Studs Lonigan (81 page)

“Yeah, I guess you're right, Red,” Studs said.

“You know, fellows, I was just thinking of how life is a funny thing,” Les said absently.

“Is that what you call Bug Club Philosophy?” Red remarked with a mild jeer.

“Well, I was just thinking about poor Shrimp, and the boys who passed away before him,” Les said.

Studs again turned to the window. He asked himself, and he asked the foreign darkness outside the window, would he be the next to go? Would he be stretched out in a coffin next, with the boys around saying poor Studs, as they said poor Shrimp? Christ, no! He didn't want people feeling sorry for him like they did for Stan and Joe and for all their dead buddies. He wasn't going to be poor Studs. He was going to be healthy and outlive them all, and be more successful, too, than Red Kelly ever would be. And he would marry Catherine. He wasn't going to crack up for a long time, mister, and when he came to his last day, he would leave behind him a long life, good times, and the name of Studs Lonigan in bigger letters of success, mister, than many imagined. He vowed this to himself, but vow or no vow, he still saw himself stretched out in a coffin, with the boys coming, looking down at his cold and waxen face, kneeling, praying, going out to the kitchen to talk about the old days, and about poor Studs.

The train swept overhead through a town, and below him Studs saw, as if they were part of some warm life that he did not know, people moving in rainy streets, automobiles, lighted signs, and windows and stores and lamp-posts. And if he was dead, maybe Lucy would be there. But the hell with her and all that.

He didn't care, and he was alive, and he was going to marry Catherine. She was a damn swell kid, who would really do anything for him, go to Hell for him, and he really cared for her, and she would make him a good wife. Red was married and coming along. So would he. And tonight, goddamn it, he was going to pop the question. He was coming back, Studs Lonigan was.

The fellows were still talking. Let them chin, he told himself, still emptily staring out the window as the train passed through the industrial belt surrounding Chicago, a passing scene of factory chimneys, squalid and dimly lit streets, houses in rows like barracks, and then stretches again of country lost in blackness. He felt dirty and nervous, and he made up his mind right then and there that he was going to pull together. He wanted to get back to Chicago quickly to start on it, too, make a fresh start, regain his health, fight an uphill battle and show the world that Studs Lonigan could be somebody. He was conscious, acutely, of the gratings and strainings and clatter of the train, the squeaking windows, and again he heard the piercing, siren-like train whistle. He did not hear Red Kelly gently remark:

“Studs must be in love. He's moping so that he doesn't even hear us talking about him.”

CHEWING on a toothpick, Studs vacantly stared through the bay window, seeing the fat and loose-faced proprietor waddle from behind the horseshoe-shaped marble counter, and cross, against a background of hustling waitresses and people eating at white-clothed tables, to the counter case in front of the window. He noticed the sag in the man's broad trouser seat, and then he watched the dark, sexy-looking waitress scurry with a large tray of food. Three fellows, toward the front and close to the wall, were leaning across their food in talk and suddenly stretched back and laughed. Studs glanced in their direction. Three regular lads having supper, and then out to make a night of it! Where to? Show? Dance? Party? Canhouse? Speakeasy? There was a quality of warmth and friendliness, not for him, in the sight of these people eating fifty- and seventy-five cent suppers, and he wished he were back inside, eating the meal he had just stowed away. He read the slanting line of enamelled lettering across the window, merely to waste time. . . .

Still a half hour before he'd meet Catherine. Chilled, he turned up his coat collar and about-faced. He saw that Dearborn Street, lined with tall and old flat-sided office buildings, with lighted windows seeming like pieces of yellow paper pasted against a dark setting, had only partially dried from the mizzling rain, and the raw snap in the air seemed to stab through to his bones. A few people walked down the deserted street, an automobile sputtered, turned a corner, and an elevated train rumbled by at Van Buren Street. Perhaps it was a southbound train. It would stop at Fifty-eighth Street, and shines would bolt down the station steps to the street that he had once known so well. One night, a year ago, when he had nothing to do, he had gone walking in the old neighborhood, feeling very much like a stranger who had no right to be there. Shrimp's funeral brought things like this to his mind, and kept them there. If he ever walked along Fifty-eighth Street again, Shrimp and Paulie and Hink and Arnold would all seem to walk with him like ghosts.

