The Studs Lonigan Trilogy - James T. Farrell [433]
He knelt again, and commenced to mutter an Our Father, but his mind slid into a daze and he was like a man half asleep. He found himself remembering that Sunday morning, now it seemed like many, many years ago, when with dirty shovelled snow along the edges of the sidewalk, and a winter sun melting it, he had come to the first mass to be celebrated in this very church. All the old parishioners had come and knelt in these deserted pews, and in that marble pulpit to the left of the altar the Cardinal Archbishop of Chicago had preached. On that day he had been filled with the confidence that things were going to go on getting better and better. He and Mary had both felt that they would coast on Easy Street into a long and happy old age, and die in this parish, respected, leaving something behind for their children. And now Bill was home, sick, thin, suffering, dying. God, Christ Almighty, if on that winter Sunday he had only seen ahead to what would happen to him and his family. Again he listlessly mumbled Our Father, his mind a fatigued blank. Unaware of what he was doing, he again sat in the pew, and began to feel convinced that it was only the day after that Sunday morning when the new St. Patrick’s church had been opened. He saw himself going home to the building on Michigan Avenue, thinking of how he would take Bill into the parlor and talk to him in such a way that Bill would see eye to eye with him and would take care of his health. And then he would sit down and calculate his money and his investments and see that the money was put into sound investments. But his money had been soundly invested in real estate and a building. What could have seemed safer? The trouble had been that too much money had gone into construction and real estate. The Jews again. If less Jews had rushed in to make easy money, then real estate values would not have been ruined.
Again he knelt, prayed in an exalting fervor, abjectly asking his God to spare his son from death, to give him back just Bill. If only Bill lived, he would take the loss of everything else with Job’s patience. He imagined Bill recovering quickly, their moving into a small fiat, economizing, he and Bill fighting back to where they had once been. He saw himself coming around to a large building where he had a big contract, seeing Bill in paint-stained overalls, up on a ladder like it used to be. He saw a future of Bill and the other children with their kids, himself and Mary as happy grandparents, a family reunion, with him and Bill laughing as they talked about the hard times of 1930 and 1931, and how they had pulled through those days of hard times.
His mind cleared. He thought of his home, and wondered how Bill was. He knelt, rigid with the paralyzing conviction that Bill was dead. Again he beseeched his God for Bill’s life.
He arose, and with fear creating tremors in him he slowly walked to the altar, knelt before the statue of the Blessed Virgin, dropped all his small change in the slot for money, and lit eight candles to burn in honor of the Blessed Virgin as prayer and offering that Bill might be spared. He arose, turned, walked to the rear of the church, a corpulent old man, his body slack, his shoulders drooping, his abdomen sagging, his eyes heavy and baggy, suggesting sleeplessness, his loose face drawn in a fretting expression.
III
He stood on the church steps looking at the drab row of three-story brick apartment houses across the street. Looked old, not worth much. Probably run down inside, too. Nigger buildings now. He watched a stout shabby Negro woman across the street walking to the corner with a waddling gait,