Studs Lonigan (75 page)

OOPH, the last of the Mohicans! Studs thought to himself, as he came out of the Fifty-eighth Street elevated station and saw Sammy Schmaltz.

“Say, Schmaltz, who won the ball game?” asked Studs.

“Studs!”

“You're still around, I see.”

“Yes, I'm always here.”

“How's business?”

Sammy shrugged his shoulders, and said he sold some papers.

“All the old people are gone, huh?”

“Doyle, he still lives around here. Oh, one or two.”

“They hang around?”

Sammy had to turn and sell a racing sheet to a nigger.

Studs walked towards Prairie Avenue. In the cigar store on the right-hand side of the elevated station, he saw a group of niggers hanging around, talking with a sweaty brown-looking, sporty bastard who leaned forwards on the counter. He saw pearly white teeth flash in a coal black smile.

Niggers passed him on the sidewalk. They nearly all looked alike, as if they were the same person. The corner, their old corner, looked like Thirty-fifth and State. A gang of young niggers were gathered around the fireplug talking, kidding, laughing. He tried to frown. Suppose they should get snotty or try to mob him? He suddenly thought of himself fighting ten or twelve niggers, standing with his back to the wall, swinging, laying them down one after the other with a punch, as guys sometimes did in the movies.

He went into the drug store. There was a pretty, white girl at the cashier's desk. He walked over to the soda fountain to get a coke. But the niggers used the same glasses. His stomach almost turned as he thought of himself using the same glass as a nigger did. He bought a package of cigarettes, and stepped outside.

A loud, irritating Negro laugh struck him, rubbed him up the back. He turned to see a dude, with baboon lips, twisting and bending forwards as he laughed.

“Hi! there, Mistah Morgan!” a loose-jointed, middle-aged Negro said to another passing Negro.

“Hi! Brother Jones,” the second replied.

A handsome, light brown, well-built girl passed. Studs looked at her. So did the Negro lads on the comer. He wondered if she was a whore. He'd like to have her. He remembered how a couple of times he'd been to nigger can houses, but the girls he'd had had been too black and bony. One like that was nice, even if she was black.

He felt uncomfortable on the corner, and walked west towards Indiana Avenue. The street was changed. There was another chain store in the block. The garage was still at the corner of the alley. There was still a dry goods store where the old Palm Theater had been. He remembered how they'd used to sneak in the side doors, years ago when he'd been still in grammar school. He tried to remember some of the pictures he'd seen, with Maurice Costello, Fatty Arbuckle, John Drew, Broncho Billy, Charlie Chaplin, Mary Pickford. He couldn't remember them well, except for Charlie Chaplin.

He lit a cigarette. Hell, it hardly seemed that they had moved five months ago. Now, too, there was no place to hang out. Sometimes he went to Sixty-third and Cottage Grove, and sometimes to Sixty-third or Sixty-seventh and Stony Island. No other corner would ever be the same. Christ, and what wouldn't he give to have just one more night, with all the guys back again, and Arnold Sheehan too?

There was a greasy-looking Jew in the drug store at Fifty-eighth and Indiana where Levin had been, and where once, on the day he'd licked Weary Reilley, Helen Shires had treated him to a chocolate soda. He looked north down Indiana Avenue, and slowly crossed the street and walked down, past the vacant lot, past the three-story building where Red O'Connell had lived. Red was a skunk, a no-do, no-work, crapping sonofabitch. He'd used to hang out down at the poolroom around Fifty-fifth the last Studs had heard of him, and he and a bunch of guys like him would be there, shooting their mouths off, selling the buildings around there and even real estate out in the lake with their line. He passed the wooden house, set back from the sidewalk where the O'Callaghans had lived. On past the apartment where the Donoghues had lived. He stopped at the gray stone brick, Lucy's old house.

He had stood there that summer night, and she had blown him a kiss, and he had gone home carrying his handkerchief, as if he kept it there, and never again had things been the same, and funny, time had passed, and here he was, and Lucy was married. He hoped to Jesus Christ she'd get fat as a pig, have ten kids, and a husband who'd kick the Christ out of her, dose her, and blow out. He looked at the house, with lights behind shaded windows. Niggers now lived in it, and the house was probably stinking because niggers always stunk, and it was dirty because niggers were dirty. He tried to whistle. He heard some vague sounds, and stood convinced that they were human voices, and somehow he felt as if he was hearing Lucy, and Dan and Helen Shires, and all of them talking once again.

He turned back towards Fifty-eighth, cut through the vacant lot, where they'd all played, into the alley, out on Fifty-eighth Street and over to Michigan. He crossed Michigan and looked at the playground, dark and gloomy, with the school building half visible. It was misty, an autumn mist, a night like many nights he'd known around the neighborhood, when they'd all get together in the pool room or at the corner, Slug and Red, Tommy and Les. And they'd goof around, listen to the punks, or go to a show, or get a bottle. He turned around, and walked back. The same railing stood by the grass plot, in front of the corner buildings at the northeast corner of Fifty-eighth and Michigan. Sometimes as a kid he used to jump back and forth over it. He vaulted over it. He vaulted back. He put his feet together to make a standing jump over it. He looked at the railing. He didn't jump, might not make it that way. He was stiffened up, heavy on his feet. He felt his belly. Jesus, was he going to get a belly like the old man?

He walked back to Indiana. On the east side of the alley between Michigan and Indiana, there was still that row of shacks. Poor people had lived there. He looked in and saw a dirty, disrumpled Negro home, lit by a kerosene lamp.

A buck nigger came along. Studs took his hands out of his pockets and tried to look tough. The nigger passed, singing.

He wondered where the guys were. He turned and walked south along Indiana towards St. Patrick's.

He started singing:

He stuck his hands in his pockets. He took them out, and swung them at his side. He lit a cigarette. The night was swell, that mist, the moon, just a little bit damp, all like some mystery or song or something. He thought of Lucy, and of that girl he'd knelt next to at mass. Wonder what had become of her. Was Lucy happy? Hell, things were all funny. He guessed he, too, might as well get a girl and marry. What the hell else was there to do? Red Kelly had his girl. Sooner or later a guy married . . . if he could find somebody to marry him.

Ahead of him, he saw the lights of an elevated train appear, disappear. He heard the echoes from the train.

A long time ago, he had walked along the same sidewalk with Lucy. He stopped under the elevated structure, just south of Fifty-ninth Street. A train rumbled overhead. Sometimes they'd played shinny, or had fights here. He moved on past a row of apartment buildings. In his time, they'd looked new and modern, with lawns and trimmed bushes in front of them. Now they seemed old. The niggers, all over again, running down a neighborhood. He heard a victrola record going:

An elevated train blotted the song out momentarily, then he heard it again:

He walked on. Niggers living in all these buildings, living their lives, jazzing, drinking, and having their kids, and flashing razors at each other.

He crossed Sixtieth, and, quickening his pace, he saw the sisters' convent, and the east side of the church grounds, with a bare flag-pole half distinct, in the center. And the school building. He looked at it, a long, low building, now like a shadow, its shape distorted because of the night. Christ, how many times had he come here? They used to play pompompullaway in the yard at lunch hour. He'd run through, stiff-arming anybody who came near. They were afraid of him. Damn tootin', they were. Studs Lonigan had been something to be afraid of. And one day, he remembered Battling Bertha giving TB McCarthy the clouts. He remembered TB covering his face and yelling to be let alone, then thinking suddenly that she was finished, he'd raised his face, and she'd been bringing her clapper down, and it had got him in the nose. He had yelled like hell, and his nose had bled. And in all those days, he'd sat in the chalk-smelling room, looked up at the desk where Bertha sat in the right hand corner of the window, he'd watched the sun coming through the window, and it would seem to come in lines, and show up all the dust. And the way Bertha would say with respect: William Lonigan, now perhaps you can diagram the first sentence. He'd had a drag with her, and she usedn't to give him the clouts as much as she had the others, because his old man always gave the sisters a turkey at Thanksgiving and Christmas. He still sent one to the sisters.

