The Studs Lonigan Trilogy - James T. Farrell [141]
They finished supper with little talk. Studs left the table and washed his teeth. He put on his hat and coat. He looked at himself in the mirror. He wasn’t a bad-looking guy at all. He heard footsteps in the hall, and turned away. He remembered how Fran had once caught him at the mirror, and had razzed him about being conceited in a snotty, superior way that she had.
“Bill, come here a minute!” Lonigan called as Studs turned the knob of the front door.
He was smoking in his rocker. Studs noticed that his belly seemed to stick out more and more every day. He plunked down on the piano stool.
“Bill, you know, Father Time is beginning to catch up on your mother and me. You kids are all we got, and . we’d kind of like to see more of you, have you all stay in and spend a quiet, happy evening with us. That isn’t asking a whole lot. You’re young and want to go out and be a regular fellow, and we don’t object. Only there’s always another night. And you know, Bill, you’ll never have another mother. She sits up night after night worrying about you. It would just tickle her heart pink if you would, now and then, go up, kiss her and say, ‘Mother, I’m going to stay in wiry you tonight.’ “
“I’m just going to a show. I’ll be in early.”
The phone rang. Studs was glad it was for him. He went out of the parlor and Lonigan picked up his newspaper to read about the Grand Jury quiz of some aldermen implicated in a school board graft. It was Dan Donoghue calling to say that he had found out for certain that Jew Schwartz would be all right, except that he had been ruptured and wouldn’t ever be able to play football again. Studs asked Dan about a show, but Dan had a date. He noticed Martin sitting by the crystal radio-set with the ear phones on, keeping time on the floor. Loretta came out of the bathroom with a copy of True Story magazine in her hands. She stopped, shaking her shoulders and doing a little dance when she saw him. He left, shouting good-bye.
II
Off the drear and rock-bound coasts of Alaska, that frigid land where men gamble their lives and souls with the dice of death, and sin for love and gold, the good ship Mary Ann braved all the monstrous terrors of the deep. Rolling, tipping, tossing, swaying, swerving, straining through the black and mysterious night, it tacked against a pelting rain, a howling wind, and huge waves that washed over it like evil spirits from out of the bowels of the unconquerable seas.
Captain Arnold, of the good ship Mary Ann, was a bulky man with cruelty stamped on a vicious, unshaven face, and a heart more ruthless than the stormy seas. He commanded his seamen with the iron hand of a tyrant. With each order, he gave them a curse, a kick, a blow. One of his sailors was Morgan, a smaller man, with the milk of human kindness in his soul. He gave Morgan an order, and slapped his face, sneering like a fiend out of hell. Morgan received the slap unflinchingly, but defiance struck the kindliness from his eyes.
Captain Arnold turned, and staggered across the rolling deck, with waves washing foamily past him, into his cabin. ‘While the door was opened to admit him, wind and water gushed in, a flickering candle almost died, and a whiskey glass tumbled off the table, to crash. In a bunk, Captain Arnold’s timid Indian wife cowered like a small and frightened rabbit, her baby girl in her arms.
“Christ, he’s a mean-looking brute,” Studs Lonigan whispered to Slug Mason, as Captain Arnold’s scowl revealed his fangs.
“You said it.”
There was conversation, glowering hatred on the Captain’s face, naked fear on the countenance of his wife. With wild animal ferocity in his eyes, Captain Arnold pointed demonstratively at the cabin door. The little Indian wife strained her baby girl more tightly to her bosom, huddled herself into a corner of the bunk, and shook her head. Her mouth opened in a scream as he approached her. He clutched her arm, and brutally yanked her out of the berth. He tore the baby from her, and dropped it in the berth, flinging her aside with such force that she catapulted