Studs Lonigan (8 page)

The priest spoke on, and the boys on the stage grew more restless. Weary Reilley told Jim Clayburn that he wished old Gilly would pipe down, but Jim didn't answer, because Jim knew how to act in public, and anyway he was almost like a boy scout. TB McCarthy told Gunboats Reardon that it was all a lot of hot air, and Reardon nodded as he shifted his weight from the right to the left gunboat. Father Doneggan heard TB, and gave him a couple of dirty looks. Studs wiped the sweat from his face and fidgeted less than the others. He told himself that he wished Gilly would choke his bull and let it die. Gilly spoke of Catholic education, praising the parents who had possessed the courage, the conscience and the faith to give their children a Catholic schooling. He contrasted them with those careless, miserly and irreligious fathers and mothers who dealt so lightly with the souls of the little ones Gawd had entrusted in their care that they sent them to public schools, where the word of Gawd is not uttered from the beginning to the end of the livelong day. Such parents, he warned, were running grave risks, not only of losing the souls of their children but also their own immortal souls. Of such parents, the good priest said:

“Woe! Woe! Woe!”

And many of the boys and girls on the stage were going on in their schooling. To the parents of these boys and girls he felt it his duty to give warning. The shoals would become more dangerous, the rocks larger. If their souls were to navigate successfully on the stormier seas of life, he commended them to the Catholic high schools of Chicago, where the boys would be trained by holy brothers and consecrated priests and the girls by holy nuns. No sacrifice would be too great to see these fine boys and girls continue in Catholic hands. Let not the parents, after such a fine beginning, fall into the class of those about whom he must monotone:

“Woe! Woe! Woe!”

And his verbal thickets grew thicker and thicker with fat polysyllables. They wallowed off his tongue like luxurious jungle growths as he repeated everything he had said.

The Lonigans sat in the rear of the hall. Mrs. Lonigan strained forward in a visible effort to devour every syllable that dropped from the tongue of the noble priest. Patrick Lonigan sat back listening, as comfortable as he could possibly be seated on a camp chair in a hot and crowded hall. Once or twice he yawned, and his wife nudged him. He mopped the perspiration from his brow. At Mama's side the two youngest darlings laughed, squirmed and childishly muttered, much to her annoyance. She nudged Papa, who was just falling into a drowse, and said that William and Frances took the show away from the others; why there wasn't a girl who looked as pretty, or who had acted as well as Frances; and William was a pretty handsome boy, too.

“Uh huh!” the old man said.

“And we don't owe a penny on their education,” she said.

“Uh huh!” he grunted.

They listened, and their pastor's words made them feel that they had participated in a great work, that they had done the Will of the Great Man Who sat on the Heavenly throne.

She strained forward again to listen attentively while the priest explained that it would be a shame if St. Patrick's could not dedicate, from among this class on the stage, a few lives to the service of God. Now was the time for the graduates to consider whether or not they had the call, for the mothers and fathers to encourage their children who might have the call, to resolve that they would put all aside and prepare for the consecrated work of the priest and the holy work of the nun. As Mrs. Lonigan listened, a dream of hope lit ecstasy on her thin face. At this moment Loretta said something to Martin, and the two children giggled. Mrs. Lonigan, severely angry, pinched Fritzie and warned her to be quiet. She told Loretta that she acted as if she had not been brought up in a good home and taught politeness and manners. She told Loretta to have respect for the priest and the people listening to him, and she made more disturbance than her daughter.

Facing the graduates, the priest gravely said:

“And now comes the painful duty, my dear young friends, of bidding you . . . farewell. It is a duty which I would gladly shirk, if shirk it I could. But . . .
Tempus fugit!
Time flies! Time is sometimes like a thief in the night, or like some lonely bird that comes to the banquet hall of this earth where man is feasting; it comes from a black unknown, flies through while man eats, and is gone out in the black night; and I may add, my dear young friends, the black night is black indeed, unless one has abided by the will of Gawd. Friends, it would be my fondest wish to keep you here with us at St. Patrick's, studying, serving the Lord, playing your happy innocent games of childhood out there in our large playground; but . . .

