Studs Lonigan (128 page)

He slouched near a window, moped himself, and a sugary male voice sang.

The song filled him with a soft kind of sadness, and he listened, forgetting things, feeling as if the music was a sad thing running through him.

And he looked like he would be something of that, marrying Catherine without a job when she'd have more dough than he had. Hot, ragging, snappy jazz music broke loose, and Studs sneered at the sight of a kid of seventeen or eighteen, with down on his upper lip, snapping his fingers, shaking his shoulders, gyrating his legs to the music. Disconcerting and shrill static cut into the music, and then it beat again in quick rhythms. Studs tapped with his foot, dreamily thinking of himself as just going along the same as he had in the old days, strong and tough and with nothing serious to cramp his style and his fun. Studs Lonigan, hard as nails, chased by broads who just begged to lay down for him.

His lips twisted in a sneer at himself, and he thought that he was just a goddamn washed-up has-been. Sneezing again. He was catching cold, and he ought to go home and get in bed. The music softened into a slow and sighing sentimental tune, and it struck at Studs, made him brood with pity for himself, worry, regret. Lucy, Catherine, the days when he was a punk kid. A crooner sobbed with the music. Felt low, walking in the moonlight of a summer night, because she had left him. He now, well, he had gotten something else again. He smiled ironically. If Catherine had left him, he might have felt the song, but he wouldn't feel like he did this minute. Vacant-eyed, he looked over objects in the window, music rolls, violins, saxophones, sheet music, victrola records, piccolos, horns, tuning forks, mouth organs. He turned from the window. He clenched his fists and compressed his lips in explosive tenseness.

Goddamn it! he silently spit at himself.

What he needed was something to make him forget such things. A burlesque show. The hottest ones were south of Van Buren. He crossed under the elevated structure, and on toward the cheap shows on South State Street.

The urinal smell of the ten-cent burlesque show made Studs feel as if he would become diseased or contaminated just by sitting in it. Four beefy women in narrow strips of colored cloth slowly rolled and twisted their abdomens to the tune of catching, tinny music. The music beat more swiftly, and the belly movements of the dancers quickened. Studs clenched his hands, leaned forward in his seat located at about the center of the small theatre. He watched closely while the women stood, legs spread, orgiastically shaking their wobbly bellies. Washed out, painted whores. But they sure could shake that thing. His whole body seemed to narrow into one canal of desire.

“Take 'em off,” a man cried.

With a final beat of the music, and a last lascivious twist, the girls trotted off the stage, their large breasts bouncing with each step.

A page-boy placed a sign at the right-hand corner of the stage.

 

SHIMMY CONTEST

 

A peroxide blonde, with purple tights and breast cloth, heavily skipped to the center of the stage. She began slowly, worked herself into rapid, shimmying twists, flung her head back in abandon, stood with her feet planted widely apart, her belly thrust forward. Sick with desire, wanting to see, and imagining the sight of the woman's hidden flesh, Studs watched the rippling of muscles beneath the purple tights. The woman let go completely, and with a final crescendo of jazz drew wild applause from the male audience.

“Take 'em off. Take 'em off,” a man cried, and Studs joined others who took up the cry, stamped their feet, clapped.

The woman removed her breast cloth deftly, shielding her breasts almost with the same movement, robbing her audience of the desired sight. She coyly winked, turned about, projected her fat buttocks to her applauders, wriggled them, trotted off the stage.

Just enough to make a fellow want more. This one was stringy with legs like poles, black-haired, lousy-looking. And she shimmied in an annoying, jerky way. But there was hard bone and muscles behind those scarlet tights, flesh and muscles and bones, meat to be laid against a guy. Come on, sister, shake it, shake it. Her breasts bounced. He wanted to see the rest.

Faster, sister, faster, baby, oh, sister, shake yourself.

“Take 'em off. Take 'em off.”

Tough luck. Too quick in covering to let them see her boobs. Another blonde, shaking the same way, oh, Jesus Christ, he wanted a woman. One of these would be the trick if he could put a towel over their faces. Come on, sister, let it go, come on, sister. Jesus Christ, this was too much, that flesh wriggling beneath pink tights, faster, head flung back just as if she was taking it standing up, and oh, sister, stop it, stop it, this was too much.

