Studs Lonigan (139 page)

“. . . you had the water of faith to . . .” Father Gilhooley said sternly, rubbing his bay front, just as he had comfortably rubbed it when he stood speaking on the stage that night in June 1916 when Studs Lonigan had graduated from St. Patrick's grammar school.

“Drink some moonshine now, and be damned with it,” said Father Shannon.

Studs rubbed his hand across his sweating, heat-tortured brow. Looking at it, he saw blood and fear and horror again spread through him.

The Pope of Rome turned and pointed at the bleeding Sacred Heart of Jesus.

“Each drop of that precious blood is shed because of the mortal sin you committed with whores, William . . . son of Lonigan,” the Pope of Rome said.

“I didn't know no better. Forgive me, give me absolution . . . must I die like a goddamn dog?”

“You sonofabitch, you ain't begun to suffer yet,” the Devil with the face of Weary Reilley said.

“Suffer little louse to come unto me and I will burn thee in the fires of Hell and damnation,” said Father Shannon, and brimstone, like firecrackers, shot up from the fires of Hell and fell all around the burning bare feet of Studs Lonigan.

He fell on his knees and cried.

Drink. A drink of water. For Christ's sake give me a drink of water.

The Pope of Rome came forward and placed a bottle of fire to the lips of kneeling Studs Lonigan, and poured liquid fire down his throat, the fire burning a path into his stomach, and Studs Lonigan let out a terrified yell.

Mrs. Lonigan rushed into the bedroom and looked at the tossing, fire-burned, sick and wasting body of her son, and amidst a dribble of inarticulate sounds and disconnected words, he emitted a weak and painful cry. She screamed, and shouted:

“He's dying.”

The nurse came over to Studs's bed; wiping his face with a wet cloth. She turned.

“He's in a very critical condition, and he is in a restless coma. His fever is very high too,” the nurse said.

Fighting back tears and sniffling, the mother looked down at her son, unable to hold back her tears any more. They ran hot down her cheeks.

“I'll call the doctor,” the nurse said.

Lonigan sat drunk by the kitchen table. He hiccupped. He put his head down and cried like a baby. He got up and told himself, Paddy, buck up and be a man. Then he walked unsteadily to the stove, and lit the gas under the coffee pot. He staggered and looked down at it and at the gas flame.

He turned from the coffee pot and walked to the cupboard, drew out a cup and saucer, and set it on the table. Then he sat down at the table, looking at the cup and saucer.

Buck up Paddy, be a man, brace yourself, Paddy, my boy.

My son is dying.

He lowered his head on the table, thinking that he might close his eyes a minute while the coffee heated. He raised his head. Stupefied, he thought dully of himself as a ruined man, and of his son on his deathbed. Any minute Bill would die. He had a sense of there being so many things that might have been averted but that now it was too late! He looked at the clock on the window beyond the stove, acutely aware of the ticking of seconds in the quiet house, feeling that these ticking seconds meant the approach of a catastrophe. He looked at the clock hands that read a quarter to eight, and wished they would stop, that time would stop for a while. The ticking of these seconds, the slow change of the minute hand from notch to notch, was indissolubly tied up for him with the death of his son. He was tense, and stared evenly at the table and the dishes he had laid out on it. The coffee boiled steadily in the percolator on the stove, but he was heedless of it. He felt completely powerless. He could do nothing for Bill. He could do nothing to check the downward swing of business that had taken his money from him and was ruining him. He began to have a sick headache, and he realized how tired and worn out he was. But he feared sleep, feared lest, if he go to sleep, he should wake up and find his son dead. The coffee pot began to burn, and the odor started to pervade the kitchen. He was unaware of it and sat in a stupor.

“Goodness, Patrick, what's this? Is the house on fire?” Mrs. Lonigan exclaimed, rushing into the kitchen, making a face.

He looked up at her.

“What, Mary?” he asked vacantly.

