Studs Lonigan (54 page)

“I guess so, but how come you're blowing so quickly?”

“Work, my boy. I ain't booked a thing tonight yet,” Nate said, leaving.

“I see you're sober tonight, Studs,” well-dressed Phil Rolfe said, stepping out of the poolroom.

“I got to lay off the stuff. I drank too much of it already. Got a heartburn, and I want to watch my guts.”

“Doctor's orders?”

“No, I just figured I better cut the stuff out for a while.”

“That's the smart thing to do; it makes a pig out of you when you get blind.”

Studs watched Shrimp and Mush laboring to lift Hink from where he had fallen on his face. Studs assisted them and then returned to his post by the window.

“It's chump stuff, drinking that way, and it doesn't pay a guy nohow,” Phil said; he trotted on.

Hink broke loose from his buddies and wandered towards Calumet Avenue, babbling; pedestrians gave him a wide berth. While Shrimp and Mush laughed, he let out a big heave, and some of his vomit splashed the silk stocking of a passing girl. She walked on indignant, muttering that it was perfectly disgusting, while Shrimp and Mush flirted with her. Studs looked at her leg.

They dragged Hink back, and got him inside the poolroom. Studs walked off towards the park. Like a pig in a gutter. It was queer all right, the way people always drank. You were calm and sober, and wanted something to do, excitement, wanted to cut loose. So you warmed your belly up with a few drinks, and it made your head a little giddy. Everything seemed suddenly rosy or funny, you were happy, you forgot everything that was bothering you. People laughed at what you said, and you laughed at your own jokes too. Everybody looked at you. You were proud of yourself, proud because you couldn't even walk straight. You weren't afraid of any sonofabitch and his brother—sometimes, not even of Johnny Law. You didn't care what you did, told everybody what you thought of him, kicked in windows, raised all holy hell. It was a glorious feeling, but you kept wanting more to drink, and kept wanting to talk more and tell the world who you were and what a great guy you were, make everybody just pay attention to you. And soon, the lights went out. Everything was black, and all you knew about was a kind of torment the same as when you went under gas to have a tooth pulled. You acted like a clown, became so helpless that you couldn't walk, puked, sometimes got puke all over yourself, made a pig out of yourself. Pig Lonigan. A wave of self-disgust swept through him. It wasn't worth it. The stuff was generally strong enough to corrode a cast-iron gut. It was canned heat, rot-gut, furniture-varnish, ratpoison. When you drank it, you took your life in your hands, and even if it didn't kill you, it might make you blind, or put your heart, liver, guts or kidneys on the fritz for life. And after you went on a bat, you woke up the next morning with a hangover. You were so jumpy you couldn't be satisfied with anything. You had sweats, a general feeling of tiredness and were ashamed of yourself for having been a fool. Your head throbbed with lines of pain running clean through it, and you had to put ice packs on it. Your guts were upset and heaving, and you couldn't eat. You were so damn thirsty that you couldn't drink enough water. You had to dope yourself with bromos, bicarbonate of soda, black coffee, aspirin, and cokes. It ruined your whole goddamn day, and you tasted bum gin and moonshine for three days.

He crossed over into Washington Park. It seemed funny to him now, how it was something to brag about, like copping a cherry, and how back in the sixth grade, he and most of the kids had thought drinking was a horrible disgrace. He didn't know why he had drunk so much of the world's liquor in his twenty-two and a half years. He had just started drinking because all the guys did. But he was on the wagon. Yes, and for good . . . maybe.

Suddenly, he sensed that spring was in the air. He could smell it. He breathed deeply, changed his slouchy walk into a brisk one, and looked about him at the dark shadows, the naked shrubbery and trees. He crossed the park drive, and walked around the patch of shrubbery on the right-hand side of the walk that curved to the boathouse. He could see the lagoon, steely, dark, glittering here and there with the moon and stars. The world, the night, the park, spring that was going to come, it was all new. He felt as if he were discovering them for the first time in his life, as if the sense of budding things, of leaves coming out on the branches, the gradual warming and laziness in the air, the grass bursting green through the cold, hard, wintry earth, as if all these were inside of him. He wished that it were spring already. He determined that it was going to be a different spring and summer for him. He was fed up with the old stuff, and he had let himself go far enough already.

