Studs Lonigan (96 page)

“I didn't say anything. It was somebody else,” Studs said tensely, writhing under the insult, wondering why the loud-mouth next to him, who was nearer this one's size, didn't admit that he'd made the crack.

“Get in line!” the sergeant-at-arms said, turning away, before Studs could reply.

“Don't let him put anything over on you, Shorty,” an oily fellow said.

“Jesus, I was so surprised I didn't know what to say, because I hadn't batted my mouth open,” Studs said, his face pallid.

And calling Studs Lonigan a
runt
and
Shorty
. God, he just wanted to break loose and start slugging right and left, jam that
runt
and
Shorty
down a lot of throats!

“Did you smell his breath? He's drunk as a soldier, if you ask me. Certainly isn't a good example to us who are new members.”

“Something ought to be done about him,” Studs said.

“Say, do you understand English, or are you another one of these Polacks who speak a foreign language?”

“You ain't got no right to get personal,” a hurt voice replied, and another low grumble spread through the room.

“And what's your name?”

“I'm blind,” a quavering voice replied.

“This man is blind, and you ought to be ashamed of yourself.”

“Did I ask you for any advice?”

“But this man is blind.”

“I heard you the first time! Snap in there with him—this isn't an all-day coming-out party!” the sergeant-at-arms exclaimed, turning from the blind man to edge toward the center of the room, where he frowned, placed his hands on his hips, and raised his voice. “We're going out of here to get started with the ceremonies of this degree when you fellows cooperate with me, and prove that you're at least half-intelligent and can understand the English language. I forgot my Polish dictionary, and I can't speak Italian or Hungarian, and I don't know Gaelic. So I'll have to give you instructions in English with my apologies. Now come on, line up!”

With the echo of grumbling and shuffling feet, Studs got into a line along the wall. He hoped that everyone would stop giving the monkey arguments so they could get going.

“Let's get started,” someone called out.

“We ought to get that guy outside after it's all over,” Studs said low to a muscular fellow before him.

“If he keeps on like this, we won't have to wait until then,” the fellow replied.

“Is it necessary to continue like this? You know, we're not cattle,” the priest said in a low voice of controlled anger, and Studs, silently applauding the clergyman, thought it ought to tone down that damn red-robed clown.

“I didn't ask for your two-cents' worth,” the sergeant-at-arms quickly retorted in an insulting tone, while the room waited in awed and taut silence.

Studs shook his head uncomprehendingly. Insulting a priest! He'd never seen that done before. And an officer of the Christys doing it, too! That guy was just passing out hints that he wanted to be mobbed. And boy, wouldn't Studs just love to jam his fists between the rat's eyes!

“I'm a priest and I do not propose to be insulted by you!” the clergyman said stiffly.

“You tell him, Father, we're with you!”

“Don't let him pull anything on you, Father!”

“Let's get going!”

“BOOOOOOO!”

“And I'm conducting this initiation. . . .”

“Pipe down!” a bull voice called out, and many stamped their feet in unison.

Studs tried to crowd forward, but couldn't break through the solid wall of backs.

“Priest or no priest, the sooner you get into line the better off we'll all be!”

Studs, leaping quickly up on his toes, caught sight of the fellow's face. Hard, tough, didn't seem afraid. Certainly wasn't the kind of a fellow to meet in a dark alley.

“We have the right to ask that you be civil to us,” the priest said.

“Get in line. You're no better than anyone else in here.”

“Help! Help!”

Heads turned. Studs saw beside him a quivering, thin, sickly-faced young man of about twenty-five, who looked as if he were going to throw a fit. The mere sight of him almost shocked Studs into a state of irresolution. He was afraid, looking at that distorted face. The sick man sagged. A stream of blood shot out of his mouth, splattering Studs' shirt collar and coat lapel. The sick man was caught under the arms and held before he hit the floor. There was a minor stampede about him, and Studs, wiping his bloody neck and soiled clothes, was jammed back.

“Man's fainted!”

“Get a doctor!”

“Gangway!”

