The Studs Lonigan Trilogy - James T. Farrell [255]
“Weary was a tough bastard, knocking the bailiff down in court after being sentenced on his last trial,” Stan said.
“I licked him when we were kids,” Studs growled.
“Well, I never was afraid of him and even to this day I’d like to tangle with the skunk,” Red said.
“You know, it was rotten of him, waiting for me until I was so cockeyed I couldn’t see straight, and then swinging on me,” Studs said.
Noticing McCarthy from the corner of his eye, Studs could see that it wasn’t the same old Muggsy. Fat in the face, looking well-fed, wearing decent clothes, but still as hunched as ever. And he was the guy they all had expected to be first to kick the bucket. Life was funny, all right.
“Say, Muggsy, how’s your health these days?” he asked.
“Never felt better in my life, Studs.”
“I’m getting to feel better right along, too,” Studs said.
He yawned. The jarring of the car seemed to get on his nerves, and he felt cramped. He arose and squeezed by McCarthy.
“Don’t fall in, Studs,” Joe said.
III
Studs shoved back his shoulders and tried to walk down the smoking-car aisle like a big shot. He swayed a trifle, and noticed a beefy man with bulging neck and jowls, his puffed face stupid in sleep. Red Kelly would he looking something like that in fifteen years, he thought, smiling. In the next seat two tough-looking but pretty girls sat, and one of them spoke in a loud voice.
“And I sez to him, say, chump .. .”
They did not return his hopeful glance, and he tried to think of an especially witty crack to make on his way back. His glance caught two men, one with a shiny face and stuffed appearance, who was earnestly speaking to the other, a gaunt and thin fellow.
“It is the duty of sales specialists like you and me, Joe, to sell confidence .
Might he something in the idea. Moving on, he wondered if the people in the car noticed him, asking themselves who he was and what he was, and wondering if he might be more than they were. Toward the rear of the car he spied two middle-aged people, evidently a man and his wife, who faced each other blank and bored. Waiting for the undertaker, he thought to himself. In back of the woman, who was riding forward, there was a well-dressed young fellow, with a much better build and healthier appearance than Studs, who puffed on a briar pipe and read a thick, black-covered book. Studs sneered, thinking that this fellow was maybe like the guys who used to jaw at the Washington Park Bug Club, saving the world when they had to eat from the pickings of garbage cans, nuts who went crazy from reading too many books, the same as Danny O’Neill had become by going to the University of Chicago, and losing his religion. Guys like that, as Red always said, thought they were too good for the human race.
He entered a cubby-holed door marked MEN. In the lavatory mirror he saw the image of his pale and pasty face with hollow cheeks. He shook his head from side to side, thinking of how the New Year’s Eve party in 1929 had been the ruin of him. Weary Reilley pasting him when he was drunk, and then someone ditching him, letting him lay in the gutter and catch pneumonia. The guy, whoever he was, who had left him like that, in the cold and snow, he was no pal. Hell, he wouldn’t have done that even to a nigger or a dog, he whined to himself. He thought of how he used to worry over getting an alderman, and now, he’d be happy if he could regain some of the twenty pounds he had lost since the party. Funny, all right, he told himself, grinning dejectedly into the mirror.
Returning along the aisle, he saw the two salesmen seated with the girls, telling them jokes. Quick workers, he thought. He couldn’t carry things off like that. Must be something lacking in him. But then he just wasn’t a bull artist the way most drummers were.
“Now, just as I was saying, fellows, we’re older than we used to be. Take Chu Chu Keefe. He and Mickey Flannagan are the same as they always were, and the last time I saw them, they were as cockeyed as ever. They’re both swell fellows, regular, but you come to a time