“Take 'em off. Take 'em off.”

Studs relaxed in his seat. His hands unclenched. He sighed, wished he hadn't come in. Glancing to his right, he saw, two seats away, a man's hand running up the thigh of a young kid of eighteen or nineteen. Ugh!

He arose, crushed out to the aisle, walked to the exit. Dazed, sleepy, he walked back toward Van Buren Street, past barber shops, employment agencies, cheap and greasy restaurants, shows, shooting galleries, flop houses, without seeing them. Stray bums scurried past him. He was so disgusted with himself that he could almost vomit. He felt as if he could puke himself right up. Watching such lowdown broads, letting them send him off as if he was a sixteen-year-old punk who still had his cherry. How different Catherine was from them. She was decent. And look what she had and was giving up for him. And then his going to a dime girl show, and liking it, getting so hot. Ugh, but he had acted like a slimy bastard. Pride in his woman Catherine mounted in a rush of dizzy hot-blooded thoughts. Catherine so clean, where they were dirty. He was just a louse, unworthy of her.

He sneezed, coughed, full of fear. He was sick. He wanted to go home, get his clothes off and fall into bed. He was tired. His arms pained, and an ache wormed straight down his backbone. His feet were so leaden that walking was an effort. His underwear was sticky, his clothes heavy. To get home and in a bed of clean, white sheets, resting, sleeping endlessly, forgetting everything that was on his mind. He tried to walk fast, but slowed down. Too much for him. His heart was leaping. His feet were getting more soaked with every step.

He had just made a mess of every damn thing. The thought of Catherine, her love and devotion alone, gave him confidence, and he wasn't worthy of her, he had been false to her. He was through. Studs Lonigan, hang up your glove. Studs Lonigan, you're through. He was beaten and whipped and he did not know what to do. He could only crawl to Catherine, ask her to forgive and take care of a louse named Studs Lonigan.

He sneezed again, and his head pounded. He realized that he had a headache. A nauseous taste arose from his stomach. He had to get home. He walked through the tunnel leading underneath Michigan Boulevard to the Van Buren Illinois Central Station. Waiting for the train, he bought a newspaper and read a headline.

 

 

But he was too tired, too tired to read.

“South Chicago,” an announcer barked.

Studs staggered through the doors to the long, narrow platform, slouched into a seat by a window. He sneezed and coughed, and damp, dirty, tired, he wished the train ride would end quickly. He touched his cheeks. Warm. Thirsty. Must have a fever. He was sick. Maybe he was going to die. Oh, God, please don't let him die. Please only let him get home to sleep, sleep, sleep. He let his chin sink on his chest. He felt as if he were going to vomit. He wanted to moan, and fought back his impulse.

“I was walking down Sixty-seventh Street, and he smiled at me. And he had such a nice smile. He! He! I didn't mean to smile, but I couldn't help myself. But then I walked right on like a good little girl, and he came along, and when I was looking into the window of a hat store, he stood there, and I smiled again. And he had such a nice smile,” a girl in the seat in back of him was saying, and he heard her dimly.

Broads and people in the train, and, oh, he was sick. He was sick, he silently repeated to himself. His eyes closed. His head and body sagged. Opening his eyes, he saw the broad, wet expanse of Stony Island from the moving train window. Almost home. The broads in back talking. Soon now, a bed, clean white sheets. He got up, tried to walk straight to the end of the car. Leaning against the side of the car platform, he saw a flashing picture of Seventy-first Street. Oh, Christ, what was going to become of him?

“Bryn Mawr.”

He stepped off the train, forced himself to walk west to the street, and he ran down Jeffery for about a hundred yards. He halted from exhaustion, stood gasping with his heart pounding like a dynamo. His cheeks were hot. His tongue felt coated. His underwear was wet with sweat. He could just drop right down on the sidewalk, and sleep, sleep. He walked feverishly on, his shoes sopping oozy bubbles with every step, his side cut with a pain, his over-stimulated heart a bombardment within his diaphragm. A feeling of congestion and pressure grew in his lungs. He sniffed. His nose drooled. He coughed up slimy green mucus.

He stopped and like a drunken man watched an automobile splash by. Suddenly, a cold chill iced his body, and the rain slapped against his cheeks, dripped from his hat. Dizzy, he staggered off the sidewalk and supported himself against a building, looking dazed at an apartment hotel building, seeing, as if in a nightmare, two men come out of it and walk rapidly toward Seventy-first Street. The building began to waver and dance before his eyes. Funny. The building was doing the shimmy. He shook his head, as if that gesture would clear his mind and permit him to see clearly. He lurched to the sidewalk, zigzagged, telling himself, Christ, God, Jesus Christ, God Almighty, he had to get home. Against his will, he closed his eyes, walked with lowered head. His shoulder slipped against a lamp-post, and, feeling himself falling, he opened his eyes like one awakening from sleep, circled the post with his arms, hung to it. He straightened up and walked on, his face burning, his body wracked with a succession of hot spells and chills. He could feel his shirt wringing wet against his back, and there was an unpleasant tightness in his crotch. With the sleeve of his raincoat, he wiped his dripping nose, streaking his upper lip. The rain beat on him, and he lurched up the steps of his father's building, set his shoulders against the door, strained, pushed, fell into the hallway, bruising the shin of his right leg. He crawled up the stairway on hands and knees, and lifted himself to his feet against the railing outside his door.

“William!” his mother exclaimed in shock as he stood before her at the door.

“Mom, I'm sick. Put me to bed,” he said feebly, throwing himself weekly into the house.

As she closed the door, he crumbled up and his mother screamed.

THE thin-faced, prim nurse read the thermometer and wrote on the chart.

2:00 P. M.——103

Shaking her head prophetically, she studied the patient, observing that the forced and shallow respirations continued. The face was Hushed and emaciated. Glazed eyes. Nostrils drawn out from the effort to breathe, each emission of breath accompanied by a forced, expiratory grunt. Lips that seemed blue with raised, grayish-red fever blisters, pinhead size, on the angle of the upper lip. An anxious expression on the suffering features.

A sudden cough wracked his body, and out of his mouth there came a feeble drool of sounds. Bending closely and listening, she distinguished the words, Please God. He became more restless. Looking vacantly up, he saw a figure of whiteness, as if through a mist. He was on fire, his legs, and his arms, and his chest, and his face. There was a nauseous taste in his dry mouth, and he could feel the coating on his tongue. That pain in his side was like a constriction or a boil, and there were aches all over his body, persisting like toothaches, or earaches, subsiding, returning in waves that shot up and down within him. Again there came that cough, coming up from his chest like a razor-bladed knife, dragging up rusty, infectious sputum. The nurse bent over him to wipe his drooling lips. She mopped his face with a cold cloth. Again he coughed, and when the cough ceased, he moaned in restlessness, dribbled out a confusion of sounds, which grew into articulated words.

“I'm dying.”

He looked up, a beseeching expression tearing his face, and he sensed himself alone and helpless, removed from the commotion of a world that beat and hummed in his ears. He sighed. Still again that cough.

“Priest,” he muttered.

The nurse shook her head. She knew the meaning of this. Again she wiped his drooling lips, and momentarily left the room while Studs lay with the feeling that he was sunk in a low bed on a rough mattress, surrounded by walls that towered up to the high ceiling.

Outside the afternoon sun beat like a torch on backyards and rear porches and the dusty cement of the alley. The exhaust pipe of an antiquated automobile backfired like a gun going off. A peddler, half a block away, was heard calling his wares in an Italian accent. A mother shrieked for her boy. A love song was crooned, and two boys walked through the alley singing
Just
A Gigolo out of tune.

And again that cough, sputum oozing from his heated mouth, a sense of his heart fluttering in pain, an ache which seemed to eat into the marrow at the base of his spine, pains in his shoulders and in the muscles of his arms and legs, a nauseous taste in his mouth, a pounding between his half-opened eyes, that expiratory grunt with the struggles that produced shallow breathings, and the world outside a buzz and a din and a humming in his ears.