The Studs Lonigan Trilogy - James T. Farrell [113]
Aw, what the hell! Let it go! He was sitting pretty!
He was aware of it being very quiet, lonesome, the sad part of the day. A dog barked. A horse and wagon clattered by on the rough, unpaved street. There was the noise of automobile brakes. The kids. The dog barked again. Quiet.
He went over Fifty-eighth Street. There was the tailor shop run by Cohen’s old man. A dry goods store in place of the old Palm Theatre. A shoe repair shop where Schroeder had had that ice cream parlor they’d raided. The alley. The chain store, and the five and dime. The neighborhood was still much the same, and yet it was different without her. Every block, every store was somehow connected in his mind with her. It was as if she was like God, and her spirit was in every-thing in the neighborhood, only it wasn’t any more. Suppose he had gone to war, and been killed. They would always remember him as a hero, and now maybe..
He stopped to get a drink of water at the fountain in front of Sternberg’s cigar store straight across from the drug store at Fifty-eighth and Prairie.
Some punks he didn’t know stood at the fountain, and as that snotty, loud-mouth little hebe, Phillip Rolfe, drew near, they squirted water square in his puss. Studs laughed. Phillip shouted irritatingly. They squirted again, and, dodging, Phillip bumped into him.
“Get out of my way!” he said, missing a kick.
“Aw, it wasn’t my fault!”
“Shut up!”
An old man limped stiffly along, shouting swear words at the top of his cracked lungs. The laughing pinks egged him on, and he cursed them. Studs laughed.
“Hey, grandpa! Button up. You’re losing something,” Rolfe yelled, everybody laughing; the old man heaped foul curses on them. Funny! Studs watched him struggle along, followed by the punks.
A truck was coming, and on an impulse he dashed before it. Had to cut that out. Might be mashed someday, if he didn’t.
He looked at his shoes, and leaned down to run a finger across the right toe. But it had been scuffed. Didn’t like that. He noticed the sharp press in his trousers.
He walked on towards the poolroom, wishing he was going out with Lucy, a girl. Maybe they’d all go to a can house. He was afraid to do that; no, he wasn’t.
He smiled at Sammy Schmaltz the newspaper man, hoping Sammy would comment on his new lid and clothes. Sammy was too busy selling papers.
Self-conscious, he joined a gang before the poolroom, and smiled deprecatingly when they kidded that he was all dolled up. Then they went back to kidding Paulie Haggerty, the married man, they said, who was too young to stand the gaff.
“Yeah, you guys just ask my wife if I ain’t the goods!” said Paulie.
Studs envied him. He could stand up and say there was one girl who was all his, every inch of her. And every night with her, he could get it, as much as he wanted.
“Hey, Haggerty, does your wife wash your diapers?” asked balloon-bellied Barney Keefe.
“Ooph, that’s a hot one,” Fitz, the poolroom pest, said, as they laughed.
“You know, Barney, you look almost human these days, even with your false teeth,” Paulie replied.
“He just bought new knee pads today too,” Kilarney said..
“Look at the can on that one!” Slew Weber said, pointing as Elizabeth Burns passed.
“Hey, Haggerty, shield your eyes. You’re married,” Barney said.
“A married man has more experience.”
“Listen, she lays for every punk in the neighborhood. She’s a fourteen-year-old bitch,” Kelly said.
“But she’s all right. I speak from experience,” Doyle said.
“I wouldn’t kick her out of bed,” Slew said.
“Weber, your age limit is from eight to eighty,” Barney said.
“Let’s do something,” Paulie said.