Studs Lonigan (80 page)

Returning along the aisle, he saw the two salesmen seated with the girls, telling them jokes. Quick workers, he thought. He couldn't carry things off like that. Must be something lacking in him. But then he just wasn't a bull artist the way most drummers were.

“Now, just as I was saying, fellows, we're older than we used to be. Take Chu Chu Keefe. He and Mickey Flannagan are the same as they always were, and the last time I saw them, they were as cockeyed as ever. They're both swell fellows, regular, but you come to a time in your life when you realize that there's a place for everything. Barney and Mickey, the only thing they got a place for in their lives is booze and female bums. Drunk and whoring all the time, with no ambition. And as I said, speaking straight from the shoulder, there's something more than that in living. A man gets married and settles down some time. Of course, he doesn't become a mollycoddle and let his wife wear the pants for him, and he drinks with the boys once in a while, but still he does a little settling down, and tries to figure out what the whole thing is all about,” Red Kelly orated as Studs returned.

Kelly was just showing off, Studs thought.

“Red, I think you're right. Since I got married, and saw how in these times the breaks can go against a guy I've begun to think a little the way you do,” Stan said.

Studs lost interest in their talk. Quickly, he thought that he was getting too mopey and the guys would notice it if he didn't jack himself up and quit mooning as he had been. He determined, he wished, he tried to make himself believe that some day he was going to be a much bigger shot than Red would ever become. He sat up erectly and looked at Red. He wasn't going to act like a dope.

“Say, Red, some day I'll bet that you're going to be sheriff or alderman, or even mayor, a real big shot,” Les said.

“Well, Les,” Red replied, biting on his cigar, rolling it around with his lips, “I'm in the political game now, and a fellow doesn't get into that for nix. Naturally, I'm aiming to go as high as I can, and to get out of it whatever I can.” He paused. “You know, boys, the stuff about politics and political issues that you see in the newspapers, well, between us, it's mostly so much crap. Politics is a game you got to play, and you got to get what you can out of it. If you don't, you're a chump, and the next fellow that comes along takes the pickings while you hold the bag. That's what happens to these honest reformers. They are sincere and think they are doing the right thing, but they don't play the game and string along, and in the end they make the next election twice as hard for the party that put them in. That was the trouble with our last Democratic mayor, Dever. He was an honest man, but he didn't know the game of politics. And, well, there's one thing boys that you can lay it on the line on, and that's this . . . Red Kelly is in to play the game, and get all the legitimate getting that comes his way.”

“In hard times like these, I guess it's best to get what you can.”

“You said it, Stan, because even then, there's none too much, but you watch! In the primaries, it's going to be Thompson and Cermak, and this spring will be a Democratic one. Cermak and the whole ticket will get in. Thompson is dead politically, and he deserves it. He's a demagogue, and he goes campaigning down in the black belt, kissing nigger babies and playing up to the shines. Any man who does that ought to be run out of town on a rail. The jiggs in Chicago are dynamite, and if they ever break loose, it's going to be hell to pay. And right now the dirty nigger-loving Reds are playing up to them to stir them up, and Thompson, kissing nigger babies, is playing right into their hands.”

“Let the niggers just get tough. We'll hang them up on every telephone pole in the city, just the same as we did in 1919,” Studs said.

“I agree with you, Studs. We ought to give them the same kind of medicine they get in the South and not even let them sit next to a white man in a street car, let alone vote,” Red said.

“I don't like niggers none, either,” Muggsy said.

“They smell pretty bad,” Stan said.

“But getting back to politics, boys, this spring is only going to be a preview to the presidential election in 1932. Then we'll have Democrats all the way from the White House to the street cleaners on every block. And there'll be better times, too,” Red said with smug pride.

“Somebody better get in and do something, because I tell you, it's goddamn tough,” Stan said.

“Well, Hoover is nothing but the tool of the international bankers, and he's the guy who put the country on the fritz,” Red said.

“That's just what Father Moylan has been saying on the radio,” Muggsy said.

“There's a man for you. Boy, what Father Moylan doesn't say about the bankers, and the Reds, too,” Kelly said.

