The Studs Lonigan Trilogy - James T. Farrell [320]
“I’m glad to hear it. Good.”
“Well, you see, Studs, these mine strikes they’ve been having these last months have helped us. In fact, they have saved our neck. You see, we had our yards full of coal and couldn’t do much with it. And these strikes creating some shortage, we’re setting pretty, and the price of coal has gone up a little. That’s helped us a lot, and I’m hoping the Reds who’ve been agitating the miners, according to some newspaper accounts, keep the strikes going a little more. It’s certainly a godsend to O’Brien’s Coal company. And then we do a big business with convents and churches and Catholic schools.”
“Well, I’m glad to hear it, Johnny.”
“Isn’t it dreadful the way these high waist-lines in the new spring styles show off the figure? You’ve really got to be thin to wear them,” Catherine said.
“I was thinking the same thing, and I’m going on that Hollywood eighteen-day diet with grapefruit, lamb chops and melba toast.”
“Yes, I’ve noticed that nearly all the restaurants downtown are featuring it, and many of them have their windows stacked with grapefruits. What do you really think of it?”
“The movie magazine that I just read said it absolutely works and I’m starting on it tomorrow,” Harriet said.
“What do you think of the election, Studs?”
“Good, Johnny, I’ve always been a Democrat.”
“I voted regular, too. We’re kind of hoping to get some contracts out of it, and it’s certainly fine for the city to kick out the crooked Republican machine.”
“Yes, I like to see the Democrats in. But I guess it doesn’t mean much to most of us. It’s like baseball. You like to see your favorite team win.”
“No, I never went to Saint Paul’s,” Catherine said to Harriet.
“It was really a tragedy to see Rock die,” Johnny said.
“Yes, he was a regular fellow.”
“He was a great man. Why even Hoover sent a telegram to his wife,” Johnny said.
“Notre Dame will miss him.”
“I think the team will go on just the same. Rockne may be gone, but not his Viking spirit.”
“There was one newspaper editorial on his death, did you see it, that was very good. It told of how he died, like he lived, in the saddle, and that he carried on the real spirit of the old Norse Vikings.”
“What was it he was going to the coast for when he died?” Studs asked.
“He was connected with the sales department of an automobile plant and he was flying out there to open a sales campaign.”
“I certainly hated to see Rock die.”
“He was a great man and it’s a great loss,” Johnny said dolefully. “But, say, mass ought to be just about starting. And say, Studs, do drop over and see us. We’re living at Sixty-ninth and Crandon. The number’s in the book, and just give us a ring any time.”
“I will.”
Studs and Catherine followed the O’Briens into church.
II
“Today certainly has brought them out,” Catherine said, crunching along a gravel walk in Jackson Park.
“Yeah, they’re out sunning themselves, all right,” Studs said, the sounds of automobiles purring steadily in his ears. He heard .the smack from a driven golf ball, and looked past Catherine at the wide expanse of the golf course. It was nice to look at, with blotches of leafless trees and bushes along its edges, with shoots of fresh green bursting amidst dead wintry grass and catching shimmers of sunlight, and with golfers spread over it and moving about in differing directions. Taking her arm, he led her over soft and soggy ground to a tee-off where a bandy-legged man in khaki trousers and shirt stood with his feet widely stanced, measuring the ball perched on a small cone of damp sand. He cracked it, and the ball veered to the right on low line, landed, disappeared. The man shook his head disappointedly.
A man in khaki pants and shirt with a prominent Adam’s apple drove quickly, an arching line which bounded neatly onto a patch of green before the hole. Studs watched them sling their golf bags over their left shoulders and tramp forward, and he wished he could drive golf