The Studs Lonigan Trilogy - James T. Farrell [88]
I pledge allegiance to the flag, and to the republic for which it stands. One flag, one nation, one people, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all.
He turned down the alley between Indiana and Prairie. He was going to be a soldier of his country. Suddenly, he trembled. If he was killed in action, it would be a hero’s death, but . he thought of the Stations of the Cross in the church, slow, sad, solemn, the story of Christ on the Cross, the sad singing, all the statues draped, death, and dying, people going, soldiers going, never speaking again or seeing anybody they wanted to see and speak to, and leaving the people they loved like he loved Lucy, and he was afraid of war because there was so much dying in it. He hastily muttered a Hail Mary to the Blessed Virgin, asking her protection, and promising always to remember her, pray to her and wear her scapular.
He fell into marching step, as if he were an American soldier going off to war. He imagined himself going over the top with the American army, not stopping until they captured Berlin. He saw Private Lonigan as the soldier who captured the Kaiser. He saw himself with levelled gun forcing Kaiser Bill to cower into a corner and yell Kamerad, like a yellow skunk.
“Take that, you raping sonofabitch!” he said, swinging on the Kaiser.
“And that!” he followed, massacring the air with a good old-fashioned American right uppercut.
A passing laundry-wagon driver leaned out of his seat and yelled:
“Hi there, Jess Willard!”
Shame blushed his cheeks. He walked circumspectly.
Well, after war was declared and Studs Lonigan was a brave and gallant soldier of his country, he wouldn’t have to pretend, and he would make everybody and Lucy envy him and be proud of him, and recognize he was a somebody all right, and he’d win medals for bravery and have his picture in the papers, and maybe, years ahead, even in the history books.
Studs emerged from the alley and walked down to the northeast side of Fifty-eighth and Prairie. At the elevated station, a half block down, he saw people crowding excitedly around Sammy Schmaltz, the newspaper man. He started to go down there, but heard Red Kelly calling him from other side of the street. He turned and saw Red waving in front of Frank Hertzog’s shoe repair shop, about fifty yards or so down from the corner. Studs dashed across the street, dodging a truck that just missed him. The driver cursed him. Red said war was declared. They went inside the shoe repair shop, and stood outside the counter. Frank, a middle-aged man with a square face and a mustache, was carefully half-soleing a shoe.
“The extras are out now. And we’re gonna cook the Kaiser’s goose plenty. How about it, Frank? You know we can do it, don’t you, because you’re from Germany?” Red said, slurring and running some of his words together.
“I’m an American citizen now,” Frank remarked without looking up from his work.
“Say, Frank, tell us what kind of a lousy country Germany is,” said Red.
Continuing to work, Frank said that he had come to America because it was a democratic country with more opportunity, and because there was no compulsory military service.
“Yep, it’s the land of the free and the home of the brave,” Red said knowingly.
“We had to do it or the Germans would have come over and attacked us,” Studs said.
“We got to save a civilization. You can see what the Germans are doing from the papers. Only they haven’t told half of it. Why last week, I was reading a book by a Catholic priest telling what the Germans did in Belgium. You know what they’d do? A hundred or so of ‘em would line up, and take a woman, or even a six-year-old girl or an eighty-year-old grandmother, like old Mrs. O’Flaharty, and they’d strip her and rape her one after the other, until she was dead. Then they’d go and do the same thing over again.”
“The book says that? Does it describe the rapes?” asked Studs.
“Yeah.”
“What’s the name of it? I’d like to read it,” Studs said.
“I forgot, but I’ll take you down to the library and show