Studs Lonigan (23 page)

Nate shuffled on, trying to light his pipe and talking to himself.

Percentage took Studs through the barber shop and back into the pool room to wash his hands. Studs said hello, casually, to Frank who always cut his hair; Frank was cutting the hair of some new guy in the neighborhood, who was reading the
Police Gazette
while Frank worked. The pool room was long and narrow; it was like a furnace, and its air was weighted with smoke. Three of the six tables were in use, and in the rear a group of lads sat around a card table, playing poker. The scene thrilled Studs, and he thought of the time he could come in and play pool and call Charley Bathcellar by his first name. He was elated as he washed his hands in the filthy lavatory.

He came out and saw that Barney was around. Barney was a bubblebellied, dark-haired, middle-aged guy. He looked like a politician, or something similarly important.

“Say, Barney, you think you'll ever amount to much?” asked Barlowe.

“Sure, he's something already,” said Swan.

“What?”

“He's a hoisting engineer,” said Swan, who accompanied his statement with the appropriate drinking gesture.

“Yeh, he's a first-class hoistin' engineer,” said Emmet Kelly, one of Red's brothers.

“He hoists down a barrel of beer a week, don't you, Barney?” said Mickey O'Callaghan.

They laughed. Studs told himself that, goddamn it, they were funny all right.

“You two-bit wiseacres can mind your own business,” said Barney.

They all laughed.

“But, Barney, no foolin' . . . I want to ask you a question in all sincerity,” said Percentage.

“Save the effort and don't get a brainstorm, hebe,” said Barney.

“Why don't you go to work?” asked Percentage.

“Times are hard, jobs are scarce and good men is plentiful,” said Barney.

They all laughed.

“Well, anyway, Barney, did you get yer beers last Sunday?” asked Weber.

“Listen, brother! Them Sunday blue laws don't mean nothin' to me,” said Barney.

“Nope, I guess you'd get your beer even if the Suffragettes put Prohibition down our necks,” said Pat Coady.

“Why, hell! I seen him over in Duffy's saloon last Sunday, soppin' up the beers like there was no law against buyin' drinks on Sunday. He was drinkin' so much, I thought he was gonna get his false teeth drowned in beer,” Barlowe said, and they all laughed.

Studs noticed the people passing. Some of them were fat guys and they had the same sleepy look his old man always had when he went for a walk.... Those old dopey-looking guys must envy the gang here, young and free like they were. Old Izzy Hersch, the consumptive, went by. He looked yellow and almost like a ghost; he ran the delicatessen-bakery down next to Morty Ascher's tailor shop near the corner of Calumet, but nobody bought anything from him because he had the con, and anyway you were liable to get cockroaches or mice in anything you bought. Izzy looked like he was going to have a funeral in his honor any one of these days. Studs felt that Izzy must envy these guys. They were young and strong, and they were the real stuff; and it wouldn't be long before he'd be one of them and then he'd be the real stuff.

Suddenly he thought of death. He didn't know why. Death just came into his thoughts, dripping black night-gloom. Death put you in a black coffin, like it was going to put Izzy Hersch. It gave you to the grave-diggers, and they dumped you in the ground. They shoveled dirt on you, and it thudded, plunked, plump-plumped over you. It would be swell if people didn't have to die; if he, anyway, didn't have to; if he could grow up and be big and strong and tough and the real stuff, like Barlowe was there, and never change. Well, anyway, he had a long time to go.

People kept dribbling by and the guys stood there, barbering in that funny way of theirs.

Lee came along, and the guys asked him why he was getting around so late.

“Oh, my wife invited me to stay home for supper, just for a change, and I thought I'd surprise her and accept the invitation,” Lee said.

“Hey, you guys! did you get that? Did you? Lee here said his old woman asked him to come to supper, just to vary the monotony a little, and he did. He actually . . . dined with his old woman,” Percentage said.

“Next thing you know he'll be going to work and supportin' her,” said Pat Coady.

“Jesus, that's a good one. Hey, Lee, tell me some more ... I got lots of Irish . . . credulity,” said Barney.

They laughed.

“That's a better one,” said Lee, pointing to a girl whom everybody marveled at because they said she was built like a brick out-house.

“She has legs, boy,” said Studs, trying to horn back into the conversation.

