The Studs Lonigan Trilogy - James T. Farrell [173]
They saw Mr. Sheehan standing, lost, by the front door. He was a ruddy, full man, with stooped shoulders, a clipped mustache, and a half-bald gray head. They expressed condolences. He seemed not even to see them, and they smelled his rancid whiskey-breath.
“God, it’s sad,” Studs said, as he and Tommy walked through the hall to the rear.
“Poor fellow, it’s knocked him groggy,” Tommy sorrowed.
They passed through the dining-room where a small group was gathered around one of Arnold’s twin sisters, a pretty black-haired girl who was distraught.
They heard the guys talking in the kitchen. Horace, Arnold’s grown brother, stood in the doorway.
“Jesus, I’m sorry Horace,” Tommy said.
“I know! It’s tough, Tommy. You know I think it’s broken Dad. He acts just like a broken man, interested in nothing, hardly ever seeing anybody. I doubt if he’ll ever get over it,” Horace replied, emphasizing his feeling with slow shakes of the head.
“And Arnold was getting on so well,” Studs said.
“Well, all we can do is make the best of it and call it life,” Horace said reflectively.
A thick veil of tobacco smoke hung over the kitchen. Jim Doyle stood by the kitchen sink, a cigar pasted in his round, jolly face, and he greeted them, called them hoods. They saluted in return, and sat down near Red Kelly. Studs noticed a girl in a corner, shabby, faded, blowsy, looked like a two-bit whore; her face seemed familiar. He frowned, and wrinkled up his forehead trying to think; he realized that she was Paulie Haggerty’s widow, Eileen. What a bitch she had turned out to be!
“Well, Studs, what’s new?” Red Kelly asked.
“Not much.”
Horace passed around cigars. Biting off the end of one, and lighting it, Studs remarked with a certain air of importance and maturity:
“Well, Red, I never expected to be here on an occasion like this.”
“Studs, when I heard it, you could have slapped me down with a feather. It’s very sad, too. It’s hit the poor mother hard, very hard. Arnold was her favorite, and he was always a little reckless, you know, a nice guy but a crazy bastard too when he was drunk, and that always caused her worry. And think of it, here he was sloughed off in the very prime of life.”
“Poor Arnold, the guy did run in bad luck,” Studs said.
“Like that time he was pie-eyed, and got stabbed by a shine; then he no sooner got his wounds healed up than he gets a dose.”
“Say, was he oiled when the accident happened?”
“No, he was on the wagon again. He had gone back to work for the city. Remember how he got canned from the job for being oiled and then went back?”
“Yep, that’s right.”
“He was riding home from work last Saturday, on a city truck, standing on the tail gate, and hanging on to a rope. The rope broke, and Arnold fell off. He cracked his skull. They took him to the County Hospital. He never came to, but in a coma he kept muttering for his mother. By luck a priest was gotten and he received Extreme Unction before he passed away. But when his mother got there he was dead. You know, Studs, it just goes to show that some people are born lucky, and others always live under an unlucky star,” Red said to Studs, who hadn’t been listening to him, but had rather been looking about from face to face, and smoking his cigar as if it were a ceremony.
“Jesus!” Studs suddenly exclaimed in expression of his reaction to the whole situation.
“Yep, that’s the way it is; you’re here today, and gone tomorrow,” Tommy Doyle said.
“And just think, I saw him at church last Sunday, feeling so swell, and dressed up like a lighthouse,” Red Kelly said.
“Life is sure funny,” Tommy remarked.
“And it always seems to get the guys who are white, and not the sons of bitches. Take a bastard like Weary Reilley. He’s a rat clean through, and he couldn’t do a decent trick if he tried. He goes around smashing guys he can lick in the mug, smacking girls to make them come across, and he’s even hit