Studs Lonigan (95 page)

“Son, I'd have given my right arm not to have let it happen.”

“It won't any more, mom,” he said with hollow reassurance.

Anxious to get out, he quickly put his arm around her, gave her a pecking kiss, patted her back.

“Goodbye, mom, and please don't worry or feel bad.”

She turned a weak, unhappy smile on him and sniffled.

“Be good, son, and come home early.”

“Yes, mom.”

He thought of how this thing would make them feel lousy all night.

“Goodbye,” he called from the front door, and he closed it, feeling like a heel.

“I WONDER what it's going to be like outside there?” a round-shouldered fellow said.

“I hope we're not going to be left shanghaied in here much longer,” a wiry fellow on Studs' left remarked.

“It can't start too soon to satisfy me. My dogs have had enough wear already,” Studs said, leaning against the back wall in the crowded little room that buzzed with talk.

“It doesn't particularly reflect to the credit of the Order of Christopher when the best waiting-room they can find for us is a sardine can like this stuffy hole. Hell, we haven't even got enough room to breathe in here,” a well-dressed, beefy, middle-aged man sourly declared.

“Fellow, this is an initiation and an initiation is an initiation, isn't it?”

“Me, I no lika this,” a swarthy Italian said.

“Me, neither, but an initiation is an initiation, and you can't expect it to be nothing else.”

“I don't mind the waiting so much, but what I don't like is this waiting-room. How about you, stranger?” the well-dressed man asked, looking at Studs.

“The whole business is all Greek to me,” Studs said.

He noticed slanting rays of sunlight cutting down through the dusty air from the small, rectangular and unwashed window above him. The sunbeams made him feel how it was a pleasant March Sunday outside, and here he was cooped up, and he didn't know what was going to happen at this initiation. Yawning, his eyelids seemed heavy. He wished that he'd had enough sense to have made an earlier break from Catherine last night and gotten a decent night's rest. His eyes fell absently on a group of fellows a few feet ahead of him, who seemed to be quite at home, talking and laughing, not so anxious as he and as most of these other candidates were. He wished he'd had a friend along with him. It would make it easier.

“I wonder what it's going to be like?”

“Well, the degree they put us through this mornin‘, it was nothin'. I came expecting to take a lot, just like college boys do when they get initiated into one of their fraternities, but this mornin' degree, it was nothin'.”

“That's why I feel so eggy. They probably saved this afternoon to give us the works.”

“Hell, they can't do no more than kill you, and they won't do that.”

“Whatever they're going to do, I wish they'd get started on it and not keep us here until the Fourth of July.”

Them's my sentiments, Studs silently told himself, feeling a dryness in his throat. He thought of the morning's event. The mass with a church crowded tight with candidates and members of the Order of Christopher. What Father Gilhooley would have called an edifying sight. So many Catholic men from all walks of life, rich and poor, young and old, marching to the altar rail in a body, receiving Communion, like true knights of the church. Seeing that, being one of those in it, he had been proud of his Church, proud to be entering an order of men so closely connected with the Church. Remembering his catechism from grammar school, he told himself that the Church was One, Holy, Catholic, and Apostolic, built upon the rock of Peter, and that it would last until Judgment Day. Yes, he was glad, damn glad, that he had been born on the right side of the fence.

“Me, I'm in the laundry business. Sure, I drive a laundry truck for the Vincent Laundry. I pick up much less laundry these days than I did a year ago, and my commissions have been going down,” a red-faced lad near Studs said.

“I'm in the insurance business. I'm getting as many policies as I ever did, but the collections are not as steady, and it's like pulling teeth getting money out of policy holders. That reminds me, here's my card in case you ever want any insurance. Since we're both going to be Christys, we might as well help each other whenever we can.”

“And any time you want any laundry done, well, give us a shot at it. . . .”

“Say, they don't seem any too keen on wanting us, from the time they're taking,” a dark, frowning man said.

“Maybe they got to figure it all out. When I was in high school, we had a frat, and before each initiation we had to figure out what we'd do.”

“This is different. The Christys aren't high-school kids, and joining the Christys is not like joining a bunch of high-school kids.”

“Well, I didn't say it was. I was only saying maybe that's the explanation, and then again, maybe it isn't.”

Yes, it had been a kind of a thrill this morning, Studs told himself. Walking to the altar he had felt how great the Church was, and he had seen that he was a part of it. And if the rest of the initiation was no worse than what they'd gotten at the degree they'd taken in the morning, it wouldn't be so bad. But when they'd been marched into the dark hall with the fellow in a red robe standing in candle light, he had gotten a creepy feeling that seemed to tickle and shiver up his spine. And that fellow in the red robe, whoever he was, he had sure talked like a hard-boiled baby. The minute he'd opened his trap, Studs had felt sure that the whole gang of them were in for some rough going. The snotty way he had called out names. And then when the candidate whose name had been called out would answer, the way the fellow in the red robe had asked a question from the catechism. He wondered, would the rest of the initiation be as clever?

“I played forward two years with the Mary Our Mother heavyweights in the Catholic High School League, and I'm going to try out for the Council team next season. Basketball is a great game and in the Christopher League you'll see some of the fastest and snappiest basketball that's played anywhere in this city.”

That fellow in the red robe, though, was smart, acted as if he might be a lawyer. If he wasn't one, he sure ought to be. Some of those who had been questioned had given the right answers from the catechism, and this fellow had tripped them up with questions until they changed their answers to the wrong ones. Studs smiled, remembering how the fellow had lit into those who had denied their right answers. What a wicked tongue he wielded.

