Studs Lonigan (19 page)

STUDS LOVES LUCY . . . LUCY IS CRAZY ABOUT STUDS ... I LIKE TO KISS LUCY—STUDS . . . STUDS KISSED LUCY A MILLION TIMES . . .

Studs saw chalked writings like these all over Indiana Avenue, on sidewalks, fences, buildings. It was two mornings after he and Lucy had been in the park. On the previous day, he had cleaned out the basement for his old man, and he had been too tired at night to wash up and come around. When he read the scrawlings all over, his face got red as a tomato, and he got so sore he cursed everybody and everything. He promised himself that a lot of guys were going to get smacked. He was so sore that he didn't take the trouble to examine the childish writings, a scrawl quite like that of his sister Loretta and her girl-chum, June Reilley.

Danny O'Neill came along, and stopped at Studs' side. He read the words aloud, and laughed. Studs socked him. Danny, in a temper, stuck his tongue out at Studs, called him a bully, and said, mimicking:

“I'm gonna tell Lucy!”

Studs cracked Danny in the jaw with all his might, and the punk, holding his mush in his hands, bawled.

Most of the guys saw Danny's swollen jaw, so they didn't try to kid Studs. The older guys sat on the grass, talking, blaming the punks, planning how they would swoop down on them and get even by taking their pants off and hanging them on trees, making them eat dirt, giving them a dose of it that they wouldn't forget until kingdom come. But the punks had all smelled trouble, and they were gone. The bunch sat around and talked about revenges. Studs didn't say much; he didn't even look anybody in the eye. Suddenly, he got up and left, and the guys said that when Studs walked away from his friends like that, without saying a word, he was pretty Goddamn sore, and when he was pretty Goddamn sore, he wasn't the kind of a guy you'd want to meet in a dark alley. He walked for blocks, not recognizing where he was going, feeling disgraced, feeling that everybody was against him, blaming everybody, blaming that little runt, Danny O'Neill. He felt that he was a goddamn clown. He blamed himself for getting soft and goofy about a skirt. He planned how he would get even, and kept telling himself that no matter what happened, it couldn't really affect him, because STUDS LONIGAN was an iron man, and when anybody laughed at the iron man, well, the iron man would knock the laugh off the face of Mr. Anybody with the sweetest paste in the mush that Mr. Anybody ever got. He vowed this, and felt his iron muscle for assurance. But he didn't really feel like an iron man. He felt like a clown that the world was laughing at. He walked, getting sorer and sorer and filling his mind with the determination to get back at . . . Indiana Avenue, the whole damn street. As far as he was concerned, it could go plumb to hell. He was through hanging around with the Indiana Avenue mopes, and as for O'Neill, well, Studs Lonigan hadn't even begun to pay that little droopy-drawers back yet.

When Studs got home, Martin, speaking like he had been coached, said:

“How's Lucy?”

“I seen Lucy today; she looked nice, like she was looking for someone ... and she had paint on her lips,” Fritzie said.

Frances asked him if he was going over to see Lucy after supper. If he was, she'd walk over with him . . . and she said if he was he had better wash himself clean and shine his shoes.

The old man sang monotonously:

Mrs. Lonigan seriously warned him that he was still a little young and he would have plenty of time later on for girls, and girls would make a fool of him, and he should not be thinking of them, but he should be praying and meditating to see if he had a vocation or not.

Studs walked out of the room, saying that they could all go to hell. He heard them laughing after him. Even the walls and the furniture seemed to laugh, to jibe and jeer. He went out for a walk without eating, and he met Helen Borax on Fifty-eighth Street. She asked him how Lucy's gentleman was, and said that she heard he was a specialist in osculation; she said she would never have believed it, but she couldn't doubt all the proof she had seen around the neighborhood in the last few days. And she would never be able to understand how Lucy mistook him for Francis X. Bushman; but then everyone had his or her right to like people. She said she knew Lucy needed a sort of roughneck to carry her books when she went to high school, because Lucy was going to St. Elizabeth's, and it was in a nigger neighborhood, and he could protect her, and walk home with her through the nigger neighborhood. Helen spoke so swiftly and cattishly that Studs couldn't get in a word edgewise. She didn't stop for over five minutes, and then she only paused for breath. After she had talked a blue streak, they stood making faces at each other.