They didn't pay any attention to him.

“Well, I object!” said Percentage.

“Why?”

“I OBJECT!”

“Why?”

“Goddamnit, it ain't right! I tell you it ain't right that stuff like that moll be wasted, with such good men and true around here . . . I say that it is damn wanton extravagance,” said Percentage.

“Hey, Percentage, you shoulda been a Philadelphia lawyer, with them there words you use,” said Barlowe.

The guys laughed, and Percentage said he saw the objection was sustained.

Swan, Percentage and Coady had a kidding match about who was the best man. It was interrupted by Barney. An ugly-looking, oldmaidish female passed, and Barney said to the three kidders:

“That's your speed!”

They trained their guns on Barney, and told him how dried up he was.

Another dame ambled by, and Percentage repeated his objection, and they kidded each other.

A third dame went by, and Percentage again objected.

“Them's my sentiments,” said Fitz, the corner pest.

A good-looking Negress passed.

“Barney, how'd you like that?” Studs asked.

“Never mind, punk! . . . And listen, the niggers ain't as bad as the Irish,” said Barney.

“Where's there a difference?” asked Percentage.

“Well, if you ask me, Barney is a combination of eight ball, mick, and shonicker,” said McArdle, one of the corner topers.

“And the Irish part is pig-Irish,” said Studs.

“The kid's got your number,” said Percentage as they all gave Barney some more merry ha-ha's.

Studs felt grown up, all right.

Barney called Studs a goofy young punk. But they all laughed at him. Studs laughed weakly, and hated bloated-belly Barney. He told himself he'd been a damn fool for not having put on his long pants before he came out.

They hung around and talked about the heat and the passing gals. It grew dark, and more lights flashed on. Andy Le Gare came along. He spoke to Studs, but Studs didn't answer him; Studs turned to Barlowe, and said the punk had wheels in his head. Barlowe said yeh; he remembered him in his diaper days down around Forty-seventh; but his brother George was a nice guy, and a scrapper. Studs again felt good, because Barlowe had talked to him like one equal to another. Andy stopped before Hirschfield's grocery store, and started erasing the chalked announcement. He rubbed out the lower part of the B on the brick butter announcement, and stood off to laugh in that idiotic way of his. The guys encouraged the punk. They talked about baseball. Swan spilled some gab about the races. Then he told of what he had seen at the Johnson-Willard and Willard-Moran fights. He said that Willard was a ham, and that Fred Fulton would mow him down if they ever got yellow Willard in the same ring with the Minnesotan. Studs said the Irishman Jim Coffey was pretty good. Swan said he was a cheese. He said the best of them all, better than Fulton even, was Gunboat Smith, who had the frog, Carpentier, licked that time in London or Paris or wherever they fought. They wondered what they would do, and talked about the heat. Barney suggested seeing the girlies, and they said o. k. Barlowe said he couldn't go. They asked why.

“I still got my dose,” he said.

They told him it was tough, and he wanted to take care of it. Coady asked him if it was bad.

“It's started again,” he said casually.

“Well, be careful,” Coady said.

The other lads piled into a hack, and were off. Studs watched them go, wide-eyed with admiration and envy, and yet quite disappointed. Then he watched Barlowe limp down the street, a big husky guy. He thought of the time when he'd be able to pile into a hack and go with the lads. He thought of Barlowe. He was afraid of things like that, and yet he wished he could stand on the corner and say he had it. Well, it wouldn't be long now before he'd be the big-time stuff.

Davey Cohen, Tommy Doyle, Haggerty, Red Kelly and Killarney happened along. Killarney had a pepper cellar, and they went over to the park to look for Jews and throw pepper in their eyes. Over in the park, Studs saw a pretty nurse, and he started objecting that molls like that should walk around and not have guys taking care of them; it was a lot of good stuff gone to waste, he repeated, and the kids all laughed, because it was a good wisecrack.

Studs and Paulie walked south along Prairie Avenue, eating the last of the candy. The candy came from the famous raid on Schreiber's ice cream parlor. Schreiber's place was between Prairie and Indiana on Fifty-eighth. Schreiber was a good guy, but you know he liked his nooky, and he was always mixed up with some woman or other. They caught up with him. One day when Studs was walking down Fifty-eighth Street, he saw two dicks taking the guy away. The bunch found out, through Red Kelly, whose old man was a police sergeant, that Schreiber was in on a white slavery rap. Three-Star Hennessey discovered that the back door of the candy store wasn't locked, and all the kids in the neighborhood raided the place. For five days they were filling up on sodas, having fights with ice cream and whipped cream, carting away candy. They stole wagons from little kids, and bikes, and carted the stuff to George Kahler's basement. It was a swell feed they had. Most of them couldn't eat supper for a week. But with so many hogging it, the loot didn't last as long as it should have. Anyway, it was a time to remember for your grandchildren. They talked about it, and laughed.

“Well, it's August already,” Paulie said.

“Yeh, Goddamn it!”

“I wonder what school I'll go to next year?” Paulie said.

“Can't you go back to St. Patrick's?” asked Studs.

“Jesus, I don't think so. And if I did get back, they probably wouldn't pass me anyway . . . Say, why in hell is school?” asked Paulie.

Studs shrugged his shoulders and cursed school.

“Say, why don't you bring your old lady up to see Bernadette,” said Studs.

“Maybe I will. Hell, St. Patrick's gets more holidays and is out sooner in June than the public schools. Only I got bounced out of there three times already,” said Paulie.

“Well, maybe you can break the record,” said Studs.

“That's something,” said Paulie.

They walked along. Paulie sniped a butt and lit it.

“Doesn't Iris live here?” said Studs, pointing at a red brick, three-story building.

“Yeh, and I'd like to bump into her,” Paulie said.

“Me, too,” said Studs.

Studs suddenly resented Paulie. Paulie couldn't fight as well as he but got more girls, and knew what it was all about.

Iris, fourteen, bobbed-haired, blue-eyed, innocent with a sunny smile, walked out of the building. She had a body too old for her years; the legs were nice and her breasts were already well-formed.

Iris was glad to see them. Paulie asked her how was tricks. She said what tricks. Paulie said just tricks. She said he was naughty-naughty. She flung lascivious looks at them, and Studs was thrilled as he had never been thrilled by Lucy. He shifted his weight from foot to foot, and studied the sky. Then he became absorbed in his shoes. They were high ones, scuffed and dirty, very much like army shoes. Paulie asked how about it. She said her mother was home. Paulie said they could go over to the park. She said no, because she had to help her old woman clean house. She cursed her mother, glibly. Hearing a girl call her mother names was different from hearing a guy, and it shocked Studs. Paulie asked how about it. She said some other afternoon. She told Studs she especially wanted him to come and see her some time, because she had never met him before and everybody said nice things about him. She looked at him in that way of hers, and said she'd be nice to him. Then she tripped toward Fifty-fifth Street, and they watched her wriggle along. They had a discussion about the way girls wriggled along. Studs said the one who had them all beat at wriggling was Helen Borax. Paulie said Iris was no slouch though. Studs wondered if girls wriggled on purpose, and how about decent ones. He told this to Paulie, and added that he hadn't ever noticed if his sister did or not. Paulie said all girls had to wriggle when they walked, and he guessed there was nothing wrong with it. He said that anything a girl did was o. k. with him, as long as she was good-looking.

They met Weary at Fifty-eighth Street. Weary had his long jeans on. He looked at Studs; Studs sort of glowered back. Paulie suggested that it was foolish not to shake hands and settle old scores. They shook.

Studs tried to be a little friendly. He asked:

“What you been doing?”

“Workin' in an office downtown,” said Weary.

“Off today?” asked Paulie.

“I took the day off, and my old lady got sore and yelled at me. I had a big scrap with the family. The gaffer was home and he tried to pitch in, too, and my sister Fran, she got wise. They noticed that my hip pocket was bulgin' a little. And when I leaned down to pick somethin' up, they saw my twenty-two. They shot their gabs off till I got sick of listenin' to them, and I got sore and cursed them out. I told them just what they could do without mincing my words, and they all gaped at me like I was a circus. The ole lady jerked on the tears, and started blessing herself, and Fran got snotty, like she never heard the words before, and she bawled, and the old man said he'd bust my snoot, but he knew better than try it. So I tells them they could all take a fast and furious, flyin', leapin' jump at Sandy Claus, and I walks out, and I'll be damned if I go home. Maybe I might try stickin' somebody up,” he said.