The Studs Lonigan Trilogy - James T. Farrell [261]
Walking on, seeing the lights of Randolph Street before him, he wondered if they were college football players. That was what Studs Lonigan might have been. Even if he did admit it, he had been a damn good quarterback. If he only hadn’t been such a chump, bumming from school to hang around with skunky Weary Reilley and Paulie Haggerty until he was so far behind at high school that it was no use going. It wouldn’t have been so hard to have studied and done enough homework to get by, and then he could have set the high school gridiron afire, gone to Notre Dame and made himself a Notre Dame immortal, maybe, alongside of George Gypp, the Four Horse-men, Christy Flannagan and Carrideo. How many times in a guy’s life couldn’t he kick his can around the block for having played chump?
“Lad, I just hit town and I’m on my uppers. I’ve been carrying the banner all winter, an’ I’m hungry,” said a seedy man, taller and huskier than Studs, shivering without an overcoat.
“Sorry, but I haven’t got anything,” Studs replied in a voice of controlled and even cautious surliness.
“Christ, lad, only a nickel or a dime for a warm cup of coffee. I’m hungry!” the bum said, doggedly following on Studs’ heels.
Wheeling around, Studs snapped, “Listen, fellow, I haven’t got it.” He perceived a craven look come into the man’s face, and frowning, his own courage mounted. “For Christ sake, can’t you understand English?”
The bum turned and zigzagged along in the direction of Van Buren Street, while Studs watched, still flushed with his own bravery. The fellow had the advantage of weight and height, and was in at least as good physical trim as he was. He could have sloughed Studs. It must have been something of the old Studs Lonigan left in him that had led to his not taking sass, risking a fight. He imagined himself fighting with the bum on the darkened and almost deserted street, a long and gruelling battle, slugging back and forth, both of them staggering and bloody, until Studs would put every ounce of spirit and energy into a last haymaker, and the bum would tumble backward, fall over the curb into the street, and know that he had met a better man. Hands on hips, he sneered, and watched the bum diminish as he pursued a ziggedy course along the sidewalk. Studs turned and continued, himself fighting like Jack Dempsey used to. He began to feel that Christ, he could have spared a dime. But then, if the bum needed money, why didn’t he work for it? He knew that in thinking this he was just trying to convince himself that he had done the right thing, when he really acted like a bastard over a measly dime. There was plenty of guys in the red now, meeting tough luck, out of work and not able to get anything. Some of his own friends, too—look at Joe Thomas, and Stan, and then there was Les almost in the same boat. Plenty of guys, all right, broke, begging, and how could he have known whether this fellow was one of them, or just a regular bum? He shrugged his shoulders, deciding that he had plenty of things of his own to worry about without bothering over every bum who came along the street.
At Madison Street, he halted to permit the passage of a west-bound surface car, reading above a window in the center of the car: MADISON & WESTERN. He had hardly ever been on the west side, and he wondered about it. It was probably like a city in itself, and it had its gangs and bunches and poolrooms all over, fellows just like their own bunch from Fifty-eighth Street, fellows just like himself, like Red and like Slug and Weary and all the old boys. He slouched onward, hearing the rumble of the elevated trains, several blocks distant, and then, from a nearer street, the