“Yes, boys, things have been happening these last few years that you'd never expect to happen,” Stan said.

“Well, all I know is that I wish I had a job,” Joe Thomas said.

“Look at me, fellows. After all the years I put in in the service of the Continental Express Company, what am I doing? Working as an extra, getting a few hours work every week with Long Johnny Continental,” Les said whiningly.

“Say, Studs, by the way, how is your old man weathering the depression?” Red asked.

“Pretty good,” Studs answered, figuring that there was no use in advertising about his old man's business.

“You know, I honestly got the creeps when I saw poor Shrimp in that coffin, looking so wasted, just like a bag of bones,” Stan said.

“Such are the mysterious ways of life,” Red pronounced.

Remembering the pallid yellow corpse of his old friend, Shrimp Haggerty, lying in the small parlor in a blue suit, the heavy odor of flowers, the gray-haired mother sobbing, the father like a broken man in a dazed fog, hardly seeing anybody, not hearing what was said to him, arising to walk to the casket and stare at his dead son, turning away to pat his mourning wife, Studs felt pretty damn low. He was afraid, afraid of death, of his friends dying, of the day when he would be stretched out in a coffin and people would be sitting at his own wake saying how sorry they were that Studs Lonigan was dead. He remembered back on a night just before his twenty-first birthday, when they had all gone to see Paulie Haggerty, trying to cheer him up and make him think he wasn't dying. And Kenny Kilarney had pulled such a dumb stunt, kidding by saying that soon they would all be Paulie's pall bearers. Without meaning it, he had made Paulie feel so damn much worse. Just like Kenny! And a few days later, on his twenty-first birthday, they had all been in the poolroom when Benny Taite had come in with the news that Paulie was dead.

Yes, he felt pretty damn low. He heard the voices of the fellows, and he looked emptily through the dusty train window. The moon was riding high now across the sky, a half moon that seemed almost like a fire of whiteness and silver, and the growing early darkness seemed itself to be sorrowing, to be carrying through it an unseen and awful sadness, and it made all the world seem to Studs like a graveyard. He wished that he could see his old pals, Paulie and Shrimp, Arnold Sheehan, Slug Mason, Tommy Doyle, Hink Weber, talk to them. If he could, it would make him feel less the fact that he, too, would one day be dead. He tried to tell himself that they were still alive, but only living in some other town, and that some day they would all come back and have a regular reunion. The train whistle cut in upon him, a deep puncture of sadness into his thoughts. He could not shake this sadness or shutter it from his mind, and it put its fingerprint upon every thought that popped up. He didn't want to talk to the fellows while he felt like this. He wanted just to sit and think. Suddenly, he saw himself as a lonely and unhappy adventurer riding upon this train, to some dangerous and unknown end. Another farmhouse light stabbed the darkening obscurity, and to Studs, for the moment that he saw it, it was like some supernatural and all-seeing eye. The train rumbled over a crossroad, spanned by the track, and he saw the headlights of an automobile coming forward. He turned from the window, fearing to look out now and continue thinking, because if he did, they would be convinced for sure that he had become a mope.

“Les, I agree with you. We'll never have the old days back again. But, as I was saying, what's gone is gone, and a guy can't always be thinking of it. He must be thinking of what's ahead for himself, where he's going,” Red said.

“I know this, too,” Studs said, cutting in on a defensively apologetic remark of Les', “I know that my old man and old woman have never felt the same about our new neighborhood as they did about the one down at Fifty-eighth Street.”

“And my aunt, Tommy Doyle's mother, she seems to feel just the same way, Studs. All she does, these days, is to sit at home and brood. She keeps saying, every time I see her, how there were such good people around Fifty-eighth Street, and she will hardly even leave the house, except to go to church. She just mopes around all day. And my brother Joe who collects rents on her buildings on South Park, he can't hardly get a red cent out of the niggers living in it. Half of the time he doesn't even try because what's the use?”

“Damn it, you know, I can't get over seeing poor Shrimp, Lord have mercy on his soul. I can't get over the snaky feeling I got looking at his corpse,” Stan Simonsky interrupted.

