Studs Lonigan (56 page)

“Studs, let's get a drink.”

“I'm on the wagon, Red,” Studs said.

“How come?”

“I'm taking care of myself these days.”

“Come on, one drink won't make any difference.”

“Nope, not tonight, Red.”

They walked silently towards Fifty-eighth Street. Across the street, the park seemed gloomy with its deserted tennis courts, and the bare, black trees and shrubbery behind them.

“Say, Studs, I think it was goddamn funny they didn't ask any of us to be pall-bearers,” Red said.

“I suppose his old man is sore. Thinks we were always responsible for his drinking. Notice the old man didn't say much to us?”

“Yeah, and the first time I met Arnold just after his family moved in the neighborhood, he was looking for a bottle,” Red said.

“It's fluky, all right.”

“I feel sorry and I understand how his folks might be feeling, and I offered them my condolences. But Jesus Christ, we were Arnold's best friends, and we'll miss him too. I tell you, Studs, it's an insult to all of us!” Red protested.

Studs wasn't listening. He couldn't get the memory of Arnold out of his head, and it gave him a feeling of awe and fear. He had just seen death, death with something terrible, final, about it. It made him suddenly leery of even living. He determined all over again that he was going to take care of himself.

“I suppose old man Sheehan must feel bad. You know, he sees us living, and his son dead, and it must have hit him. But we didn't kill Arnold. He shouldn't act that way towards us. But then I suspect it might be Horace. Come to think of it, he hardly ever comes around the poolroom, and when he does, he doesn't have a lot to say.”

“Yes,” Studs said, not feeling so badly that he hadn't been asked to be a pall-bearer.

“Arnold was a prince, though. That's why I'm going to the funeral, even if his family did act that way, and not ask even one of his best friends to stand by him in his last journey,” Red said.

“I'll miss him. He was white, all right,” Studs said.

“Say, Studs, sure you won't change your mind and have a drink?”

“No, Red, I'm really starting to put myself into decent shape.”

“What the hell, you're in good shape, aren't you?”

“But what I mean is get hard, and get this little bit of belly I got off, and then next season we can get the old team together and play football again.”

“That's not a bad idea. Remember that fight with the Monitors?”

“Say, that reminds me, remember that kike they had who was so fast and who nearly got killed? I forget his name, but you remember him?”

“I think it was Schwartz.”

“Well, I'll be goddamned if I wasn't out to a game in the park last fall and he was playing, and just as fast as ever.”

“But we stopped him,” Red said.

“Yeah, we did,” Studs said, hoping Red would mention one or two of those tackles.

“But come on, Studs,” Red said; Studs shook his head no.

“I was thinking I'd join the Y, and go swimming there and fool around the gym a couple of nights a week. What do you think of it?”

“I might, too.”

“I'm going over this week, want to come along?”

“Maybe. Pick me up at the poolroom.”

They had coffee an' in the Greek restaurant. Studs went home, and turned in early. Lying in bed he felt as if he had again conquered himself, and was already started on the road to making himself as healthy as the guys whose pictures he saw in the physical culture ads in magazines. He thought that every day in every way he was going to get harder and healthier. But he couldn't get Arnold from his mind, and the words of a song the guys sang kept running through his head.

 

I HATE to see the evening sun go down. . . .

 

Feeling tomorrow just like I feel today.

 

STUDS' eyes were attracted by a framed picture of the Sacred Heart of Jesus, around which was written the verse:

He wanted to substitute the word healthy for faithful. He looked at his feet where he had just dropped the evening's copy of the
Chicago Evening journal
that he'd been reading. He'd come across a squib telling of how a thirty-seven-year-old man had dropped dead of heart trouble at the ball game. He thought that he had been having pains in his heart, and down around his stomach of late, and he was gloomy and worried, because maybe he'd be having heart trouble and dropping dead, or having to have an operation for appendicitis, or be suffering from ulcers of the stomach or something like that. Maybe his plan to condition himself was just too late, and it was too bad for him. Health was the greatest gift and wealth that any man could receive or have, and when health was gone, all was gone.

He might be dead any day. He might drop dead in the street. He might have already torn all the lining out of his stomach with rotgut gin.

