Studs Lonigan (6 page)

He took a meditative puff on his stogy, and informed himself that time was a funny thing. Old Man Time just walked along, and he didn't even blow a How-do-you-do through his whiskers. He just walked on past you. Things just change. Chicago was nothing like it used to be, when over around St. Ignatius Church and back of the yards were white men's neighborhoods, and Prairie Avenue was a tony street where all the swells lived, like Fields, who had a mansion at Nineteenth and Prairie, and Pullman at Eighteenth and Calumet, and Fairbanks and Potter Palmer and the niggers and whores had not roosted around Twenty-second Street, and Fifty-eighth Street was nothing but a wilderness, and on Sunday afternoons the boulevards were lined with carriages, and there were no automobiles, and living was dirt cheap, and people were friendlier and more neighborly than they now were, and there were high sidewalks,
and he and Mary were young
. Mary had been a pretty girl, too, and at picnics she had always won the prizes because she could run like a deer; and he remembered that first picnic he took her to, and she won a loving cup and gave it to him, and then they went off sparking, and he had gotten his first kiss, and they sat under a tree when it was hushed, like the earth was preparing for darkness, and he and Mary had looked at each other, and then he knew he had fallen, and he didn't give a damn. And the bicycle parties.

And that Sunday he had rented a buggy, even though it cut a terrible hole in his kick, and they had driven way out south. Who would have ever thought he and she would now be living in the same neighborhood they had driven into that Sunday, and that they would have their own home, and graduate their kids from it? Now, who would have thought it? And the time he had taken her to a dance at Hull House, and coming home he had almost gotten into a mixup with some soused mick because the fellow had started to get smartalecky, like he was a kike. Yes sir, them was the days. He hummed, trying first to strike the right tune to
Little Annie Rooney
, then the tune of
My Irish Molly 'O.
He sang to himself:

He couldn't remember the rest of the song, but it was a fine song. It described his Mary to a T. His . . . Dear Old Girl.

And the old gang. They were scattered now, to the very ends of the earth. Many of them were dead, like poor Paddy McCoy, Lord have mercy on his soul, whose ashes rested in a drunkard's grave at Potter's Field. Well, they were a fine gang, and many's the good man they drank under the table, but . . . well, most of them didn't turn out so well. There was Heinie Schmaltz, the boy with glue on his fingers, the original sticky-fingered kid. And poor Mrs. Schmaltz, Lord have mercy on her poor soul. God was merciful to take her away before she could know that her boy went up the road to Joliet on a ten-year jolt for burglary. The poor little woman, how she used to come around and tell of the things her Heinie found. She'd say, in her German dialect, My Heinie, he finds the grandest things. Vy, ony yesterday, I tell you, I tell you, he found a diamond ring, vy, can you himagine hit! And that time she and Mrs. McGoorty got to talking about which of their boys were the luckiest, and about the fine things my Heinie found, and the foine things my Mike is always pickin' up. Good souls they were. And there was Dinny Gorman, the fake silk-hat. When Dinny would tote himself by, they'd all haw-haw because he was like an old woman. He was too bright, if you please, to associate with ordinary fellows. Once a guy from New York came around, and he was damned if High-hat Dinny, who'd never been to the big burg, didn't sit down and try to tell this guy all about New York. Dinny had made a little dough, but he was, after all, only a shyster lawyer and a cheap politician. He had been made ward committeeman because he had licked everybody's boots. And there were his own brothers. Bill had run away to sea at seventeen and nobody had ever heard from him again. Jack, Lord have mercy on his soul, had always been a wild and foolish fellow, and man or devil couldn't persuade him not to join the colors for the war with Spain, and he'd been killed in Cuba, and it had nearly broken their mother's heart in two. Lord have mercy on his and her and the old man's souls. He'd been a fool, all right! Poor Jack! And Mike had run off and married a woman older than himself, and he was now in the east, and not doing so well, and his wife was an old crow, slobbering in a wheel chair. And Joe was a motorman. And Catherine, well, he hadn't even better think of her. Letting a traveling salesman get her like that, and expecting to come home with her fatherless baby; and then going out and becoming . . . a scarlet woman. His own sister, too! God! Nope, his family had not turned out so well. They hadn't had, none of them, the persistence that he had. He had stuck to his job and nearly killed himself working. But now he was reaping his rewards. It had been no soft job when he had started as a painter's apprentice, and there weren't strong unions then like there were now, and there was no eight-hour day, neither, and the pay was nothing. In them days, many's the good man that fell off a scaffold to die or become permanently injured. Well, Pat Lonigan had gone through the mill, and he had pulled himself up by his own bootstraps, and while he was not exactly sitting in the plush on Easy Street, he was a boss painter, and had his own business, and pretty soon maybe he'd even be worth a cool hundred thousand berries. But life was a funny thing, all right. It was like Mr. Dooley said, and he had never forgotten that remark, because Dooley, that is Finley Peter Dunne, was a real philosopher. Who'll tell what makes wan man a thief, and another man a saint?

