Studs Lonigan (42 page)

A girl came toward him. He liked her looks. He had confidence in his walk. He was well dressed too: gray Stetson, conservative gray topcoat, well-fitting sixty-five dollar Oxford gray suit, good cut, the trousers wide enough so that he didn't look like a hick, but not ringing bell bottoms. The girl passed him. He passed her, and turned over Fifty-eighth Street.

But the evening was all wasted, because he had made his decision and would stick to it.

He walked towards the poolroom thinking about a lot of things. He saw young Cooley, and motioned him over, calling him a dope.

“Droopy, when you gonna let it alone?” he asked, not knowing why he did it, and laughing to see the hurt, shocked look on the kid's face.

He walked along. He had let himself get into the wrong attitude. Well, he didn't have to go tonight. But he did. He didn't like to admit it to himself, but he was afraid. Well, it wasn't yellow. It was a different kind of fear. It was fear for his soul if something did happen to him.

He just felt all off kilter. Maybe afterwards, he would feel different.

Studs had what Father Gilhooley always called a feeling of gratification. Red, Tommy, and the guys had kept trying to talk him into going with them, and he had resisted all temptation.

He walked up towards the church, taking his time. There wouldn't be a crowd there. He thought of himself as having already gone to confession. He saw himself saying his penance, saw himself kneeling in the confessional, talking through the screen to Father Doneggan, running through the catalogue of his sins, commandment by commandment. He tried to put himself into a contrite mood. He wanted his act of contrition after confession tonight to be a perfect act of contrition, as if it were his last confession.

Studs walked slowly; nervous, he lit a cigarette.

The thought of Paulie dead out there in the cemetery still hung on him. The thought of another, a waiting grave out in Calvary Cemetery hung more heavily.

Already this football season, he had read of five or six different fellows being killed in football games. When he had been a kid, he remembered having read about how a fellow named Albert at the U of C had been killed. In Thursday's paper there had been something about a fifteen-year-old kid who'd had his skull fractured.

A voice within Studs, as if it were his conscience, kept assuring him that he was yellow.

He seemed to keep seeing that kid he had read about in Thursday's paper, before him, prostrate, moaning, blood from his cracked head dropping to mix in the dirt, moaning, deathmoans persisting, ringing out as if in prophecy of his death, and of the death of everyone that he knew. He seemed to see Studs Lonigan in place of the kid with crushed head. He seemed to hear the deathmoans of Studs Lonigan.

He walked slowly.

The night was crisp. A mist swung down low. It was not the kind of a night to think of death. It was the kind of a night to make one want to live.

He paused at the curb on Fifty-ninth, to let a truck swing around the corner. He had a crazy impulse, that he couldn't understand, to dive in front of the truck.

He crossed the street, walked on lazily.

He tried to examine his conscience. He hadn't broken the first commandment. He had taken the name of God in vain, fifteen, no, twenty or twenty-five times a day, he guessed. Third commandment. He hadn't missed mass. His thoughts wandered. He realized that he was lonesome. He wondered what he could do after confession. He didn't want to go home. He figured he hadn't better go to a show. It might cause him to have the wrong kind of thoughts after confession. He wondered what the bunch was doing.

He thought of himself, out on the football field for tomorrow's game. The kickoff. Studs Lonigan running the first kickoff back a hundred and three yards. He wasn't going to be hurt either. But suppose he was. Well, he was going to confession so he wouldn't be. He'd be afraid to enter that game tomorrow if he didn't, because he had that kind of a feeling.

He got back to the third commandment, and walked slowly towards St. Patrick's Church.

In the church, a low-ceilinged structure of boxed-in gloom, he took a seat in the rear pew on the left-hand side. He bowed his head, and said a few prayers to the Blessed Virgin in preparation for an examination of conscience. Up forwards, near the side exit door, a woman arose, and waddled a few steps forwards to the plushed entrance of Father Gilhooley's confessional. Behind him, the door of Father Doneggan's box clattered slightly as it was closed. He heard a street car passing, and then the whistle of a railroad engine.

He riveted his eyes in a stare on the altar that was hallowed back in the center. He watched the flickering altar light above it. A man arose from the front, center, and did a St. Vitus dance down the center aisle, coming with twisted and painful slowness, dragging along the ruins of a paralyzed body. It was Joe, the paper-man. Studs knew him. He was all right, and not goofy to talk to, although he looked completely off because of the deadened nerves in the left side of his face. He came to church every morning, and received at least once a week. Poor bastard, he lived somehow on a few pennies made peddling the
New World.
Studs felt sorry for him.

The fellows had talked about going to the State and Congress. He wished . . . but a burlesque show was an occasion of sin. Couldn't be thinking of them and planning to go to confession. Not the right attitude. . . . Oh, my God, I am heartily sorry for having offended Thee, and I detest all my sins. . . . He heard the bang of a door from the confessional box of Father Roney, on the right-hand side of the church, just in front of the choir box.

For no reason at all, he glanced up at the low ceiling. He had to get himself into the right attitude. Feeling contrition was hard. He had to feel it deeply, with his whole heart and his whole soul. Oh, my God, I am heartily, heartily sorry. . . .

He had taken God's name in vain twenty-five or thirty times a day. He had been late for Mass on his own account, but they were only venial sins because he'd gotten in before the Consecration.

He looked behind him. Four and five people in the line before Father Doneggan's box. He turned and glanced off from his right towards Father Roney's box, five and six people in the two lines.

An old man walked down from the altar, where he had been praying, and on back towards the rear, his heels rat-tatting on the rubber aisle.

A feeling of fear came over him, fear of being injured in the football game, fear with a sudden realization that Hell was a place of torments, endless torments in a fire that never ended, the monotony of its hissing flames, a sudden fear of life. He wanted to be outside in the fall night. He wanted to get it over with. He couldn't get himself to arise and join one of the waiting lines before Father Doneggan's confessional box. He heard the swinging doors of the entrance, and heels on the marble steps leading from the vestibule. He heard the closing of a door in back of him, then, the closing of a door of Father Roney's confessional. He had violated the fifth commandment by anger towards others, maybe . . . maybe . . . maybe. . . . His eyes were again attracted by the ceaselessly glowing altar light. He had violated the fifth commandment by anger. . . .

Suddenly, he found that he had lapsed into dirty thoughts. He labored through an Act of Contrition, trying to make it a perfect one. A feeling of death was in him, and went from him to the gloomy church, and the autumn night without. He just couldn't seem to be able to get through the commandments.

Suddenly, he just raced through them, estimating his sins, in violation of each commandment, and arose. He took a place in line, his back to the altar, before the left-hand door of Father Doneggan's box. There were four ahead of him. He waited.

The door on the other side opened. Art Hahn, a tall, slim fellow, blond, several years older than Studs, emerged. A woman entered the box. Art smiled at Studs, as he passed him, down the aisle, and Studs pointed toward the exit door. Art nodded. Father Doneggan was quick in everything he did. Studs soon got inside the stale-smelling box. The slide opened, and he saw, dimly, the blond priest inside the wire screen. He confessed his sins, said the Act of Contrition, was absolved and received a penance of nine Our Fathers and nine Hail Marys.

Outside, Studs and Art lit cigarettes and went north along Indiana Avenue, the street along which Studs had, in his day, always come to and from school. The past came back into his thoughts. The day that Paulie had been licked by Johnny O'Brien. The day in winter that he had clipped a truck driver on the ear with a snowball and they had all been shagged. He felt as if tomorrow he would be going to communion with the boys' sodality at the eight o'clock Mass. But what the hell!

Studs asked Art how he happened to be going to confession.

“I'd never think of playing football without receiving communion. You never know what's going to happen to you in a prairie football game like that one we've got scheduled tomorrow. And I always play safe.”

“Yeah,” said Studs, feeling good that he wasn't the only guy who'd felt that way.

“Why did you go—same reason?” asked Art.

“Oh, I just thought it was about time that I'd receive. And then I thought I'd do it for Paulie Haggerty.”

“Say, that reminds me, I ought to be offering up my communion for Paulie tomorrow too,” said Art.

Studs suddenly recalled that he had intended to make it a general confession for his whole life. And it had skipped his mind. He was afraid all over again, because of that slip. He saw himself killed in the football game. But he was offering his communion up for Paulie, and Paulie in Purgatory, if he was there, would pray for him in return.

Jesus, what the hell was happening to him, getting like he was.

He went down to the Elevated to get a Sunday-morning paper, vowing to himself that he wouldn't stop at the poolroom. He did, and found Bill Donoghue there. He told Bill he'd gone to confession, and they played several games of straight pool. Studs won. Then they had coffee in fat Gus the Greek's restaurant, between the Elevated and Prairie Avenue. They talked about the old days when they were kids at St. Patrick's. Studs had a good Saturday night, and got home about a quarter to twelve. He told his old man that he should tell his mother not to get him breakfast, he had gone to confession. Lonigan beamed.

WORRY
did not sit well upon a jolly, red, robust face like Mrs. Sheehan's. But she had a premonition. Last night in a dream, she had seen her Arnold lying dead in a football uniform. Oh, if only sons would heed their mothers, there would be less trouble, fewer broken-hearted mothers in this world. And how much happier a world it would be!

WATCHING himself in the mirror, Studs hitched up his football pants, carefully arranging the cotton hip pads around his sides. Wished he had better ones. Wouldn't be much protection from a boot in the ribs. He touched the schimmels under his blue jersey, and put on his black helmet. Every inch a football player!

He thought of himself going out to play with old street pants, a jersey, and football shoes. Dressed that way, tackling so hard he'd knock them cuckoo; jumping up ready to go on, no matter how hard he was slammed. No use to be senseless and play without sufficient padding. Only it was swell thinking of being reckless that way, having the crowd recognize such gameness.

He flexed and unflexed his arm muscles. Even with the drinking and carousing he'd done these last couple of years, he was still pretty hard and tough. He slapped his guts. They were hard enough, too, and there was no alderman yet, or not enough anyway to be noticed. And there never would be, because he'd take care of himself before that ever happened. He'd never have a paunch like his old man had. Iron Man Lonigan! The bigger they are, the harder they fall. He lit a cigarette and sat on the bed, thinking proudly of his body, good and strong, even if he was small; powerful football shoulders, good for fighting. And this afternoon he'd prove that it was a good body, and that there was heart and courage inside of it.

But there wouldn't be any girls out there for him to be playing for. Other guys had girls. Wished he had a girl, Lucy, a girl coming out only to see him play . . . Goofy! . . . But he still loved Lucy even if he hadn't seen her in about four years. And if she was coming out there to see him play, because she loved him, he would play much better, and instead of being in it just for the fun and the glory, and to show them all what he was made of, he'd be playing for her also. And he wanted to. Christ sake, he was getting like a clown, all mush inside. He tried to laugh at himself; it was forced.