The Studs Lonigan Trilogy - James T. Farrell [129]
He walked slowly.
The night was crisp. A mist swung down low. It was not the kind of a night to think of death. It was the kind of a night to make one want to live.
He paused at the curb on Fifty-ninth, to let a truck swing around the corner. He had a crazy impulse, that he couldn’t understand, to dive in front of the truck.
He crossed the street, walked on lazily.
He tried to examine his conscience. He hadn’t broken the first commandment. He had taken the name of God in vain, fifteen, no twenty or twenty-five times a day, he guessed. Third commandment. He hadn’t missed mass. His thoughts wandered. He realized that he was lonesome. He wondered what he could do after confession. He didn’t want to go home. He figured he hadn’t better go to a show. It might cause him to have the wrong kind of thoughts after confession. He wondered what the bunch was doing.
He thought of himself, out on the football field for tomorrow’s game. The kickoff. Studs Lonigan running the first kickoff back a hundred and three yards. He wasn’t going to be hurt either. But suppose he was. Well, he was going to confession so he wouldn’t be. He’d be afraid to enter that game tomorrow if he didn’t, because he had that kind of a feeling.
He got back to the third commandment, and walked slowly towards St. Patrick’s Church.
In the church, a low-ceilinged structure of boxed-in gloom, he took a seat in the rear pew on the left-hand side. He bowed his head, and said a few prayers to the Blessed Virgin in preparation for an examination of conscience. Up forwards, near the side exit door, a woman arose, and waddled a few steps forwards to the plushed entrance of Father Gilhooley’s confessional. Behind him, the door of Father Doneggan’s box clattered slightly as it was closed. He heard a street car passing, and then the whistle of a railroad engine.
He riveted his eyes in a stare on the altar that was hallowed back in the center. He watched the flickering altar light above it. A man arose from the front, center, and did a St. Vitus dance down the center aisle, coming with twisted and painful slowness, dragging along the ruins of a paralyzed body. It was Joe, the paper-man. Studs knew him. He was all right, and not goofy to talk to, although he looked completely off because of the deadened nerves in the left side of his face. He came to church every morning, and received at least once a week. Poor bastard, he lived somehow on a few pennies made peddling the New World. Studs felt sorry for him.
The fellows had talked about going to the State and Congress. He wished . but a burlesque show was an occasion of sin. Couldn’t be thinking of them and planning to go to confession. Not the right attitude.. Oh, my God, I am heartily sorry for having offended Thee, and I detest all my sins... He heard the bang of a door from the confessional box of Father Roney, on the right-hand side of the church, just in front of the choir box.
For no reason at all, he glanced up at the low ceiling. He had to get himself into the right attitude. Feeling contrition was hard. He had to feel it deeply, with his whole heart and his whole soul. Oh, my God, I am heartily, heartily sorry..
He had taken God’s name in vain twenty-five or thirty times a day. He had been late for Mass on his own account, but they were only venial sins because he’d gotten in before the Consecration.
He looked behind him. Four and five people in the line before Father Doneggan’s box. He turned and glanced off from his right towards Father Roney’s box, five and six people in two lines.
An old man walked down from the altar, where he had been praying, and on back towards the rear, his heels rattatting on the rubber aisle.
A feeling of fear came over him, fear of being injured in the football game, fear with a sudden realization that Hell was a place of torments, endless torments in a fire that never ended, the monotony of its hissing flames, a sudden fear of life. He wanted