Studs Lonigan (70 page)

“So long.”

Davey hung around, a bit chilled, waiting to see if anybody else would come. He hated to go home. He thought how swell it would be if a broad came along, and he met her, and they went to her room, and she warmed him, and ummmmm, Jesus Christ! He wanted a lot of things. Poor sick Jew! He wished the guys would come. They didn't. He tramped disappointedly home.

AT THE
supper table early in 1927, Mrs. Lonigan sighed that she was glad because soon it would be time for Father Shannon, the missionary, to be coming back to the parish to conduct the first mission in the new church. And she was anxious to hear what he would say about it, and how surprised he would be, and pleased to be conducting a mission in such a magnificent house of worship. Lonigan reflected aloud that Father Shannon was as brilliant and as educated as any Jesuit.

“SURE, Father Shannon is regular. He won't jump three feet every time he hears a hell, and he doesn't try to scare people into loading their pants with any hell-fire and damnation sermons. He talks man-to-man, using psychology,” Kelly said.

“I like Father Shannon,” Les said, while Red frowned at some passing niggers.

“He seems to be working wonders with you hoodlums,” Red said.

“Us hoodlums! What about yourself?” Doyle retaliated.

“I sure like him,” Les said.

“He's certainly different from Gilly. He knows human nature. And he doesn't always harp for money. Still he gets it,” Tommy said.

“The way Gilly harps on the dough, you'd think no one ever gave a cent. Like a couple of weeks ago, when he told people they should quit putting pennies and nickels in the collection box,” Studs said.

“Of course, he has to, with the debt on the new church, and so many well-to-do parishioners moving out of the parish before it's up hardly more than a year,” Kelly said.

“Hear Ye! Hear Ye! Hear Ye!” burlesqued Barney Keefe; they certified that he was sober by smelling his breath.

“Coming to the mission, Chu Chu?” Studs asked.

“Yes, but not with you hoodlums. The mission is for sinners and louses like you. guys, not me. I'm holy,” Barney said; Red frowned as two more niggers passed the corner.

“Listen to the bastard talk, when his war cry has always been: ‘Let's get a bottle'.” Red laughed.

“One of these days, I'm going to sue all you heels for defamation of character and slander,” Barney said.

“Tell me, Barney! Is that the right spirit to have when you're making the mission?” asked Red.

“Get away from me. Woe! Woe! Woe! You're all the occasion of sin,” Barney said.

“Seems to me you guys ought to be more serious,” Stan Simonsky said.

“Of course, Stan, we're all Catholics here. If there were outsiders around, we'd talk different,” Red said.

“Talking of people needing the mission, though, now this bastard Lonigan doesn't need it at all. Not after the way he went for that blond at the Rex last week,” Doyle said.

“How about Les here? Drink isn't his temptation. He's a temptation to gin,” Studs beamed.

“But, fellows, Father Shannon is showing us what's what,” Les said.

“I know. I wish I was as smart as he is,” Doyle said.

“Remember Tuesday night, when he was talking about atheists, and said the Bible says that any man who says there is no God is a fool. And then he said that if anyone says there is no God, let him just go outside and look at the moon, and after looking at it, try to say that the moon made itself. Listen, if some of those atheists over around the Bug Club heard that, they would have squirmed in their seats, and if they aren't already too vain about their puny human knowledge, they'd come to their senses, and quit thinking that they were too good for the human race,” Red said.

“Between us and that fireplug, I'll bet, too, that when he was young, he was no sissy,” Stan said.

“Sure, he knows the ways of the world. He had his wild oats, I'll bet. That's why he knows so much about human nature,” Red said.

“Oh, hello, Hink,” Studs said.

“I just heard you guys talking about that priest. Sure he has his good times. All priests do.”

“Say, Hink, I was hoping you'd be around. I wanted to ask you to come along with us to the mission tonight. Father Shannon is different from any one you ever heard speak, a brilliant, educated man, and he'll make you understand the Catholic philosophy,” Red said.

“What do I care about the Catholics' side of it?”

“You wouldn't be so radical, then, about our religion,” Red said.

“I'm not interested,” Hink said snottily.

“Honest, Hink, he's the real stuff,” Tommy said.

Hink walked away from them.

“There's something queer about Hink. He's not like he used to be,” Studs said, and he offered one more of his many repetitions of the experience that he and Davey had had with Hink the previous autumn.

“And, Christ, nearly every night he's rolling all over the street drunk,” Stan said.

“Hink is a white fellow. But there's something wrong with him. I think it's in the family. His brother Slew is in the sanitarium now. Remember how he always looked first for the suicides in the paper, and remember how he would chase sixteen-year-old girls, and hang around the Bug Club, talk like they did over there, sit around the park all day stripped to the waist taking sun-baths. I tell you I think a brain disease like paranoia runs in their family. It's too bad,” Red said.

