Studs Lonigan (93 page)

“Your dad wants us to finish up today and get cleaned up tomorrow with only a half a day's work. We got to step because that last bedroom is pretty big,” Mort said, chewing on a hunk of pork chop, his face weakened, wrinkled, worn.

The thought of the afternoon's work made Studs gloomy. How in Christ's name would he get through it! He thought that he might lay off and go home. But no, that would be letting the old man down.

“Lad, I'm gettin' old, and it's gettin' pretty damn hard. There's not a lot left in me. And I was the fellow who used to think that when I reached my present age I'd take it easy, have a little saved up, and would have my kids to take care of me and my old woman. Well, a man doesn't get what he hopes for, not by a damn sight. Only one of my boys workin' and him doing part-time work.”

“The old man's worrying his pants off these days,” Studs said.

“Don't I know it, lad! Just now when business should be best, there's not a thing stirrin'.”

Studs motioned to the waitress and, catching her eye, pointed to an empty coffee cup. Needed it to wake up for the afternoon grind.

“Well, things better get better!” Studs said, thinking how yesterday his stock had dropped to nineteen. Goddamn it, they had to.

He looked at Mort, struck by the signs of age in the old man. His face like a map with wrinkles: hair, all gray: thinner, too, than he'd used to be. Studs wondered how there could be any strength left in him. Studs relaxed in his chair, still tired from the morning's work. And hell, five, six, eight years ago, he'd been able to go out on a drunk and work the next day without feeling the effects as much as he did now.

“Did you read about that bank on the west side failing? I know what that means. Poor people, workingmen like myself, lose everything they got, saved from years of work. It's goddamn tough when a poor man saves a little money and thinks that he's got something put aside for his old age, and then the bank goes bust. It's goddamn rotten. And I suppose the crooked bankers who stole all the money will go free.”

“Tough tiddy, all right. Think many of them will fail?”

“Lad, I hope not. If they do, the people won't stand for it. There'll be a revolution or something.”

“Mort, the whole shooting match puzzles me,” Studs said, sipping coffee. “I don't understand it. I guess there was a depression right after the war, but I didn't pay much attention to it.”

“It wasn't anywheres near as frightful as this one.”

“I was younger and the old man was doing better. But I never saw anything like this,” Studs said.

“I remember the panics of 1907, and 1893, and they were bad. But not as bad as now. I don't know how many millions of men there's on the streets.”

“How did the depression in those years end?”

“Well, they got to end. There's action, and then reaction, and then action again. When a thing goes up, it has to come down, and then when it comes down, it has to go up again.”

“Mort, what do you think of the stock market?”

As Mort shrugged his shoulders, Studs saw by the restaurant clock that it was a quarter to one. Fifteen minutes more, and work. Fifteen minutes was damn short . . . and then . . . Christ, if the day was only over and he was home, just sitting doing nothing or reading the newspaper, resting. If he was as tired when he got home as he was now, he'd have to call off his date with Catherine.

“I never had much money to fool around with stocks. And I'm no good at figuring, and stocks involves a lot of figuring.”

“Maybe it isn't the thing to fool around with.”

“If you got the money, is might be all right, and then again it might be crooked. Nearly everything in the country seems to be crooked these days, and banks aren't safe, a man's job isn't sure. So I guess if a man has anything it's best to thank the Lord for what he's got and not want more.”

“Maybe you're right, Mort,” Studs said reflectively, looking again at the clock: ten to one.

“It takes money to make money, of course, but I don't know. If I had anything, I'd rather hang on to it. But I'm a poor man. I tried to save, but it was no use, and my wife sick for so many years, and then the funeral expenses when she died, and the kids I had to raise and educate. And now one of my boys had to move in on me with his wife and two babies because he was evicted.”

“I know how it is,” Studs said.

As they arose, Studs laid a dime tip under his plate. He lit a cigarette and paid his check.

“Christ, I wish the day's work was done,” he said.

“We'll get it done, all right. I never fell down on a job for Paddy Lonigan yet, and I'm too old a dog to be learning new tricks. I told him we'd finish today and by God, we will.”

Studs noticed that Mort was a little stooped, and had about him the manner of a man weakening with age. Christ, would he become like that some day? Or like his father? Or wouldn't he even live long enough for that? The doctor turning him down for the insurance company. . . . Thinking of that, he hastily shot the butt of his halfsmoked cigarette. His body was heavy, sluggish.

“Say, what's the crowd?” he said in sudden surprise, pointing at a crowd around the corner ahead, seeing a policeman whose star caught and reflected glints of sunlight.

“Must be the bank or else an accident.”

“Let's step on it and see,” Studs said, a sense of eagerness and curiosity tingling him into an energetic state.

“I don't see that it's worth hurrying about. We'll come to it.”

“It's something funny, all right. Cops there, too,” Studs said, walking a pace ahead of Mort.

Approaching, he saw that the crowd was milling about a bank, and that a line of people cut out from the bank entrance onto the sidewalk. He felt the same as if he were running to a fire. Excitement. He saw that there were a number of policemen and that people in the crowd were talking and gesticulating.

“Watch out,” Mort called, pulling him back from the car-track.

He heard the dinging gong of the street car and saw one sweep past him. His heart beat rapidly. He held his breath in an after-fear.

“Got to watch yourself, lad.”

He looked ahead and to his side for traffic.

“Close,” he said, sighing, the terror of being run over clinging.

“Robbers,” a thin and wizened man of about forty-five said loudly as they stepped onto the curb.

Studs edged through the crowd, squeezing close to the line of people, crushed together, waiting to go forward, held in order by police who swung and twirled their menacing nightsticks in the air. His eye ran up and down the faces, anxious men and women. He saw a Jewish woman, frantically biting her finger-nails, and beside her a powerful man in his prime with a pale face, nervous eyes, almost trembling lips. Almost crapping in their pants, all right, he reflected. Maybe his dough was, after all, just as safe in stock as the banks. Hell, if it went on like this where would a guy's dough be safe? If he kept it home he might be robbed. If he socked it in a bank, the bank might go under. If he bought stock, the market might crash. Christ, what a goofy world it was becoming.

“Oh, God! And my mother home sick. Oh, God, what will I do if I don't get my money?” a middle-aged woman said, her eyes watery, her hair dishevelled under her black felt hat.

“I guess it's a bank going on the fritz, all right,” Studs said to Mort who had edged in beside him.

“There's no trouble. People just get excited. Irresponsible people, like the Reds, spread these rumors around, to cause trouble,” a fellow near Studs said.

“You work all your life and put your money in the bank and dese robbers, dese robbers, take it. You woirk all your life, eh, and then you say no, maybe it's nottin', just excitement. Yah,” a tall, dour-faced, redmustached foreigner in overalls exclaimed.

The fellow gave the foreigner a look of contempt and turned away.

“Nottin'! Nottin'! for a working man to lose his money. Yah, nottin'?”

Studs wondered was the foreigner in overalls a Red. He didn't like him because he looked too much like the type who became bald-headed crabby janitors.

“You got anything in it?” Studs asked.

“Working men don't have much money,” the fellow said, growling, and Studs thought that he had a lot of crust shooting his bazoo off when it wasn't any skin off his teeth.

He noticed people squeezing out of the bank, and the line of people crushing forward. He and Mort edged toward the bank entrance, and they watched a gray-haired woman, with a creased, rough-skinned peasant face, a black shawl over her head, edge out with the blustering assistance of a policeman. Crisp money stuck from the edges of the bank book which she clutched fiercely in gnarled fingers.

“This way, mother,” a burly, ruddy-faced policeman said, taking her arm and leading her across the street.

“Lucky old bitch!” Studs heard someone in the waiting line grumble.

“Hot roasted peanuts. Get something for your money while you can. Hot roasted peanuts!” a greasy man, wearing a white soda-jerker's coat, shouted.

The crowd seemed constantly to be increasing, and the police shoved and pushed in their efforts to preserve order. Again and again Studs caught the glances of fright on people's faces, the nervousness they revealed by biting their lips, furtively looking about, grimacing. Something was wrong somewhere, all right, and he guessed these people would have a goddamn legitimate squawk if they lost their dough.

A well-dressed man, with a sleek face and a white carnation in his buttonhole, emerged from the bank, smiling.

“Nothing wrong. Only a scare. Why, even a priest got up on a table in the bank and spoke, telling everybody to be calm and leave their money in there where it's safe. He waved his bank book to show that he was leaving his parish funds in, and that's where I left all my dough,” Studs heard the fellow say in a blustering, self-confident manner.

“You tink so?” a wary little hook-nosed man asked.

“Sure thing, brother. Look,” the fellow with the carnation in his buttonhole said, waving his bank book.

A cheer went up. Studs was caught in the middle of a wave of pushing people. He squeezed himself slowly to a curb edge and saw an armored car and four armed guards escorting two men carrying money through a lane to the entrance made by the police. Studs smiled. The bank maybe wouldn't fail, and these people wouldn't lose their dough. The fewer banks that failed, the better off everything would be all around.

Mort touched his sleeve and they walked away, another cheer arising behind them.

“Fierce! Fierce! Money makes people into dogs,” Mort said.

“Hell on a lot of 'em if the bank fails. But maybe it won't. They were bringing in more money, and I just heard a fellow saying that a priest in a parish around here was in the bank speaking to the people, telling them to leave their dough in.”

“I hope so. I know what it means to people to be poor in their old age.”

“Well, it's more than I can make out,” Studs said, shaking his head.

“And it's a quarter after one. We got to hustle,” Mort said.

Studs felt sluggish and tired again. Jesus, if the day was only over.

“Did you get finished, Bill?”

“Yes, dad,” Studs called from the hall, entering in his paint-splotched work clothes, tired.

“I'm glad of that. You know, by getting done today, you and Mort saved me some money, and these days I got to figure on every possible economy,” Lonigan said as Studs walked into the parlor and slumped in an easy chair.

“There was a run on a bank on Seventy-fifth. I forget the name.

“Must be the Chemical Deposits. Did it fail?”

“No, because on my way home I asked a cop who was standing in front of it, and he said it hadn't. I asked him what had caused the run, and he said he thought the Reds had spread a false rumor. The bank officials gave every depositor who didn't take his dough out, a carnation to put in his buttonhole, the cop told me.”

“What the hell good would that do the people?”

“I don't know. And the cop was a mick, and he was proud because a Catholic priest, pastor of one of the parishes near the bank, saved it by getting on a table and telling everybody to have confidence and go home. He left all his parish funds in,” Studs said.

“Those damn Reds bellyaching and agitating in times like these when everybody ought to get right to it to help keep the ship afloat! And, Bill, I also heard the Reds were egging on the niggers in the black belt. That's sheer dynamite.” Lonigan gritted his teeth. “Anyway, I'm glad I haven't any money tied up in that bank. But I've got a couple of bills due from fellows out there in that vicinity. I suppose, if the bank crashes, these guys will claim they lost all they own, whether they did or not, and squirm out of paying me. I lost three thousand bucks already from fellows who've pulled that gag on me. But even so, I collected some money today at last from a guy on the west side who's been welshing payment on a job I done for him six months ago. And he promised more next month.” Lonigan seemed to drift into brooding. Suddenly, he continued, “Collecting bills these days is sure one hell of a job.”

Mrs. Lonigan appeared with a glass of milk, and Studs drank half of it in one gulp.

“William, you shouldn't drink so fast!”

“How were Phil and Loretta when you saw them last night?”

“Oh, pretty good.”

“Phil say how business was going with him?”

“Pretty good.”

“Well, that makes me glad. He's a smart Jew, I mean a smart boy. It's a relief on a man's mind to know that his two sons-in-law are getting along.”