Studs Lonigan (47 page)

“Like the broad I fixed you up with last Sunday night after the football game?”

“Yeah.”

“Nice, huh?”

“Yeah.”

“Say, wouldn't I like that broad in the picture,” Slug said with all his mispronunciations.

Hell, what right had he to think of a broad like her? She wouldn't even spit on him.

They passed the white-tiled Methodist Church at Fifty-sixth and Indiana. At Fifty-seventh, Studs kind of wished that Slug would not turn but that they'd walk down to Fifty-eighth past her old house. But he didn't have any special reason to give for wanting to go that way, and walked with Slug when he turned east on Fifty-seventh. They turned by the Crerar Presbyterian Church on the corner of Fifty-seventh and Prairie, and Studs remembered one Sunday night when they'd been kids; how they'd gone to services there, put slugs in the collection box, and laughed until a sappy-faced usher kicked them out. They saw a group on the corner. Studs determined he wouldn't hang around long. He wondered too, if he didn't marry, would he be an old soak like Barney Keefe. He wanted to be something big in life. But look at what his fat, loud-mouthed old man was! Or Dinny Gorman, the high hat windbag of a politician! It got him all right.

“Lonigan!” Barney Keefe exclaimed with drunken exuberance.

“Keefe!” Lonigan replied with pumped boisterousness.

“Lonigan, you pig-in-the-parlor mick!”

“Keefe, you drunken flannel-mouth.”

Slug complimented the boys for being polluted. Baby-faced Mickey Flannagan faced them, stupefied, swaying like a reed in the wind.

Studs told them that Schwartz from last Sunday's game would be all right. They said good.

“Flannagan has his guts pickled in gin,” Keefe said.

Mickey mumbled. Slug caught him as he fell forwards, and set him against the fire plug.

Barney pulled out a bottle, and held it aloft;

They laughed. Kelly grabbed the bottle. Barney beefed like hell. Taite and Les tried to get a sip from Kelly, but it was all gone.

Mickey mumbled for them to watch his match trick. He fumbled through his pockets and came out with a box of safety matches. He hiccoughed. He lit a match. It went out. He lit another. The flame quickly died. He repeated until they asked him where the trick was. He pawed out a match and lit it. It went out. That was the trick.

“Look out there, Flannagan, your guts are rising!” Keefe said.

Mickey belched.

“Here's the Bad News Twins,” Studs said, seeing Mush Joss and TB McCarthy approaching.

Muggsy, looking like the con, round-shouldered, a cigarette drooping from the corner of his mouth, tried to scrouge two bits off Keefe.

“So long, boys. I'm going home and sleep,” Studs said, yawning.

“Hang around. The Alky Squad is here, and something might happen,” Slug said.

TB tried to hit Studs for a quarter. Studs told him to get away.

“Flannagan, you lousy paper salesman, give these mooching bastards a quarter. I can't stand their sight,” Keefe said.

Flannagan fell on his face, mumbling incoherently.

Kelly suggested a poker game at his house. Studs said he had to go home. He went with the boys. Flannagan was left draped around the fire plug. Muggsy and Mush rolled him, and had a meal. Stepping out of the Greek Restaurant, Muggsy wished now that they could pick up a bum broad and take her back with them to the basement where they slept. Muggsy said it was the best meal he'd had all week.

Studs left Kelly's at three o'clock. He walked along with his eyes heavy. He bumped into a building, and realized that he was asleep on his feet. What a chump he'd been! He'd be pooped tomorrow, and only have a couple of hours' sleep. And he'd lost eight bucks.

DAVEY COHEN
pulled up the collar of his thin overcoat. He climbed a hilly street of Jamestown, New York, in the rain. He spewed up a racking cough, and spat. He entered the public library for shelter. A girl looked askance at him, and he felt as if he were an interloper. A blue-covered book, lay before him. He read the title.
The Collected Poems of Heinrich Heine
, translated by Louis Untermeyer. He opened the book, just to pass the time, and read the preface. He read the facts of the poet's life, saddened at his fate, proud that he had been a Jew. A quotation from one of Heine's letters excited him:

 

When the harvest moon was up last year, I had to take to my bed, and since then I have not risen from it . . . I am no longer a divine biped: I am no longer a joyous though slightly corpulent Hellene, smiling gaily down on the melancholy Nazarene. I am now only an etching of sorrow, an unhappy man—a poor sick Jew.”

 

He turned the pages and came upon
Monolog From A Mattress
. He could visualize the Jewish poet, twisted in body, unhappy in mind, expressing crucified thoughts from his mattress grave. The deepest poignancy of his whole life trembled within him.

STUDS LONIGAN arose with the ringing of the alarm clock, and rode to work on a crowded surface-car which ran backwards. As if through a mist, he saw the familiar unremembered faces of the other passengers. A man with an indistinct face and the sleek uniform of an army officer stared at him with contempt. Studs tried to recall that somewhere he had seen that face before. He crossed the aisle and eyed the man with an expression that was both questioning and conciliatory.

“Say, Chauncey, we're going backwards, and I got to be at work.”

“All the cars in Alaska go this way.”

In a shock of surprise, Studs saw from the window of the moving car that they were passing through expansive, flat fields of snow.