He said, sore as a boil:

“Kiss may . . .”

She blushed, gulped, swallowed, looked shocked and horror-stricken. He turned his back on her, and walked away.

“Lucy's gentleman!” Helen called after him.

He turned and thumbed his nose.

The next day he wandered forlorn streets, wishing that he would meet Dan, or Helen Shires, or someone, and not having the nerve to go around Indiana, where he might find them. At Fifty-eighth and Prairie, he met Lucy. She was with some girl he didn't know, and she said hello booby to him, winking at her friend. He got sore, and stuttered goofy things to her, like she needn't think she was so much. She said she was a lady, and only cared to associate with gentlemen. He said that girls were a pain. She said that girls wouldn't think much of him after the awful thing he had said to Helen Borax; she said her mother would certainly forbid her to associate with such a person. He stood looking at her. She asked him if he saw anything green. He didn't have any comeback.

They walked away, their heads stuck up, laughing at him. He stood there, trying to figure out why girls were so un-understandable, and why they changed and were flighty like the weather. He walked on in a trance, thinking about this and about things in general. He told himself again and again that the world was lousy and he was going to give it one Goddamn run for its lousy money, all right. It was rotten, all right. Just when things were jake, they blew up like they had a stick of dynamite under them. Well, Goddamn everybody, let them lump it. He walked, thinking, dream-planning heroic revenge, telling himself how he would become something daring and famous like an aviator, a lone wolf bandit, an Asiatic pirate, a German submarine commander.

He walked. The day was fine. The wind was cool. It would have been so nice to walk with Lucy. He went over to the park, and found their tree and sat up there, imagining that Lucy was by his side swinging her legs and kissing him. He forgot where he was, and everything else. He only thought of Lucy. Then he thought he was some place else, and this time, some place else was sad, and he didn't want to be in it, and there was no place else for him to go. The wind again waved through his hair, but now it was only the wind.

He cursed.

He finally grew lonely and needed to find someone, anyone, to be with. He climbed down and walked snappily, so people seeing him would think he had some place to go and that he wasn't just drooping around like a damn mope. He found himself over near the playground. He went in. Johnny O'Brien, Danny O'Neill and a number of other younger kids were playing indoors, and Miss Tyson, the pretty director, was umpiring. Miss Tyson was a pretty chicken, all right, and a good sport, and whenever she played with the guys, and had to run bases, she slid, and then they could all see her legs. Studs stood and watched them for a minute, and he was just going to ask them to let him in the game, when Old Man Hall, in his tan uniform and looking like he was on his last legs, came up. He looked at Studs, sour and crabby, as if it was Studs' fault that he was an old man ready to go west.

“Come on, now. Get out of here, and don't be plaguin' them that are smaller'n you are. This is no hangout for fellows like you. You ought to be ashamed of yourself, hanging around here, a big fellow like you that ought to be working and earning a living. Come on, get out!” he said in a creaky voice, starting to shove Studs.

“Don't go shoving me!” Studs said.

“I told you to get out, and if you don't, I'll call the police,” Hall said.

“Well, just watch who you're shovin'.”

The indoor game stopped, and everybody collected around Studs and Old Man Hall. It made Studs feel like an even bigger clown.

Miss Tyson tried to intercede and explain to Hall that Studs was all right, but the old codger made a long speech, telling everybody that he ran the playground, and as long as he did toughs would stay out even if he had to have the police to put them out.

Miss Tyson smiled sweetly at Studs, and apologized. But she couldn't do anything. To save his pride, he said he didn't want to come in anyway, and they could all go to the devil before he'd play on their indoor team in the playground tournament, like he'd said he would when he'd been asked to. He left, Hall hobbling along beside him, and almost every kid in the playground witnessing his humiliation. At the gate Hall said:

“Now if you come back, I'll have you run in. Good riddance to bad rubbish!”

An old guy, who was so feeble he couldn't probably hold a spoon of soup without spilling it all over himself, doing a thing like that to Studs! It made him Goddamn sore. He told himself: I'm riled sure, now.

He sat outside the playground, brooding, wondering how he'd get even with Hall. Then he walked on and sat near the sun-blue lagoon, down past the boathouse. He sat. He watched the people flood over the park. He wished he was somebody else. He watched the sky roll down back of the apartment buildings that stood above the trees lining the South Park edge of the park. He watched a familiar looking airedale dog shag about, snapping at the heels of the park sheep, until Coady, the flat-footed, red-faced park cop, hoofed it after the dog, probably sweating and cursing his ears off. The dog scampered away from the cop, ran down to the lagoon, and took a swim. The cop sought the shadow of the boathouse. The dog came out, shook the water from its back, and ran. Studs noticed it more closely. It was goofy Danny O'Neill's dog, Lib, and it ran away every day to come over to the park and take a swim. The dog was a damn sight smarter than Danny. He told himself that airedales were peachy dogs, they were fighters, they could swim and liked the water, and they were smart; an airedale was too smart a dog for O'Neill to have. Studs thought of getting even with Danny by doing something to the dog, but when he watched it run, its movements so graceful, its body so alert, its ears cocked the way he liked to see a dog's ears cocked, he couldn't think of hurting it. He called: “Here, Lib!” The dog came up. Studs patted its head, softly stroked its forehead the way dogs like to be stroked, rubbed his cheek against the dog, liked it even if it did smell like a livery stable.

“Good dog!” he said.

He stood up, grabbed a piece of branch and threw it. The dog chased the branch, grabbed it, returned, dropped the branch at Studs' feet, and spread out on all fours, waiting to be patted. Studs kept throwing the branch until it was ugly wet with saliva. He rubbed his hand in the grass and patted the dog. He told the dog to stand up, and it obeyed. Then to play dead dog. Then to roll on its back in the grass and speak. He ran, and the dog legged it with him, and rapidly left him behind.

Lib spied the park sheep and was after them. The sheep milled and bleated, and Lib tore circles around them, running like an efficient sheep dog. The cop again appeared, waddling on his defective feet. The dog ran at the sound of the cop's voice. It was too wise for the cop, Studs thought, and laughed. Coady yelled at Studs, complaining, in his Irish brogue, that he wished he'd keep that dog of his away. It was a disturbance of the peace, with it always scaring the sheep, jumping up and getting ladies' dresses muddy, and running around without a leash and muzzle, all against the law. Suppose the dog went mad and bit a baby. The next time he saw the dog, he would shoot it. It was too damn troublesome, and too damn wise.

“Sure it knows I'm after it, and runs when I come,” Coady said in an Irish brogue.

Studs said it wasn't his dog.

“Well, then, bejesus, whose dog is it?”

“I don't know.”

“Well, keep it away from here, or sure it'll be a dead dog.”

The sun was too much for Coady. He flatfooted it back to the shade. Studs laughed. It was always fun to see a copper stumped. The dog was gone now, on its way home. Studs walked, wishing he had a dog of his own, because you could have fun with a dog, particularly when you were lonesome. A dog was almost human, and a guy was always wishing he could get closer to it, speak to it, understand what it meant when it barked. It was pretty the way the dog looked at you, the way it ran and cocked its ears. It got a guy. A dog was a real friend, all right. But his old man wouldn't have a dog, because he said dogs were dirty, and his mother said they brought bad luck into the house, because sometimes dogs were the souls of people, who had put a curse on you, come back to life.

He walked around the park, and didn't meet anyone he knew.

IN SUMMER, the days went too fast. They raced. In June, right after his graduation, Studs had had no sense of the passing days. And now July was almost gone, and the days were racing toward September and school. He remembered the Fourth; he had spent it with the Indiana gang, lighting firecrackers under tin cans to watch them pop.

It had promised to be a great summer for him and it was turning out pretty punk. And now it was one of those days, like the ones that came so often in mid-August. It was hot, but there was no sun; and the wind sounded like there were devils in it; and the leaves were all a solid, deep green. It was just that kind of a day. It made him feel different, glum; and his thoughts were queer and foggy, and he didn't have the right words for them. There was the feeling that he wanted something, and he didn't know what it was. He couldn't stay put in one place, and he kept shifting about, doing all sorts of awkward things, looking far away, and not being satisfied with anything he did.