Studs Lonigan (67 page)

A young fellow booed.

“Some waffle pup in the audience is aching to get his puss slapped. Now the next one of you cheap wise guys who heckles is going to get the smile slapped off your mugs, and if any two or three of you want to try it, the same goes for you. If you want to go home with your snotty faces in a sling, just try getting wise. Otherwise, keep your traps closed like your mothers warned you to!” Connolly bellowed.

After the applause, he continued speaking.

“Slug, I'd like to see you tangle with that louse,” Kelly whispered.

Slug said he had nothing against him, and liked a fellow who took nobody's sass. Red said he couldn't understand an Irishman being a nigger-lover. Studs supposed that the guy would let a nigger jazz his sister. The next speaker, a small, untidy Jew, monotonously said that according to anthropology, which was a new science they were studying at the University of Chicago, they had proven as a scientific truth that no one race is superior to any other race. Studs asked Red what he was trying to say. Red said he was trying to prove that a Jew was a white man. The audience called for time.

Excitement started outside the circle. The gang rushed to it. They found a cop arguing with a kid. The cop pulled a gun. Connolly, by a quick twist of the policeman's wrist, took the gun and warned him not to try shooting off more than his mouth. The cop barked loudly. Connolly told him to keep cool. He sent the kid away, handed the gun back to the cop, and told him to be careful or it would go off. He walked away, followed by an adulatory crowd.

“He's a real guy,” Slug said as they walked towards Fifty-eighth Street.

“He'll get his. Those wise radicals always do. You can't go against the human race,” Kelly said.

“He's got guts,” Slug said.

“He was in jail during the war for being a pacifist. And a few years back he went out to agitate at a coal strike in Colorado, and the police kicked out a couple of his front teeth. But even though I know he's wrong., he's a smart man,” Jim Doyle said.

“If I'd been that cop, I'd have plugged him,” Red said.

“He's just over the heads of you hoods,” Jim Doyle said.

“Sure, he thinks he's too good for the human race,” Red said.

“He isn't yellow,” Studs said, thinking how big and tough Connolly was, and how small he himself was. He thought of how Morgan had baffled him. He admired and envied and hated the big fellow.

“All those guys read too much. When you do that you get lop-sided. Now I was reading some stories by a Frenchman named Balzac. . . .”

Haggerty punned the word.

“He was an atheist, and because he was, he wrote stories that are so filthy they make you want to puke,” Kelly continued.

“Dirty stories?” asked Shrimp.

“And how,” Red replied.

“Maybe I'll read them,” said Shrimp.

“But, anyway, I suppose the French are a pretty filthy race, and that's why this guy wrote such stuff,” Red said.

“Look at all the American soldiers who got the syph,” Shrimp said.

“Me for Paris,” Slug said.

“Boy, I'll bet that with a little dough you could get all you wanted there,” Red said.

Tommy wondered how long it would take Slug to know as many whores in Paris as he did in Chicago. Shrimp said they needed some liquor. Studs wanted some. He couldn't get things off his mind, the humiliation he had suffered, Lucy. He wished he'd been a hero in the war or even killed.

When they got tired of hanging around Fifty-eighth Street with nothing to do, they got drunk on Jamaica ginger. Their drunken attention was caught by a passing Negro hot-tamale-man. They slugged him and took the wagon. Red wheeled it and they marched down the street towards the park. They each had a hot tamale and debated what to do with the rest. Red caught a passing shine. They tossed him into the fountain by the curve in the boathouse path. He struggled to get out of the slippery fountain, and was shoved back, and pelted as long as they had hot tamales. Studs passed out. He was carried home, and they left him to sleep all night on the back porch.

ST. PATRICK'S
new church was a half block long, and several hundred yards wide. It was cruciform in shape, a squat box of dull red brick with a dome rounding out of the center. The nave was expansive, giving an illusion of tremendous size. It was segmented by impressive marble pillars, overhung by the hollowed dome of glass, and lined with oak pews. The floor was stone. The main altar, imported from Italy, was a huge slab of marble, set back in a hollow, and flanked by two altars that formed the horizontal sides of the cruciform. At the side altars, there were weakly conventional statues of St. Joseph, and the Blessed Virgin Mary. Above the altar were circular windows of stained glass with the half-distinguishable figures of Christ, Mary, St. Patrick and other saints, trumpeting and flying angels with the face of Donatello's “David,” baby angels, sheep and retreating snakes. On the left towards the front, there was an altar shrine to St. Anthony with a marble statue of the saint. The stations of the cross dotted the church with cheaply emotionalized statuary representations of the suffering and death of Christ. The choir box, with a ten-thousand-dollar organ and gilded pipes, was overhead in the rear, and next to it, a small gallery with tiers of pews. The edifice was built in no specific architectural style. It was a loot of traditions.

SALLY, a buxom human heifer, leaned forwards over the cashier's counter, and handed Dapper Dan O'Doul the autographed picture of Ramon Novarro, which she had procured by sending money and stamps. Her blue energetic eyes flashed, and she continued leaning forwards with the front of her dress sagging, permitting Dapper Dan to get an eyeful.

“Isn't he keen?”

“He's the nuts,” Dapper Dan said, arranging his precisely-tied silver-and-red cravat.

“That bastard hangs around all night, peeping down Sally's dress,” Studs said.

“Still raining. Christ, this weather,” Red said, looking out the door to see the rain bouncing on the sidewalk like silver dollars.

“Say, will that broad come across?” Studs asked, resting his elbow on the radiator.

“Dapper Dan is sure trying hard enough,” Doyle said.

“These young punks around here are worse than O'Neill, and that goof, Young Rocky, who went to New York,” Studs said.

“They call O'Doul the Kodak kid. He hangs around the drug store all winter posing, and he kodaks on the beach in summer time, combing his hair as if he was having his picture taken, and never even getting his feet wet. He's a lulu,” Tommy Doyle said.

“That goddamn rain,” Kelly said.

A customer, hastening in hunched and wet, had to shove to get by the gang because they were choking the doorway.

“Hey, Dapper Dan,” Studs called.

“Studs, it doesn't shave yet,” Red Kelly said, as O'Doul stood before them.

“Listen, O'Doul, does she say you're handsomer than that movie actor whose picture she's got there?” Studs asked; the older guys laughed in O'Doul's face.

Sally heard, and laughed; Dapper Dan blushed. Red cursed the weather. Slug said O'Doul ought to wipe the milk from behind his ears with toilet paper. Studs sidled over to Curley and whispered to him. Curley looked at Studs, blankly.

“Go on!” Studs prodded.

Vinc pouted at Studs. He sulked over by Sally's desk.

“Say, Dan, Studs asked to ask you if you got that topcoat all paid for?”

“Vincent, you're not even as funny as a hearse,” Dapper Dan said; the older guys laughed, and Sally gave them the wink.

“Studs, why did you ask me to ask that when you knew he would get sore, and he's my friend?” Vinc gravely said, causing another barrage of laughter.

“Vincent!” Sally coquetted.

“Hey, Cowboy, Curley's competition for you. Watch your step!” Tommy Doyle said.

“Studs, is Curley becoming a lady-killer?” Fat Malloy asked.

“Vincent, won't you even talk to poor little harmless Sally?” she cooed.

Vincent said he had to ask Malloy an important question. Fat roughly asked what, Vinc said that with everybody all talking all at once he had forgotten it, but if he had a minute to think, he'd remember again. Studs yelled for him to beware of brain-fever.

“All right, Vincent, you'll be sorry some day, if you put Sally on the shelf,” she tantalized.

Studs looked at the time: eight-twenty.

Malloy told Vinc to wake up, the girl was stuck on him. They shoved Vinc towards the desk.

“Vincent, you're perfectly horrid, you always act so high hat, and never even speak to me. Why, you treat me like I was a bug or something.”

“When did I do that? I never said you was a bug.”

“Hey, Fat, tell him to cut it out before we all laugh ourselves into a nut house,” Studs said.

“I don't remember when I said anything like that,” Curley said, twisting himself around the counter.

“Tell him to let it alone,” Studs told Tommy.

“I'll bet if he had let it alone, he wouldn't have so many marbles absent from his brain,” Slug said.

Studs suggested doing something. Slug said they might if the rain would stop. Tommy said they could go down to the poolroom at Fifty-fifth Street. Red said it would be nuts going down there in the rain. They said it was too bad that the Greek had closed up the poolroom.

“Here comes Society Brand, the Clothes Peddler,” Fat Malloy said. Phil Rolfe entered, pulling down an umbrella. His greeting was ingratiating. He remarked that it was raining. Fat told him not to crap them, the sun was shining bright.

“Say, Society Kid, you look like the rage,” sixteen-year-old, skinny Pete Webb said, as Phil unbuttoned his yellow slicker.

“Like the suit, boys?”

“It's the nuts, Phil,” Pat Carrigan said.

“Listen, any time you need one, come down and see me. I'm at Sankey, Hatfield, and Cohen's, on Adams Street. We handle straight Society Brand stuff, give perfect fit, and have a reasonable budget plan. Here's one of my cards.”

“Say, Phil, I was waiting to see you,” Curley said, leaving Sally.

“Hello, Vincent,” Phillip said.

“Want to go to the Michigan tonight?”

“Gee, Vincent, I'm sorry, but I got a date. We'll make it some other night.”

He walked over to Studs, smiling. He ignored the grunted greeting he got, and mentioned that he was selling suits, had some swell buys, and suggested that Studs drop in on him the next time he was needing clothes. Couldn't get a better suit for the price anywhere in town.

“Leave it to the kikes,” Tommy Doyle said, after Rolfe had gone over to the group around Pat Carrigan and Pete Webb.

“They're all the same. I'm your friend, fellow . . . but business first,” Red said.

Studs looked at the clock: eight-twenty-seven.

“Jesus Christ!” he exclaimed, bored.

Slug mentioned seeing the girlies. Tommy said that after the last four nights, he'd had enough for a while. Slug kidded that he must be getting old. Studs said no more for him for a while. Slug kidded that you never could get enough of it.

“Say, I'll be damned, if the Jew isn't selling Curley a suit,” Red said.

Tommy yelled for Vinc not to buy a suit. Phil protested that he wasn't selling anything.

“Oh, say, Davey Cohen's back,” Red said.

“How is he?”

“He hasn't grown hardly an inch since he left, and he looks like hell. I tell you, if he hasn't got the con, I'll eat it on State and Madison at high noon.”

“What'll we do?” Studs asked, observing that it was eight-thirty.

“What do you say, Doyle?” asked Slug.

“How about you, Kelly. Any bright ideas?” asked Tommy.

Slug called Vinc over and asked him if he wanted to go to a can house. It merited some more buffoonery. Phil buttonholed Vine again, and warned him not to let the barbers get his goat. Studs sneered, and moved more closely to them. He overheard Phil telling Curley that a new Sankey, Hatfield, and Cohen society suit would make a man of him, make him attractive to all the girls. Vinc said he'd think about it, and propositioned Phil again about the movies. Phil said he couldn't because he had a date with Fritzie Lonigan. Studs frowned and ambled back with Doyle and the guys by the radiator. Slug said that the punks had caused the poolroom to close, because they'd always hung around, and never spent any jack. Phil got razzed as he left.