Studs Lonigan (98 page)

“What good did it do Christ and the martyrs to sacrifice their blood?” a blond lad answered.

“I look at it this way. It's a fine thing to belong to the Order, and we ought to be prepared to do something for it,” Studs said hesitantly, understanding clearly to himself why it was right, but not being able to put his understanding lucidly into words. He tried to remember the words Gorman had used in explanation, but he was distracted when another hand went up. Which of them would be the one? He hoped it wouldn't be he. But that was reneging. He was ready, come what may. Only he wished it could be gotten over with. If he could walk out and get it over with this minute, it would be all right. This waiting. . . .

“All right, gentlemen, before we select the man, are there any more volunteers?”

“Bull,” a fellow close to Studs muttered under his breath.

They began to murmur, and scrape their feet in restlessness.

“Will the volunteers please come forward?”

Studs edged slowly toward the stand, head lowered to avoid meeting anyone's eyes, wondering was he a chump, trying to keep calm, steeling himself for the ordeal. His face was colorless. His lips were clamped tight with determination. Suppose it did kill him? Just as he raised his eyes toward Gorman, the Judge pointed at the hairy-handed blond fellow with the face of a pugilist.

“Will you gentlemen agree on this young man as the volunteer. . . . Thank you. . . . And I want also to congratulate you others who have come here. Your willingness and courage moves me as an older member of our Order, I assure you we shall always be proud of members like you young men!

Studs flushed, and sank back into the crowd, disappointed at this lost opportunity, and yet . . . suppose, now, it had killed him? The other lad, too, looked healthy enough to go through with it.

“That's the stuff, friend,” someone said to him, and he smiled.

“Will you sign a statement absolving the Order of Christopher from all responsibility in case your sacrifice should prove fatal?”

“Yes, sir, I will!”

“Ready,” the Judge called in the back.

“Yes, send him out,” a voice coldly answered.

The restlessness ceased. They waited.

Jesus, he hoped the guy came through it all right, Studs told himself.

Eddie McCarthy leaped down from the stand. As he slowly walked across the vacant space between the stand and the camp chairs, which were now filled, a moan caused him to glance to his left. He saw the sick man from the waiting-room, his face twisted and distorted, his body convulsing. Emitting a howl, the sick man jumped toward him. McCarthy ran down the center aisle between the camp chairs, pursued by the sick man.

The afternoon's mounting tensions collapsed into howling laughter. The sick man stopped in the aisle, straightened up, laughed. McCarthy turned around, like a frightened boy, stared from face to face, hurt and ashamed. Seeing Judge Gorman chuckling, he scratched his poll quizzically.

The priest, the blind man, the blond fellow who had volunteered to shed his blood, and the sergeant-at-arms minus his red robe, appeared under the stand, smiling, like actors taking their encore bow.

“Say, wasn't this on the level?” McCarthy asked. Laughing, Studs shook his head, and thought that he had been taken in by it, all right. Funny. If he had only used his brains, he could have seen through it all. He laughed, watching McCarthy return the robe of office to the sergeant-at-arms.

“Now, I shall explain, because you must clearly perceive that these distressing events were really part of the ritual of this last degree in your initiation. But first, permit me to state that never in my experience as the master-of-ceremonies at initiations have I assisted in putting through a more spirited group of candidates. What is your opinion, Mr. Joyce?”

“Yes, Judge. And we had a lively time in the waiting room. I would have had it much livelier, too, if our plants hadn't proven such good shock-absorbers and helped me get out,” Joyce grinned.

“The priest here is not a real member of the clergy, he has been serving as a plant in our initiations for a number of seasons now. And as you see, the blind man has been restored to sight, and the sick man to health. . . .”

“How did that guy shoot blood all over me,” Studs said to the fellow beside him, shaking his head, touching his shirt where it was stiffened with blood stains.

“Probably had a rubber ball in his mouth. Got you, huh?” the fellow replied, both of them grinning.

“Every new member of our Order, excepting priests, goes through this same initiation. Now, some of you may be thinking of it in its lighter aspects, and it may seem mere horseplay to you, contrived to afford pleasure and amusement to our membership. But I trust that this impression is not the predominant one which you will carry away. For if it is, our ritual will have failed to serve its real purpose.

“This initiation has been carefully planned with the aim of implanting in you the moral lessons which should drive home to every candidate the principles and the aims of the Order of Christopher, and the obligations which it expects of its membership. To speak in the vernacular, we did not merely wish to pull your legs.

“You are probably wondering why Mr. Joyce deliberately set out to embroil you. It was to test your patience, your courage, your honor, your charity. What, then, are the lessons of this ritual? On the one hand, it is calculated to impress upon you the virtues of patience and fortitude, to suggest the dangers that lie behind action that is too impulsive and hasty. In other words, to suggest that it is not always best to fly off the handle before you know what is really happening, because things are not always as they seem. Thus, a priest was not really insulted at all, as you supposed, because it seemed to you that he was.

“Specific parts of the ritual, which seem like sheer buffoonery to a superficial observer, actually embody a moral lesson. Thus we plant a member among you in the disguise of a priest to instil in you the lesson of reverence and respect for the clergy, and to drive home to you the duty incumbent on every member of our Order, the duty of defending the Church and the clergy wherever and whenever that defense may be needed. In the same manner, a blind man is planted in your midst to impress on you the virtue of charity, which is a cardinal principle of our Order, and to tell you in concrete terms that every member is to be as charitable as circumstances may warrant to the sick, the lame, the halt, the blind, the unfortunate.

“The part of our ritual dealing with blood sacrifice also has its purpose. It should re-enforce in your memories the lessons and glories of the Christian martyrs, and the grace and glory which shine resplendent upon him who earns the crown of martyrdom. It should inform you that when you come into this Order you come as a man prepared to defend his faith, his honor, and his country, to struggle to the utmost for these sacred causes as the needs require it. These are the principles on which this Order was founded, and on which it stands to date. And we believe that the best way of informing you of these principles, instead of merely telling them to you in a dry sermonizing talk, is by contriving a ritual of initiation which will inculcate them upon your minds in an unforgettable way.

“You have proven yourselves, and I am proud to welcome you in fraternal spirit into the Order of Christopher. Your conduct here this afternoon demonstrates to us that you have in you the best stuff of which Catholic American manhood is made. You have shown yourself ready to defend the faith, to sacrifice yourselves, to practice the virtue of charity. I am sure that our association in this Council of the Order of Christopher will be happy, enriching to our personal lives, fruitful in our mutual participation in the larger life of our Order, our Church, our city, and our great nation. I know that all of you, in joining us, will contribute your share to the manifold works which the Order of Christopher performs.

“As a final word, let me express the confident hope that you will appear regularly at our meetings, get acquainted with older members, and that you will immediately join the various phases of our activities for which you are individually the most suited.

“I will now administer the oath of admission. Raise your right hands, please!”

Studs raised his right hand, and in a mood of solemnity, repeated a simple oath pledging secrecy and the defense of his faith and his country.

“I kind of suspected that it wasn't the real goods all along,” a fellow in the lavatory line-up said amidst a rattle of conversation.

“It's clever. Only I didn't suspect it for a minute. I fell, hook, line and sinker.”

“Me, now, did I play chump.”

“You're McCarthy, aren't you? You were a very good candidate, though.”

“And say, are my kidneys floating?”

“I didn't think it was all hoax until the guy shagged McCarthy down the middle aisle. Only I wish that when he pulled that fainting act he found another target,” Studs said to the fellow behind him, revealing his blood-stained coat lapel and shirt.

“I didn't, either. The fellow who thought it up, whoever he was, was a smart man. I give him credit!” the fellow replied to Studs.

“They pulled it off so neat,” Studs marvelled.

“The master-of-ceremonies is a brainy man. His talk at the end there, it was really inspiring, and made you understand just what the Order of Christopher means.”

“I know him. He's Judge Gorman,” Studs said with pride.

“He must be smart as a whip.”

“I knew from the start it was all hooey.”

“And say, was I ready to stand up and give three cheers when that long-nose ended his spiel?”

“I'm just waiting for the next initiation, when I can see some new chumps go through the mill like I did, and laugh behind a black robe, thinking now there are lads dumber than I was.”

“Jesus, this place smells like a . . .”

“Yes, just like a crapper. Ain't that funny? And you know what flowers smell like? They smell like flowers.”

“Dumb, hell! McCarthy, you're the stuff that the best of Catholic American manhood is made of. Didn't he say so?”

“That stuff must be hunger, because right now I'm made of just hunger.”

“Anyway, fellow, the Order of Christopher is sure a fine thing. I'm glad I can call myself a Christy.”

“Me, too.”

Stepping outside, Studs breathed deeply. On the street car, he turned up his coat collar to hide the blood stains, and relaxed in his seat. He realized how tired he was. And he wanted to talk about the doings, regretting that he couldn't tell of it to anyone but a Christy. Well, he could tell the old man about it anyway. He drowsed. Waking up stiff, he rushed to the platform and got off the car. He thought that some day he'd be a big shot in the Christys, just like Judge Gorman. He proudly told himself that he was a Christy. And he had gotten a thousand dollars worth of insurance, too, in Catherine's name.

He let himself in quietly and hurried to his room to change his clothes so his mother wouldn't see the stains and go up in the air about them.

His father was drowsing by the radio, and smiled.

“Congratulations, Bill. And say, I'm sorry. You just missed Father Moylan's talk. Did he roast the bankers! Tell me, how was the doings?”

Studs smiled knowingly at his father.

His stocks were off eight points, and that meant that he was out over six hundred bucks. His brows knitted, and he determined that he would pray this morning as he had never prayed before.

“Honey, what's the trouble?” Catherine asked.

“Nothing. Why?” he asked, switching a forced smile on her.

“You look so worried and grumpy.”

“There's nothing wrong. I was just thinking.”

“About what?”

“Oh, nothing in particular. I was just thinking.”

“No, you're worried.”

“Not especially. Of course, in these times, you wonder about a lot of things that you never even thought of before.”

“What things?”

“Well, business.”

“Yes, darling, and I've been feeling the same way since I got that ten-dollar cut in my salary. But this is Sunday, and you're just going to give business and worry a nice kick around the block,” she said with a dash of feminine decisiveness, as if she were energetically routing dust from a closet.

He smiled again, forced.

“Sometimes you are just like a boy.”

“What do you mean?” he asked with a mixture of embarrassed pride and pleasure.

“You men,” she exclaimed in mock contempt. “You try to be so big and important, and stick your chests out, and you're just like little boys playing games. That's why we find you so sweet and love you.”

Feigning disinterest, he shook his head quizzically.

“Now, you forget all this serious business,” she coaxed, sliding her arm through his.

Jesus, if he only could walk along with her on a sunny spring morning like this one and not have a worry in his head, no worry about his dough sunk in Imbray stock, about his health and weak heart, and the possibility of not living a long life, and not be wondering would he, by afternoon, feel pooped and shot. And then it was so gloomy at home that it could be cut with a knife, and it was bound to affect him, the old man's business going to pot, his dough lost and going fast, his expenses, unrented apartments, the mortgage. Just to have none of these things on his mind, and to be able to stroll along Easy Street with Catherine at his side, perfectly happy all day, and not having to feel that when he woke up tomorrow all these thoughts would pop back and keep going off like fire-crackers in his mind all day. And he had to decide about holding or selling his stock. Which?