“When I die, I want to go out like a light,” Studs said, trying, by speaking of death, to rid himself of the clinging fear of it.

“Me, too, Studs, only I want to have the priest first.”

“All the boys from our old gang who were Catholic had the priest. They were lucky at least in that,” Les said.

“Me, now, all I wish is that this damn train ride was over,” McCarthy said.

Studs, again not listening closely, had a sudden vision of a screeching collision, the cars smashing, turning over and dumping off the tracks and down the siding, the passengers, himself included, being pinned under the steel, moaning, crying and begging for help, gritting their teeth to be brave and bear their injuries, or crying forth in misery and cowardice, many of them dying before they could be rescued, or before, anyway, those who were Catholic had a priest. He saw himself dying without the last rites, his insides smashed and hanging out, his skull fractured. He went pale, and looked aside so they wouldn't notice him. He heard Muggsy still complaining that he wanted the train ride over, and he wished that he could be as light-hearted now as Muggsy seemed to be. He wanted to act and talk and be like the old Studs Lonigan.

“What's the matter, Monk, don't travel agree with you, or are you getting hot for your old lady?” Stan asked.

“Tickle Joe, Les,” Muggsy said, pointing at Thomas, whose head had dropped forward in sleep.

“Let the poor guy sleep. With losing his job, and that rheumatism that has been bothering him these last couple of years, he's had one hell of a time,” Kelly said.

“Say, Red, remember the time we tried to enlist,” Studs said with a forced smile, still the prey to disturbing thoughts.

“How could I ever forget it?” Red said, and the others laughed.

“And the time we went to Burnham, and tried to make goofy Curley lose his manhood,” McCarthy said.

“And when the joint was raided, I jumped out of a second-story window and escaped, even if I did sprain my ankle,” Studs said nonchalantly, hoping that they would remember and speak of some of his past exploits.

“Those were the days,” said Les.

“And just think, we're almost all of the old gang that's left,” Muggsy said mournfully.

“Hey, Muggsy, you're a married man with a kid. Does your wife know about your past?” Studs grinned, and they laughed.

“That's all right. It never pays to tell a woman too much,” Muggsy replied.

“Don't you wish you were single, Muggsy?” Studs said, wanting to keep up the kidding, because it made him forget many things.

“And I ain't sorry none, and I'm glad that I got my kid. She's beginning to talk now, and she says daddy just like she meant it.”

Studs saw Stan's lips twitch, and his face cloud while Red gave Muggsy the razzberry. He wished that the subject hadn't been brought up. Stan was a good guy, and the poor bastard had gotten it plenty tough, no work, and a crippled baby.

“How about yourself, Kelly, when are you going to begin populating the world with little Red Kellys?” Stan asked, forcing himself back into the laughing fellowship.

“Sure, Red, don't tell us you ain't doing your duty,” McCarthy kidded.

“I ain't saying nothing, boys, and I'm just letting nature take its course,” Red grinned.

“If Les, there, ever gets married and has any kids, the first thing they'll say to him, if they are chips off the old block, will be ‘Come on, pops, how about a bottle?' ” Muggsy said, causing Les to beam.

“Les has no idea of sliding down the middle aisle while he hardly works two days a week,” Les said.

“Studs, there, is going to be the next,” said Red.

“I ain't saying nothing,” Studs said, blushing, enjoying the crack, and thinking that they were all swell fellows, all right, and that their gang had, after all, been the best gang of regular fellows a guy could want to pal with.

“But say, boys, I meant to tell you the story about George the Greek who used to own the poolroom. He saved up all his dough and went back to the old country to act like a big shot, and the first thing they did was shove him in the army,” Red said, everybody laughing.

“I never did like Greeks,” Studs said.

“Me neither. Like that waiter Christy in the restaurant who was a Red. They ought to take bastards like him who don't appreciate this country and send them all back on the first boat. We got too many foreigners here anyway, and that's why there are so many Americans like Stan and Joe here out of work,” Red said oracularly.