Studs Lonigan (85 page)

“Could I get it at twelve and a half a share?” Studs asked.

“No. That's only on our employee stock-purchasing plan. But Studs, it's cheap at twenty-five a share.”

“I'd like to know more about it,” Studs said.

“No. Me, I'm working for Imbray.”

“What did you do, sneak into Solomon Imbray's office and read his private mail?” Pat asked.

“Well, listen, fellows, this is straight. If you buy Imbray stocks you're going to make dough.”

“I don't know nothing about that and I ain't got any dough to be forking over anyway,” Pat said.

“How come, Dugan?” Studs asked, leaning forward in his seat.

“Well, fellahs, old man Solomon Imbray has got a head on his shoulders. He's a smart man,” Ike said.

“He ought to be. With all the dough he's made,” Studs said.

“You're damn right he's smart. If you coast along with him, you're coasting along with a guy who's got a head on his shoulders. I know. I work for one of the Imbray companies, and I'm getting fifty bucks a week.”

“That's good dough these days,” Pat said.

“And you want to know what I'm doing? I'm sinking twenty of it in stock. We got a stock plan. They're floating a new issue called Imbray Securities at twenty-five bucks a share. Employees, we pay half for a share and the company gives us the other half. That means I'm picking up almost a share and a half a week. And when it's a company backed by Solomon Imbray, it's safe.”

“Got any oil wells for sale, Ike?” Pat asked.

“This is the first sign I've seen of the depression that's encouraging,” Studs said.

“How come?” asked Ike.

“No lineup outside the ticket window,” Studs smiled.

“A couple of years ago, there'd have been a line a block long waiting to get in,” Pat said as they purchased their tickets.

“Nice-looking place,” Studs said, walking along the glittering foyer.

“Sure, these shows are swell dumps. Fit for a palace. Look at those draperies. They cost dough. Dough!” Ike said.

“Seats on the main floor. Aisle two. This way, please,” a shiny, powdered attendant, in a maroon and gray uniform with many brass buttons, braided gold, and a long coat, announced formally.

“Jesus, that's a job for a pansy to have. Dressed up in a monkey suit like that,” Studs said.

“Ike, you'd look the nuts with an usher's monkey suit on.”

“The broads would give you the eye, too, Ike. They'd call you General Dugan,” Studs said.

“I don't need that job.”

“Sure, Ike's going to be a big shot out of the commissions he makes, selling shares of stock in the Jackson Park golf course,” Pat said.

“Boy, anybody in that outfit standing there and speaking his funny little piece, must feel like a clown if he isn't a damn pansy.”

“Studs, a lot of the ushers in these shows went to college,” Ike said.

“They look it,” Pat said.

“Hell, I hate news reels,” Pat whispered to Studs as an usher preceded them quickly along an aisle on the main floor, past many vacant seats.

The usher halted near the center, turned his flashlight on a row of unfilled seats, and they moved in to the middle of the rows.

“I hope we see something exciting in these damn news reels,” Ike whispered.

“The thing I like best about news reels is that they're short,” Studs whispered.

“Out on the coast these days, business clubs and fraternal organizations are doing some novel fighting against the bogey of Old Man Depression. And is it fun, boys! I'll say it is!”

 

As the announcer spoke, the camera flashed a view of business men shouting jubilantly as they pelted each other with eggs like a crowd of school boys in a snow fight. The next shot presented the sight of huge piles of eggs guarded by shapely girls in bathing suits who filled baskets and knapsacks with eggs for ammunition. A blonde girl splattered an egg against the back of a departing warrior.

“Hot stuff,” Pat whispered to Studs, while many in the theater laughed.

“Boy, that would be great fun,” Ike whispered.

The laughter in the theater increased at the sight of a wobbling fat man, surrounded by enemies who subjected him to a merciless fire of eggs, spluttering and staining his white clothing.

 

“That's a shampoo, what's a shampoo,” the announcer called with formalized enthusiasm as a detachment closed in on the fat man and broke his own basket of eggs over his head.

 

In a close-up, the fat man bawled like a baby, his hair matted, egg shells clinging to his face, his double chins dripping egg yolks.

 

“And watch this charge of the light brigade!” the announcer called as a crowd swept over the field of stricken eggs into the maw of a heavy fire. “We can't say that's not fun, and all in a novel manner which reduces the surplus of eggs, making it profitable for those who sell them. A new way of scrambling eggs, if you ask me.”

Studs leaned forward, laughing. Wished he was in a fight like that.

“Uncle Sam's latest bombers take to the clouds in a trial test of speed and endurance.”

 

With purring motors, a winged formation of heavy bombing planes streaked evenly across low plains that were cut by a river. A closer shot revealed one plane riding against a background of clouds, and then the formation rode steadily above the Pacific Ocean.

 

“A comforting reception committee for unwanted guests at our coast line. The pick of the Navy's air fleet, Uncle Sam's latest bid for supremacy of the skies.”

“And now, here is a serious battle . . .”

 

Grim-faced men in working clothes and overalls with an interspersing of women in their ranks marched slowly along a high fence surrounding a factory in a mid-western town, watched by special deputies who stood at regularly-spaced intervals with clubs and truncheons ready. Above the geometrically patterned factory windows, two chimneys smoked.

 

“When non-striking workers attempted to relieve the day shift at this factory, they were attacked by strikers. And look at this for a sample of some real serious rioting,” the announcer called in the same tone as if he were describing a heroic hundred-yard run on a college gridiron, and simultaneously with his words the screen presented men struggling and grappling, tugging, wrestling, raising a cloud of dust, and howling and cursing as they fought, groups coming together amidst flying bricks and swinging clubs, policemen breaking groups apart, shagging overalled men from the factory gates with raised clubs. A fleeing man in overalls was clubbed by a policeman, and as he fell groggily forward, a special deputy smashed him on the shoulder with a truncheon. He lay face forward in the center of the picture, blood oozing from his head, and the struggling crowd surged over his body.

