Studs Lonigan (88 page)

“Well, Mary, all business is much the same these days, dog eat dog, and when everything is said and done, the thing that counts is getting ahead. The boy's doing that.”

“That's true, dad,” Studs said reflectively.

“And once you get the money, sock it, hang on to it! Don't invest in anything. I met another fellow today who's a good friend of Tom Gregory's, the chain-store man who made such a profit a year or two ago when he sold out his Peoples Stores. I don't know Tom personally, myself, but he's an old-timer who knows the business of making money forward and backward and sidewise. He started with a little store over in back of the yards, and today, according to what this fellow says, he's an insurance man, Tom Gregory is worth a cool twenty million. He was saying he was out to see Tom the other night, and they were talking about stocks and investments, and Tom said to him, and as I was saying, Tom would know about the matter if anybody would, well, anyway, Tom told him that there's not a stock on the market today that's safe.”

“William, don't eat so fast,” Mrs. Lonigan said, noticing that Studs had lowered his head and was bolting down his food.

“Isn't a stock like, well, say, Imbray stock with public utilities all over the Middle West to back it up, and directed by a man with the brain of Solomon Imbray, isn't that stock safe?”

“Well, Bill, I was only saying what I had heard from this insurance man what Tom Gregory had told him. But I'm inclined, personally, to agree with Tom. The stock markets are manipulated by the Jew international bankers, and those are fellows I don't trust.”

Should he sell his stock and take the small loss? Should he ask his old man's advice? God, if he lost his dough!

“I was talking to another fellow today, who knows things on the inside down at the City Hall, and he was saying to me, only don't let this go any further than ourselves, that the city is getting deeper and deeper into a financial pickle, and that soon the policemen, firemen, bailiffs and a lot of the politicians will be in the same boat as the school teachers, and will not be getting their pay envelopes. Now, you can't tell me that's natural and isn't just the result of graft somewhere. You bet, there's something rotten some place. Here men like myself pay out good hard-earned money for taxes, and where does it go? Where does it go that the city can't even pay the people working for it?” Lonigan said, his face flushing with anger.

“Did you say the bailiffs? Red Kelly won't be getting his pay then, and he won't like that at all,” Studs said.

“That's a soft job Red's got. I wish I was as lucky as him and could get me a political job,” Martin said.

“He was kind of wild as a boy. I remember once seeing Sister Bernadette when the children were in school, and she told me that I should not have a fine boy like William running around with the likes of that Kelly boy. But he must have settled down since he's gotten married and turned out all right, much better than poor Mrs. Reilley's boy did.”

“Red's all right, and he's got a drag with both Judge Dinny Gorman and the sheriff,” Studs said.

“I don't care if Dinny is a judge. Judge or not, he's a damn old mollycoddle to me and always was, a high-hat mollycoddle if ever there was one. He's not human now, like Joe O‘Reilley is. I sure hope, too, that Joe gets in for judge in the elections next month. If there ever was a fine and a smart man, it's Joe O'Reilley, and he would have been state's attorney years ago if the newspapers hadn't knifed him.”

“I saw Red downtown a week or so ago, and all he talked about was his wife,” Martin said.

“He loves his wife, all right,” Studs said.

Mrs. Lonigan carted in coffee and angel-food cake, and served it.

“Well, if things only pick up some now, I'll be having plenty of work for you boys,” Lonigan said, smiling.

“I'm ready,” Studs said.

“And, Mary, we'll make that trip to Ireland when times get better. We'll let the boys do their old man's work, and with two smart lads like Bill and Martin here, well, we need have no worries, and can enjoy our second honeymoon.”

“Yes, Patrick. And I know that everything is going to come out shipshape,” she said, smiling at him in consolation.

“I guess we have to have faith and confidence, and not let ourselves believe we're licked,” Lonigan said after a gulp of coffee.

Studs sank into a rocking chair opposite the radio, while his father, toying with the dials, produced grating static. The parlor suddenly filled with howling jazz, and Lonigan again tinkered with the dials, decreasing the ear-splitting volume. Out of the swift tempo the notes of a saxophone came like a clear stream of fluid sound that seemed to flow into Studs, shivering up his spine, spilling through his nerves, and pouring poignancy into every corner of his brain. He leaned back, a brooding expression settling on his face, and again the saxophone was lost in a rising cacophony that crashed into a wild conclusion. Lonigan looked at his bulky gold watch, its ornamented case flashing back a ray of electric light that had hit it.

“Amos and Andy will be on about ten o'clock. Gosh, they're funny, and when they get going they can touch anybody's funny bone,” Lonigan said in an interlude between songs, while an announcer's eulogy of furniture went unheeded.

Studs nodded. Maybe in the morning he'd better dump the stock, after all. But if he did, and the stock rose, wouldn't he want to shag his tail around the block six ways from Sunday for having pulled out with clammy feet? He looked at his father, wondering whether the old man were really listening to the radio music or not. He was getting along in years now, and it was showing, his gray hair thinning out, wrinkles coming into the blown red face, bags under the eyes, the look of all-around tiredness on it. Pretty tough, too, having worries in old age. He heard a faint wheeze with every breath his father took, and he continued to glance at the relaxed face. Tough!

And how would things be going in ten years—1941. Would his father and mother be alive? Would he? Martin, what would he be doing? Would he and Catherine have kids of their own? How many? Would they be well-heeled with dough? And Phil and Loretta? These questions disturbed him. He was kind of afraid of what might happen in the next ten years. He let himself slump into his chair to receive the song of a cloying-voiced radio crooner.

