The Studs Lonigan Trilogy - James T. Farrell [64]
“Wouldn’t it have been nice to have had her there and have had let us lay our heads in her lap, and have a feel-day, or go out with her way out, or swim around to the breakwater, where nobody was, and out there get our ashes hauled,” said Studs.
“Almost as nice as eating a steak would be this very minute,” said Kenny.
“Sure,” said Studs.
They walked on. When Studs had been lying in the sand, he had been at peace, almost like some happy guy in a story, and he hadn’t thought that way about girls, and it hadn’t bothered him like it did other times, or made him do things he was ashamed of way deep down inside himself. Now his peace was all gone like a scrap of burned-up paper. He was nervous again, and girls kept coming into his mind, bothering all hell out of him. And that made him feel queer, and he got ashamed of the thoughts he had... because of Lucy. And he couldn’t think of anything else.
At home they had steak, and Studs, like a healthy boy, forgot everything but the steak put before him.
II
The July night leaked heat all over Fifty-eighth Street, and the fitful death of the sun shed softening colors that spread gauze-like and glamorous over the street, stilling those harshnesses and commercial uglinesses that were emphasized by the brighter revelations of day. About the street there seemed to be a supervening beauty of reflected life. The dust, the scraps of paper, the piled-up store windows, the first electric lights sizzling into brightness, Sammie Schmaltz, the paper man, yelling his final box-score editions, a boy’s broken hoop left forgotten against the elevated girder, the people hurrying out of the elevated station and others walking lazily about, all bespoke the life of a community, the tang and sorrow and joy of a people that lived, worked, suffered, procreated, aspired, filled out their little days, and died.
And the flower of this community, its young men, were grouped about the pool room, choking the few squares of sidewalk outside it. The pool room was two doors east of the elevated station, which was midway between Calumet and Prairie Avenues. It had barber poles in front, and its windows bore the scratched legend, Bathcellar’s Billiard Parlor and Barber Shop. The entrance was a narrow slit, filled with the forms of young men, while from inside came the click of billiard balls and the talk of other young men.
Old toothless Nate shuffled along home from his day’s work.
“Hello, Nate!” said Swan, the slicker, who wore a tout’s gray checked suit with narrow-cuffed trousers, a pink silk shirt with soft collar, and a loud purplish tie; his bright-banded straw hat was rakishly angled on his blond head.
“Hello, Moneybags!” said Jew Percentage, a middle-aged, vaguely corpulent, brown-suited, purple-shirted guy with a cigar stuck in his tan, prosperous-looking mug.
“Hello, Nate! How’s the answer to a K. M.’s prayer on this fine evenin’?” asked Pat Coady, a young guy dressed like a race-track follower.
“How’re the house maids?” asked young Studs Lonigan, who stood with the big guys, proud of knowing them, ashamed of his size, age and short breeches.
The older guys all laughed at Young Lonigan’s wisecrack. Slew Weber, the blond guy with the size-eleven shoes, looked up from his newspaper and asked Nate if he was still on the trail of the house maids.
Nate had been holding a dialogue with himself. He interrupted it to tell them that he was getting his.
Slew Weber went back to his newspaper. He said:
“Say, I see there’s six suicides in the paper tonight.”
“Jesus, I knew it,” said Swan.
“This guy Weber is a guy, all right. All he needs to do is smell a paper, and he can tell you how many birds has croaked themselves. He’s got an eagle eye fur suicides,” said Pat Coady.
Nate started to talk; he said:
“Say, goddamnit, I’m tired. I’m gonna quit this goddamn work. Jesus Christ! the things people wancha tuh do. Now, today I was hikin’ an order, and some old bitch without a stitch on…”
“Naughty! Naughty! Naughty Nate!” interrupted Percentage, crossing his fingers