The Studs Lonigan Trilogy - James T. Farrell [330]
“The bathing beach is going to open soon and maybe we can all get on as life guards.”
“I can’t swim well enough.”
“Hang around until 1933 and you can get a job at the World’s Fair.”
“Swell hit, Pete. Come on, Al, lean on it.”
“All I can say is some damn thing has got to happen.”
“Hire a hall, you ain’t got no kick. Laying around in the sun, playing ball, looking at nursemaids, and hearing the birds sing.”
“Swell catch, Spunk, you lucky bastard.”
Studs waited anxiously in right field, but batter after batter came up without hitting to him. He walked in at the end of the inning more confident. He’d get a rap this time and sock one.
“Save us a bat, lad,” a fellow in a dirty gray sweatshirt called while Studs stepped up with two out. The bat seemed too heavy and, facing the pitcher, he lost confidence.
“Hey, which side am I on?”
“Wait till the inning’s up.”
He decided that this fellow could take his place. He swung late, fizzling a grounder to the pitcher, and didn’t even run. “Hey, Pfeiffer, he can take my place.”
“No, it’s only a scrub game, Lonigan.”
“Well, I’m kind of tired anyway.”
“Come around again and tell the kid brother I was askin’ about him.”
He crossed the driveway and walked along the gravel path flanking the lagoon, which lay below in shimmering sunlight. He should have gone on playing. He would have gotten into his stride, hit some solid ones, and nabbed fly balls, too. It would have been nice passing the time, and they seemed like a decent bunch. He imagined himself driving a home-run over the centerfielder’s head and then making one-handed and shoe-string catches in the outfield. He shrugged his shoulders, laughed at his sudden interest in baseball.
III
His watch pointed at eleven-thirty. What would he do? He could walk home to dinner and that would cut a hole in the long day ahead of him. He ambled on in a careless, unenergetic stride. Was the stock market going up, he asked himself, dropping down on a bench and lighting a cigarette.
His vague awareness of chirping birds and of automobiles rushing behind him was distracted by a strolling couple. Lucky lad with such a cute and neat trick, and maybe he was taking her to a secluded spot on the wooded island, and he would sink his head in her lap, and she would stroke his face and hair, and maybe she was nuts about him and wanted it from the guy so much that she’d even risk being caught in daylight. Wished he had a girl nuts about him like that. Of course, there was Catherine, but she was decent, and this was a different matter. It made a guy proud, let him sort of feel his oats, gave him something to brag about. After he and Catherine got married and she got used to it, would she feel that way about him? If she didn’t, what would be the use of marriage? He watched the couple disappear around a bend in the park. Lucky bastard.
An elderly woman with a neat black suit and a haughty society-woman manner about her looked at him with disdain as if he were something like a piece of garbage. She thought he was a bum. He sat up erect, straightened his tie, dusted off his shoes with his handkerchief. He wasn’t a bum. But what the hell, these people would probably never see him again, and what difference did it make? But still, he wasn’t a bum.
Yawning, he examined his watch; a quarter to twelve. What to do? He wished someone he knew would happen along.
But even if it was dull, it was good having the sun on him. And if he did this regularly, he would get a good, healthy coat of tan. He removed his coat, carefully folded it and laid it over the bench beside him. He rolled up his sleeves and looked at his thin white arms. Good, too, getting them tanned. He sat realizing that it had suddenly become quiet with just a faint stirring of leaves and sounds of birds. Then, from Stony Island, came the rumbling of a street car. Automobiles passed, an engine dying, chugging, starting again, its hum dying away. Human voices echoing from a distance made him want people to talk to. Maybe he could take a walk to the old neighborhood later in the