holy things. But when he just prayed in general, with no particular intention in mind, he just mumbled out the prayer words, and his thoughts wandered over everything, and he couldn't, not even to save his neck, keep them on God and holy things. Today, he'd asked God in his prayers to be on the side of America, if Wilson declared war, and let him fight and be a hero and not get killed or mortally wounded.

He remembered his history lessons from grammar school. We had, America had, the most glorious and bravest and noblest war record in all history. Old Glory had never kissed the dust in defeat. And now, maybe, yes, Old Glory would be flying victorious over the battlefields of the biggest war in history. But what would it be like in war times, because war times were the only important times in history? It was great to think that kids in the future might be reading about the times when Studs Lonigan had lived. They might even be reading of William Lonigan, the hero, just like he'd read about Hobson, the guy who had carried the message to Garcia in the war with Spain when America had set Cuba free from tyranny. He guessed he might still be too young, but he'd get there soon, somehow. He was prepared to fight, and, if necessary, die for his country. He paused under the elevated structure at Fifty-ninth and Indiana, and slowly, solemnly, as if taking an oath in the very presence of God, he muttered:

 

 

He turned down the alley between Indiana and Prairie. He was going to be a soldier of his country. Suddenly, he trembled. If he was killed in action, it would be a hero's death, but . . . he thought of the Stations of the Cross in the church, slow, sad, solemn, the story of Christ on the Cross, the sad singing, all the statues draped, death, and dying, people going, soldiers going, never speaking again or seeing anybody they wanted to see and speak to, and leaving the people they loved like he loved Lucy, and he was afraid of war because there was so much dying in it. He hastily muttered a Hail Mary to the Blessed Virgin, asking her protection, and promising always to remember her, pray to her and wear her scapular.

He fell into marching step, as if he were an American soldier going off to war. He imagined himself going over the top with the American army, not stopping until they captured Berlin. He saw Private Lonigan as the soldier who captured the Kaiser. He saw himself with levelled gun forcing Kaiser Bill to cower into a corner and yell Kamerad, like a yellow skunk.

“Take that, you raping sonofabitch!” he said, swinging on the Kaiser.

“And that!” he followed, massacring the air with a good old-fashioned American right uppercut.

A passing laundry-wagon driver leaned out of his seat and yelled:

“Hi there, Jess Willard!”

Shame blushed his cheeks. He walked circumspectly. Well, after war was declared and Studs Lonigan was a brave and gallant soldier of his country, he wouldn't have to pretend, and he would make everybody and Lucy envy him and be proud of him, and recognize he was a somebody all right, and he'd win medals for bravery and have his picture in the papers, and maybe, years ahead, even in the history books.

Studs emerged from the alley and walked down to the northeast side of Fifty-eighth and Prairie. At the elevated station, a half block down, he saw people crowding excitedly around Sammy Schmaltz, the newspaper man. He started to go down there, but heard Red Kelly calling him from the other side of the street. He turned and saw Red waving in front of Frank Hertzog's shoe repair shop, about fifty yards or so down from the corner. Studs dashed across the street, dodging a truck that just missed him. The driver cursed him. Red said war was declared. They went inside the shoe repair shop, and stood outside the counter. Frank, a middle-aged man with a square face and a mustache, was carefully half-soleing a shoe.

“The extras are out now. And we're gonna cook the Kaiser's goose plenty. How about it, Frank? You know we can do it, don't you, because you're from Germany?” Red said, slurring and running some of his words together.

“I'm an American citizen now,” Frank remarked without looking up from his work.

“Say, Frank, tell us what kind of a lousy country Germany is,” said Red.

Continuing to work, Frank said that he had come to America because it was a democratic country with more opportunity, and because there was no compulsory military service.

“Yep, it's the land of the free and the home of the brave,” Red said knowingly.

“We had to do it or the Germans would have come over and attacked us,” Studs said.

“We got to save a civilization. You can see what the Germans are doing from the papers. Only they haven't told half of it. Why last week, I was reading a book by a Catholic priest telling what the Germans did in Belgium. You know what they'd do? A hundred or so of ‘em would line up, and take a woman, or even a six-year-old girl or an eighty-year-old grandmother, like old Mrs. O'Flaharty, and they'd strip her and rape her one after the other, until she was dead. Then they'd go and do the same thing over again.”

“The book says that? Does it describe the rapes?” asked Studs

“Yeah.”

“What's the name of it? I'd like to read it,” Studs said.

“I forgot, but I'll take you down to the library and show it to you and you can read it there.”

“I'd like to. You say it describes the rapes?” Studs asked.

“The Huns, they're not civilized . . . of course, Frank, you know I don't mean you because you're Americanized . . . but the Germans are brutes. Why, they're destroying Catholic churches, and Red Cross hospitals, and they sink ships without warning, letting helpless women and children drown. Look at the Lusitania! I tell you, they ain't civilized.”