The Studs Lonigan Trilogy - James T. Farrell [324]
He tossed his cigarette away. He was very lonesome, and he didn’t want to be alone and thinking about such things. But it was always that way. You couldn’t think of anything you wanted to, and when you were in the dumps you thought of all your gripes and troubles and felt yourself to be a miserable no-good, bad-news bastard, and that was just how he felt. He looked around at the quiet street, the night, half dark only because the moon was so full and shiny, and he looked at it, and at clouds covering it, and at the lamp-postlights cutting areas out of the shadows, and he wanted things, wanted something, wanted his luck to change. He couldn’t stand this, and he quickened his steps to get home and read the newspaper, listen to the radio, do anything to get those thoughts out of his head.
IV
“Hello, Dad,” Studs said, still breathing rapidly as he entered the parlor.
“Hello, Bill. What’s in the paper tonight?”
“A break in the stock market, and it looks like they got the goods on that Methodist minister who’s mixed in that divorce suit out in California.”
“The dirty Protestant A. P. A. Fooling around with a decent little girl who sings in his choir. Stringing him up would be too good for him. You wouldn’t find a Catholic priest doing a thing like that,” the father said with venom.
“How was Amos and Andy tonight?” Studs asked.
“Oh, they were all right,” Lonigan said.
There was something on the old man’s mind. Must be the stock-market break. He could see that the old man had something to say to him, too. He’d need that money now. For a moment, he felt as he used to when he was a kid, and his father was really a boss over him. He grew fearful of his father as he had done in those days when he’d done something the old man didn’t want him to do. Then he realized that he wasn’t a kid any more and he and his father acted differently toward each other.
“Let’s see that paper, I want to look at the stock-market news.”
Studs handed him the newspaper and watched his father’s fretting face as he read.
“Looks damn rotten, all right, Bill,” he said as if to himself.
“Think things are going to keep on this way?”
“I don’t know what the hell it is, but something is wrong. It’s the big fellows, the banks and Wall Street,” Lonigan said laying aside the paper.
“I don’t know,” Studs said, because he hadn’t listened closely and he hadn’t anything else to say.
“Bill, I had my stocks sold out from under my feet today.”
“Gee, Dad. That’s rotten, I’m terribly sorry. How much?”
“Five thousand bucks more, Bill.”
Studs lit a cigarette and rose to get an ash tray.
“Goddamn robbers,” Lonigan cursed.
They sat in silence.
“Bill, I’m in a hole now. I can’t collect on bills long overdue me, and I’m going to have to meet a big mortgage payment in the early fall. And with wages to pay out and the household expenses to meet, I’m in a tighter pinch than I ever was in my life. Can I borrow that money of yours for a little while?”
Studs’ face dropped. He looked aside.
“Of course, Bill, I feel that I ain’t got the right to ask you, and if you don’t want to, why, I’ll have to try elsewhere. I’ve already borrowed up to the hilt on my life insurance, and it’s pretty damn hard raising any money these days.”
“It isn’t that, it’s... ”
“What?” Lonigan said with questioning anxiety, as Studs, failing to continue,