• Choose a category
• All
• Classic-Fiction

By Root 10432 0

or a knife, or maybe a twenty-two, of some day walking up to him and renewing the fight, taking an advantage by busting him right square between the eyes before he knew what was coming, or maybe cracking him in the neck and choking his windpipe, or in the solar plexus. He was angry. He sensed his own weakness. He could get little satisfaction out of planning revenge. He hated Studs, hated him with the face Studs had punched, with the body he’d battered; and that face and body told Weary he was licked when his mind refused to believe it. He was interrupted by Helen Borax, who called him from behind. She said that she was sorry, and that Studs was a beast, and she knew that Studs must have hurt him, and she was awfully sorry. Her pity made him see white. He drained off his hatred by glaring at her, calling her a bitch, and telling her he had gotten all he wanted from her under her back porch on the night they had graduated.

Studs, the conquering hero, returned to the gang. As he walked back, he thought up a brave story, about how he had told the gum-shoe to lump it, which he would tell the gang. But when he was sitting in the center of the adulatory group, he couldn’t tell it. Damn it, he couldn’t spread the bull on thick; he didn’t know how to string people along and tell lies like some people did. He told them what had happened, and they had fun talking it over. They talked about the battle, showering Studs with praise, telling him how great he was and how he was the champ of the neighborhood. Johnny O’Brien had been going around telling everybody how thick he was with Red Kelly, and every time he got in dutch with anybody bigger than he was he would always threaten to get Red Kelly after him. Now he told Studs that he could clean up Kelly. Studs was tired, sick in his stomach, aching all over. And he kept feeling his swollen eye. Johnny O’Brien ran home and copped a piece of beefsteak from his old lady. Helen and Lucy applied it. Studs was happy, even though he felt rotten. He was now the cock of the walk, and the battering he had gotten from Weary was worth this; but he’d hate to have to fight him again; his jaw was all cut on the inside; well, Weary was probably worse off. Weary Reilley had been licked; he, Studs Lonigan, had pounded the stuffings out of him. Now, that was something to be proud of.

He listened to the sycophantic comments; they poured sweetly on his ears. Helen gave a vigorous redescription of how the fight started. Red O’Connell, who hated Studs, and was kowtowing to him only because he had cleaned up Reilley, kept saying, it had been a bear of a fight. Dan Donoghue said there hadn’t been a fight like it in the whole history of the neighborhood. Dick Buckford told Studs he could fight like blazes until they all told the punk to keep quiet. And Lucy said it showed Studs was brave.

Studs told himself he had been waiting for things like this to happen a long time; now they were happening, and life was going to be a whole lot more... more fun, and it was going to make everything just jake; and he was going to be an important guy, and all the punks would look up to him and brag to other punks that they knew him; and he would be... well, in the limelight. Maybe it would set things happening as he always knew they would; and he would keep on getting more and more important.

It was all swell; and it made him feel good, even if he was tired and aching. After they had all talked themselves almost blue in the face, they decided that it would be cooler in the Shires’ playhouse. They went back there, and Helen chased away her kid sister’s gang. The guys all chipped in to buy lunch, with Johnny O’Brien putting up most of the money. Red, Dan and Johnny went to the delicatessen store for grub; coming back, they copped a couple of bottles of milk from iceboxes. It was a fine lunch, and afterward they played post office, and Lucy gave her hero plenty of kisses. Life was fine and dandy for Studs, all right, and the only thing bothering him, besides his headache, was that he would have a heck of a time explaining his