The Studs Lonigan Trilogy - James T. Farrell [100]
“To hell, want to come along?”
“It’ll be Heaven if you’re there.”
“You’re a kidder.”
She twisted against him and he felt that it was all set.
At Congress, the whole car seemed to jam towards the door simultaneously. He and Red lost the janes in the crush; just their goddamn luck.
He hoped he’d pick her up again, as he ganged along with the guys over to State and Van Buren. He looked frantically into faces, hurried the going, wanting to get her again, suddenly wanting Lucy Scanlan, but wanting her the more because she had everything a guy could wish for, and she’d go the limit, and what the hell if her breath was bad.
The Chicago loop was like a nuthouse on fire. The sidewalks were swollen with people, the streets were clogged, and autoists honked their horns, and motor men donged bells in vain. Tons of paper and confetti blizzarded from the upper stories of buildings and sundry noise-makers echoed an insistent racket. People sang, shouted until it seemed that their lungs would burst from their mouths.
Studs followed a guy playing a clarinet. A bag of water dropped on the guy’s bean. He played on, and a fellow clamped him on the dome with a banana stalk. He played on. He was caught in a laughing crowd which followed a fat black mammy who paraded down the sidewalk, dressed in a washtub full of clothes, joyously singing:
Oh, Lawd, Ise happy!
No mo’ washin’ fo’ me!
No mo’ washin’ fo’ me!
My two boys’ll be comin’ home soon!
My two boys’!! be cumin’ home soon!
Oh, Lawd, I’se happy!
He watched a sailor and a Marine scrapping. A pretty girl stopped the fight by kissing each of them. He clapped and catcalled with the crowd. If he was only in uniform. Everybody snickered as another sailor rushed forwards and threatened to fight if he wasn’t kissed. She kissed him, and the other two demanded second kisses. Everybody laughed.
He was plumped on the head with a banana stalk, and went sick with a sudden thud of a headache. He shook his head, turned, and tripped the guy with the stalk, just as he had lifted it to club someone else. He grabbed the stalk, and circumspectly clubbed a little fellow. Ahead, he saw a guy parting a way by brandishing a blackjack. Somebody spit in his ear, yelling that the war was over. A drunk came up to him, seriously and methodically shook hands, and then seriously and methodically walked on. Another drunk rolled in dt’s on the sidewalk, and a girl stuck her high heel in his guts.
Jesus, it was great! he thought.
He suddenly looked up through the noise and falling paper, and there was Old Glory on a flag pole, furled in the breeze, glinting the November sunlight—Old Glory that had never kissed the dust in defeat, and he could see it floating, flying over the trenches, ruins, corpses of the fields of France, again Victorious! Old Glory! His Flag! Proudly he told himself:
I’m an American.
He heard raucous feminine shouting. Turning, he saw a hysterical woman, her gray hair falling over her ageing face. She yelled:
“My son didn’t die in vain. Thank God, my Willie is not dead in vain!”
He joined a snake dance which sang There’ll Be a Hot Time in the Old Town Tonight. The snake dance dissolved, when a man on crutches, with two wooden legs, solemnly marched holding a small American flag between his teeth. He was cheered uproariously.
He bumped into the gang while they were gathered around a drunk who insisted that they all would hang the Kaiser to a sour apple tree. They tried to scrounge a drink but he said that now the Kaiser must be hung to a sour apple tree and Wilson must be crowned King of Germany and the League of Nations. They tried to scrounge a drink, and he said they’d get a barrel if they’d bring the Kaiser to him. A soldier dragged him off.,
An insane-looking woman passed, holding a sign aloft: FOLLOW ME TO THE KAISER’S FUNERAL HANS AND FRITZ HAVE THE FITS.
“WAHOOOOOOOOOO!” they yelled under the leadership of Kenny Kilarney.
Studs lost the gang again. He didn’t care. There’d never been a day like this