He passed along the iron picket-fence. He noticed a light in the sisters' convent. He looked at the old building, from the front, the steps leading up to the wide wooden doors. He'd stood here, too, after mass on many mornings.

He was still doing it. With this building here, looking the same, things couldn't be changed, and it couldn't be so many years ago, it couldn't. This building gave him confidence. Everything was all the same as it used to be, and he wasn't fat and worried about his health, and it couldn't be different, and all that couldn't be gone. He stood in a trance.

A street car passed. An old nigger in overalls walked wearily by him. He looked to his left at the new church, standing now huge and high. He remembered how the parish had talked of it. And it was a goddamn beautiful church, and what was it for now—a handful of black bastards.

He turned and walked away. At Sixtieth and Calumet, he paused to watch two young nigger kids wrestling. Three classily-dressed young shines minced past him. He walked right along behind them.

“I swear, ah'll tear your eyes out, Gloria, if you all start making those oogle eyes at my big man.”

“What does I care for that big black bastard you got?”

For Christ sake! He followed them. They slackened their pace. He walked by them, and one of the fairies said hello. A second one said he looked lonesome. A third asked if he had any chickens on the block. He was momentarily tempted to take a chance out of curiosity. Self-disgust rose, changing his mind. He turned and told them to blow. They laughed, and he walked on, hearing their voices and laughter behind him, feeling that he was being talked about. It was almost as if he were being humiliated, undressed, in public, and he hastened.

Automobiles were coming in all directions at Sixtieth and South Park. He wanted to get across the street. He dashed in front of the cars, dodged, and just landed safely on the other side. He was out of breath, but he was proud of himself. It had been taking a chance. His guts were still there, and he was still the old Studs Lonigan, ready to run risks. If he hadn't had guts, he wouldn't have taken the risk of his life, dashing in front of the cars. Damn tootin', he was! He drifted through the park. The wind was powerful, and he heard it beating steadily through the empty trees, scraping and rustling the dead leaves. It was dark, with scarcely a star in the sky. Dark, lonely in the park. It had used to be his park. He almost felt as if his memories were in it, walking about like ghosts. He turned to go and look at the lagoon.

Ahead, he saw a stout, squat fellow searching on the ground, repeatedly lighting matches. The sight was funny, almost like a shot from a movie comedy. He suddenly imagined that the guy had lost a valuable ring, money. It was perhaps something happening in real life, like one of the detective stories he had been reading recently. Studs Lonigan the sleuth would find it.

“Lost something!”

“Lonigan!” the fellow said with a curious lisp, as he looked up.

Studs laughed at Barney Keefe who faced him, wearing pyjamas and a bathrobe.

“The sonsofabitches!” Barney said.

“You drunk?” asked Studs, perceiving that Barney did not have his false teeth.

“No!” snapped Barney.

“Well, what the hell's this?”

“I'm sick!”

“You look worse. What the hell you doing out here in that outfit?”

“Oh, Doyle and them bastards came around, and I was sick, and they said come on, they'd take me for a little ride, because Doyle has his old lady's car, and they promised to give me a drink of some bonded stuff. And the wise bastards left me here and threw my false teeth some place around here. But there's nothing funny about it,” Barney said, because Studs had to laugh.

Studs found the false teeth. Barney cursed all the way back to the park exit. He hailed a cab, and gave Keefe the fare.

He walked back, because Barney had said that the boys always met by the stone bridge in the park. He knew they'd be back. He found them seated on a bench. They all laughed when he told them how he'd met Barney.