He wanted to live to be a hundred. He could see himself celebrating his hundredth birthday, with everybody he now knew dead, and his great-grandchildren and his great-great-grandchildren surrounding him. He could see himself at a hundred, hale and hearty, having his picture in the newspapers and telling the reporters, while they took his picture, that he attributed his health to careful living, and explaining how when he had been twenty-two he had laid out a plan of careful living and exercise for himself, and he'd followed it conscientiously for years. He could see himself, a hundred years old, walking erect without a cane, not fat either like his father was, coming back to the old neighborhood, looking at all the old buildings where Lucy and Helen Shires and Dan Donoghue and Red Kelly had lived, going over to Washington Park and sitting by the lagoon, or in the boathouse, walking over to the wooded island, looking at the tree where he and Lucy had sat, or at the spot, if the tree was gone, going all around to see the old sights, thinking about all the things he'd done as a kid so long long long ago, and the things he was doing now, thinking about Lucy and Helen Shires, and the girl who sat next to him at Christmas mass and who maybe would be his wife. And maybe when he was a hundred and did that, he might still be having as much as ten years to go. He wanted to live longer than any man in the whole world had ever lived. And goddamn it, he would.

He wanted to be strong and healthy and never turn into a weakkneed, unhealthy guy. And he would. He got up, and shadow-boxed clumsily around the room. He tensed his stomach and felt it to see if his exercises and training had hardened up his guts. He couldn't tell. He still had something of an alderman. Well, that would go. And he would have a long time to live. He'd only worried unnecessarily about his heart and his stomach. He dressed, ate supper, and then left. He was going over to the Y tonight, and Red and some of the guys were coming along. He walked along, confident and happy, feeling, too, that he wouldn't be hanging around, wondering every few minutes what time it was, and what they'd do.

“But it's a pretty long walk, Studs,” Les said.

“It'll do us good. It'll be exercise.”

“I get plenty of exercise wrestling freight for John Continental.”

“Come on, a little more won't hurt you. I get exercise, too. And if we go by street car, we'd have to go down to Sixty-first, and then transfer at Cottage Grove.”

“It'd be quicker.”

“Come on,” Studs said, as they entered the park.

“Say, what'll we have to do?”

“Sign up, pay the fee, and then we can use the gym and swimming pool.”

They walked across the park, saying little. Studs tried to think of himself as a prizefighter or some kind of an athlete putting himself in condition to come back. It made it appear more interesting and important that way. It was as if he was somebody in the limelight, a celebrity, and the world was interested in his success and failure. And now, suppose he was a fighter, would it be best for him to call himself Studs Lonigan, Young Lonigan, or K. O. Lonigan?

“Say, aren't Y. M. C. A.'s dopey places?”

“I guess they got all boy scouts in them, but we're going there to swim and use the gym and get ourselves in condition physically.”

“Then, what do we do?”

“What the hell! Don't you like to be healthy?”

“Sure, I guess so.”

“Puddles here,” Studs said, skipping and leaping over a stretch of watery ground.

“I knew it would be best not to come this way.”

“We're near the hills now. Then we'll be past the puddles.”

Les laughed to himself.

“What's the comedy?” asked Studs.

“I was thinking what would the teameos I know at the express company think, if they knew I was going to a Y. M. C. A. . . . Jesus, them turkeys down there would ride the pants off me.”

“You don't have to tell them, and if they do find out, what the hell's the difference? Tell them to go to and stay put.”

“But they'll find out. Down there at that express company they find out about everything a guy does. They got the best grapevine in the world.”

“There are a lot of bastards like that in this world. I'd like to see them all in hell too.”

“Cigarette, Studs?”

“No, thanks.”

“Jesus, you're doing this thing right.”

“If I plan to do something, I don't see any reason to do it half ass,” Studs said.

“I wonder why Tommy and Red and the guys didn't come along. They all promised to.”

“Hell, they're mopes. And they're going to a goddamn shine cabaret, and maybe get slashed with a razor,” Studs said.

“They never think of what's going to happen to them.”

“They're mopes.”

They crossed the hills on the far side of the park, went over the drive, along a path, and out at Fifty-fifth and Cottage.

“It's only down a few blocks and over on Fifty-second Street.”

“That don't irritate me none,” Les said.

They turned east on Fifty-second Street.

“Hey, Shrimp doesn't look so good, does he?”

“He's hitting the bottle every day. I don't think he's been sober since New Year's. He's wasting away to a shadow,” Studs said.

“Yeah, poor Shrimp's wasting away to a shadow.”

“He can drink the whole gang of us together under the table,” Studs said.

“He certainly doesn't look any too good. I'll say that,” Les said.

“He's ripping his guts out with rotgut,” Studs said.

Feeling out of place at the Y entrance, they paused in momentary indecision. Studs acted casual. Les was nervous, and blushed.