He took a long puff. He gazed out, and watched a group of kids, thirteen, fourteen, fifteen, boys like Bill, who sat in the gravel near the backstop close to the Michigan Avenue fence. What do kids talk about? He wondered, because a person's own childhood got so far away from him he forgot most of it, and sometimes it seemed as if he'd never been a kid himself, he forgot the way a kid felt, the thoughts of a kid. He sometimes wondered about Bill. Bill was a fine boy. You couldn't find a better one up on the graduating stage at St. Patrick's tonight, no more than you would see a finer girl than Frances. But sometimes he wondered just what Bill thought about.

He puffed. It was nice sitting there. He would like to sit there, and watch it slowly get dark, because when it was just getting dark things were quiet and soft-like, and a fellow liked to sit in all the quiet and well, just sit, and let any old thoughts go through his mind; just sit and dream, and realize that life was a funny thing, but that he'd fought his way up to a station where there weren't no real serious problems like poverty, and he sits there, and is comfortable and content and patient, because he knows that he has put his shoulder to the wheel, and he has been a good Catholic, and a good American, a good father, and a good husband. He just sits there with Mary, and smokes his cigar, and has his thoughts, and then, after it gets dark, he can send one of the kids for ice cream, or maybe sneak down to the saloon at Fifty-eighth and State and have a glass of beer. But there was many another evening for that, and tonight he'd have to go and see the kids get a good sendoff; otherwise he wouldn't be much of a father. When you're a father you got duties, and Patrick J. Lonigan well knew that.

While Lonigan's attention had been sunk inwards, the kids had all left the playground. Now he looked about, and the scene was swallowed in a hush, broken only by occasional automobiles and by the noise from the State Street cars that seemed to be more than a block away. Suddenly, he experienced, like an unexpected blow, a sharp fear of growing old and dying, and he knew a moment of terror. Then it slipped away, greased by the thickness of his content. Where in hell should he get the idea that he was getting so old? Sure, he was a little gray in the top story, and a little fat around the belly, but, well, the fat was a healthy fat, and there was lots of stuff left in the old boy. And he was not any fatter than old man O'Brien who owned the coal yards at Sixty-second and Wabash.

He puffed at his stogy and flicked the ashes over the railing. He thought about his own family. Bill would get himself some more education, and then learn the business, starting as a painter's apprentice, and when he got the hang of things and had worked on the job long enough, he would step in and run the works; and then the old man and Mary would take a trip to the old sod and see where John McCormack was born, take a squint at the Lakes of Killarney, kiss the blarney stone, and look up all his relatives. He sang to himself, so that no one would hear him:

He glowed over the fact that his kids were springing up. Martin and Loretta were coming along faster than he could imagine. Frances was going to be a beautiful girl who'd attract some rich and sensible young fellow. He beat up a number of imaginary villains who would try to ruin her. He returned to the thought that his kids were growing up; and he rested in the assurance that they had all gotten the right start; they would turn out A No. 1.

