The Studs Lonigan Trilogy - James T. Farrell [102]
“000HHHHHHHH!” muttered Studs.
Kenny grabbed his arm.
“Where to?” muttered Studs.
“We’ll brown the Kaiser,” shouted Kenny.
“And the Clown Quince too,” said Studs, his mind painful with the thought of girls.
They stopped at a fight. It was Tommy Doyle. He knocked a souse out. Red Kelly kicked him in the ribs.
“That’s the Fifty-eighth Street spirit,” yelled Studs, as they rushed on.
They ate in a restaurant and ran out without paying.
They saw a guy fall through a plate-glass window. He was pulled out, and laid on the sidewalk. They fought in a whole mob, that milled like cattle to look at the guy, as he lay bleeding and moaning.
It got dark. Studs saw the girl from the elevated train again. He rushed to her and said, “Hello,” but she didn’t hear him, and dove for a passing Marine. Another jane copped the Marine, Studs grabbed her and kissed her. She slapped his face, and stopped a soldier to kiss him. She simulated moans as the soldier kissed her.
“Come on, girlie!” the soldier said.
Studs watched them quickly disappear in the crowd, and he was hot and wanted it, and gloomy, and just like that his heart seemed to go out of the whole celebration, and he felt that he was only a punk to them, just as the kids around the neighborhood were only punks to him.
It was late when Studs climbed into bed. He was tired, but too excited to sleep, and the refrain of Pack Up Your Troubles In Your Old Kit Bag drummed in his head. He tossed in the bed most of the night, wishing the war wasn’t over, wishing he was a hero, wishing, wishing he’d had the dough for a can house, or had copped off a broad downtown. He tried to keep thinking of that girl on the train, and of making her, over and over again. His head got drowsy, his eyes heavy, and he tried to think even more of her because then he might dream of her and something might happen in the dream
and
Dough-boy Studs Lonigan wearing a steel helmet, his bayonetted gun levelled, crossed No Man’s Land Over There, one of the rum-turn-tumming Yanks who were advancing. Star shells flared. Shells fell all around him. Machine gun bullets whizzed by his ear. He stepped over corpses. He leaped into the German trenches and suddenly discovered that he was alone, and that the Germans, the whole German Army, brutes, every one of them looking like the fat man with drooping mustaches in the Charlie Chaplin pictures, came at him. They came slowly forwards, goose-stepping, bayonets pointed. He backed into a corner, prepared to pay dearly for his life, terrified into courage by abject fear. And suddenly, all of a sudden in a funny goddamn way that he couldn’t understand, there were no Germans, only Old Man Death, wrinkled and creaky, coming at him with a scythe to which there hung a skull and cross-bones. And every time he breathed, ice floated out of his mouth. Studs cowered, prayed to the Blessed Virgin Mary. He turned and ran. He looked behind, and there was Old Man Death coming, an even steadiness in his tread. He realized that Old Man Death was The Rose of No Man’s Land, and he ran the swifter, it seemed for miles and miles, and turned, thinking that he had escaped, and there was The Rose of No Man’s Land, still coming, even, steady, breathing chunks of ice, carrying his scythe. Sweating, he turned and ran through fields and towns back to the eighth-grade class-room of St. Patrick’s Grammar School, and there he found Lucy Scanlan in a nun’s garb, teaching the class. He took his seat. Down the hall, he heard the heavy steps of The Rose of No Man’s Land
and
then Studs Lonigan was in the cockpit of an airplane, flying over France, surrounded by German planes. He took a nose dive, and headed straight into one German plane, waiting until he could see the aviator’s face. It was the face of grandma. He shot once, and down the plane went in flames. He climbed a cloud, and above it, headed for a second plane, saw that the aviator in it had the face of the girl on