He halted on the opposite side of Van Buren Street to look at the ordered rows of black and tan oxfords in the window of Hassel's shoe store. Used to have more clothes than he had now, he thought, his eyes straying from shoe to shoe until he fastened upon a pair of black brogans with narrow, perforated toes. But he oughtn't to spend fivefifty on shoes when he still had two pairs that would do him for a while.

At Jackson Boulevard he stood on the curb irresolutely, while several automobiles shot past him. A tall fellow stared at him. Telling himself that the lad was constructed like a power machine, Studs attempted to appear unobtrusively firm in returning the glance. The fellow's stare was unrelenting. Studs crossed the street, and walked by the Great Northern Hotel, stopping to study a news photograph of Lindbergh and his wife in flying outfit with a plane behind them. He thought that Lindbergh was a fearless-looking brute, all right, and tried to imagine what it would be like to be the hero of the nation and to have been the first man to fly alone across the Atlantic, winning twenty-five thousand dollars, a society wife, and undying fame. Lucky boy! Realizing what Lindbergh was, he began to feel measly and insignificant, and turned away from the picture.

Maybe if he had gotten into the war he might have been an aviator, and when the prize was offered he might have competed with Lindbergh, beat him across the Atlantic, and become more famous than the hero of the nation. He began to feel joyful, seeing himself, Studs Lonigan, as Lindbergh, instead of the Studs Lonigan that he was at the moment. Then the world would have known what he was, what kind of stuff he was made of! Damn tootin', it would.

Two tall youths approached him. From force of habit, he clenched his fists, and his body tensed for action. He saw that they were wearing smart and expensive clothes, with gray stetsons, and their faces were bright and shiny. Doggy fellows, he murmured to himself. The fellow on the outside, in the gray coat, was talking in a highbrow accent. Studs guessed they were collegiate or just out of college. He turned to stare after them, noticing the cut of their beltless overcoats. The one in the gray coat laughed in a refined low-pitched way. Boy scouts in long pants! His fists again automatically clenched.

Walking on, seeing the lights of Randolph Street before him, he wondered if they were college football players. That was what Studs Lonigan might have been. Even if he did admit it, he had been a damn good quarterback. If he only hadn't been such a chump, bumming from school to hang around with skunky Weary Reilley and Paulie Haggerty until he was so far behind at high school that it was no use going. It wouldn't have been so hard to have studied and done enough homework to get by, and then he could have set the high school gridiron afire, gone to Notre Dame and made himself a Notre Dame immortal, maybe, alongside of George Gypp, the Four Horsemen, Christy Flannagan and Carrideo. How many times in a guy's life couldn't he kick his can around the block for having played chump?

“Lad, I just hit town and I'm on my uppers. I've been carrying the banner all winter, an' I'm hungry,” said a seedy man, taller and huskier than Studs, shivering without an overcoat.

“Sorry, but I haven't got anything,” Studs replied in a voice of controlled and even cautious surliness.

“Christ, lad, only a nickel or a dime for a warm cup of coffee. I'm hungry!” the bum said, doggedly following on Studs' heels.

Wheeling around, Studs snapped, “Listen, fellow, I haven't got it.” He perceived a craven look come into the man's face, and frowning, his own courage mounted. “For Christ sake, can't you understand English?”

The bum turned and zigzagged along in the direction of Van Buren Street, while Studs watched, still flushed with his own bravery. The fellow had the advantage of weight and height, and was in at least as good physical trim as he was. He could have sloughed Studs. It must have been something of the old Studs Lonigan left in him that had led to his not taking sass, risking a fight. He imagined himself fighting with the bum on the darkened and almost deserted street, a long and gruelling battle, slugging back and forth, both of them staggering and bloody, until Studs would put every ounce of spirit and energy into a last haymaker, and the bum would tumble backward, fall over the curb into the street, and know that he had met a better man. Hands on hips, he sneered, and watched the bum diminish as he pursued a ziggedy course along the sidewalk. Studs turned and continued, himself fighting like Jack Dempsey used to. He began to feel that Christ, he could have spared a dime. But then, if the bum needed money, why didn't he work for it? He knew that in thinking this he was just trying to convince himself that he had done the right thing, when he really acted like a bastard over a measly dime. There were plenty of guys in the red now, meeting tough luck, out of work and not able to get anything. Some of his own friends, too—look at Joe Thomas, and Stan, and then there was Les almost in the same boat. Plenty of guys, all right, broke, begging, and how could he have known whether this fellow was one of them, or just a regular bum? He shrugged his shoulders, deciding that he had plenty of things of his own to worry about without bothering over every bum who came along the street.

