The Studs Lonigan Trilogy - James T. Farrell [28]
Then the parents rose to retire, yawning.
Mrs. Lonigan put Martin to bed. She hugged the boy close to her meager bosom and said:
“Martin, don’t you think you’d like to be a priest when you grow up, and serve God!”
“I want to be a grave digger,” Martin answered sleepily.
She left the room, her cheeks slightly wet with tears. She prayed to God that he would give one of her boys the call.
After they had left the parlor, Studs sat by the window. He looked out, watching the night strangeness, listening. The darkness was over everything like a warm bed-cover, and all the little sounds of night seemed to him as if they belonged to some great mystery. He listened to the wind in the tree by the window. The street was queer, and didn’t seem at all like Wabash Avenue. He watched a man pass, his heels beating a monotonous echo. Studs imagined him to be some criminal being pursued by a detective like Maurice Costello, who used to act detective parts for Vitagraph. He watched. He thought of Lucy on the street and himself bravely rescuing her from horrors more terrible than he could imagine. He thought about the fall, and of the arguments for working that he should have sprung on the old man. He thought of himself on a scaffold, wearing a painter’s overalls, chewing tobacco, and talking man-talk with the other painters; and of pay days and the independence they would bring him. He thought of Studs Lonigan, a free and independent working man, on his first pay night, plunking down some dough to the old lady for board, putting on his new straw katy, calling for Lucy, and taking her out stepping to White City, having a swell time.
Frances came in. She wore a thin nightgown. He could almost see right through it. He tried to keep looking away, but he had to turn his head back to look at her. She stood before him, and didn’t seem to know that he was looking at her. She seemed kind of queer; he thought maybe she was sick.
“Do you like Lucy?”
“Oh, a little,” he said.
He was excited, and couldn’t talk much, because he didn’t want her to notice it.
“Do you like to kiss girls?”
“Not so much,” he said.
“You did tonight.”
“It was all in the game.”
“Helen must like Weary.”
“I hate her.”
“I don’t like her either, but .. do you think they did anything in the post office?”
“What do you mean?” he asked.
She wasn’t going to pump him and get anything out of him.
She seemed to be looking at him, awful queer, all right.
“You know. Do you think they did anything that was fun or that the sisters wouldn’t want them to do... or that’s bad?”
“I don’t know.”
Dirty thoughts rushed to his head like hot blood. He told himself he was a bastard because... she was his sister. “I don’t know,” he said, confused.
“You think maybe they did something bad, and it was fun?” He shrugged his shoulders and looked out the window so she couldn’t see his face.
“I feel funny,” she said.
He hadn’t better say anything to her, because she’d snitch and give him away.
“I want to do something... They’re all in bed. Let’s us play leap frog, you know that game that boys play where one bends down, and the others jump over him?” she said.
“We’ll make too much noise.”
“Do you really think that Weary and Helen did anything that might be fun?” she asked.
She got up, and walked nervously around the room. She plunked down on the piano stool, and part of her leg showed.
He looked out the window. He looked back. They sat. She fidgeted and couldn’t sit still. She got up and ran out of the room. He sat there. He must be a bastard... she was his sister.
He looked out the window. He wondered what it was like; he was getting old enough to find out.
He got up. He looked at himself in the mirror. He shadow-boxed, and thought of Lucy. He thought of Fran. He squinted at himself in the mirror.
He turned the light out and started down the hallway. Fran called him. She was lying in bed without the sheets over her. “It’s hot here. Awful