The Studs Lonigan Trilogy - James T. Farrell [72]
“Oh, I got a sprained thumb. It was that damn Andy Le Gare. He got fresh, and one day came up and tickled the palm of my hand. Well, I’m not letting anybody try and get dirty around me, so I hauled off on him,” she said.
“You hung one on ‘im, huh? Good!”
“Yeah, he started to hit me back, but I hit him again, and he changed his mind. But I sprained my thumb, and it’s pretty sore,” she said.
“Gee, that’s good, not the thumb, but your hanging a couple on goofy Andy,” said Studs, because he couldn’t think of anything else to say.
She asked him where he had been keeping himself and how he was getting along. He did not seem as confused now, and he started bragging about the swell time he had been having. She invited him to her sister’s playhouse, where it would be cooler and they could sit there and chew the fat.
“It’s been dead around here,” she said.
“Yeh!” said Studs, glad that the street was dead, because it showed that he had been a wise guy in shaking his tail from Indiana.
“I have been having a swell time,” he said.
“Well, I been swimming nearly every day. But my mother keeps naggin’. You know how a kid’s old lady is. They want to do what’s right, but they never understand a kid,” she said.
“My old lady wants me to be a priest. Can you imagine a guy like me bein’ a priest?” said Studs as he lit a cigarette, just as Swan lit his cigarettes in front of the pool room.
Helen said that she wasn’t getting on so well with the family, because they always kicked that she wasn’t like other girls; they said she was too old to go on being a tomboy. Her old lady wanted her to do like other girls and give up playing ball, so that she could pay more attention to other things like studying music, dancing and dramatics. She said for her part, if she would be allowed to play basketball on the Englewood high school team, music, dramatics and dancing could all go hang. She said she was fed up on her old lady’s nagging.
“But can you imagine a guy like me bein’ a priest?” repeated Studs.
“The girls around here are too soft and primpy; they’re cry babies. And they are always talking, talking about boys and kisses. And some of ‘em like Helen Borax are too damn catty for me,” Helen said.
“Well, it seems to me that the whole neighborhood around here has gone dead. Now aroun’ Fifty-eighth and Prairie we got a real gang,” said Studs.
“Well, I don’t like them,” she said.
Studs shot the butt he’d been smoking. He stocked his mush with tobacco. She smiled and asked him now long he’d been chewing. Trying to he matter of fact, he said that he’d been chewing for a long time. He rose, and walking to the window he let the brown juice fly. It was a pretty good performance; he was learning, all right.
He came back and asked her if she could imagine a guy like him bein’ a priest. She said he wasn’t such a bad guy at that.
“But can you imagine a guy like me bein’ a priest?” he said.
They sat. They didn’t have much more to say. Studs had feelings he would have liked to talk about, but he didn’t have words, just those melting feelings that went through him and made him want Lucy more than he wanted a drink of water when he was thirsty. Helen would have liked to talk to him as they used to talk when he hung around Indiana. The words just weren’t in either of them any more. After a while she tried to speak, telling him that he was being a fool hanging around Fifty-eighth Street where the bunch made a bum out of everybody. She said a guy didn’t have to be a sissy or yellow not to be a bum like those louses were. She didn’t like them, or like the way they picked on Jews, and beat kids up, and always got in trouble. The thing the matter with them, she said, was that they thought