Studs Lonigan (133 page)

“True, Paddy, true.”

“Well, goodbye, Mort, old man, and whenever I have any work for you, I'll get in touch with you. Goodbye and good luck, old man,” Lonigan said.

“So long, Paddy. I know how it is. I know,” Mort said as the two men spiritlessly shook hands.

Mort trudged out of the office. Lonigan stood as if transfixed, thinking that Mort was too old and too slow to do much work for him. He had to use younger men, who could do the work quickly.

He picked up the telephone, put it down. He was afraid to call home and get bad news. Bill might be dead. Was in bad shape when he left this morning, and Mary had spoken of having the priest.

He locked his office door and left.

Lonigan sat at the wheel of his battered, dusty Ford coupé. There was really no place to go, and it didn't matter where he went or why. If there was ever a man plagued by the seven devils, he knew that man was himself.

He stepped on the starter. The engine turned, and the car lurched forward. Driving mechanically, Lonigan decided that he might pay a visit to Saint Patrick's. He parked his car before the broad and pillared facade of the church. Inside, he looked around in awe and wonder, rediscovering the stained-glass windows, the hollowed dome of colored glass, the marble altar, the statuesque stations of the Cross along the wall. He knelt in the last pew on the right of the center aisle, his eyes fastened on the candle burning with flickering steadiness inside a red glass hung above the altar.

A sense of mystery filled him, an awe of God, his God. He blessed himself a second time, palmed his hands together, looked from the altar light to the golden tabernacle door which housed the Lord in Whose honor the candle burned perpetually. He beseeched comfort and solace. Divine help, that his God would intervene, if it be His Will, and spare his son. His
Our Father
was interrupted by the remembrance of how Dr. O'Donnell had shaken his head and said that Nature would have to take its course in Bill's case. His eyes shifted from the tabernacle door to rest on the hanging imprint of the bleeding and crucified Jesus set high in the hollowed half dome which curved above the altar. He begged it for hope, feeling that he was a weak and tired man, deserted, at the mercy of a world beyond his powers.

His knees tired, he sat back in the pew. Bewildered, he tried to force himself to understand what was happening to him, what was happening in the world, why so many things should be crushing down on the shoulders of Paddy Lonigan who had once been so confident, so well equipped to deal with his difficulties.

Vaguely, he remembered an afternoon in October, 1929, when he had come home around a quarter to five as usual. In the newspaper delivered at his door he had read the account of a break in the stock market. Now he saw that that was the beginning of this depression, this depression that was robbing him of everything he had acquired through the long years of work. And more clearly he remembered that New Year's morning of 1929, when he had been awakened by a call from the Washington Park Hospital at Sixty-first and Vernon and told to come down and see about his son, who had been picked up on the street, in the gutter, drunk and unconscious. That day was one he could never forget. And both of these days had brought upon him troubles that now linked up in one whole series that was breaking him. And he was getting old himself. This all meant the ending for Paddy Lonigan.

It was neither right nor fair. He could not see why these troubles must all come to him. What had he done? He wanted to know. Here he was, a man who had always done his duties. Hadn't he earned his place in the world by hard work? Hadn't he always provided for his family to the best of his abilities, tried to be a good husband and a good father, a true Catholic, and a real American? Hadn't he always made his Easter duty, contributed to the support of his pastor? And hadn't he done all in his power to bring his children up the right way? He had wanted them to be a comfort to himself and Mary in their old age. And now, Bill, his favorite, was dying. And he and Mary, after all their work and struggle, must come to such misery in their old age, be reduced almost to the state of paupers. It wasn't right. It wasn't fair. He had done nothing to merit this punishment. Why, why was it?

Anger flared in him. He silently heaped a curse on the Jew international bankers. They were the causes, he assured himself. They did not want America to collect its just debts from Europe. If America did, they wouldn't make enough greedy profit. That was why there was a depression. The bankers. And hadn't that radio priest, Father Moylan from the Shrine of The Little Rose of Jesus Christ, told the bankers where to get off at?

But why was he, and not others, being ruined? Old man O'Brien who ran the coal yards was still above water. So were his two son-inlaws, and Judge Joe O'Reilly, and Dinny Gorman. And Paddy Lonigan wasn't. With his back against the wall, he had to make the grimmest fight of his life, and he didn't have the heart to fight any more. Those dirty Jew international bankers.

It was the Jew all over again, he told himself with grumbling, morbid pleasure. The Jews queered everything they put their hands on. This neighborhood, for instance, had been a good neighborhood, with decent, good people in it. The Jews had come in, and then that meant that the Irish and the other white people had had to clear out. Because the Jews hadn't been satisfied by themselves, but they had sold their property to the niggers. Trickery, Jew trickery, had ruined this neighborhood. And the trickery of the Jew bankers was causing the depression and ruining him.

He knelt again, and commenced to mutter an
Our Father,
but his mind slid into a daze and he was like a man half asleep. He found himself remembering that Sunday morning, now it seemed like many, many years ago, when with dirty shovelled snow along the edges of the sidewalk, and a winter sun melting it, he had come to the first mass to be celebrated in this very church. All the old parishioners had come and knelt in these deserted pews, and in that marble pulpit to the left of the altar the Cardinal Archbishop of Chicago had preached. On that day he had been filled with the confidence that things were going to go on getting better and better. He and Mary had both felt that they would coast on Easy Street into a long and happy old age, and die in this parish, respected, leaving something behind for their children. And now Bill was home, sick, thin, suffering, dying. God, Christ Almighty, if on that winter Sunday he had only seen ahead to what would happen to him and his family. Again he listlessly mumbled
Our Father,
his mind a fatigued blank. Unaware of what he was doing, he again sat in the pew, and began to feel convinced that it was only the day after that Sunday morning when the new Saint Patrick's church had been opened. He saw himself going home to the building on Michigan Avenue, thinking of how he would take Bill into the parlor and talk to him in such a way that Bill would see eye to eye with him and would take care of his health. And then he would sit down and calculate his money and his investments and see that the money was put into sound investments. But his money had been soundly invested in real estate and a building. What could have seemed safer? The trouble had been that too much money had gone into construction and real estate. The Jews again. If less Jews had rushed in to make easy money, then real estate values would not have been ruined.

Again he knelt, prayed in an exalting fervor, abjectly asking his God to spare his son from death, to give him back just Bill. If only Bill lived, he would take the loss of everything else with Job's patience. He imagined Bill recovering quickly, their moving into a small flat, economizing, he and Bill fighting back to where they had once been. He saw himself coming around to a large building where he had a big contract, seeing Bill in paint-stained overalls, up on a ladder like it used to be. He saw a future of Bill and the other children with their kids, himself and Mary as happy grandparents, a family reunion, with him and Bill laughing as they talked about the hard times of 1930 and 1931, and how they had pulled through those days of hard times.

His mind cleared. He thought of his home, and wondered how Bill was. He knelt, rigid with the paralyzing conviction that Bill was dead. Again he beseeched his God for Bill's life.

He arose, and with fear creating tremors in him he slowly walked to the altar, knelt before the statue of the Blessed Virgin, dropped all his small change in the slot for money, and lit eight candles to burn in honor of the Blessed Virgin as prayer and offering that Bill might be spared. He arose, turned, walked to the rear of the church, a corpulent old man, his body slack, his shoulders drooping, his abdomen sagging, his eyes heavy and baggy, suggesting sleeplessness, his loose face drawn in a fretting expression.

He stood on the church steps looking at the drab row of three-story brick apartment houses across the street. Looked old, not worth much. Probably run down inside, too. Nigger buildings now. He watched a stout shabby Negro woman across the street walking to the corner with a waddling gait, disappearing around the corner store.

The feeling of having nothing to do, no stone to turn, no help in his present difficulties, weighed upon him like something heavy. He stood indecisive and watched a street car cut across Michigan Avenue, followed by a succession of three automobiles. He smiled at a neatly dressed Negro boy of about twelve who passed him singing, and he thought that, golly, the eight-balls sure could be happy. He stared while a slender, pretty mulatto girl wheeled a baby buggy along the sidewalk below him. Nigger babies were cute little ducks. But they grew up into black dangerous buck niggers who flashed razors. He nodded, bewildered by his observation.