“What the hell's that?” asked Barney.

“It's a brain disease that unbalances you, so that you won't associate with people, don't care about them or even yourself, think you're too good for the human race, and talk about people like Hink does about priests and the Catholic Church,” Red said, causing doleful shaking of heads.

“Say, Slug, come on to church with us tonight. You don't want to miss it,” Studs said, as Slug shambled up to them.

“You guys must want the pillars of the church to crumble,” Barney said.

“Tonight, Slug, the sermon is going to be about guys who get nooky,” said Doyle.

“I don't want to hear about it. I just like to get it. And I know all about how to get it,” Slug said, with his Polack pronunciation.

“Come on, Slug!” Studs persuaded.

“Hell, I'd do everything the wrong way in church, and then when the priest was talking, I'd maybe fall asleep, and start snoring, and get thrun out of church on my tail,” Slug said.

“You won't fall asleep when Father Shannon talks,” Red said.

“Not me. Say, I wish it was over. I ain't had anybody to get a bottle with me all week,” Slug said.

“Don't tempt us this week, Slug,” said Doyle.

“Listen, you bastards, if you're making the mission, it means you should get there on time for the rosary that's said before the sermon. What are you trying to do, miss the rosary? Come on!” Barney said.

Slug nodded, watching them depart.

“Another black skunk,” Red said, pointing to a young Negro ahead of them.

“Boy, they've been coming into the neighborhood fast, and so soon after the new church was built,” Stan said.

“I see some at the mission every night,” Studs said.

“They're ruining the neighborhood. That's why Jim and I have been trying to convince the old lady to sell the building before it's too late. Property values are going to pot here. You can tell it, when there's a saloon on Fifty-eighth Street, and beer flats all around, and flats and buildings being made into rooming-houses. And down on Garfield Boulevard the other night, why a hustler even tried to pick me up,” Tommy lamented.

“If we had a pastor like Father Shannon, instead of Gilly, that mightn't have happened. He wouldn't be the kind to build a beautiful new church, and then let his parish go to the dogs. He'd have seen to it that the good parishioners stayed, and that the niggers were kept out. He'd have organized things like vigilance committees to prevent it,” Red said.

“That's what my old man has been saying,” Studs said.

“It was the Jews who did it. And he would have settled those profiteering shonnickers. It's a lousy thing, if you ask me, Jews ruining a neighborhood just to make money like Judas did. It's all greed all over again, the greed of the Jews,” Kelly said.

“Why don't the Jews all go back to Jerusalem where they belong?” Tommy said.

“And why don't you Irish go back and sleep with the pigs in the old country,” Barney said.

“Chu Chu, you can't be serious for a minute,” Stan said to Keefe.

“Speaking seriously, something will have to be done pretty quick if the neighborhood is going to be saved,” Red said.

“It's too late now,” said Tommy.

“What I want to know is this: Will the mission convert Doyle to work?” said Barney.

“No danger,” said Les.

“He worked all summer warming his fanny in the boathouse,” Red said.

“And don't think I didn't put in long hours,” Tommy boasted.

“Say, fellows, I got a letter from Shrimp,” said Red.

“That tb rat,” Barney said.

“He's a good fellow,” Tommy said.

“Yeah, a snake in the grass. I had a job as sewer-pipe layer all fixed up a couple of years ago. And that louse queered it thinking he could get it. It was muscling in, and I lost it, and he just queered both of us,” Barney said.

They laughed, and Red said anyway, Shrimp didn't like the navy at all.

“I hope he falls overboard into the mouth of a shark,” Barney said.

“Say, by the way, did all you guys know that Rolfe has been converted, and is making his first communion Sunday?” Stan said.

“That's the dope,” Studs said.

“It was your sister, Studs, who did it,” Red said.

“I suspect that guy. Him being a Catholic is too much for me. He's full of so much B.S. that I doubt how much he means it,” Tommy said.

“If he gets your sister, Studs, he's getting a damn fine, decent girl. My opinion is that she's much too good for him,” Red said.

“All right, you guys, step on it! You're going to church, not to an employment agency. You're too late for the rosary now, anyway,” Barney said.

St. Patrick's church was packed, and hushed. Father Shannon, a plump, bald-headed priest, emerged from the sacristy door on the right, pushed the back of his right hand to his mouth as he emitted a half-cough, genuflected, facing the altar, and proceeded to climb into the marble pulpit. He laid his beret beside him and faced the audience of young people, his soft, mushy, almost womanly face, half-distinct. He stretched his arms, and smoothed down his cassock. His bald head shone as it was caught in candle flickers. He emitted another cracked cough. In a quiet and confident voice, he said, while blessing himself: