Studs Lonigan (115 page)

“What do you mean?”

“Those two wasting their energy dancing that way,” Studs said, motioning his head in the direction of team number sixteen, a sheiky fellow with sideburns and blue jersey and a tough-looking, thin, faded girl in scarlet beach pyjamas who hot-stepped in a rapid, whirling dance.

Applause broke out from the half-filled bleachers, and coins were flung at them. Studs smiled knowingly. He glanced around at the crowd, fellows with regan haircuts, and the girls, hoods, fat Polack women, young broads who looked to be the kind that got crushes on movie stars, all kinds of people, a mixed audience no different from the kind that would be seen at a movie.

“When is something going to happen?” he asked, watching the contestants moving around and around.

“I don't know. It's funny, and I don't think there's anything interesting in it, either,” she said.

“Damn fools, wasting their health. Look at the blonde trying to keep number eight on his feet.”

“I wouldn't like to be her.”

“And I wouldn't want to trade places with that guy, either. He can have his dance marathon.”

“Why do they do such foolish things?”

“I suppose because they can get people to come out and make damn fools of themselves, and then, too, there's the dough.”

“Yes, the prize is something like a thousand dollars for the winners.”

“Well, they earn it,” Studs said, watching the blonde girl of team number eight fight and strain to keep her partner from crashing to the floor.

“Look,” Catherine said excitedly.

The blonde girl had tripped, and her partner smashed to the floor on his face. A buzz of conversation rose from the stands. Other dancers crowded around him. The judge emerged from his small box beside the orchestra dais, and two male attendants in soiled white clothing rushed forward.

“Oh, I hope poor Albert isn't hurt,” the woman with the Slavic features in front of them sighed.

“Gee, he got a shiner,” Studs exclaimed, attentively watching the male attendants lift number eight.

Number eight shook his head in stupor and walked beside his partner. He received cheers, and coins were flung to him.

“What's that?” Studs asked a fellow next to him when male and female attendants assisted number eight and three other couples from the floor, following the resounding of a siren.

“Rest period. They all get ten minutes every hour, and they go off the floor in batches.”

“What do they do, sleep?” Studs asked.

Three teams which had appeared unnoticed to Studs arose from benches along the side of the dance floor and joined the straggling procession, which wound around and around and around.

“How long will this go on?” Studs asked Catherine.

“They'll still be here in another month. They all got guts and they can take it,” the fellow next to him said.

“It's beyond me,” Studs said, puzzled.

“They do look like physical wrecks. And I can't understand why all the girls are so swollen out,” she said.

“Uh huh,” Studs muttered, watching the girl of team number three holding up the dead weight of her sleep-doped partner, and then he glanced from girl to girl, noticing how their buttocks were like pumped-up balloons.

“Let 'em hang, Jackie,” someone called out as the male of number nineteen kept pulling up his falling knickers; the marathoner grinned sillily, marched with his knickers draping below his knees.

Studs watched a contestant in a brown sweater reading a newspaper as he walked. He thought, too, that the guys, poor bastards, must be pretty hard up. There they were, for twenty-four hours a day, so close to girls, touching against them, hanging onto them, holding them up, and not being able to get anything. And the girls didn't look so decent or hard, and probably wouldn't mind a little. That made it all the tougher.

“I wonder when something is going to happen?” he said to Catherine.

“I guess this is what happens,” she said.

He watched number two, a little fellow with thinning light hair walk with a steadily more pronounced limp. Then he turned his attention to number seven, a solid, broad young lad of almost six feet who was without a partner. He walked, asleep, wagging his head, floundered. His head and shoulders lurched forward. He swerved sidewise. His head jerked back. He staggered like a man hopelessly drunk. He fell against the box seats below Studs. Two contestants turned him around, shoved him slightly. He reeled to the center of the floor, swayed precariously, stumbled to his right, and stood listing. He crumpled, his body hitting the floor with a thud.

“I suppose that guy is finished,” Studs said to Catherine.

“He's been that way for four days since his partner was forced out with swollen feet,” the fellow beside Studs said.

“The winners will earn their dough,” Studs said.

Amid cheers number seven arose, shaking his head, grinning. He marched in the dragging procession. The orchestra played a snappy tune. The contestants dragged themselves around and around and around.

A medium-sized slick, light-haired announcer swayed his girlish hips before the microphone in the center of the floor, and the contestants clustered around him.

“Well, folks, we're now in our three hundred and thirty-seventh hour of the World's Championship Super-Marathon contest at the Silver Eagle Ballroom, and as I look around at the boys and girls, I can see that there are no signs of let-up. Game to the core, fighters all, these eighteen couples and two solos are still sticking. And when I say sticking, I mean just that, sticking it out, hour after hour, day after day, battling to win the world's marathon championship and the thousand-dollar prize which will go to the winning couple. The courage which we see here on the floor daily, even hourly, is something astounding, and it forces us to admire and pay tribute to all these game and courageous contestants out here on the dance floor of the Silver Eagle Ballroom where the World's Championship Super Dance Marathon is now in its three hundred and sixty-seventh hour.

“Some of the boys here are wide awake, folks, and getting spryer and spryer every minute like the well-known Squirmy Stevens of team number four.”

He glanced at a squat fellow in a crimson jersey and tannish knickers, and the fellow's dark, heavy-browed oversized Neanderthal face broke into a grin.

“How about it, Squirmy?

“Squirmy says he feels like he could eat a couple of beefsteaks and then sleep until next year,” the announcer said into the microphone, and Squirmy performed a brief, hopping dance, drawing applause and smiles when he clowned aside by sagging and bending his knees, creating the effect of deformed walking.

“Well, Squirmy, all you got to do is to strut your stuff longer than anyone else on the floor and you'll get your wish. And when you do go on that sleep, sweet dreams.”

The contestant with the sore feet and thinning hair spoke to the announcer.

“Joe Hergel here says sleeping is natural to Squirmy and he should wish to wake up. Well, a little kidding adds to the gaiety of life, and let me say, ladies and gentlemen, that these marathon dancers we've got here on the dance floor of the Silver Eagle Ballroom in the World's Championship Super Marathon just have the time of their lives with all their jokes and good-natured fun. They all know how to give it, and, what's more important, to take it.”

“Goodness!” Catherine exclaimed in shock while Squirmy drew a laugh by bending over, projecting out his broad buttocks and wriggling them.

“Now, folks, the contestants are going to strut their stuff, for you, and I'm going to bring as many of them as we'll have time to hear up to the mike for you. But, first, as a prelude, let me repeat for those radio fans who may have missed the opening of this broadcast. We are here now in the three hundred and sixty-seventh hour of the World's Championship Super Dance Marathon in the ballroom of the Silver Eagle, and we still have eighteen couples and two solos battling for the title and the one-thousand-dollar prize which will be awarded to the winning couple. Some of them had a bad night of it last night, and others have had trouble today, but now all of the contestants are cutting up here as spry as if they had just started. They will have interesting things to tell you, and the first contestant that I will call on is Louise Strang, of team number twenty-one, that game little blonde girl from Carmody, Indiana. Louise is the smallest one on the floor here, but, folks, is she game! Is she game! Night after night she's proven how game she is. And let me say this to you folks who haven't come out here on the south side of Chicago at the Silver Eagle Ballroom to see the World's Championship Super Dance Marathon Dance, let me tell you, it's worth the price of admission alone just to see little Louise Strang. Here she is now right beside me, as fresh and as pretty as a daisy, one of the favorites out here, and her partner Joe Joslyn agrees with me when I say that she's as game a girl as ever stepped out onto any dance marathon floor. Louise Strang.”

“She looks horrible,” Catherine said as a blonde girl in a lacy black dress shyly stepped forward. She was blown and puffed, with her eyes sunken and circled with fatigue, and her face was hideously caked with powder. Loud cheering and a rat-tat-tat of hand-clapping greeted her.

“Hello, folks,” she began, sleepy-voiced. “I'm awful glad to be able to say hello to you tonight, and I wanna say hello to all my friends and admirers of Radioland. Now I'm going to sing my favorite song for you.”

She smiled self-consciously into the microphone and cleared her throat. Her tired mouth opened into an O shape, and tunelessly and without energy she dragged out monotonous sing-songed syllables.

 

 

“She may be a marvel or something but she can't sing,” Studs whispered to Catherine.

“She sings worse than you do,” Catherine whispered back, squeezing his hand, smiling intimately.

“That's no compliment.”

 

 

When Louise concluded, a shower of change spilled onto the floor and assisted by other contestants, she quickly picked up the money. A half dollar bounced, rolled into a corner. Squirmy made a nose dive for it and skidded on his stomach amid laughter. He cake-walked away from Louise Strang who pursued him, ogling and giggling, with an outstretched hand. The spectators laughed.

“Now I'll call on another favorite, the inimitable Squirmy Stevens of team number four who scarcely needs an introduction. Squirmy.”

Applause again broke, and Squirmy, handing Louise Strang the silver piece he had retrieved, cake-walked to the microphone.

“Hello, everybody, I want to say that I thank you one and all for your interest in me and in our World's Championship Super Dance Marathon out here at the Silver Eagle Ballroom and I'd like to say that I'd like to invite you, one and all, to come out here any time and see us do our stuff. And, folks, I wanna say this. A dance marathon is a fight, and the winner in a high-class field like the one we got here in our World's Championship battle has got to be a fighter, and stick to it, and that's what we're all out here trying to do. Well, everybody, I thank you one and all. So long. Squirmy Stevens signing off.”

He cake-walked aside, a wide grin on his face. Money was thrown to him, and he made side-comedy grabbing it.

“You've just heard the inimitable Squirmy Stevens tell you what it takes to win a marathon dance like the World's Championship Super Dance Marathon which we are staging here in the ballroom of the Silver Eagle. Now, there's been a lot of letters asking for Georgia Ginger, the attractive and spirited little lady from the famous peach state, so I'm presenting to you, Miss Ginger, the Georgia Flash as she is known here among us. Come on, everybody, give this little girl a hand.”

Loud clapping accompanied a bobbed, sandy-haired, plump girl in dirty, greenish beach pyjamas, as she stepped forward, her coy, baby face a smothered picture of sleepiness.

“Hello, folks, I want to thank you all for wanting me to say hello to you all, and I want to say that we all here appreciate what you all think of us and the interest you all take in us, and, folks, I want to thank you all,” she drawled, rubbing her eyes as she stepped aside.

“You've just had a word from that spunky little girl, Miss Ginger, the Georgia Peach, who expressed a feeling that all of us connected with this World's Championship Super Dance Marathon at the Silver Eagle Ballroom have. We all feel the same way toward the public for its interest. You know, it means a lot to these people here to know you're interested in them and anxious to know how they're coming along. Because they're out here twenty-fours a day, battling for the coveted prize and honor. They're here every day, rain or shine, the weather doesn't mean much to them. Yes, sir, it means a lot to them when doggedly and persistently they fight sleep, it means a lot to them to know that you of the public are with them. Next, I'm going to present another favorite, Harold Morgan, one of our solos. Harold was coupled with Lilly Lewis, of team thirteen, and he thinks that his number is a jinx. Because a few days ago, after a game, game fight, his partner, Miss Lilly Lewis, was forced to retire. Well, Harold still has his heart set on the coveted honors, and his game solo fight here has been making dance marathon history. Harold Morgan.”

“Hello, folks,” Harold Morgan, tall, lanky and bucolic, began in a twangy voice, “I want to thank you all for the interest you have taken in my fight against odds in this here contest. Well, sirs, now my partner she put up a hard fight, a great fight, but, well, sirs, she got her feet blistered on the soles. She walked on those blistered soles of hers when nobody would have thought that she could have walked on such blistered feet. My partner, Lilly Lewis, she put up a ha-ard fight. So Lilly had to give up and here I am, and of course I don't wish bad luck to any of the boys here. They're one and all a fine fighting bunch of boys, and I don't wish them bad luck, but I am just wishing that somebody drops out and gives me a girl for a partner, because you can't win this here World's Championship Super Dance Marathon if you're a solo. And if any of the folks back home in Coonville, Missouri, are listening in, I want to say to them to tell everybody that Harold Morgan is agonna stick right in here until hades freezes over to bring home the bacon to Coonville, and also I want to say hello to Thad Shelden, and Ruth Allen, and to tell my ma and pa and tell them Harold is fine. Well, sirs, I thank you one and all for your kind interest and attention.”