She rushed to the stove and turned off the gas. He realized he had let the coffee pot burn and was aware of the smell in the kitchen. He looked at her like a guilty small boy, and immediately she thought of her dying son and saw in the abashed and guilty expression her son William in short pants after being caught in some domestic misadventure. She started to cry. Lonigan moved clumsily to her. Awkwardly he put his arms around her shoulder and drew her against him.

“Father,” she said in a moan.

“Now, Mary, we got to be brave, you and me, and face whatever the Lord gives us. I know it's hard, but, Mary, now you and me, we've come through a lot together, and we've still got each other.” Her body shook as she cried against his shoulder. She seemed not to have heard what he had said.

He patted her back, stroked her hair. . . .

He had nothing to say, and he looked aside. He felt like crying too. She finally turned from him and busied herself with washing out the burned coffee pot. He stood helplessly by her side.

The white-garbed nurse looked down at the form of Studs Lonigan and smiled. He was resting easily now, and that was a hopeful sign. She sat back in her chair by the bedside and yawned. There was a tremor in the body on the bed, and she dropped into a snooze.

Studs lay on the bed, his body twitched. There was a twitch in his wasted face, a slight motion of a hand under the cover, the movement of his breathing beneath the sheet.

And Studs Lonigan walked along a strange street with a gun, and he said to himself:

Al Capone Lonigan.

He pulled the gun out and shot at a man on the opposite side of the street who looked like Weary Reilley. He calmly walked along, and three policemen intruded on him, looking like Bull MacNamara, the cop around Fifty-eighth Street. He pot-shotted them, and they dropped like felled logs.

Al Capone Lonigan.

He walked along, forgetting that he was Al Capone Lonigan. He thought to himself:

I'm Jack Dempsey Lonigan.

He was no longer walking along a street, but he was entering a ring with two million people looking on, and he was the heavyweight champion of the world, and across from him, seated in the ring, there were Jim Jeffries, Jack Johnson, Jess Willard, Jack Dempsey, Gene Tunney, and Jack Sharkey, and he thought it funny that he would be fighting six men. And he thought, could they all be fighting at the same time, when they were not of the same age and some were oldtimers? He turned to his handler and manager, Lucy Scanlan:

How come?

They're fighting you. You can beat them. You can beat them because I have confidence in you, and I've always loved you.

He walked into the ring and he knocked. . . .

The nurse awakened and looked at him. He seemed to be resting, and again she heard him call out something in a feeble voice.

She felt his pulse and bent down to listen to his heart, and then sat down again by his bedside.

Studs Lonigan rode on a railroad train, thinking that Lucy would be in the next town and he would meet her. He had something to tell her and he forgot what it was, but he felt that if he saw her, he would remember all over again what he had to tell her. The train was drawing near to the city where he would see Lucy, but instead of stopping it gathered speed and shot right through. Studs ran up and down the aisle yelling:

“Hey, stop the train!”

The conductor came to him and said:

“This is a through train.”

“Well, stop it. I got to get off. I got to get off.”

The conductor looked at him.

“Get off then,” he said. . . .

Studs ran to the end of the train, and . . . the last step, and there was Lucy. . . . He stood on the platform of the last car, knowing that he was a coward, and that out of cowardice he had failed to see Lucy, and he felt that he had forever lost something.

Studs Lonigan walked through a jungle looking for Lucy. About him were lions and tigers, and he was constricted by a fear within him. Out of this fear he suddenly lost his power of motion and he stood still, and felt himself shrinking, shriveling up and growing smaller. If he did not check this growing smaller because of his fear, he would shrink to a pinpoint. He saw Red Kelly walking by, unafraid, and he called:

Red.

Red Kelly walked on, dressed like a hunter with a sunshade, puttees, white shorts, shirt, and long rifle. He saw Red disappear through a snarling group of lions and tigers.

Fly, he told himself. He raised his arms, and like a bird he floated through the air, without arms, over snarling packs of hungry carnivorous animals. He floated on and . . .