He stood by the lagoon watching while trifling waves swished into the thin line of pebbled shore. He glanced up at the sky and was quickened with surprise and elation because it was so clear, with such clean clouds, and a moon which seemed like frothy ice or frozen snow. And he had never realized there were so many stars in the sky, some of them blue like signal lights far, far off. They were all over the sky like jewels flung on a dark carpet and they made him wonder about life, and what it was and why people had such curious feelings. But he guessed that God had made life and the stars just as they were so that people would wonder like that, and marvel at His handiwork.

He had a feeling of freshness and cleanness, even if he, too, had often been drunk like a pig. Pig Lonigan! And the thought of the spring that was coming made him happy. He thought how he would walk about in the park, with the trees and smells and sky and shadows and people, young girls in summer clothes, looking like Lucy had looked just so soon after graduation. Spring was like new life to the world, and he was going to be a new person in this coming new spring. And that girl. He had seen her a couple of times at church, but she had not batted an eye; she didn't know who he was, or if she did, she didn't show it. But he knew, he had faith that she was going to be the center of his new life in this coming new spring, and he was going to be a different Studs Lonigan, not a pig, stinking with lousy gin, and rolling helplessly in the gutter, like he'd seen Hink Weber doing. Some day he'd see her, meet her, speak to her, tell her how he had been in the park this very night, and of the things he'd thought, and how she had been in them so much, as if she were the trees and flowers of the new spring growing inside of him. He suddenly remembered Lucy. Hell with her! This other girl was keener. Lucy had had her chance. She could be sorry when it was too late. But he would learn from losing Lucy, and he wouldn't sulk with foolish pride and bashfulness, and be afraid of this girl. He would even every so often treat her coldly, acting as if he didn't care, because the minute a girl was too sure of a guy, she'd tire of him like Lucy must have gotten to feel. He'd learn from experience, learn about women from Lucy. He wondered what her name was.

He walked on and sat on a bench by the stone bridge around past the south bend of the lagoon. He pulled up his overcoat collar, and thought of how it was funny that a guy never took time off to think of what he was doing, and think about life. When he was home, he never did, but always listened to the radio, played a Victrola record, read a story in some magazine like the Argosy, or looked at the newspaper. Once in a while he would lie down, but then he would think of something he wanted to happen, getting girls, drinking. Often, since he had knelt beside her at Mass on Christmas day two years ago, he'd thought of her, of knowing her and loving her. And when he went out, he hung around so goddamn much, restless, wondering what to do, and hardly ever satisfied when he did do something, gassing, goofing clowns like Curley and he always kept wondering what time it was. And all along, he had known there was something missing. But this spring it would all be different and he would be better off from every viewpoint, all because he was going to meet her, and, yes, go with her. He remembered when he had licked Weary Reilley, that other day when he had sat with Lucy in the tree, and that day when he had gone home from work with his first pay, how on all those times, he had felt that life was going to start being different for him. This time, though, it had to be. It would. He looked across the lagoon at the wooded island which was on a small hill, half hidden in shadows, with bare trees ranged backwards at intervals from the bank.

He tossed aside the cigarette he was smoking. Most painters smoked and drank too much. He guessed those heartburns he got were from too much smoking. He was going to cut down. Under no considerations would he smoke more than a package a day. He was suddenly afraid that he had a bum heart. Suppose he wouldn't live long, and even a long life was short. He was going on twenty-three now, and look how quickly time seemed to have passed. He thought of himself being cut off early.

