The Studs Lonigan Trilogy - James T. Farrell [89]
“I’d like to. You say it describes the rapes?” Studs asked.
“The Huns, they’re not civilized... of course, Frank, you know I don’t mean you because you’re Americanized... but the Germans are brutes. Why, they’re destroying Catholic churches, and Red Cross hospitals, and they sink ships without warning, letting helpless women and children drown. Look at the Lusitania! I tell you, they ain’t civilized.”
Frank’s eyebrows rose, and he glanced at the two boys. He thought of other years, back in Bavaria, his fatherland. And friends and cousins, and the children of friends and cousins, boys of fifteen and sixteen like these, being taken off to war and killed. Why? His own brother, shot with Hindenburg’s army on the Russian front! The world was calling them Huns, beasts, brutes, savages. These silly boys had picked it up like parrots, all that awful talk. He tried to work rapidly. He had come to America, haven of peace and liberty, and it, too, was joining the slaughter, fighting for the big capitalists. There was no peace for men, only murder, cruelty, brutality. He was choked with feelings and fears. His own name! His birthplace. His fatherland! He loved it, suffering Bavaria. America would be a war-crazy nation. He told the boys he was very busy, and asked them to return and see him another time. He went to the back of the shop to sit down and try and think and assimilate this terror.
“I want to go,” Red said.
“Me, too,” said Studs, leaning on the fireplug in front of the chain drug store.
Some of the passing people acted as if nothing had happened. Others had their heads buried in extra papers. Groups paused on the corner to discuss the declaration of war. From down the street, newsboys barked:
“EXTRA PAPEE! CONGRESS DECLARES WAR! EX-TRY! WAR!”
“Yeah. I want to go,” Studs said reflectively.
“I’m going to try and get in.”
“But you’re underweight and under age.”
“I’ll say I’m eighteen, and I can maybe put on enough weight by eating bananas and drinking water before I go down to enlist.”
“Say, Red, that’s an idea.”
“What you say? We’ll both join the Marines?”
“Maybe we’ll get all the guys. We’ll have a company from Fifty-eighth Street,” Studs said.
“It’d be good if we all could become aviators, and have our own squadron,” Red suggested.
“We’ll have a swell time. And we’ll bring Kenny Kilarney along, too.”
“Say, he’ll be a one-man circus in the war... But did you hear, Kenny’s got a job?”
“No kiddin’.”
“Sure, he’s deliverin’ orders for Ortenstein and Vauss’ drug store down on Garfield Boulevard. I wouldn’t believe it myself if I didn’t see him there.”
“If he goes to war, he’ll probably pull off some stunt like capturing all the rats in our trenches and sending them over to the Huns. That’ll be the way we’ll win the war,” said Studs laughing.
“And I hear the hustlers are yum-yum in France, too,” Red said.
“We won’t do nothin’ atall with those French chickens,” Studs bragged lasciviously.
“If we save civilization and France, I think we’ll have a right to.”
“You know, I got to laugh, just thinkin’ of what a guy like Kenny wouldn’t pull in the war. He’d probably go over and cop all the German soup-kitchens, or he might nab Berlin from right under the Kaiser’s nose, without the Germans knowing it was gone.”
They talked of how they would come home- in glory and victory, marching down Michigan Boulevard with their medals and souvenirs. And Kenny Kilarney would probably have the Kaiser’s mustache, iron helmet and his iron cross, and he’d hold them up, shouting RAGOLIRON, as he marched out of step.
Kenny happened along, carrying a bottle of seltzer water for delivery, and singing, Reuben, Reuben, I Been Thinking. They told him about enlisting. He looked at them in that goofy surprised way of his, waved his arms, and sang, I Didn’t Raise My Boy To Be A Soldier. It was so funny they had to laugh, because Kenny was a funny guy. They said he ought to go into vaudeville. He said that, all kidding aside, the idea was jake with him. He showed them how he would jam a bayonet up the