He seemed to float and fly, flapping armwings for a long indefinite period, and the pleasure he had derived from it changed to boredom, and then to fear, and looking down at the blue water, a terrible thirst burning in his body, his tongue dropping parched from his dry mouth, he wondered would he ever touch land, and would he ever again have a drink of water. A fear of unknown and threatening consequence blotted from his mind other things that stood in his path of . . . and on and on he flew, parched and dry and afraid . . . he knew unless it stopped, unless he received water, unless his feet touched land, and he knew when and why he was there, he would come to some unhappy end. Clarity came to him, a clarity that told him that unless such a thing happened, he would die. Floating still, he knew that he was flying to death, and he knew that he did not want to die, and he . . . a deep and mournful sadness that he could not articulate but that he felt vaguely. He looked at the water beneath him and around him, water running. . . .

I'm dying, he told himself.

On and on he flew, and suddenly he was flying no more. He was standing in sand, and every step he took, his feet sank in it, so that walking was slow and difficult. He walked on slowly, tortured, directionless. He looked up at a sky in which there was a blazing hot sun, and he wondered, was he in Africa? He looked off, and beyond the stretch of sand he was crossing, in a far distance there were trees, some kind of shrubbery and vegetable growth. He knew he wanted to get there. He went along in sand, and he could not remember where he was and where he was going. All he knew was . . . he was himself. He said to himself as he traveled:

I am Studs Lonigan, the great Ham What Am!

He walked on. He had come from someplace . . . pain. He was glad to be away from it. He could remember how there had been pain for him in the place from which he had come, and it lingered in him . . . he stood for a moment, his feet sinking in sand. . . .

He could not remember it, or what it was. He did not know where he was going, he knew nothing, and he walked tiredly forward, and again he was thirsty.

He fell down. He crawled on his hands and knees, feeling that he did not know how to walk any more. Ahead of him he saw a man walking, a man with his back turned, but with a walk and a build that seemed familiar. He stopped and looked as the man moved ahead of him, unimpeded, with ease. He was awed that a man should be able to walk on his legs, instead of having to crawl. He was envious . . . a man could do that. He moved to catch up with the man to ask him how he could do such an astounding thing . . . walk on his legs. He crawled swiftly, and overtook the man, and he was Red Kelly, and Studs recognized him.

Red Kelly, why can you walk on your legs?

You're small fry, brother, Red Kelly said, walking . . . leaving Studs alone and sad and envious as he crawled slowly with lowered head. . . .

In pain, Studs Lonigan sensed mistiness, and in this mistiness terror and danger. He sensed a sickness through a surrounding layer of this grayish blue mistiness, as if it were to attack him, to transport its danger from outside him to his body, his mind, his soul. He knew he was sick, his soul was sick, and the world was unhappy, and he was unhappy, and he was standing in it alone. If only he could hear a voice. If only he could see someone. If only he could see Lucy. Hear Lucy. Speak to Lucy. Or if not Lucy, then Catherine. Yes, Catherine. Now he remembered. He had loved Lucy, and he had loved Catherine. He had loved and laid Catherine, and she had said to him, Studs jazz me when you want me, any time, anywhere, any place . . . he had led her into sin, and the sin black on her soul was blacker on his own soul, and now he was . . . and sick in a sick world, unhappy in an unhappy world, sinful in a world of black sin, and around him there was mist, mist and no one, no voice, no voice of . . . no voice from Lucy, from Catherine, from friends or enemies, or angels.

He sat down. He was too sick and too fatigued. . . .

And Studs Lonigan understood. Clarity came to him, and the voice of his conscience said to him:

Die, goddamn you, die, die like a dog. Die, you Lonigan louse, die like a mangy dog.

He sat there, looking from right to left, forward and behind him, his face distorted with terror and fear, and he knew something was happening to him. He sat there.

He took mist in his hands, and formed it, and he realized, in terror and abjectness, that he was Antichrist. Antichrist Lonigan arose. He was afraid and knew that he was sinning, and he heard from beyond the mist the powerful voice of God.

I am the Lord thy God, and thou shalt not have graven images before Me!

He knew he must not defy God, and Antichrist Lonigan was forced to defy God. He was compelled to stand up as the rival of God. He held the mist in his hands, and he said: