The Studs Lonigan Trilogy - James T. Farrell [66]
“Sure, he’s something already,” said Swan.
“What?”
“He’s a hoisting engineer,” said Swan, who accompanied his statement with the appropriate drinking gesture.
“Yeh, he’s a first-class hoistin’ engineer,” said Emmet Kelly, one of Red’s brothers.
“He hoists down a barrel of beer a week, don’t you, Barney?” said Mickey O’Callaghan.
They laughed. Studs told himself that, goddamn it, they were funny all right.
“You two-bit wiseacres can mind your own business,” said Barney.
They all laughed.
“But, Barney, no foolin’... I want to ask you a question in all sincerity,” said Percentage.
“Save the effort and don’t get a brainstorm, hebe,” said Barney.
“Why don’t you go to work?” asked Percentage.
“Times are hard, jobs are scarce and good men is plentiful,” said Barney.
They all laughed.
“Well, anyway, Barney, did you get yer beers last Sunday?” asked Weber.
“Listen, brother! Them Sunday blue laws don’t mean nothin’ to me,” said Barney.
“Nope, I guess you’d get your beer even if the Suffragettes put Prohibition down our necks,” said Pat Coady.
“Why, hell! 1 seen him over in Duffy’s saloon last Sunday, soppin’ up the beers like there was no law against buyin’ drinks on Sunday. He was drinkin’ so much, I thought he was gonna get his’ false teeth drowned in beer,” Barlowe said, and they all laughed.
Studs noticed the people passing. Some of them were fat guys and they had the same sleepy look his old man always had when he went for a walk... Those old dopey-looking guys must envy the gang here, young and free like they were. Old Izzy Hersch, the consumptive, went by. He looked yellow and almost like a ghost; he ran the delicatessen-bakery down next to Morty Ascher’s tailor shop near the corner of Calumet, but nobody bought anything from him because he had the con, and anyway you were liable to get cockroaches or mice in anything you bought. Izzy looked like he was going to have a funeral in his honor any one of these days. Studs felt that Izzy must envy these guys. They were young and strong, and they were the real stuff; and it wouldn’t be long before he’d he one of them and then he’d be the real stuff.
Suddenly he thought of death. He didn’t know why. Death just came into his thoughts, dripping black night-gloom. Death put you in a black coffin, like it was going to put Izzy Hersch. It gave you to the grave-diggers, and they dumped you in the ground. They shoveled dirt on you, and it thudded, plunked, plump-plumped over you. It would be swell if people didn’t have to die; if he, anyway, didn’t have to; if he could grow up and be big and strong and tough and the real stuff, like Barlowe was there, and never change. Well, anyway, he had a long time to go.
People kept dribbling by and the guys stood there, barbering in the funny way of theirs.
Lee came along, and the guys asked him why he was getting around so late.
“Oh, my wife invited me to stay home for supper, just for a change, and I thought I’d surprise her and accept the invitation,” Lee said.
“Hey, you guys! did you get that? Did you? Lee here said his old woman asked him to come to supper, just to vary the monotony a little, and he did. He actually... dined with his old woman,” Percentage said.
“Next thing you know he’ll be going to work and supportin’ her,” said Pat Coady.
“Jesus, that’s a good one. Hey, Lee, tell me some more I got lots of Irish... credulity,” said Barney.
They laughed.
“That’s a better one,” said Lee, pointing to a girl whom everybody marveled at because they said she was built like a brick out-house.
“She has legs, boy,” said Studs, trying to horn back into the conversation.
They didn’t pay any attention to him.
“Well, I object!” said Percentage.
“Why?”
“I OBJECT!”
“Why?”
“Goddamnit, it ain’t right! I tell you it ain’t right that stuff like that moll be wasted, with such good men and true around here... I say that it is damn wanton extravagance,” said Percentage.
“Hey, Percentage, you shoulda been a Philadelphia lawyer, with them there words you use,” said Barlowe.
The guys laughed, and Percentage