“I wanted to go to high school myself, and play baseball, but my old man worked in a machine shop and lost his hand. They said it was his own fault, and he didn't get much dough out of the accident, and so I had to go to work when I graduated from Saint Catherine's grammar school. But the Order runs a commercial school, and I think I'll go to it nights and take up accounting, if it doesn't cost too much. I was good at percentage in grammar school, and I figure I ought to get on in accounting. I've got no hankering to spend the rest of my life running a machine in a button factory.”

“There's not much doing in accounting. Better stick to what you got.”

“Well, the way I figure is, that a little ambition won't hurt anybody.”

He wished that his name had been called out this morning and he'd have been given a catechism question he could answer, like what are the attributes of the Church? And they would have all known that a fellow named William Lonigan couldn't be tripped up easily when he knew something. But it was sure damn clever. Getting them all in a dark, spooky room, questioning them on the catechism to show them that a member of the Order of Christopher should know something about the faith. Would the next degree in the initiation be as clever and as interesting?

“I'm getting fed up waiting,” a young lad beside Studs said.

“I don't care what they do as long as they make it snappy,” Studs said, his legs aching, that stiffness in his side from Martin's punch bothering him.

“It'll go on in time,” a puffy-cheeked fellow, whose breathing caused a little whistling noise, said.

Studs thought that there was lots to the guy who breathed like an orchestra, lots of deadness, and he turned the other way so he wouldn't have to talk to the dope. Several feet away he saw a priest, surrounded by fellows, all butting in to get in a word and show off. He sneered at such show-off bastards, thinking how he wasn't that kind of a guy, blowing out crap by the pound to make himself look big. Still he'd like to talk to the priest. Most priests were human, and interesting to talk to, like Father Doneggan of Saint Patrick's had been. But gee, he never knew that Father Doneggan had hit the bottle, and it sure had been a surprise to him when he'd heard that Father Doneggan had left the priesthood.

“Hell, you don't call Art Shires a ball player, do you? He's just a jaw artist.”

Perspiring, he felt his shirt stick and his arm pits a bit clammy. And the air was getting worse. How long, oh, tell me how long, must I wait. Can we get it now, or must we hesitate?

“You can't convince me, if you jabber till doomsday, that with the resources behind the Order of Christopher, it has any excuse for not supplying us with a better waiting-room than this crummy hole.”

“Bah, it's the same as everything else, a racket. We pay our ten bucks, and then, what do they care,” a blond fellow of about twenty-five said.

“Just a minute, young fellow, you're making serious charges against the Order,” a gray-haired, sunken-jawed man countered.

“Well, why shouldn't I? Do you think I forked out my initiation fees to be plunked in here all afternoon without even room to wriggle my ears?”

Studs wanted to tell the fellow to wait and see, because if the Order put them in here, it must have a reason, and the men at the head of it had more brains than this fellow had, and if they had put them here it was with a reason, and the Order of Christopher couldn't be a racket. If it was a racket, Cardinals and Archbishops wouldn't tolerate it a minute.

“Give us room! Room! This man is blind,” a husky voice shouted.

Amidst sudden crowding and shoving, a wave of constraint seemed to lay a band around everyone in the room. All thoughts, except curiosity and a fear lest some kind of trouble might start, were sucked out of Studs' mind. He slowly edged himself toward the fellow who had called out, and he saw a blind man cowering and trembling on the arm of a plump, dark-browed fellow in a gray suit.

“Say, I wonder what's the idea of all this?”

“That's what we're all wondering, lad.”

“It's an initiation, isn't it?”

“Hell of a way to run one, letting a blind man into a crowded room like this where he could get stepped on!”

Studs slipped back to lean against the wall. Aches extended down his legs like troublesome wires, and the soles of his feet were getting sore. He mopped his face and felt sweaty.

“I hope we get out of here by Christmas,” he said wearily.

“All right, you birds, line up!” a full-faced sergeant-at-arms in a red robe commanded before they had finished sighing with relief at his entrance.

There was a hasty and disorganized attempt to form several lines, and Studs hesitated between them.

“Get in there!” the sergeant-at-arms snapped, unceremoniously pushing a slowly responsive initiate; and Studs, catching his first good glimpse of the man, saw that he was a tough-looking customer with a hard expression and heavy brows.

“I will,” came a sulky voice.

“Well, do it and shut your trap! I haven't got all day to fool around here!”

“All right!” the voice replied still with a trace of sulkiness.

“I don't like his looks,” a fellow next to Studs mumbled.

“Looks hard-boiled to me!”

“Oh, so you're snotty, are you!” the sergeant-at-arms said with menacing irony.

“I can't figure why he should come here in that manner. He's acting as if he wanted to start a riot,” Studs remarked to the fellow next to him who had just spoken.

“Well, if that's what he's out for, he might be accommodated,” the fellow said, and Studs hoped that the initiation wouldn't be broken up by a free-for-all.

“This is a free country and you got no right to order me around like I was a coolie.”

“Listen, wise boy! While you're here, do what I tell you! I don't need any instructions, so try and edify yourself with silence, because the Order is not particularly concerned with accepting loud-mouths.”

“He wouldn't pull that crap on me!”

“Me, neither,” Studs said in a low voice.

“All right, let's can the beefing and get going!” the fellow who had been passing remarks to Studs called out throatily, his head lowered.

“What's your name?” the sergeant-at-arms said, glaring at Studs, after having brushed through to him.

“Me?” Studs asked in surprise, unwittingly pointing his right index finger at his chest.

“Yes, you, shrimp!”

“Lonigan.”

“A runt like you with an Irish name. The Holy Spirit must certainly have deserted old Erin,” he said with a contemptuous sneer, a mumble of low protest breaking out around the room.

“Why?” Studs asked, humiliated, wishing he was this baby's size, knowing he was the center of attention.

“Listen, Loogan, or whatever your name is, I don't need any help from you. If you want to hear the sound of your own voice, get up on a soap box after the ceremonies.”