Studs Lonigan (40 page)

“Drunk again?” asked Stan.

Arnold nodded.

“Every time you get snozzled, you get a break, don't you! Two weeks ago you were maggoty and got your dose, and you're still limping from getting shoved down those elevated steps last week. You better stick to malted milks, Arnold.”

“Just hard luck! I was dancing at the Bourbon Palace, and got in a scrap over a broad I was trying to make. I wasn't so drunk, though. You should have seen Weary Reilley. He was tossing sugar bowls all around Kling's Restaurant.”

“Some day that guy's gonna get worse than you'll ever get.”

“Say, Arnold, what'll you take for your shiner?” Kelly hollered over to him.

“You were pretty gone last night,” beefy Tommy Doyle said to his cousin Les.

“Yes, I was,” Les modestly said.

“Your old man should have seen you.”

“Don't worry. He's tipped many a bottle himself,” Les said, smiling like a cherubim.

Tommy shook his head in expression of indefinite amusement.

“Hell, I might just as well get drunk. I don't see why I got to rot away in that rut, working on an electric for the Continental Express Company. Gee, I'm never going to amount to anything, and I might as well have a little fun. . . . Say, Tommy, I sure do wish I'd gone to school and gotten an education,” Les whined.

“You don't know when you're well off. I'd like to have a job paying the dough you get.”

“Well, I wish I had an education. Look at where Joe O'Reilley and Dinny Gorman are. Now if I was a lawyer, I might be getting somewhere's.”

“You know Dot Gorman. She's older than us guys, see, but lemme tell you . . . she's keen. KEEN!” funnyface Young Duffy orated for his own benefit.

“She ain't so much. She's horsefaced and stuckup,” Denny Dennis said.

“Say, your taste is all in your mouth,” funnyface Duffy said.

Goofy Nate Klein called Duffy aside.

“Listen, punk. Dorothy Gorman is a friend of mine. She's too nice a girl to be talked about in a joint like this. If you know when you're healthy, don't mention her name in this place again. And don't call her Dot. Get me?”

“I didn't say nothin' against her. I was just complimenting her. . . .”

“I told you that if you don't want your friends taking up a collection for flowers for you, don't mention her name in this joint again!” Nate said, hard-boiled.

“You know, I just went into the bedroom with that broad last night, and everything went out like the lights,” Studs said.

Tommy Doyle cracked a joke about what should have happened.

“Lookat the punks. They ain't washed under the ears yet,” sneered Slug, gazing surprisedly around the poolroom.

“They look goofy in their ding-dong pants,” said Studs.

“Monkey suits,” said Slug; he pointed at the twenty-two-inch bellbottoms on Phil Rolfe's carefully, precisely, exactly careless black suit. Phil turned his light-complexioned, insipid face towards them and smiled. He was wearing a blue shirt, collar attached, a soft, wine-red knit tie, and a light brown hat.

“Pull up your skirts,” said Stan Simonsky.

“Hi, kid,” patronized Phil.

“Hey, Rolfe?” yelled Red.

“What you say, Red,” replied Phil with aplomb.

“Hey, punk, where's your rubber knee pads?” Studs sneered.

“Did you get that out of a joke book?” he asked, but he blushed slightly.

Phil walked away from them, towards a table in the back.

“Hey, Studs, I haven't eaten today. Can you loan me two bits. After while, I'll shark some guy in a pool game, but Christ, I'm starved!” said TB McCarthy; TB was thin, consumptive-looking, with jaundiced cheeks that seemed to be shrivelling and hollowing away. He wore a spotted, unpressed, shabby, brown suit.

“Get out of here, heel.”

“Muggsy mooching again?” said Red.

“Jesus, Red, I haven't eaten today,” said Muggsy.

“Well, McCarthy, there's lots of horse manure in the alley,” said Slug. All the older guys in the bunch guffawed.

“Thanks, kid, and I'll have the liquor back to you at three-thirty this afternoon. And I guarantee that it's bonded,” Jeff said, taking three and a half dollars from funnyface Young Duffy.

“Sure now that it's good stuff?” asked Duffy.

“I wouldn't sell it to you if it wasn't,” Jeff convincingly replied.