He returned to his seat, and his disappointment dissipated when he realized that he was an adventurer, journeying to fight for love and gold. And the army officer was Lieutenant Ames Dubois. With the pride of ingenuity, he outlined a plan of action. Ames would be returning to Gloria. After seeing her, he would lead his soldiers out on an expedition to shovel snow. And Gloria would be awaiting her lover, Studs Lonigan, in a little Alaska love-nest. She would be prepared for him, without a strip on, and she would give herself unto him, body and soul, until it hurt. Then she would show him where the gold was in them there Alaska hills, and he would become a billionaire. He would return to Fifty-eighth Street with his fortune, and he would go round to the poolroom of George the Greek, escorting glorious Gloria, who would wear pearls in her ears, diamonds on her fingers, and rings on her toes. And every night for a century, glorious Gloria, stripped, would give herself unto him, body and soul, until it hurt. He glanced across the aisle at Lieutenant Ames Dubois, thinking what a chump that boy was.

The car jolted as it was jammed into an unexpected halt. Studs looked up into the face of Ames Dubois, and the countenance of the conductor; he knew that he knew the conductor and hated him like poison.

“Lonigan, take your goddamn tree off the tracks!” they jointly demanded.

“My tree?” Studs asked in surprised apology.

To the amusement of all the passengers, he was ejected from the car, and landed in unwet snow. He found no tree on the tracks, and when he looked up, the car was in motion, and Weary Reilley, the conductor, stood on the rear platform thumbing his nose.

Studs ran, flagging after the car, and pleading in shouts for them to wait. He was outdistanced and he stopped to catch his breath. A sense of loss swept him with oceans of sadness, and he was more sad than any man had ever been. He peered around him, and saw the same monotonous desolation of snow on every side, with neither sight nor sign of a human being. He had lost glorious Gloria forevermore, and he was poor, and miles upon miles from his home in Chicago that he should never have left. And when he did return, after walking the whole distance without shoes, he would have neither love nor gold.

You're no good! You're not a man. You never will be, you yellow Lonigan louse, a voice within him, as if it were the voice of conscience, sneered.

He dropped a dejected head, and set out upon that thousand-mile journey back to his home, without any shoes on his feet. He already could hear the crackling, sarcastic laughter with which he would be greeted. Suddenly, he was amongst buildings which resembled the houses and apartments in the 5700 block on Indiana Avenue. And in the sky, like a rising sun of the spring time, he saw the beaming face of Lucy Scanlan. In a voice as sweet as candy, she sang to him that she still loved him in a cosy Morris chair, and that if he wanted her, he must go and touch the tree. He confidently strode through a recognizable gangway, and came out upon a street which was fronted with a park of huge oak-trees. He crossed the street, but the trees receded and disappeared with his approach. He chased the vanishing trees across fields of grass, encouraged and hopeful, only because the face of Lucy Scanlan still shone in the sky like a rising sun of the spring time. He came upon a bent, gnarled oak-tree, and knew that it was the one, because the face of Lucy Scanlan blew kisses down upon it, and it sang
In the Blue Ridge Mountains of Virginia
with the voice of Lucy Scanlan. He touched the tree gently with the second and third fingers of his right hand and suddenly . . . . the boy Studs Lonigan sat nervously in the eighth-grade room of St. Patrick's school, wishing that school would let out, because he had just touched something that was the secret of love and happiness and he couldn't remember what it was, or where it was, and he had to go out and find it again before it was too late.

“William Bastard Lonigan, you were late for school this morning,” Sister Battling Bertha said, wrinkling the toothless face of a crone.

“I wasn't. The bell rang before I got here,” the boy Studs Lonigan replied, and a six-foot-four pupil in short britches named Slug Mason guffawed.

“Sister, he played poker last night and lost eight dollars and when I asked him for a penny because I was starving, he wouldn't give it to me,” TB McCarthy said, turning a sickly yellow face upon the schoolboy, Studs Lonigan.

“All I did last night was go to bed with Lucy, only we didn't sleep much. Ha! Ha!” the schoolboy Studs Lonigan said.

William Bastard Lonigan, by your gambling and immoral thoughts, words, deeds, acts and wishes, you have spilled the consecrated blood of the Sacred Heart of the Crucified Jesus, and you have put gray hairs upon the heads of your father, mother, God the Father, Son and Holy Ghost, and all the communion of saints in Heaven and on earth. You will go to the gallows for your sacrileges, and God will send you special delivery to Hell to burn forevermore in a lake of brimstone!

She descended on him like a cyclone, and vigorously shook his head.

“Oh, how I hate to get up in the morning,” he sang.

“Get up!” she commanded, slapping his face, while the entire class laughed at Clown Lonigan. . . .

and . . .

Studs Lonigan opened eyes that were heavy with sleep to find his mother gently shaking him. He sat up in bed, yawned, rubbed his eyes with the sleeve of his pyjamas.

“Goodness, didn't you hear the alarm, son?”

“Gee, mother, it was the funniest darn thing. I dreamt I got up with that clock, and was riding to work,” he said boyishly.

She suddenly flung her arms around him, pulled him to her thin bosom, and kissed him, declaring that he would always be her baby. He was embarrassed.

“You must hurry now, son. Breakfast is all ready.”

He sat on the edge of the bed half asleep, tiredly stretching. He opened his eyes; he'd fallen asleep sitting there. He looked over and saw that Martin was up, and in the bathroom washing. It got him sore. Martin returned to the bedroom.

“Say, what the hell's the idea? You know I have to be out of here earlier than you. You're just too damn wise a punk, ain't you,” Studs said, arising, and raising his hand as if to slam his kid brother.