• Choose a category
• All
• Classic-Fiction

“Yeah, I know,” Studs said, trying to be hard.

“You have to be careful all the time.”

Studs felt like telling him a lot of bull, but he couldn’t think up any story. The guy clogged up his tongue.

“You know, there’s better and safer ways,” the fellow said, his hand ever-so-lightly running up Studs’ thigh. Studs noticed how queer and tight the fellow’s face got. He felt himself being pawed.

“Listen! What’s the idea!” Studs said very excitedly, sitting up.

“Now, sonny, be calm! I’m only going to be a friend to you. I wouldn’t try and hurt a clean decent-looking boy like you.”

“Yeah!” jerked Studs menacingly.

He stood up with his fists clenched, but indecisive. The guy arose, slipped into the bushes and disappeared.

Studs woke up. The guy was fruit, the first one he’d ever met like that. He was sorry he hadn’t hauled off on him. He walked into the path, and looked up and down. Then he looked in the boathouse, but couldn’t find the guy. He returned again to sit down under the tree.

He was ashamed of himself, of his thoughts, his body, of the way life was. He heard birds chirping and the winds above him in the tree leaves, pure like Lucy, and he looked up at the waving bushes, first one group of bushes flaunting, then another, then all of them whipping back and forth, and through them he could see patches of sky. He felt as if somebody had rubbed him all over with horse manure.

He got up, and walked about, moody, not wanting to go any place, not wanting to go back and sit around the pool-room with the guys, feeling all clammy.

He got home for supper late, and the old man was crabby. He didn’t say anything at the table. They noticed that he was acting queer and kept asking him what was the matter.

“Nothing,” he said.

II

After supper, Lonigan called Studs into the parlor for a talk. He said all right, a bit surlily, and stopped off in the bathroom to get his thoughts collected. He felt that maybe this was going to be a showdown with the old man, and if it was, he’d let him know that Studs Lonigan was going to be his own boss.

The old man sat in his rocker, an ancient piece with a plush cushion that the old lady had been trying to get out of the parlor for years. Studs entered with a scowl of determination on his face. The old man gave him a sharp look, as if to scare him. He told Studs to sit down, his manner authoritative, and he dabbled away at lighting his stogy.

“You’re going on eighteen?”

“Yes.”

“I wonder if you agree with me that it’s about time that you begin to figure out what you’re going to do with your life?”

“Well... I looked for a job today.”

“Where?”

“Oh, a number of places in the Loop,” Studs said, wishing he had told the old man to mind his own damn business.

“Do you want to go back to school or don’t you?” the old man asked, nodding ironically.

“I don’t like school,” Studs said with uncertain firmness.

“Well, what do you want or like?”

“I’ll get a job one of these days.”

“Yes. You’ve been doing that for over a year, and it’s cost me a buck a day. What’s the matter with you? Are you sick? Tonight at the supper table there, you didn’t even bat an eye and had a face a yard long. What’s wrong? Are you sick or in trouble?”

“Nothing. I’ll get a job.”

“Take the chip off your shoulder!”

“I ain’t got any on it!”

“I can’t understand you. Here I’m willing to give you a hell of a lot better chance in life than I ever had, and you won’t take it. You just mope along …” the old man stopped short and shrugged his shoulders, a gesture of weariness. Studs waited to see what would come next.

“Well, as they say, you can bring a horse to the trough, but you can’t make him drink!”

The old man whewed as if expressing the difficulties of thinking down into disconsolate depths.

“Maybe you’re better off without an education, and a lot of book-learning. It might make you into a high-hat snob like it did Dinny Gorman. You don’t need an education like that to be a success. I didn’t.”

Studs wanted it to be over so he could get out of the damn house.

“What you need is hard work, and I’m going to give it to