The Studs Lonigan Trilogy - James T. Farrell [101]
He went on, head lowering as if he was a fullback hitting the line, feeling like he was a bursting boiler that was liable to blow the whole Loop to smithereens.
“WAHOOOOOOOOOOOOO!”
He fought his way into a store in a jam, copped a horn, crushed out, and blew the horn for all he was worth. A funny-looking egg pushed a wheel-barrow along, lashing an effigy of the Kaiser in it with a horse whip. Studs got behind the guy, blowing his horn, feeling swell that everybody was seeing him in the midst of things, hoping she’d see him, and rush out and grab his arm, hoping that Lucy Scanlan would see him and think that he was pretty much the real stuff.
He blew the horn out and joined in a mob that was making a center rush. A girl’s dress and coat got torn off, and Studs fought to get a look at her. But she flung herself into the arms of a sailor and yelled for him to hurry up and take her with him where she wouldn’t need the damn rags. Jesus, it made him hot.
He was jammed to the curb to watch a parade of hearses. The first hearse was black, and carried a sign:
THE KAISER’S COFFIN! KILLED BY THE U. S. A.! A white hearse following it:
THE KAISER’S FUNERAL!
A third, black:
THE KULTUR INVENTOR DIED AT 2 A.M. HIS NEXT EMPIRE IS HELL!
Damn good stunt! thought Studs, trying to out-bellow every-one else, wishing like hell he had mightier lungs and stronger mitts.
A bunch of sailors came by, and he joined them. They cursed fiercely because they wouldn’t get their shot at the Huns. One of them gave Studs his first slug of whiskey. It burned all the way down, made him sneeze and cough, with watering eyes, and they laughed at him. He slunk off, and even when out of their sight, seemed to hear their laughter. Shamed feelings blistered into oaths. He put his cap on at a crooked tough-guy angle, slung back his shoulders, scowled with intent ferocity, and clenched his fists. He saw a little girl with a flag, and, fed up, he snatched it, letting her bawl her eyes out.
He laughed, forgetting, as he spotted a funny drunk leaning against a department store window. Studs gave him a disdainful hello. The fellow mummed his fingers to his lips, drew Studs close, almost suffocated him with an alcohol breath, and whispered that he couldn’t move because German spies had under-mined the foundation of the building, and he alone was holding it up, and if he moved, it would come down on everybody. He, like Wilson, was a savior of Humanity. Red came along. Studs gave Red the wink. Red nodded. They each cut one of the drunk’s feet from under him and he went down, his head snapping and cracking on the sidewalk. Blood oozed from it. A singing bunch of Marines stepped on the drunk as he lay there, and Studs and Red hurried away, afraid that maybe they’d killed the fellow.
They followed in the trail of five janes who were singing dirty songs and carrying a sailor on their shoulders. Studs wanted a uniform. Jesus! All the janes would be kissing him, and telling him to come on. He tried to think of himself in uniform, being kissed and grabbed by all the janes, carried about, taken to hotels, loved up by ten of them in succession. Goddamn it! He was nearly knocked down, and that brought him to his senses. Red grabbed him and said look at the funny bloke with the pig.
They went behind a fellow who dragged a pig along by a rope. There was a sign tied on the pig:
THE KAISER.
The fellow kept twisting the pig’s tail to make it squeal, and it was funny.
They followed him over to Michigan Avenue, hoping to get near enough to twist the pig’s tail. They spotted Kenny Kilarney on top of one of the lions in front of the Art Institute, flinging tomatoes into the crowd, and rushed over. Studs grabbed Kilarney’s last tomato, and let it go. He was glad when it hit a soldier in the ear. They dashed down the steps, and bumped square into a girl as she went for a sailor with open arms, shrieking:
“Here I am, sailor boy!”
Studs stood next to them, watching them kiss, the girl’s body straining, her