He slowly calmed his fears, because he was sure that it was not too late for him to start taking care of his health. He'd exercise, get the fat off, because if he let it go, he'd have too much on and fat would be dangerous and maybe make his heart worse, and you looked like hell with an alderman. Everybody kidded you. And she wouldn't want a guy who stuck out in the front like a balloon. He would exercise every day, go on the wagon, even watch his eating. Many a guy had dug his grave with a knife and fork, just as that writer in the
Questioner
, Cathcart, had said. The hell with boozing, whoring. It was the crap. Didn't pay. Ended you up behind the eight ball.

He felt chilly, and started back to Fifty-eighth Street. He looked at the trees which spread before him, like corpses, with the wind saddening through them. Nice. He was glad, too, that he had taken this walk. And he was going to stick to his determinations, fight not to break them. By God, he wouldn't! He shot his butt, realizing that he had determined to cut out smoking. Well, it hadn't been breaking his intentions, because he hadn't realized that he was smoking. He felt more different than he had ever felt before. He felt that he had will power, and will power was the main asset needed in every walk of life. Over near the drive, he was again aware of the wind sweeping through the shrubbery. It was a sad song, and it seemed to sing through him. It made him sad, but it was a pleasant sadness, because he knew he was different from all the mopes at the poolroom, he was going to do different things and be more than they. He could see himself, meeting them thirty years from now, himself thin, in the pink, not looking his age, them fat, red-nosed, failures, like Barney Keefe, envying him, and saying Studs you haven't changed a bit, you look swell, say how in the name of Christ do you do it? He was glad he had seen Hink. It had been like having ice-water thrown in his face to wake him up. It had made him think. Pig Lonigan! Not any more. It had made him learn his lesson in time, before he ruined himself like poor Paulie Haggerty had done, and his brother Shrimp Haggerty was doing.

Kelly came out of the poolroom as Studs slouched along. He asked Studs about doing something. Studs shook his head, and felt superior to Red. It was the first exercise of his new will power.

“Hell, Studs, if you go home now, your old man and old lady might have a fit of apoplexy or heart failure, they'll be so surprised,” Tommy Doyle said.

“I'm turning in and getting some sleep.”

He went towards home. At the corner of Fifty-eighth and Michigan, he saw a nigger and his black girl ahead, walking arm in arm. He thought of how in this new spring time, the new man Studs Lonigan would be walking about in the evening with her on his arm. Suddenly, he sneered, thinking that the goddamn niggers had their guts, invading a white man's neighborhood, and sooner or later they'd have to be run out.

Lonigan was glad with surprise. He and Studs talked about business for a half hour. He turned in with the mother. Studs and Fran talked, and he promised to go to the Wednesday evening Lenten services at St. Patrick's next Wednesday. In bed, the father said to the mother that he was gratified because Bill was getting some sense now, and settling down. He took the credit for it.

PHIL ROLFE
was one of the best-dressed cake-eaters at an afternoon dance given on Washington's Birthday at a hall near Englewood High School. A sizeable, lively crowd was in attendance. Amongst them were a number of fellows and girls who rated in the south side high school fraternity and sorority world.

They talked about the music, dances, the people present, places to go. As they glided into a corner it seemed that Loretta let hersef go tensely against him. He thought maybe she would sock it in. But he had to be careful. She was a nice girl. She might get sore. Had to handle nice girls with kid gloves that way, until you broke down the resistance. And her brother was tough. They turned gracefully in and out of the moving crowd, and Phil whistled the tune of
Frivolous Sal
as the orchestra played it. She smiled up at him with white, even teeth. He commented again on some of the people present and she laughed. He strategically manipulated his body until he had it against her. Her curly bobbed hair brushed his cheek. She wondered would he think her awful, and try to get too fresh if she shimmied. Fellows often did. But he was so cute. And a girl had to do something about that, and if she didn't shimmy, she might do something worse. In a corner, she took a chance. Phillip figured she was a nice sweet girl, and he'd have to date her up some time.