Studs Lonigan (76 page)

“The jiggs drove us over here,” said Tommy.

“How's everything been going?” Studs asked.

“Oh, so-so. You heard about my cousin, Les?” asked Tommy.

“Why no, what happened?”

“He's in a sanitarium.”

“How come?” asked Studs surprised.

“Oh, drink. His heart is on the kibosh from that bum gin he's been guzzling,” said Tommy.

“Jesus, I'm sorry to hear it. Is it serious?”

“It almost was, but I guess he'll be all right.”

“Les ain't drank his last yet, thank God,” interjected Joe Moonan, the dick.

“But Shrimp is in a bad way,” said Tommy.

“Yeah? Where's he at?”

“He was dishonorably discharged from the Navy and he's down in Fort Wayne. That's where he comes from, you know. Yeah, he's dying by inches,” said Tommy.

“It's too bad. What's up with him?”

“Con. I guess he got it from too much carousing around.”

“Jesus, first Paulie, and then Shrimp.”

“How you feelin', Studs?”

“Pretty good,” said Studs, wishing he wasn't worried about his health.

“You're looking good,” Tommy said, although it was too dark to see how Studs was looking.

“Slug been around much?” asked Studs.

“Sure. He's always around. He'll be here tonight.”

“I'd like to see him.”

“You heard about Hink, didn't you?”

“No?”

“They put him in the nut house.”

“Jesus, I'm sorry to hear that. Christ, that's too bad. He was kind of queer, though. I remember seeing him several times when he didn't act like he was all there. But say, Joe, how are you these days?” Studs said.

“Oh, I'm all right. Since Thompson got elected again, I feel better, because that goddamn Dever wanted the force to be honest,” Joe said.

“He made the boys work for their dough,” kidded Tommy.

“Wait till your brother Jim gets on the force, Tommy. He'll work. They'll make a flatfoot out of him goddamn quick.”

“When you getting yourself a jane, Lonigan?” asked Moonan.

“Hell with that crap,” Studs said.

“Come to think of it, Studs, you never ran around much with girls,” Tommy said.

“Jim's getting up in the world, huh?” said Studs.

“Yeah. He'll be on the force in a month,” Tommy said.

“Seen any of the other boys?”

“Red. He's still around. He's out with his jane tonight. He's been going around with her more than he used to. I think he's already put the ring on her finger since he's got to be a bailiff in Dinny Gorman's Court,” Tommy said.

“That stuff's crap,” Studs said.

Tommy said also that Davey Cohen had just come out of the county hospital and he looked bad; lungs.

Slug came around. He and Studs greeted each other.

“Say, listen boys, it's getting late, and this ain't no place to be hangin' around all night. What you say we go to Cooley's saloon, huh?”

“Sounds like an idea,” said Tommy.

“Gee, things are changed,” Studs said, getting into the cab.

“Yeah, the old neighborhood is shot.”

“The boys are all getting separated.”

“You know, I was thinking, it might be a good idea to get all the boys together, and have a blowout party, say, New Year's Eve. Red's been thinking about it, and he's willing to make the arrangements and collect from the boys,” Tommy said.

“Count me in on it,” said Studs.

“How you like the car? My mother finally put out and bought it.”

“Pretty nice.”

“The Doyle Cab service,” Moonan said.

“Well, I'll tell Red to call you up,” said Tommy as they drove to Cooley's saloon.

Studs got the blues from gin. He suddenly left the boys. He staggered back to the park, and over onto the wooded island. He looked for the tree where he and Lucy had sat on that afternoon so long ago. He couldn't find it. He staggered about frantically, and finally got out of the park at Cottage Grove. He fell asleep on the car and rode out to South Chicago. He didn't get home until three o'clock. He felt lousy.

LES'S
old man, and his sister, Mrs. Doyle, went to the midnight show at the Prairie Theater on New Year's Eve. He was a wizened man, with a bloodless, wrinkled face, humped shoulders, and quivering hands. She was a full-bodied woman, who breathed in gasps when she did much walking.

A VOICE within Studs, that wasn't his voice, and that perhaps maybe might have been the voice of conscience, said reiteratively, as if in a hoarse accusing tone:

You're nothing but a slob. You're getting to be a great big fat slob. Nothing on the ball any more. Slob! Slob! Fat slob! Double slob!

“I'm drunk. Happy New Year. Whooops!” Studs yelled loudly: he staggered backwards and forwards with the utterance of each syllable.

Slob! Slob! Double Slob!

He looked at the street. It seemed familiar. What was the name?

The voice said:

You don't know your fanny from a hole in the ground!

He ran to escape that voice that kept hammering at him, in his heavy, heavy, twirling head. He ran, thinking he was running straight, and with form. He halted after about a hundred yards and thought that he'd run a block.

He knew the street as well as he knew his name. His name was Lonigan, the great Studs Lonigan.

Slob Lonigan! that voice said.

He stared bleary-eyed up and down the street. There was a light mist, and the street lamps seemed lopsided.

An automobile passed. Studs eyed it intently.

“Hey, where's . . . fire?”

He looked at three-story buildings. They seemed like he knew them and had seen them before. Where, oh, where is my wandering street tonight? Where, oh, where can it be?