Jeff struggled and puffed towards the door. Everybody got in his way and he had a hell of a time squeezing past them.

“All I hope is that that dope starts her like nobody's business,” Wils Gillen said.

“It did for me when I had the scare about Elizabeth,” Ellsworth said.

“Well, if it don't . . . Holy Jesus!”

“You'll either have to join the navy or else . . . marry the pig.”

“Marry her, a Midway Garden bum?”

“If it don't, I know a doctor. I fixed up Sadie Prevost with him when she was knocked up by all you guys. She's all right, only to raise the dough she had to go out and hustle. She did so well hustling that she's in the business for good now,” Darby Dan Drennan said.

“She sacrificed her amateur standing, huh?” said Ellsworth.

“If it don't, it's the marines and see the world, boys,” Wils said.

“Anyway, Wils, no matter how tough a hole you're in, remember that you'll always be better off than poor Paulie Haggerty,” philosophized Darby Dan Drennan.

“Now ain't that something,” said Wils.

“Sure, I'm good,” Young Rocky said, hanging up his cue.

“You made some good shots,” Bob Connell said professionally.

“Hang around with me, brother, and you'll learn how to shoot pool,” Young Rocky said. His eyes opened in wide interest. “Let there be light and there was light. Let there be Louisa Nolan's Dance Hall, and there was Three Star Hennessey.”

Three Star Hennessey, a pimply-faced runt, wearing a cheap blue suit with flapping bell bottoms, ambled towards them.

“Spats and all,” said glassy-eyed Swede Larsen, looking at Hennessey's pearl gray spats.

“Goin' to the jig this afternoon?” asked Connell.

“If he didn't, Nolan's would close up.”

“Say, Hennessey, is it true that you go down to Castle Gardens and dance so that you can pinch pocketbooks?” Swede asked.

“I combine business with pleasure . . . but, say, who'll loan me a buck until tonight?”

“Scrouging dough again, huh, Hennessey?” said Young Rocky.

“What?” Fat Malloy bellowed.

Long-faced Jawbones Levinsky adjusted his horn-rimmed glasses, stuck his hands in his topcoat pocket, and sneered.

“Gypp was overrated.”

“For Christ sake!” exclaimed Malloy, belligerent and nonplussed.

“Well, what did he ever do?”

“What did he do? Didn't he make a seventy-yard drop kick?”

Jawbones' right hand pushed outwards in a gesture of disdainful unbelief.

“Listen, Jew! I SAY THAT GYPP MADE A SEVENTY-FIVE YARD DROP KICK AND YOU CAN FIND IT IN THE RECORD BOOK.”

“What record book?”

“Why, you damn fool kike, the record book. What the hell record book you suppose, the one on volley ball? What the hell do you go to an A.P.A. college like the U for if you don't understand English?”

“Think I fall for that stuff?”

“Why, you lowdown Jew! Say, get this straight and don't forget it! George Gypp of Notre Dame made a seventy-five-yard drop kick,” Malloy said, clenching his fists, and shoving a bull-dog mug forward.

“Hell, you're just another one of these synthetic Notre Dame alumni.... And you can't even pronounce the name correctly.”

“YOU LOUSY KIKE! I OUGHT TO PUNCH THAT FACE OF YOURS FULL OF HOLES. . . .”

Departure became the better part of Levinsky's valor.

“You're exonerated, then?” said big Gannon, a park cop.

“Yeah,” Joe Moonan answered; he was a classily dressed, angelic-faced dick.

“How did it all happen, Joe? I never got the story straight.”

Joe told how he had caught the kids shooting craps down near Twelfth Street, and had yelled at them. They had run after he called to them to halt, and he pulled out his gun; intending to scare them. He had been aiming to shoot over their heads, but somehow, he didn't know how, and was sorry it happened, he'd hit one of the kids.

“It sure caused a stink, didn't it? But anyway, I'm glad they exonerated you.”

“It was all accident. And what the hell, the kid was just a goddamn alley-rat. I don't see why there was so much trouble about it.”

Jim Doyle stuck a fat cigar in his face, and rubbed his right hand over the alderman he was starting to develop.