At Madison Street, he halted to permit the passage of a west-bound surface car, reading above a window in the center of the car: MADISON & WESTERN. He had hardly ever been on the west side, and he wondered about it. It was probably like a city in itself, and it had its gangs and bunches and poolrooms all over, fellows just like their own bunch from Fifty-eighth Street, fellows like himself, like Red and like Slug and Weary and all the old boys. He slouched onward, hearing the rumble of the elevated trains, several blocks distant, and then, from a nearer street, the shrieking sirens of fire engines, and the high-powered roaring of fire-engine motors. He wished the fire were along his way to meet Catherine, so he could stop and watch the excitement. If it was a big one, he might see the flames bursting out of the windows, and even watch the walls of a building crumble, making noises like booming cannons. But that was a goofy thing to hope for.

He increased his gait to a brisk walk, because Catherine was almost never late, and since he was going to pop the question tonight he oughtn't to annoy her by making her wait for him. The idea of proposing worried him; his body became tense and his breath seemed almost to jerk out of him. It was a serious business, and maybe he ought to think it over more. He reduced his pace unconsciously. He felt somewhat the same as he might have if he were going to a dentist's to have a tooth pulled, wanting to postpone what had to be done to some other time. Suppose he should make a fool of himself? After all, he was really a stranger to her. He was really a stranger to everyone else in the world also, and they really did not know what went on inside of him, and how he felt about many, many things. He wasn't sure that he would want to live so intimately with anyone as he would have to do with Catherine if he married her. Maybe he should not have made the date with her tonight, coming all the way downtown instead of getting off at the Englewood station, and letting Stan bring home his small grip. But if he hadn't done this, he would have nothing to do but go home and sit around watching how bored his old man and old woman seemed to be, or else going out alone. And these days he hated to be alone, and when he was alone, he worried and puzzled over too many things, and stewed over his health. And did he, now, really want to marry Catherine?

There was Lucy. And there was that girl he had knelt next to at a Christmas morning mass at St. Patrick's. He had wanted to get next to her, and he had used to hope that he would. As he remembered her, and as he remembered Lucy, they had class, the same kind of class that girls like his own sisters or Weary's sister, Fran Reilley, had. There was an air about them, about the way they talked, walked, the things they said and did, their clothes, everything about them that Catherine did not seem to have. Catherine would make him a damn good wife, he knew, but still, well, there was something common about her, something that would have kept her from being in the same group with girls like his sisters, from being bid to their sororities, something that was there even if he couldn't put his finger on it. She was decent, he was sure she would say yes when he popped the question, and she was the kind who would make a goddamn swell wife in some ways. Yet when he was with her, and met his sisters, he was ashamed of her. Thinking of Lucy, or that other girl, he kind of felt sorry for Catherine.

He turned the corner onto Randolph, the Loop noises bursting upon him with a sudden increase of volume, the elevated trains from Lake Street, the clanging of a street-car gong on Dearborn, the humming movement of the automobiles, the parade of people along the sidewalk, snatches of their talk, their feet scraping over the sidewalk. He felt as if he had left a place that was cold to come into one that was warm. He heard the jazz band of a nearby, second-floor, Chinese dine-and-dance restaurant break into snappy music, and he glanced at the many and brilliant electric fronts of the shows along both sides of the street. Keyed up, he was glad to see people, he wanted to talk, to do something, to see Catherine, too. He felt that his body was now like some kind of a nervous instrument with strings like violin strings that had been plucked and tingled.