“Pipe down!” the sergeant-at-arms bellowed. A pushing wave carried Studs forward, his neck sticky, a semi-coagulating stream trickling under his shirt. . . . The sick man emitted a shrill, pitiful moan.

“Open the door!”

“Man's died!”

“Give him air!”

“Get a doctor!”

Another wave dragged Studs forward.

“Get that guy!”

“Sock him!”

“Get a doctor!”

“Open the door!”

Studs, caught up in this excitement, lowered his head, crashed forward. Just as he got close to the sergeant-at-arms, an aisle seemed to open to the door, and the sergeant-at-arms shot through it, slamming the door behind him. They pounded on the door, milled, crashed into each other, shoved purposelessly, grumbling with rage, and the sick man again moaned pitifully.

“Open the door!”

“There's a man dying!”

“Open that goddamn door!”

“Break it down!”

The sick man moaned.

“Man dead!”

“Open that goddamn door!”

The door opened, and the head of the sergeant-at-arms appeared in the doorway.

“Get him!”

The cry rose, and the candidates like an irresistible flood surged forward. A jam at the narrow door impeded their exit, and as they drove through by brute pressure, breaking loudly and wildly into a large hall, the sergeant-at-arms gained distance on them.

“Get him! Catch him!” Studs bellowed like a maniac, breathlessly streaking down the center of the hall. The sergeant-at-arms dashed safely ahead, his robe flying behind him as he passed rows of empty camp chairs, and a stand upon which a sharp-nosed man in a ceremonial red robe stood awed. He escaped through a wedge in the solid wall of black-hooded figures formed behind the stand, and when the mob of initiates reached it, the black-hooded figures closed tightly, preventing any break. Their voices rising into a babble, the initiates turned and milled about the stand.

Exhausted, his chest paining, his heart racing, Studs gasped at the edge of the crowd. He stared around the hall and saw, on all sides, a silent wall of hooded, black figures. This was too much for him, he thought, gasping again for breath.

“Please, please, gentlemen! What is the meaning of all this?” the sharp-nosed man on the stand called in a surprised and squeaky voice, rapping on the wooden railing with a gavel.

“We'll get that rat!”

“Drunk, and insulting a priest!”

“He's no better than a murderer!”

Studs, slowly regaining his breath, wondered what had happened to the blind man and the lad who'd gotten sick and puked blood all over him. Couldn't the fellow have just tried croaking all over somebody else? He spotted the blind man quivering nervously in a chair. Lucky he hadn't been stepped on, all right!

“Bring him out!”

“Massacre the rat!”

“String him up!”

“Gentlemen, what's all this? Goodness, I never witnessed such disorder before at an initiation.”

“He socked a blind man and insulted a priest. Send him out!”

“Hand him over!”

Studs looked up at the squeaky-voiced master-of-ceremonies. Judge Gorman, he realized in surprise.

“Please, order, gentlemen, order, and let us know the cause of this outburst!”

“We're not interested in jawing. Fish up that rat for us!”

“Who? What? Hit a blind man, what's this?” the Judge called out, a shocked expression on his thin face.

“We want that guy!” Studs bellowed to get back into the excitement, and he smiled when others took up his cry and megaphoned it through their hands in unison.

Studs wove through the crowd, closer to the stand.

“Will some one of you come up here and tell us just what has happened, please?”

Studs raised his hands, thinking that he would explain it to Gorman, make himself known to all the candidates here, and use his good offices in knowing the Judge to settle this trouble.

“Here's a gentleman now from your own number who will tell us. Come up here, please, sir!”

“Tell him the straight stuff, lad!” someone said as Studs mounted the stand.

“Mr. Gorman, don't you remember me, Lonigan, from Fifty-eighth Street?” Studs said, extending his hand.

“Why, yes, yes.”

“Well, Mr. Gorman, you see, this sergeant-at-arms must have had a few shots too many and. . . .”

“Here, please, turn around and tell everybody.”

Studs fidgeted at the sight of so many faces below him. He looked over their heads at vacant chairs, and opened his mouth without saying anything.

“Gentlemen, now we can get down to the facts in this situation.”

