The Studs Lonigan Trilogy - James T. Farrell [333]
“But, Charlie, I didn’t. I didn’t. Jesus Christ, I couldn’t.”
“Don’t crap me, sister, because I’m not the kind of a guy who lets himself get crapped. See?”
He couldn’t imagine a fellow talking that way to a girl if she was decent. They selected an unoccupied bench, and Studs, walking by, noted the concerned, pleading expression on the girl’s cheaply decorated face, and the fellow’s curt and unbelieving look.
“Charlie, you just got to believe me,” she said in a throbbing voice.
He would like to have stayed near and heard more, but he couldn’t just stand gaping while a guy scrapped with his girl. He guessed that the lad thought she was two-timing him. He wouldn’t put it past that kind of a broad, either. He smiled, thinking that Catherine was different, and wouldn’t ever pull such tricks behind his back.
He walked on, his feet dragging, in no hurry. Lots of people in the park, fellows with nothing else to do, he supposed. Like the one ahead of him on the bench, sitting like a mope, half asleep, looking ahead of him at nothing. Maybe he was a poor bastard more down in his luck than Studs Lonigan.
“I knew Dopey Ahern when he drove for the Continental Express Company. But he went in the beer-running racket, and they put him on the spot,” a fellow said to two companions as they strolled by Studs.
He thought of how when you went out and listened to what people said, you heard all kinds of things, people washing their dirty linen in public, talking about friends and business and gash, and it made him think how the world must be, at every minute, so full of people fighting, and jazzing, and dying, and working, and losing jobs, and it was a funny world, all right, full of funny people, millions of them. And he was only one out of all these millions of people, and they were all trying to get along, and many of them had gotten farther than he. Hell, what right did he have to expect to get anywhere with all these millions and millions in the same game, with fellows starting out with dough and an education, and better health than he had? He felt small and a little goofy. He looked around, seeing old men on a bench, a woman with a baby buggy, three fellows who looked like college boys on the grass, a skinny park policeman. How many of all the people around him, how many of all the people in the park, were ahead of him so far?
His feet began to ache and he flopped again on a bench. One o’clock factory whistles blew from somewhere. A long afternoon still ahead of him. Did many fellows sitting around the park feel the same as he did, wanting something exciting to happen? A fleshy, light-brown Negress came along the path, her dress splitting against her thighs, her breast nipples clear against her black-and-white dress. A tight feeling gripped him. Wheel And he whiffed strongly an odor of cheap scent. Plenty of guys would like what she had. Plenty of white broads would like to have as much as she had. It was a goddamn shame, too, that a broad with all that stuff should be black and not white, he told himself, wishing someone was around so he could have sprung such a witty crack on them. Should he follow her even if she was a nigger? He looked after her at her slender brown silken legs, and he was tempted to whistle, to get up and follow her. Hell, she might just be a whore because he guessed most black gals were hustlers anyway. And even if she wasn’t, a dark-skinned baby ought to fall all over herself with joy if a white guy propositioned her. But kissing one of them. Ugh . He eagerly watched her disappear from sight, and he saw her naked in his mind. Jesus, he was pretty lousy getting so het up over a dark-skinned wench. And still, brother, white or black, she had it. But here he was engaged to a decent