Studs Lonigan (49 page)

“Phil, is that so that the only thing you read in the paper is Gallicoe's column on what the well-dressed man wears?” asked Swede Larsen.

“Phil, they tell me that with all the sheiking you do, you still don't know what it's for,” Ellsworth Lyman said.

“Bug House Fable Number 999; Phillip Rolfe giving a penny to a starving blind man,” said Young Rocky.

“I just see you boys shoveling out dimes like you were John D.,” Phillip sharply retorted.

“Studs, it's nigger date night tonight. It has a date,” Tommy Doyle shouted, passing along.

“It wouldn't do a lot of you guys any harm if you invested a dime in a second-hand joke book,” Phillip said, walking off.

Skinny Joe Thomas asked Studs how about a game of pool. Studs said he thought maybe he could take Joe.

“Always ready to give you the chance. We'll play fifty straight pool, and I'll spot you ten. And just to make it interesting, we'll play for half a buck, if you say so?”

Studs nodded, hating to take the handicap and admit that Joe was better than he was. But Joe had it on him with the cue, and if he refused the spot, he'd just look like a stuck-up sap. Joe reached with his cue, and set off ten beads on Studs' side of the marking wire stretched above the table. Lagging for break with the ivory, Studs lost, and had to break. He chalked his cue, and took careful aim, planning just to graze off the eight ball on the right of the last row of the racked triangle of balls. He hit the ivory too hard and with poor aim, cracking seven balls loose from the rack-up. Joe sank three shots, and missed an easy one, but left Studs sewn up.

“That was just luck,” Joe said, his buck teeth showing in a good-natured, chinless smile.

Automatically chalking his cue, Studs studied the table, roving slowly around it to survey the balls from varying angles. He frowned in concentration. He heard Tommy Doyle remark that it was Studs' can. He bent over the table, and took careful aim, calling the three ball in the left-hand side pocket on a sharp cut. He was aware of a silence amongst the spectators. He shot, the three ball rolling straight into the pocket. He smiled, with a sense of relief. He made a run of ten, and as he sank his shots he saw himself as a careless, chance-taking pool shark. He missed a set-up before one of the lower end pockets. He set the balls back on the table in a line up from the spot, and pushed ten beads more on his side of the wire. He could not check a smile when he heard Doyle tell Joe that this time Studs looked like he might give him a run for his dough.

Three Star Hennessey sauntered in and oozed out a greeting to the gentlemen present. Doyle hopped on him about his spats and bell bottoms. Hennessey replied that they kept his feet warm, and everybody haw-hawed. Joe kidded with Hennessey as he made a difficult bank shot. He knocked six in and left Studs sewn up. Studs nettled his eyebrows and called a double bank.

“So, you're smoking Melachrinos now, Hennessey?” Joe remarked.

“The best is none too good for Mrs. Hennessey's son, John,” Three Star said.

“Robbing the broads again,” Studs remarked, trying to pull Joe's stunt of kidding while he made difficult shots; he fizzled the shot, and left the table open for Joe.

Joe ran off twenty and was ahead of Studs. Studs nettled his brows. He felt his confidence ebbing away. On his next inning, he slammed the eight ball into the side pocket. He had position on an easy shot, and hoped the guys would think he played for it, instead of getting it by accident.

Hennessey and Rolfe started ragging each other in their loud-mouthed punk manner. Studs, unconscious of everything but the balls before him, ran the table, feeling a sense of skill and power as he made ball after ball, planning shots ahead, putting english on the ball to get position, feeling a complete mastery. Joe set the balls back in a line up from spot.

“I only need to make two more to break my high-run record,” Studs said to Tommy Doyle, as he chalked his cue.

“You're hot tonight, there, Hoppe,” Stan Simonsky said.

“Looks like he's got my number,” Joe said, undismayed.

Studs bent over, and pushed the cue through the crooked index finger of his left hand, aiming at the end ball that was frozen against the back rail. The ball seemed suddenly unclear to him. He was nervous. He felt like a mechanical man without control over the cue. He wanted to break that record.

“Well, anyway, louse, I don't snatch pocketbooks,” Rolfe shrieked.

The punk's voice drummed in Studs' ears. He stood up, and rechalked his cue. He took a puff from the cigarette which he had placed on the wooden edge of the table, trying to steady himself. He bent over, and again took aim.

“Any goddamn time you catch me snipping purses. . . .”

The damn . . . Studs miscued. His shoulders dropped in a droop of relaxation, relieved from the strain, even though he was disappointed. Those two snotty drug-store cow-boys had taken his mind off his game.

“Hey!” Studs yelled at them, sore.

“Gwan, rat, frisk some more nickels off working girls,” Rolfe yelled.

“Say, Rolfe, you goddamn Jew, if you don't close that trap of yours, I will,” Studs barked, throwing everyone into a waiting silence.

“Jesus, Studs! I'm sorry if I disturbed you,” Phillip apologized, blushing; Hennessey quietly smirked at him.

“One more bat out of you while I'm shooting, and it'll be curtains for you, punk!”

Studs couldn't regain his form. Joe walked away with the game, and won a second game with ease. Studs handed him a buck, and paid for the time with some of his chips. Joe said it was tough, going so good, and then suddenly losing your form. Next time, he might have better luck. Studs smiled weakly, but a sudden hatred of Joe stirred in him. Joe was almost chinless, not good-looking, a nice guy, but he had nothing on his side except his ability with the cue. No reason for jealousy and hatred. But Studs hated him for winning, hated to lose or be second fiddle at any thing. He was even glad when Joe remarked that his rheumatism was bothering him again.

He started out and met Arnold Sheehan limping in the doorway. He asked how tricks were. Arnold said he had a job with a construction gang for the city, and was on the wagon. He was going to start working as soon as his knee, twisted in the football game last Sunday, was better. Studs said swell.

He walked along amidst the six-o'clock confusion of Fifty-eighth Street, with people pouring out of the elevated station, elevated trains rumbling almost continuously, kids barking as they sold the Saturday
Evening Post
, Sammy Schmaltz yelling his latest papers, people hurrying in front of and by him. It made him nervous. And he thought how he had just been going so good, ran the table for the third time in his life at straight pool, had been on the verge of breaking his record run. He remembered the feeling of power he had had, running the table, his eye, brains, arm, all of himself concentrated on the balls, all clicking together like a coordinated machine, and the thrill that went with each shot as the balls were smashed, cut, banked, eased into the pockets. A feeling that, in its way, was like the one he'd had making that first clean tackle of Jewboy Schwartz in the football game.

He saw the dumpy figure of Helen Shires ahead of him, and caught up with her. She looked mannish, with a shingle bob, a simple felt hat, almost like a man's, a plain blue suit with shirt waist and blue tie. Not good-looking any more. She'd been almost like a pal with him when they'd been kids. Some of the old feeling for her came back. But she hadn't turned into much. Wouldn't be a bargain in bed now either.

“I'm glad to see you again, Studs; haven't seen you in ages,” she said.

“How are you, Helen?”

“Fine. Working in an office, stenographer. I hear you're still working for your dad,” she said, and he nodded, lighting a cigarette.

“I saw Loretta the other day and she has certainly grown into a sweet young girl.”

Not much for them to say to each other. It made him sorry they had changed and drifted apart, because he could remember how she had been such a pal, just like a guy you liked a lot.

“Seen any of the old bunch?” she asked, after the silence between them had grown uncomfortable.

“Bill comes around once in a while and we go to a show together. He has a pretty good job, repairing adding-machines.”

“And how's Fran?”

“All right.”

He wanted to talk about old times, and have them just naturally talk about themselves, and maybe Lucy.

“I saw Jim Clayburn. He's studying law,” she said.

He told her about last Sunday's football game and the fight.

“You're just the same as ever, aren't you? Haven't changed, even to the fighting,” she said in a complimentary way; he was pleased, and looked at her out of the corner of his eye. Might date her up at that and make her; she probably could be made, and every jane a guy made was another notch in his belt. But he liked her and wished they could be as they used to be.

“What's your sister doing?”

“She's in high school. She's a flapper now,” Helen said.

“You haven't changed either, Helen,” he said, but it was a lie. She wasn't the old Helen. And she looked sort of whipped, too. Maybe it was because she wasn't good-looking or something.

They stood awkwardly at the corner of Fifty-eighth and Indiana. Finally they said they'd have to be trotting along. Studs said they'd have to get together some time, and she replied vaguely. He watched her walk mannishly along, her dumpy figure swaying a trifle. He wished.... He went in the drug store and bought copies of Snappy
Stories
and the
Whizz Bang
to read after supper, since he wasn't going out.

He felt moody over having seen Helen, noticed the way she seemed whipped, and wasn't the old Helen. And then losing that game too. He yawned, tired. He remembered what good times he and Helen and the old bunch used to have roasting marshmallows and baking potatoes in a bonfire nights over by the foundation when the Prairie Theater was just being built.

A HOLLOW ROAR
, like heavy thunder splitting the sky in a storm, boomed over the neighborhood. People near Fifty-ninth and South Park Avenue heard falling glass, and in some cases, their buildings, and the very bedrooms in which they slept, quaked. Inside of five minutes, a crowd was collected in front of a low, two-story, red stone house between Fifty-ninth and Sixtieth on South Park Avenue. Two policemen stood before the crumbled steps, and the long wide porch before the building was splintered and half-wrecked.

The crowd was steadily enlarged by people of all ages who displayed the signs of hasty arousal from sleep; men with trousers and coats pulled on over pyjamas, kids with tousled hair and sleep still in their eyes, surprised and half-dressed women. There was much talk and speculation, and amongst them there was a general consensus that the bomb had been placed there through the machinations of real-estate people who desired that Abraham Clarkson, the leading colored banker of Chicago, should sell his property and cease living in a white man
'
s neighborhood. Most of the excited and gaping people present also eyed the wreckage with approval, wishing that it would have a proper and fearful effect. But they knew that the bomb would teach no lessons and inspire no fear. For Abraham Clarkson had been bombed before, and he had stated defiantly that he would move from his home to another one only in a casket. It was nerve for the nigger to say that and go on ruining a white man's neighborhood, living amongst people who didn
'
t want him. Secretly, many of those present wished that he had been killed. Some of the Catholics wished only that it had wounded him, un-mortally, for didn't he always give Father Gilhooley a hundred dollars in the annual Easter and Christmas collections. The crowd increased. After about three quarters of an hour of gaping, it slowly dispersed. Red Kelly walked off arguing with Tommy Doyle, Red insisting that it was the fifth time that the jigg had been bombed, Tommy contending that it was only the fourth time.

“PAPEE! Box score!”

Studs Lonigan laughed at Sammy Schmaltz like a drunken apparition.

“Which one?”

“There ain't no box scores on Christmas Eve,” Studs said, continuing to laugh.

“Papee! Latest papee!”

“Merry Fourth of July!” Studs bellowed, with an uncontrolled wave of his hand; he staggered over to plaster himself against the bellied front of the Fifty-eighth Street elevated station. He saw Phillip Rolfe and bellowed a command for him to come over.

“Say, are you a fag?” Studs sneered.

“You're drunk, kid,” Phillip replied, taking Studs' arm. “The boys said you've been home laid up with the flu for several weeks. Do you feel all right now?”

“I'll bet you are a pansy,” Studs said, brushing Phillip's arm aside, and eyeing him with curiosity, as Rolfe inched backwards.

“Why do you punks wear those goddamn monkey suits? You can't keep them pressed when you get on your knees,” Studs said, studying Phil's bell bottoms.

“They're the rage, kid,” Phillip said, walking away.

Studs fell back against the building. He coughed. He saw people passing as in a dream, and imagined himself just walking up to them one by one, and laying them cold.

“Hey, Jew, commere!” he commanded.

Smirking, Jawbones Levinsky halted a respectable distance from Studs.

“So you're the goddamn Jew who's prejudiced against the N. D. football team.”

“Yeah,” said Levinsky, quickly dodging a right haymaker.