The Studs Lonigan Trilogy - James T. Farrell [380]
He was distracted by a telephone ringing somewhere, and he wondered what kind of people it was talking, and what they would have to say to each other. But suppose now that he still had his two thousand bucks. Suppose he had even cleaned up on the market a little, two hundred, five hundred, two thousand, five thousand, fifteen thousand. Getting married to Catherine, and having fifteen, twenty thousand bucks, and Red and everybody he knew saying, well, I never thought that Studs would be so well-heeled. He could just see himself with twenty-five thousand bucks to ,his name, and that only a starter. Bank accounts, checking accounts, buying anything he wanted to. Thinking of himself like this, too, it gave him a pleasant, sleepy, lulling feeling. His eyes grew heavy. A drowsing, dozeful sense of animal comfort caressed his limbs, his nerves, his muscles, his brain. Studs Lonigan, the big shot. He fell asleep.
II
Studs entered the parlor, wearing old trousers over his B.V.D.’s. He rubbed his hand over his drawn and sleepy face, yawned again, stood indecisive, with his arms, white and thin, hanging at his sides.
“Hello, Bill. How are you feeling?”
“Pretty good, Dad. I took a nice nap.”
“That’s good. I always like a little snooze myself on a Saturday afternoon after the week’s work. But today I just couldn’t come home and take one. I was down to see Barney McCormack today.”
“You saw Barney McCormack today, huh?”
“Yes, I saw him.”
“What did he have to say?”
“Like everybody else these days, Barney’s crying.”
“That’s funny. I should think Barney would be sitting in clover after the Democratic victory last spring. And that’s nothing at all to the Democratic landslide we ought to have in the presidential elections next year if I know anything about it.”
“The way Barney was crying, he would have felt almost as good if the Republicans got a few jobs.”
“That’s funny. How come?”
`Barney did nothing but cry all the time I saw him. He was crying about the Polacks and the Bohunks. He says that they just almost cleaned out the Irish. He kept saying to me, `Paddy, if you want to get anything down at the Hall, you better put a sky on your name before you go down there.’ And he made one funny crack. He said that these days, down at the Hall, they only speak English from one to two in the afternoon.”
“That’s funny.”
“Well, Bill, tell you, you know for years all these foreigners have been let into America, and now they’ve just about damn near taken the country over. Why, from the looks of things, pretty soon a white man won’t feel at home here. What with the Jew international bankers holding all the money here, and the Polacks and Bohunks squeezing the Irish out of politics, it’s getting to be no place for a white man to live,” Lonigan said, sighing as he spoke.
“You didn’t line up any contracts then?” Studs asked, and Lonigan answered with slow and emphatic negative words.
“Barney said that these days, before a dead horse can be taken off the streets, you got to see one of the Polacks or Bohunks and get his O. K. They’ve just closed out the Irish. He told me it was just hopeless to count on any school contracts or anything like that. We’re just out of luck. He says he doubts if anything could be done, even if I put a sky on my name.”
“Gee, Dad, that’s tough. I’m sorry to hear it.”
“Bill, it’s a fright. It’s a fright.”
“What are you going to do?”
“What can a man do? I can hardly collect a cent. And every guy who owes me money seems to owe it to everybody else and his brother. If I did press some of these bastards, they’d go in bankruptcy, and their creditors would be over them like leeches, and I’d be lucky if I collected a nickel or a dime on the dollar. It wouldn’t be worth