He didn't like gigolos. They were like pansies, worse even. But he felt something sad in the music, and it seemed to make their home, the parlor, his father and mother, himself, seem sad, as the chorus of the song was crooned a second time. Wiping her bony, chapped hands in an apron, his mother entered the room and took a seat near a tall, ornate floor-lamp. He noticed his parents again, and he wondered when he and Catherine were old would they sit night after night the same way, listening to the radio, with hardly a word to say, and would they have children of their own to feel sorry for them in the same way that he was feeling sorry now for his mother and dad, and would he seem to his children to be ready for the ash heap as he dozed half-awake at nights?

He tried to shift to other thoughts, and words from the song stuck in his mind.
Youth will pass away, Life goes on without me.
His stocks could give him a start and prevent him from fearing lest he end up like the old man. Oh, Jesus Christ, why, why couldn't they just go up and double, triple, in value. If they went to a hundred bucks, that would be seventy-five bucks a share profit. And other people had made plenty this way. Why couldn't he?

And there they were, his father and mother, seeming to have other things on their minds. The old man's mouth hung open, his arms were dropped like lead over the side of his chair, and when he breathed, the loose roll of fat around his belly moved.

Poor old bastard! Studs silently exclaimed.

And there were so many wrinkles now in his mother's face, and the circles under her eyes, too, made her seem so old. She was the kind who must always be wearing herself out doing things for people, for the old man, for himself and Martin, for the girls, and Phil and Carroll. And she would go on doing things for her home and her family until the end. Suppose the old man did lose everything? How tough it would be on her! Jesus God, if his stock would only go up and he could save them from such troubles!

“And what could be more tempting, more refreshing, more delicious than. . . .”

“Those damn advertisements,” Lonigan said, leaning forward to turn the dial, capturing successive snatches of song, more advertisements, speeches, static.

“The sun shines on yonder hill, friends in radioland, through the courtesy of Bloop Blop and Doop, makers of solid whalebone non-skid rolling collar buttons,” Martin said, entering the parlor.

“Martin, they have to have money for the radio, don't they, and I think you should appreciate what you get for nothing and not be making such mean remarks. I think it's nice of people and business men to spend good hard-earned money in these days so we can hear all the wonderful things we do hear over the radio, without you making fun and belittling,” his mother nagged.

Martin cast a quick, pitying glance at his mother, shrugged his shoulders, picked up a morning paper from the piano bench, and slumped into a rocking chair.

“Martin, turn to the radio page and see if there's anything good due now,” his father said.

“Father, there's going to be old-time songs on XAK at about this time. I remember seeing it in the papers,” Martin said, and Lonigan dialed.

 

“And friends of Radioland, the Peoples Stores, situated all over the city for the housewives' convenience, will be gratified, and amply repaid if you have enjoyed this concert which they have sponsored. This is station XAK, Norman Withers announcing. Stand by now for the time. It is now four seconds to eight, central standard time.”

Melodious bell-like chimes rung out.

 

“And now, folks of Radioland, we have back with us the Midget Singers. Through the courtesy of the Soskimo Old Woolen Company, manufacturers of all lines of high-class woolen fabrics, with their main manufacturing plant at Soskimo Falls, Massachusetts, we will hear the Midget Singers in an old-times song festival. Miss Marjorie Maginnis, Miss Florence Turtleback, and Miss Helen Ashencourt, the famous Midget Singers, will entertain us with those dear old songs of the days that are gone but not forgotten, when you and I were young, Maggie, and after the ball was over, you hitched old Dobbin to the sleigh and rode home on a bicycle built for two to pledge your troths in the shade of the old apple tree. Folks of Radioland, the Midget Singers.”

Lonigan's face became alive. He smiled at his wife. Martin frowned, bored, and sank himself again in the newspaper.

Studs noticed the tender way his father looked at his mother. They loved each other, and he thought of how it would be terrible when one of them died. He figured, too, that they both must be thinking of the good times they had when they were young, remembering rich good things, and he asked himself would he and Catherine sometimes sit, still in love, looking back the same way, and also remembering rich good things?

That beaming smile on the old man's face. He had once courted her, taken her out on dates, just as he took Catherine out, thought the same things of her that he thought of Catherine and had once thought of Lucy, kissed her in the same way as he kissed Catherine down by the lake the night they had become engaged. Once his mother, she had been young, like a flower to the old man, warm and hot and panting for breath in his arms, just like himself and Catherine. He tried to visualize his parents when they were young, kissing, and the image would not stay fixed in his mind. To him, they were something different. He could not see them as sweethearts together. But it had once been. And now they were old, and he, himself, was nearly thirty, and he was going to be old, too, some day.

Martin yawned.

And in those days things had been a lot different, with bicycles all over the streets, and almost no automobiles, and the women dressed so differently. He wished he could have known what those days had been like, what kind of a fellow the old man had really been. He watched him, too, nodding his head from side to side, looking at his mother still, his lips moving as he quietly sang the songs.

Lonigan sighed deeply, wistfully.

Studs guessed that this one must be making the old man think of Ireland that he had left as such a small kid. If the stock would go up enough, they could take that trip to Ireland, maybe with himself and Catherine going along, and that would be just jake. He wanted, now, very much, to be able to do something for the two of them. He was glad, too, to see them happy while these songs were sung, only he knew it was a sad kind of happiness, making them think of how they were once young and were now old.