The Studs Lonigan Trilogy - James T. Farrell [127]
He could see it so clear. They could have won if only ... Some day all the American working-men would strike, and even the waiters would have to then, and then too . they would win, and men like himself wouldn’t be made goats. He clenched his weak fists, wanting to fight back. But there was no fighting left in him.
Others before him had been blacklisted, and had known his bitterness. Others had been betrayed. But it wouldn’t, couldn’t always be thus. All that bitterness and defeat would not die. It would gnaw the souls of men. It would fester. It would spit poison. It was only with bitterness and poison that the workingmen, even the waiters, would beat the Shriftons. He vowed that his defeat would not be in vain. He would pass the bitterness of it on, help to make for that day when he would be dead, but when the bitterness of workingmen would rise above the brim, and then, the Shriftons would be blacklisted. He felt a brief exaltation. It drowsed and died.
“Hello, Dad,” Andy said.
He looked at his son whose brain was not very good.
“Don’t worry, Dad. Maybe get a job next week and help out.”
Tears grew in Mr. Le Gare’s eyes.
CHAPTER SEVEN
I
His life was much the same as it had been last week or last year. It was a week now since his twenty-first birthday, and his life was much the same as it had been last week or a year ago.
The old man owned a new building on Michigan, near the Carter School, and the Lonigans lived on the third floor south. Studs emerged from the building and walked along, taking loose, easy strides, strides that he considered self-confident.
He had made his decision while shaving. Now, it caused him to have a sense of impending unpleasantness. It would be a wasted evening, and tomorrow he would regret having let a night slip by him. But that wasn’t the right attitude to show. Sometimes, he wished that he wasn’t a Catholic, and didn’t have to meet the responsibilities of a Catholic. But that wasn’t the right attitude either.
The Carter playgrounds surrounding the school were rimmed by an iron picket fence. Walking along, Studs had an impulse to touch each picket as he had used to do. But he walked along like a guy of twenty-one who wasn’t a clown. He paused at a spot along the fence which stood almost opposite the third base of the indoor diamond in the northeast corner of the grounds.
Remembering, remembering many things, he nodded. And Paulie was dead now. He had never thought that on his twenty-first birthday, first day of manhood, that his old friend, Paulie, would die. Life was funny and unpredictable.
He looked at the rambling, tan-and-gray school building that stood in the center of the grounds facing south. The sky over it was red. It all made him lonesome. The sky red, the empty buildings, the playground he had known so well as a kid, with nobody now in it. He looked at the batter’s box on the diamond. Paulie had stood there batting right-handed in a piggy game, cursing Young Coady for twirling the ball on the day he’d cleaned Red Kelly. He could almost hear Paulie’s voice:
“Come on, you goddamn punk, or I’ll fling the bat at you!”
And right inside the fence from where he stood was the spot where they’d had the fight. Paulie had placed the stick on his shoulder and Red had knocked it off, and they’d tangled. And the fists of Studs Lonigan had won him respect.
Suddenly, he was lonesome, lonesome to be a boy again.
He looked at his clenched fist. It was pretty big, considering his size. He was only about five six, but he was broad, and he was still tough, and able to spot a lot of guys on weight and take them.
But still he couldn’t get himself to believe that Paulie was dead. He had stood right inside the playground, and Studs could almost see him, mushy-faced, a bit fat, big fanny, wearing a red-trimmed, gray baseball shirt. The first to go, and all shot to pieces with clap, and drink, and dissipation.
Poor Paulie.
Studs lit a cigarette. He wondered why the good guys like Paulie went, and the louses like Weary Reilley