The Studs Lonigan Trilogy - James T. Farrell [244]
“Count me in on it,” said Studs.
“How you like the car? My mother finally put out and bought it.”
“Pretty nice.”
“The Doyle Cab service,” Moonan said.
“Well, I’ll tell Red to call you up,” said Tommy as they drove to Cooley’s saloon.
Studs got the blues from gin. He suddenly left the boys. He staggered back to the park, and over onto the wooded island. He looked for the tree where he and Lucy had sat on that afternoon so long ago. He couldn’t find it. He staggered about frantically, and finally got out of the park at Cottage Grove. He fell asleep on the car and rode out to South Chicago. He didn’t get home until three o’clock. He felt lousy.
XXIV
Les’s old man and his sister, Mrs. Doyle, went to the midnight show at the Prairie Theater on New Year’s Eve. He was a wizened man, with a bloodless, wrinkled face, humped shoulders, and quivering hands. She was a full-bodied woman, who breathed in gasps when she did much walking.
“Well, Mike, sure and another year’s passed,” she said.
“Ah, yes, Margaret,” he said.
“There won’t be many another year for the likes of you and me, Mike.”
“Ah, no, Margaret. But God forbid that we should be dead before next New Year’s.”
“Well, Mike, I only have one more boy to see married to a nice girl, and it’s me baby Tommy.”
“And Les is my only worry, Margaret. He’s a hard-working boy, but after him being so sick, I hope he doesn’t drink tonight.”
“And I do be worried about my Tom. He’s a good boy, only it’s bad companions. Now that my Jim is on the force, and Tommy has his job with the city, he might be settling down.”
“Sure, Margaret, let us hope. It’s the New Year.”
At Prairie, Nate Klein staggered up to a passing white stranger, and told him to go take a pee-pee-pee for himself in his hat. Nate told the street that he was going to the party.
“And Lord Bless me, I was afraid for a minute that that was me Tom.”
“Ah, and I thought it was my Les.”
She walked rheumatically across Prairie Avenue, holding onto her brother’s arm.
“1 do be worried because my Tom has the car, too. That car has a curse upon it,” she said.
“Now don’t worry, Margaret,” Mike said.
At the midnight show, they saw sixth-rate vaudeville, and a weeping, five-months’ old movie.
Coming out, they yawned, and complained that it was too late for people their age to be up. They walked home slowly.
“Mike, 1 hope that my Tom is all right. I have a feeling.”
“Now, Margaret,” he said, without conviction.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
I
A voice within Studs, that wasn’t his voice, and that perhaps maybe might have been the voice of conscience, said reiteratively, as if in a hoarse accusing tone:
You’re nothing but a slob. You’re getting to be a great big fat slob. Nothing on the ball any more. Slob! Slob! Fat slob! Double slob!
“I’m drunk. Happy New Year. Whoops!” Studs yelled loudly: he staggered backwards and forwards with the utterance of each syllable.
Slob! Slob! Double slob!
He looked at the street. It seemed familiar. What was the name?
The voice said:
You don’t know your fanny from a hole in the ground!
He ran to escape that voice that kept hammering at him, in his heavy, heavy, twirling head. He ran, thinking he was running straight, and with form. He halted after about a hundred yards and thought that he’d run a block.
He knew the street as well as he knew his name. His name was Lonigan, the great Studs Lonigan.
Slob Lonigan! that voice said.
He stared bleary-eyed up and down the street. There was a light mist, and the street lamps seemed lopsided.
An automobile passed. Studs eyed it intently.
“Hey, where’s... fire?”
He looked at three-story buildings. They seemed like he knew them and had seen them before. Where, oh, where is my wandering street tonight? Where, oh, where can it be?
The street rolled under him like a ship in a storm. His head spun like a top that was in perpetual motion. The street went up, whoops, and slow, slowly, evenly, it went down, whoops,