Martin would be a lawyer or professional man of some kind; he might go into politics and become a senator or a . . . you never could tell what a lad with the blood of Paddy Lonigan in him might not become. And Loretta, he just didn't know what she'd be, but there was plenty of time for that. Anyway, there was going to be no hitches in the future of his kids. And the family would have to be moving soon. When he'd bought this building, Wabash Avenue had been a nice, decent, respectable street for a self-respecting man to live with his family. But now, well, the niggers and kikes were getting in, and they were dirty, and you didn't know but what, even in broad daylight, some nigger moron might be attacking his girls. He'd have to get away from the eight balls and tinhorn kikes. And when they got into a neighborhood property values went blooey. He'd sell and get out . . . and when he did, he was going to get a pretty penny on the sale.

He puffed away. A copy of the
Chicago Evening Journal
was lying at his side. It was the only decent paper in town; the rest were Republican. And he hated the
Questioner
, because it hadn't supported Joe O'Reilley, past grand master of Lonigan's Order of Christopher lodge, that time in 1912 when Joe had run for the Democratic nomination for State's Attorney. Lonigan believed it was the
Questioner
that had beaten Joe; he wouldn't have it in his house. He thought about the Christys, and decided he would have to be taking his fourth degree, and then at functions he could be all dolled up with a plume in his hat and a sword at his side that would be attached to a red band strung across his front. And then he'd get a soup-and-fish outfit and go to the dinners all rigged out so that his own family wouldn't know him. He wasn't a bad-looking guy, and he'd bet he could cut a swath all togged up in soup and fish. And when his two lads grew up, he was going to make good Christys out of them too. And he'd have to be attending meetings regularly. It might even help his business along, and it was only right that one Christy should help another one along. That was what fraternalism meant. He looked down at the paper and noticed the headlines announcing Wilson's nomination at St. Louis. There was a full-length photograph of long-faced Wilson; he was snapped in summery clothes, light shoes and trousers, a dark coat and a straw hat. He held an American flag on a pole about four feet long. Next to him in the photograph was the script of a declaration he had had drafted into the party platform, forecasting the glorious future of the American people and declaring inimical to their progress any movement that was favorable to a foreign government at the expense of the American Nation. The cut was worded, THE PRESIDENT AND THE FLAG.

Now, that was a coincidence. On the day that Bill and Frances were graduated, Woodrow Wilson was renominated for the presidency. It was a historic day, because Wilson was a great president, and he had kept us out of war. There might be something to coincidences after all. And then the paper carried an account of the day's doings at the Will Orpet trial; Orpet was the bastard who ruined a girl, and when she was in the family way, went and killed her rather than marry her like any decent man would have done. And the baseball scores. The White Sox had lost to Boston, two to one. They were only in fifth place with an average of five hundred, but things looked good and they might win the pennant anyway. Look at what the Boston Braves had done in 1914. The Sox would spend the last month home. He'd have to be going out and seeing the Sox again. He hadn't been to a game since 1911 when he'd seen Ping Bodie break up a seventeen-inning game with the Tigers. Good old Ping. He was back in the minors, but that was Comiskey's mistake. Cicotte and Faber were in form now, and that strengthened the team, and they had Zeb Terry at shortstop playing a whale of a game, with Joe Jackson on the club, and Weaver at third, playing bang-up ball and not making an error a game like he had playing shortstop, and Collins and Schalk, and a better pitching staff, they would get going like a house on fire, and he'd have to be stepping out and seeing them play regular. Well, he could read all about it, and about the food riots in Rotterdam, and the bloody battle in which the Germans had captured Vaux, afterwards. Now, he'd have to be going inside, putting on his tie, and going up with Mary and the kids for the doings. He sat there, comfortable, puffing away. Life was a good thing if you were Patrick J. Lonigan and had worked hard to win out in the grim battle, and God had been good to you. But then, he had earned the good things he had. Yes, sir, let God call him to the Heavenly throne this very minute, and he could look God square in the eye and say he had done his duty, and he had been, and was, a good father. They had given the kids a good home, fed and clothed them, set the right example for them, sent them to Catholic schools to be educated, seen that they performed their religious duties, hustled them off to confession regularly, given them money for the collection, never allowed them to miss mass, even in winter, let them play properly so they'd be healthy, given them money for good clean amusements like the movies because they were also educational, done everything a parent can do for a child.