The Studs Lonigan Trilogy - James T. Farrell [62]
“But listen! Don’t work so fast. Suppose she don’t give you a tumble. Sometimes she gets temperment, and then she’s no soap until some guy she gets a grudge against beats it... She’s like a primadonna,” said Kenny.
“I thought she was like a sweetheart of the navy,” Studs said.
“Well, sometimes she is and sometimes she isn’t.”
“Yeah. But anyway, you just lead me to her,” boasted Studs.
“Well, at that, you’re talkin’ horse sense,” said Kenny.
“Horsey sense,” said Studs.
“Well, anyway, I got to get my suit,” said Kenny.
Kenny told Studs to walk down Fifty-eighth toward Indiana. “And when I come tearin’ along, you run, too, and cut through the lot on Indiana, and down the alley, and through that trick gangway to Michigan,” he added.
Studs did. In a moment, Kenny came running along, and they carried out their plan of escaping, though no one was chasing them. On Michigan, Kenny pulled out the two-piece bathing suit he had copped; the trunks were blue, the top white.
“If it only fits now,” he said.
They laughed together, and Studs said that Kenny had real style. Kenny laughed, and said it was nothing to cop things from drug stores. Studs told himself that Kilarney was a guy, all right.
They put their suits on under their clothes at Studs’. The suit fitted Kenny. They went over to South Park and bummed rides to Fifty-first, and did the same thing along Fifty-first and Hyde Park Boulevard. They had fun on Hyde Park Boulevard. It was a ritzy neighborhood where everybody had the kale and all the men wore knickers and played tennis and golf, and all the guys were sissies. Kenny had chalked his K.K. initials all over the Fifty-eighth Street neighborhood, so he started putting mysterious K.K. signs on the Boulevard. And he kept walking on the grass, making fun of the footmen and wriggling his ears at the well-dressed women. They saw one hot dame, in clothes that must have cost a million bucks, and Kenny commented on the large breastworks she had. He spoke too loud, and she heard him. She went up in the air like a kite, and talked very indignantly about ragamuffins from the slums. When they got out of her hearing, they laughed.
The lake was very calm, and way out it was as blue as the sky on a swell summer evening. And the sun came down over it like a blessing. And they were tanned, so they didn’t have to worry about getting sunburned and blistered. They ran out from the lockers with feelings of animal glee. The first touch of the water was cold, and they experienced sharp sensations. But they dove under water, and then it was warm. The lake was just right. They went out, splashing, diving under water, trying to duck each other, laughing and shouting. The diving board was crowded but they climbed up and took some dives.. Kenny did all kinds of dippy dives, back flaps and rolls. The people about the diving board watched them and thought Kenny was pretty good. He started a stump-the-leader game on the board but he was too good for them, so they all lost interest.
Kenny and Studs swam out where it was cold and deep, and there was no one around them. They dove, splashed, floated, splashed, swam, snorted. They were like happy seals. Studs got off by himself and wheeled and turned over in the water like a rolling barrel. He called over to Kenny that it was the nuts. Kenny yelled back that boy it was jake. They swam breast-stroke, and it was nice and easy; then they did the crawl. They went out further. Only the lake was ahead of them, vast and blue-gray and nice with the sun on it; and it gave them feelings they couldn’t describe. Studs floated, and looked up at the round sky, his head resting easy on the water line, himself just drifting, the sun firing away at his legs. It was too nice for anything. He just floated and didn’t have anything to think about. He looked up at the drifting clouds. He felt just like a cloud that didn’t have any bothers and just sailed across the sky. He told himself: Gee, it was a big sky. He asked himself: I wonder why God made the sky? He floated. He floated, and suddenly he