Studs grinned weakly. He wanted to make a hit, and he'd never spoken to a crowd before, and he was no orator, and. . . .

“Well, first we are in the room, ah, a room like sardines in a can and the fellow comes in and he shoves everybody around, insults the priest, and when one fellow gets sick, he locks us in. For all he cared, the fellow could have died,” Studs said, beginning nervously, the last words of his statement dying as he uttered them.

“Unheard of! Unheard of!” Judge Gorman exclaimed, shocked.

“Well, it's so,” Studs said doggedly, stimulating corroborative cries.

“Is there any more to this? Here, will you come up here and tell us what happened and back up this man's charges?” the Judge said, pointing to a thin fellow with a turned-up nose and over-sized ears.

“You bet your boots!” the fellow replied, confidently mounting the stand.

Studs, feeling that he had failed, unobtrusively slid down from the platform.

“That's the stuff, lad,” someone said, lightening Studs' disappointment.

“Quiet, please, gentlemen, while we proceed with this investigation. We must get to the bottom of these facts, because the Order of Christopher would be deeply humiliated if it allowed these allegations against one of its officers to go unpunished, if they be proven.”

“All right, I'll tell you! We're candidates, see, and we come here to be initiated. We plunk down our ten bucks, and we're all anxious to be put through the degrees in our initiation. That's the layout. We come here to be initiated and not to be treated like a bunch of dogs!” the little fellow with the large ears said in a resonant voice.

“Pardon me, but what has this got to do with the facts that have been charged against our sergeant-at-arms?”

“I'm coming to that. All right, then, we didn't come here to be treated like dogs, did we?”

“No!” the crowd boomed.

“All right! We come here to join the Order of Christopher because we know that it stands for decent things, sports, religion, good fellowships, the church, decent things.”

“If it stands for men of God being insulted by the likes of that drunken bully, give me my money back!” a voice cried out with a trace of an Irish brogue in it, bringing cheers and catcalls.

“All right, he comes into that room with a breath that would make a Mack truck run backward, shoves us around, and he says to one lad, ‘Are you a Polack?' And then what does he do? He insults a priest.” Turning to Judge Gorman, the speaker raised his voice. “Now, does the Order of Christopher stand for insulting priests or doesn't it?”

“Of course not. If that be true, the proper punitive measures will be taken.”

“And we're going to take the same things!”

Studs added his voice to the riotous outburst, keen for excitement, watching the speaker and thinking how he might have done what this fellow was doing instead of fizzling his chance away.

“How was the priest insulted?”

“There's Father. He can tell you!” the speaker said, pointing.

“It is true!” the priest called from the crowd.

“Thank you!” Judge Gorman said, his voice squelched in applause, and when it died, he continued, “Thank you, Father! We'll ask you for more evidence when this gentleman here concludes giving us his testimony.”

“Well, we're in the room just as I said, and we got a blind man. He can't see, because he's blind. And this drunken . . . I can't call what he is in public. . . .”

Funny guy, Studs thought, laughing with the others.

“. . . He tells the blind man to get in line, just like he was a snotty cop, and the blind man, he can't see no line. And when Father protests, he tells Father to keep his face shut, I mean to shut up . . .”

“All right. That's enough jawing. Let's get him!”

“Gentlemen! Order, please!” Judge Gorman squeaked amidst a disgruntled murmuring.

“All right, boys, just a minute,” the speaker shouted, producing quiet by a confident wave of his hand, then turning a proud glance of assurance upon Judge Gorman.

“Thank you,” the Judge said humbly to the speaker before facing the candidates. “Please, gentlemen, let us have patience for a little longer. This unprecedented and outrageous situation calls for more than mere vengeance. As soon as it is cleared up, we will proceed to the initiation. But first we must get to the roots of this situation, and prove to you the blamelessness of our Order in its occurrence. The Order feels keenly such insults upon its integrity. And because of this, I must get to the facts, because without all of the facts, this Order cannot act upon them. And it is in total agreement with your demand that justice be rendered, and that its honor be cleared as well as it insists that the wrongs which some of you have suffered, be righted. Again, gentlemen, I ask you not to be too hasty and impatient.”