The street rolled under him like a ship in a storm. His head spun like a top that was in perpetual motion. The street went up, whoops, and slow, slowly, evenly, it went down, whoops, just like a see-saw.

He shoved his hat on the back of his head.

He stared across the street, and it went up, whoops, and it went down, whoops, and the building came towards him, whoops, like a railroad engine coming forwards on a screen, growing nearer and nearer. Whoops! The building stopped. That was funny.

You're drunk, you clown, drunk as a lord.

He walked, like a paralytic, head down, his body loose, his nervous control deadened. He raised his feet high, as if in a caricature of Germans in a movie comedy doing the goose-step. He halted, threw out his chest, tossed back his head, and almost fell over backwards. His hat slipped to the sidewalk. He turned around in a circle, wondering where, oh, where was his wandering hat tonight.

He saw the hat lying as big as a balloon on the sidewalk. He pulled out a stick that had somehow and somewhere been stuck in his overcoat pocket, and held it over the hat as if it were a fishing pole. He jerked with both hands, like a man dragging in a huge fish, and he tottered backwards for about three yards before he gained a precarious balance. He looked at the end of the stick. No fishee, no hattee! Whoops!

He laughed, and tossed the stick away. He snuck up on his hat, tiptoe, shshing his right index finger to his lips. He circled, continuing to shssh his finger to his lips. He quietly snuck three feet from the hat. He dove for it, clumsily, like a green football player falling on the ball. He lay on the sidewalk. It was cold. Struggling, and by degrees, he achieved his feet again.

Slob Lonigan! Slob Lonigan! You're no goddamn good any more. Got an alderman. Alderman on your gut, and couldn't even get yourself a decent girl. Slob! Slob! Double Slob!

“Who's a slob?” he shouted.

You're a slob, the voice said.

He hauled off on the air, and went for a head-first dive in the hard, cold dirt by the walk. He lay there and looked at the world go around. The buildings spun about as if on a swiftly propelled merry-go-round. An automobile coming along went uphill and then downhill. Whoops! He arose, and ran around in circles in the middle of the street, trying to catch the buildings.

A taxi came skidding along. It stopped.

“You goddamn fool, get off the road!”

Studs uttered some inarticulate sound which seemed like uuuuhhhh.

The driver jumped out, and asked what did he say. Studs cursed him. The taxi driver pushed Studs back over the curb, and drove away. Studs fought to his feet, and rushed in the middle of the street, yelling after the vanished taxi.

Studs staggered, and draped his arms tightly around a lamppost. He vomited.

“I'm sick. I want Lucy. I love Lucy. I want Lucy. I want Lucy,” he cried aloud, a large tear splattered on his cheek. The vomiting caused a violent contraction and pressure, as if a hammer were in his head.

“I'm sick! Lucy, please love Studs!” he cried.

A light flurry of snow commenced. Studs tenderly kissed the cold lamppost, which suddenly seemed to be Lucy.

“I always loved you, Lucy!”

Tears rolled down his drunken, dirty face.

Weary Reilley went to the Bourbon Palace to get a pickup to take to the party the old boys from Fifty-eighth Street were throwing. There was a huge crowd at the dance hall. He moved about, and danced with several girls. One of them wouldn't sock it in. Another couldn't dance well enough to please him. A third laughed as if she were an idiot. The fourth girl was pretty in a chubby way with brown eyes and a quiet manner. He guessed, though, that here was a case of still waters running deep. She was his meat. She weighed about a hundred and twenty-five pounds, nice figure, got a guy hot just looking at her, straight, small hard breasts, nice legs, meat on them and on the thighs. Just his speed! He danced three successive times with her, and she seemed to like him. At first she drew back when he got her in the corners, but then she laid it right up to him, and they socked it in plenty. That made him sure that she was what he wanted. She had everything. He was going to give it to her like she'd never gotten it before. Dancing with her, he thought of what he would do to her, direct, crude images of brutalized sex.

“You're a pretty good dancer,” she said.

“You're keen too,” he said, working against her. “Shake that thing,” he added.

“That's not . . . nice,” she said, blushing as her eyes dropped.

“Come on, sister!” he said, aggressively.

She smiled, and let herself go against him.

“Do you come up here often?” she asked, hanging on his arm, and walking off the floor at the conclusion of the dance.

“I haven't got time for it,” he said.

“Umm. Swell people. I suppose you go to the South Shore Country Club.”

“No. There's too many pigs, and no-do's around here.”

“Am I to take that as a compliment?”

“You're the real stuff, girlie.”

“You'd be surprised.”

“Meaning which?” he said, looking unflinchingly into her dark eyes.

“Maybe I'm not.”

“I can take care of that.”

“You're not confident, are you?”

“I pick my women, baby.”

“Just like that! You're not what they call an . . . egotistical.”

“Listen, want to go to a party?”

“Oh, I couldn't.”

“How come?”

“Why, I don't even know you.”

“Come on, never mind that. This damn joint is too crowded. There's too many no-do's here. Come on, baby, and can the stalling. You don't want to be wasting your time with these imitation Valentinos up here.”

“But what will my girl friend say?”