The Studs Lonigan Trilogy - James T. Farrell [289]
“The way I look at it, boys, is this. A Democrat like Al Smith, or Tony Cermak, who’s a cinch for mayor in the next elections, now if they were up to bat in Washington, they might not knock the ball out of the lot every time they stepped up to the plate, but they wouldn’t just hit nothin’ but foul balls, the way Hoover does,” Pat said.
“Well, this boy right here wouldn’t complain, and he wouldn’t be giving a damn about anything else if he could just line himself up to another job that paid a little dough,” Allison, a tall, raw-boned fellow said.
“It used to be that all the lads I knew was workin’, and I was beginning to get so lonesome that I almost went to work myself. But when I would almost do that, I’d think of you boys, sweating your tails off in the offices and factories on hot days when I was lolling on the beach, with my head in the lap of a sweet pickup. But now, what the hell, I don’t take any more pride in my idleness since so many of you boys have signed up as recruits in the Army of the Unemployed. If it keeps up like this with all you rookies crowding me out, Steve O’Grady will have to be shagging ass downtown one of these days and getting himself a job. Only if I did, the gaffer and the old woman might die from the shock,” O’Grady said, and they laughed, Studs’ laugh a trifle self-conscious.
“If you do that, Steve, do me a favor? Let me know where you get the job, and how you turned the trick. Because, brother, I sure pounded the pavements in the Loop looking for a job, until my fanny was drooping like a wilting lily of the fields and the soles of my feet just ached for a nice comfortable pair of carpet slippers and a soft rug. And all I got was the go-by. Me, now, I’m a guy who doesn’t feel good if I ain’t working. I’m no lazy bastard like O’Grady...”
“That’s why you’ve always been so dumb,” O’Grady said, interrupting Allison.
“Dumb, hell! It’s just that I got to have something to do, and dough in my pocket, and the feeling that I don’t have to take nobody’s crap. Then I can just go along and pay my own way, and I feel right. And Christ, this goddamn hanging around without a sou in your pocket, it just rips me up the back.”
“Me, now, I might just as well be not working, with my salary cut to fifteen bucks a week, and my old man sobbing the blues every night about how broke he is. Holy Christ!” Bryan said.
“Sing ‘em, brother, sing ‘em!” Pat said, smiling. He turned to Studs as they seemed to split into two groups, and said, “Doing anything interesting these days, Studs?”
“Not a lot,” Studs answered, as if his conduct were of interest to Pat, his feeling for Pat warmed more and more.
“I guess nobody’s raising as much hell as they used to. Fellows like yourself are getting more settled, and anyway, there’s not so much loose dough floating around for hell-raising like there used to be.”
“Come to think of it, Pat, I did spend a hell of a lot of dough on booze and such things in the old days.”
“Don’t I remember! It used to be a sight to hang around the corner on a Saturday night until one or two when you boys of the Fifty-eighth Street Alky Squad came around pie-eyed,” Pat said, he and Studs laughing, Studs having the feeling suddenly that it was still the old days.
Warning bells and the lowering train gates of the I.C. distracted his thoughts, and he watched a westbound electric suburban train clatter down the middle of the street, drawing into the Bryn Mawr station that reached westward from Jeffrey. He watched three young fellows racing up the station steps to catch the train, asking himself idly who they were, and what they were?
“Say, Lonigan, since your old man’s a painting contractor, I was wondering about something. A lad I know, good friend of mine, was chump enough to get himself spliced when he was out of a job. He’s damn nifty with the brushes, too, and now he needs work because his wife is having a kid. I’ll vouch for him as a damn good worker, not at