“Tempus fugit!
For alas . . . . . . . . . Time flies!

“Tonight you put aside the joys of childhood to become young men and young women. And just as we, who are older, now recollect the joys and happiness of childhood, so will you one day remember your golden days with us here at St. Patrick's. They will be memories of gold and silver, memories richer than all the treasures of this world. And, my dear young friends, I want you always to remember that, no matter what you may become, no matter if you are rich or poor, famous, as I sincerely trust some of you will be, or just one of the poor, honest workers in the Master's Vineyard, we at St. Patrick's will always remember you as friends, we will always remember the banner class of 1916.”

“Vinc, listen to this!” said Three-Star Hennessey.

Vinc listened.

Three-Star made lip-noises.

The others almost strangled themselves checking guffaws. Davey held his nose and whispered to the guys that it was Vinc.

“Ugh!” he muttered.

People near them looked askance.

The guys all told Vinc that he should be ashamed of himself.

“It was him! It was Three-Star, Dave. I didn't do it. I didn't. Hones'! Hones'! Hones'! I didn't. I tell you I didn't. I'll take an oath. Cross my die and hope to heart, I mean, I'll cross my heart and hope to die if I did it. I'm tellin' you that I didn't. Hones'!” pleaded Vinc with pained sincerity.

Three-Star told Vinc to tie his bull to another ash can.

“Why, Three-Star!” Vinc said, shocked.

Someone in the audience told them to shut up.

“Didn't your old lady teach you any better manners?” said Paulie.

“She's better'n' your old lady,” said Vinc aloud, but his remark didn't carry up to the stage. People turned, annoyed.

“Yeah!” whispered Paulie to Vinc.

Vinc was open-mouthed and hurt; hurt that he should be treated so unjustly.

“Alas, my dear young friends, you must move down the hard and stony paths of life. And at times, it will be a difficult road. It might be a long and lonely journey, unless you take, Gawd forbid, that false path which the grreat and Catholic-minded William Shakespeare described as the primrose path to the everlasting bonfire;
the primrose path to the everlasting bonfire
sown with the flowers and fruits of the Devil, bounded by beautiful rose bushes behind which hide old Nick and his fallen angels; the foxy, the sly and foxy hordes of hell. You must beware of old Nick, and you must not allow him to snare your souls. Old Nick, the Devil, is tricky, full of the blarney, as they say in the old country. He is like the fox, tricky, cunning, clever. He will always make false promises to you; he will seek to deceive you with all the pomp and gold and glory of this world. He is a master of artifice, and he will pay your price in this . . . if you will pay his price in the next world;
if you pay his price in the next world
, where hell hisses and yawns, and the damned suffer as no earthly being can or has suffered. False friendships, fame, riches, power, success, all will be strewn at your feet by old Nick, if only you sell your soul, like Mephistopheles
. . . if only you deny our Lord, Jesus Christ.”

From the second row, center, Mr. and Mrs. Reilley listened to the priest. She was a reddish woman, generously supplied with flesh and bust. He looked like a conventional cartoon of a henpecked husband.

“Sure, isn't he the walkin' saint of God? And isn't he the saint?” she said.

Reilley nodded his head from a long-standing habit of acquiescence.

“And isn't he the grand scholar?”

Reilley nodded.

“And maybe the lad will take all of what he says to heart.”

Reilley nodded.

“And maybe he'll not run around like he does.”

“I hope so,” Reilley muttered.

“And sure, doesn't the lad and the lass take the cake up there on the stage?”

“Uh huh!” from Reilley.