He descended the steps, got into his Ford, and without thinking of what he was doing drove north along Michigan Avenue, past the Carter School playground where black children romped and played in the same place and in the same way as his own kids had romped and played. He halted the car in front of the building he had once owned, approached it. With his hand on the knob of the outer entrance door, he realized with the pain of loss that it was no longer his building and that all the life, hopes, expectations lived in this building, these were all gone, and that he was now an old man on the verge of ruin, and when he went home tonight, he might find his oldest son . . . dead.

Jesus Christ, he agonizingly exclaimed to himself.

Nervousness accumulated in him, and feeling the need of doing something, he lit a cigar. He stepped back to his automobile, and drove northward. At Fifty-sixth Street he came to the sudden realization that he was driving heedlessly, and swerved, scratching a fender against the curb to avoid colliding into a Nation Oil tank truck. Shocked, he watched his driving, puffed on his cigar, turned west onto Garfield Boulevard. Turning north again, he saw by a sign in one of its windows that the bank of Abraham Clarkson was closed. Served Clarkson right because Clarkson was the shine who, in the old days, had refused to move from the neighborhood when no one had wanted a nigger in it, depressing real estate values and living among white people where he didn't belong. He wouldn't get out, even though his house kept getting bombed. Lonigan suddenly remembered reading in the papers that Clarkson had been indicted. Served him right. A banker and a nigger.

At Fifty-first Street he wheeled westward, driving along a dreary, dusty street, with shabby stores, wooden houses, sooty, low, brick buildings. A train roared overhead as he went under the viaduct, and he drove on, turning onto Wentworth Avenue, seeing again a dusty street filled with people, for-rent signs in store windows, and on his right a drab, low fence, in need of paint, with post-no-bills announcements spaced regularly along it. Several firemen lounged back on chairs in front of the fire engine house at Forty-seventh Street, and he thought that they weren't getting paid because the city was broke. A crowd of men were cluttering a corner, two blocks down, and he guessed they were out of work. That was bad, because with nothing to do they got into trouble, especially the younger ones. He honked vigorously when a dirty-faced boy dashed before his car, dodged in front of a truck on his right, and leaped onto the sidewalk. Crazy kid. He'd get killed doing that some day. A street car donged behind him, and he curved off the cartracks. Another closed bank. Golly. More men on the corners. Women in shawls. Kids. More idle men.

He turned on Thirty-fifth Street and followed a surface car along the west-bound tracks, annoyed by the slow progress, the repeated stops of the car, the people who cut in front of him at the street crossings. Nervous, he passed the car, and jammed his machine to a quick halt to avoid running over an old woman in a blue coat. He cursed, and followed again in the wake of the car, cursing, telling himself that he would have to watch his driving. Dingy, smoky street. Wooden houses, buildings stained from smoke, drab stores, for-rent signs in dirty windows. Another closed bank. It made him suddenly realize something of what this depression was beginning to mean in people's lives. When a bank in a neighborhood like this one closed, there must have been many men like himself, many poor working people who lost all their life savings. It meant that they were made paupers. Dirty crooks of bankers, he hissed to himself.

Halted by the traffic lights at Halsted Street, he understood why he had come to this neighborhood, and where he was going. His mood softened into one of deep nostalgia, and he told himself that he was going back to an old neighborhood, to look at places where he had lived and played as a shaver. He remembered his Irish father and mother, his sister who had become a whore, Joe, getting old and tired, working still on the street cars, plugging along, Joe's oldest son Tommy in the pen for sticking up a store. Ought to see Joe. Joe, poor fellow, had had a hard life. And he and Joe were the only ones left, he guessed, unless Catherine was still alive. And Joe's wife Ann, she was sick, not much life left in her. Once she had been like Mary also, a blooming, innocent young girl. He felt kindly toward Joe, toward Ann, even toward the memory of Catherine. He wanted to see them again, talk to them. And all he could do was to shake his head sadly and sigh.