Guarded by policemen with drawn guns, a sick-faced, injured, bleeding group of strikers sat dazed in the dusty street, and one full-faced policeman turned to smile into the camera.

 

“Poor bastards,” Pat mumbled.

 

“This unfortunate riot resulted in the injury of scores. Two strikers and one deputy were taken to a local hospital in a critical condition with their skulls fractured. Not the best form of sport, I'd say, and it is to be regretted that such altercations occur and to be hoped that they are not repeated.”

“And now, did anyone ever hear of a joyful funeral?”

 

A hearse drove slowly forward along the cartracks of a decorated and crowded street, its side strung with a large banner.

A band playing the wedding march from
Lohengrin
trailed in the wake of the hearse, followed by a large and flowery float with flower girls throwing roses to the crowd, and a stately virginal girl in white seated on a bedecked throne.

“Swell-looking dame,” Studs whispered as boy scouts tramped behind an American flag.

A column of the local American Legion, with guns and steel helmets, marched in formation and then, at the head of a band of children, a dimpled girl of five or six carried a large sign.

“Is that a happy funeral? Well, I'll tell the cockeyed world that it is. If all funeral processions were as gay, oh, death, where would thy sting be?”

“And now, travelling to sunny Italy, the land of the olive and Il Duce, we see Italian Boy Scouts in war maneuvers.”

 

A band of black-shirted boys of twelve and thirteen, wearing shorts and carrying wooden rifles like soldiers, marched along a road singing the Fascist anthem,
Giovinezza.
The scene quickly changed, and the boys were shown charging through a weedy field toward enemy trenches.

 

“And now for the reward, parading before Il Duce himself.”

 

Mussolini, in military uniform, stood stern-faced on a reviewing stand, returning a stiff Fascist salute to the boys marching in ranks below him.

 

“Bravo, says Il Duce, because he knows that they will some day grow up disciplined to fight and die for him and for Italy.”

 

A hiss sounded from the rear of the main floor, and Studs wondered what the damn fool was hissing for. Mussolini couldn't hear it.

“Girls and more girls and more girls from all over America and from six foreign countries entered this Beauty Contest in New York to determine the most perfect girl in the Universe. And Oh! Oh! is there pulchritude here!”

 

“Oh, mama!” Ike muttered at the view of girls in bathing suits marching slowly around an arc-lighted platform, with strips of lettered ribbon slanting across their chests.

“Control yourself, simp,” Pat said.

 

“And here's Miss Estelle Cavendish, the winner.”

 

A close shot revealed Miss Estelle Cavendish, dark-haired, seductive, her grayish bathing suit bringing out her brassiered breasts and her figure.

“She'd pass in a crowd,” Studs whispered, he and Pat smiling.

 

“I consider it a great honor to be the winner of this contest to determine the most perfect girl in the universe, and I am very proud . . . and I'm glad,” Miss Estelle Cavendish said from the screen in a cooing voice, a coy smile revealing her even white teeth.

“Thank you, Estelle, and so are we,” said the announcer.

“There may be wars or rumors of wars, depressions and troubles and heartaches in other parts of the world, but sunny peaceful old Spain is still the same. For centuries, these Spanish peasants have celebrated their annual winter fete.”

 

Spanish peasants, in local costumes, danced folk dances on a narrow, cobble-stoned street, accompanied by the sound recordings of their songs and music.

 

“And look at this gay caballero twanging his guitar to his fair Juliet. H'm, wouldn't plenty of our American sheiks be jealous,” the announcer said while a mustached young Spanish peasant played his guitar in the shadow of the balcony.

“Romance lives in old Spain.”

 

“I'd like to be there,” Studs said.

“Me, too. Spanish broads are hot,” Pat added.

“And a new world's champion is crowned. Oscar Albert McGonigle wins peanut race for a five-hundred-dollar prize”

 

Six men, on their hands and knees, rolled peanuts along a cement road with their noses, followed by an amused crowd of spectators.

“The world's sure full of clowns,” Studs said, as laughter broke over the theater.

“Hell, he got five hundred dollars for it. That's not so dumb,” Pat muttered.

 

“And now, let us listen to Oscar Albert McGonigle tell how he won!”

 

The audience roared at the close-up of an adenoidal blond young man in his middle twenties with a raw scraped nose.

“I'm certainly glad to be the winner in this race,” he said, nasal-voiced, “and it was sure a hard one. When I entered it, I said to myself Oscar you got to win, you got to win. My mother, she said to me ‘Oscar you haven't a long enough nose to win,' and I said, ‘Maw, you wait and see.' Well, I won, and it was a hard race, and I'm sure the happiest man in the world today”

A stout, puffy, bald-headed man sat at a desk and mechanically read from a paper.

 

“A business depression is a reaction. For every action, there must be a reaction, and then a counter action, because that is the law of life and of economics. The business depression is a reaction to over-production. We are now through the worst of it, and have slowed down our processes of production in consonance with the law of supply and demand. We are again on a solid footing, and we shall see, in the next six months, another commercial upswing. In my recent visit to the White House, I found this same hope prevailing in official circles, and I concluded that what we all must do is to get behind our president and push upward, to the next period of prosperity. And when our next period does return, let us all be wiser than we were in the years of 1928 and 1929.”