The priest described the glee of the Devil when he, Lucifer, snares a young and innocent soul; and the boy Studs Lonigan on the stage had an imaginative picture of Satan in a tight-fitting red-horned outfit, like the creature on a Pluto water bottle, hopping out from behind a bush, clutching the soul of a young guy or a girl from the stony road of life and dragging it away as he smiled, showing all his teeth just like Deadwood Dick in the newspaper cartoons. Father Gilhooley told how cunning Satan took the Master up to the mountain tops of the world and offered him all the pleasures and riches of this life, if He deny His Father, and Jesus resisted, saying, Get thee behind me, Satan, for He must be about His Father's work. The priest said that Satan must have, symbolically, taken the German Kaiser to the mountain tops and offered him the world and Kaiser Bill must have accepted, and that was probably why we had the terrible war devastating Europe. Yes, they must beware of old Nick, and they must persevere in the ways of the Master, who died that agonizing death on that terrible cross to redeem mankind. They must always remember that Christ died for them, and they must never put a thorn in His side by sinning. And they must not forget the advice and example, the teachings of the good sisters. They must say their prayers morning and evening and whenever they were heavily beset with temptations, they must keep the commandments of God and of Holy Mother Church, receive the sacraments regularly, never willfully miss mass, avoid bad companions and all occasions of sin, publicly defend the Church from all enemies and contribute to the support of their pastor. If they did these things, and if they dedicated their lives to God's Holy Mother, and to the good and great patron saint of their parish who had driven the snakes out of Ireland, converting it to the true faith so that it had become the Isle of Saints and Scholars, they would all be among the sheep and not the goats on that grand and final day of judgment, when the God of Love would become the God of Justice. Wishing that they would all go forth to lead holy and happy lives, he gave them one final word of warning. On this very night of their graduation, when they and their parents were so proud, so happy, so righteously gratified, there was many a work-worn father and many a gray-haired mother sitting by the lamplit parlor window, waiting and praying for the return of that prodigal son, that erring daughter, who would, alas . . . never return. He prayed Gawd forbid any graduates of St. Patrick's to cause gray hairs to a father or a mother. Gawd wished that the fourth, above almost all other commandments, be kept . . .
Honor thy father and thy mother; that thy days may be long upon the land which the Lord thy Gawd giveth thee.

He blessed them, and the ceremonies were closed.

The graduating class shuffled off the stage into the side room on the left. The boys gathered around wrinkled Sister Bertha; the girls giggled about smiling, youngish Sister Bernadette Marie.

Studs stood off by himself, wanting to join the guys and say goodbye to Battleaxe Bertha. He found himself suddenly sad because he wanted to stay in the eighth grade another year and have more fun. He told himself that Bertha was a pretty good sport, all things considered; and anyway, she hadn't treated him so rotten like she had TB McCarthy, or Reardon, whose old man was only a working man and couldn't afford to pay any tuition. Yes, she was a good sport at that. He wanted to go up to her and say goodbye, and say that he felt her to be a pretty good sport at that, but he couldn't, because there was some goofy part of himself telling himself that he couldn't. He couldn't let himself get soft about anything, because, well, just because he wasn't the kind of a bird that got soft. He never let anyone know how he felt. He told himself that anyway he'd join the guys and say goodbye to her. He made several starts to approach the guys, but didn't go up. He stood watching, hoping that someone would recognize him and call him up. But he felt that he didn't belong there. There was Frances, near Bernadette, and there was Lucy Scanlan; but they didn't see him. His old not-belonging feeling had gotten hold of him. He eased out of the door. It was just as well, because he wanted to slip around to the can and have a smoke before he joined the folks out in front to be told he looked so swell and all that boushwah. Inside the damp boys' lavatory on the Indiana Avenue side of the building, he leaned against a sink and puffed away, absorbed in the ascending strands of smoke. He wondered if it was really a sin to smoke, and told himself that was all bunk.

He puffed and looked about the dark and lonely place. He could hear himself breathing, and his heart beating away, and the queerness of the place seemed to put strange figures in him, and the strange figures just walked right out of his head and moved about the place, leering at him like red-dressed Satan. He felt like he used to feel when he was a young kid, and he would have nightmares, and strange boys, like demons, and as big as his father, would come and lean over his bed, and he would get up and run screaming into the dining room, where he would tear around and around the table until his old man came and shagged them away. Hell, he wasn't afraid of spooks any more, and all this talk of spirits was a lot of hokum. It was just that he felt a little queer about something. He puffed nervously, and watched the way the rays of moonlight fell into the room and dropped over the damp floor like they were sick things.