“Now, Lonigan, remember and always vote Democratic,” Jim said, buttonholing Studs.

“Sure, the old man's a good Democrat,” Studs said.

“It's only a left-handed mick who'd vote Republican. Hell, Lonigan, if the Irish only would stick together and realize that the Democrats are their party, they could run this city. And if they don't, well, the Jews and Polacks will be stepping all over them.”

“Sure.”

“Too bad you're not in my precinct. . . . Anyway, a vote's a vote.”

“You precinct captain now?”

“No, I just help out Old Rubenstein.”

“Oh!”

“Well, congratulations, old man, and so long.”

Jim turned back and handed Studs a cigar.

“Say, Vinc, remember the girl you kissed at Sarah Windlemann's beach party last month, Mary the Wop?” Runt asked.

Vine Curley, tall with an enlarged and elongated head, and a mouth chronically opened like a fly trap, gaped at them, visibly remembering and curious.

“I haven't the heart to tell the guy what she's got,” Runt said, giving Young Rocky a knowing eye.

“But, Runt, it's only fair to tell him,” Young Rocky said after due reflection.

Young Rocky studied a cold sore on Vinc's lip. He looked dolorous, and placed a hand on Vinc's shoulder.

“Vinc, I hate to tell you, but you're my pal. . . . Mary the Wop has syphilis.”

“Yeah, the dirty bitch!” Runt said with feigned hate.

“And . . . fellows . . . have I got it too?” Vinc asked after a long pause.

Balefully, they nodded affirmation. He asked what it meant, and what he should do. They answered with mysterious remarks about something gotten in drug stores, called G.O. 45. They told him it was very serious, and made the skin maggoty, caused it to moulder, and might even lead to blindness, deafness, dumbness, and his arms might even fall off, his eyes drop out, and his toes fall apart. Terrible thing! And he had better get it taken care of immediately.

“Vinc, old pal, they'll put you in quarantine, and we'll miss you,” Runt said, slowly extending his hand.

Young Rocky sliced Runt's elbow, warning him not to risk contagion by shaking hands with Vine.

Vine bolted out of the poolroom.

“Tough about Paulie Haggerty, my old buddy,” Hennessey said.

“Say, just what is wrong with him?” asked Lou Bruner.

“Every goddamn thing. Clap, gonorrheal rheumatism, his heart is shot, his lungs are gone, and he has ulcers of the stomach. The guy has just drunk and jazzed himself to death.”

“Jesus Christ!” exclaimed Lou.

“Yes, I said the Republicans, they went and steel the election from Cox by crookedness,” Andy defiantly declared.

“Where did you get all that inside dope?” asked Darby Dan Drennan.

“My father told me. And he ought to know. Doesn't he belong to the Ku Klux Klan?”

“Fellows, his old man wears a nightshirt and burns fiery crosses in empty prairies,” said Darby Dan, guffawing.

“He don't neither.”

“His old man rides around in bed-sheets on a horse,” said Darby Dan.

“Where does he keep the horse?” asked Pochon.

“He ain't got no horse.”

“Does he belong to the Ku Klux Klan?” asked Drennan.

“Yes,” Andy proudly said.

“Then, he's got to have a horse.”

“He don't need no horse,” Andy shouted above their laughter.

“If he hasn't got a horse, how can he wear his nightshirt and go riding?” laughed Pochon.

Andy stuttered.

“Whenever you think about girls, you know, wondering if they are all they're cracked up to be, more decent and better than guys, think of this angle! Think of the keenest broad you know sitting down to take a great big healthy. . . .”

“What sweet thoughts you have,” Swede said, interrupting Young Rocky.

“Guys talking like you do, just don't rate.”

“Is that so, Hennessey? Well, lemme tell you that since I came here from Kansas City two years ago, I've dated up every broad worth dating in this neighborhood,” Young Rocky said.

“Horse.”

Charley Josephson, a silly-looking runt of seventeen, rushed in and asked what was biting Curley. They told him the joke they had pulled on Vine. He said he'd been in the drug store at the corner, and Vinc had come in, red in the face and all excited, demanding G.O. 45 right away to rub on his lips.