The Studs Lonigan Trilogy - James T. Farrell [96]
Studs tried hard to convince himself in his thoughts that he was not envying the punks out there fighting, and, hell, he’d grown past all that kid stuff. But he knew that he couldn’t fool himself and tell himself lies, and that when he wanted something, he wanted it, and all the telling himself in the world that he didn’t want it couldn’t make him get rid of that wanting. The same way he tried to tell himself that he didn’t really love Lucy, and that loving a girl the way he loved Lucy was goofy, because a big tough guy should only want to jump a girl, and think that all the rest and the love was crap.
“Kids will be kids,” said Screwy.
“Yep, they will,” a baker driver said.
“Yeah,” the needle-faced guy said.
“No time in life like when you’re a kid,” the bakery man meditated aloud.
“You should have seen them bellyaching before it started. They both wanted to be the Americans. I thought they’d end up in a free-for-all fist fight,” said Studs, a man in a man’s world.
They haw-hawed, Studs the most loudly. Not one punk noticed Studs Lonigan laughing, a man in a man’s world.
And smiling-eyed, curly-haired Lucy Scanlan, plump, pretty, flowering beautifully into young womanhood, came along.
Studs saw her. She saw him. Studs took out a cigarette and lit it like an expert. He talked and laughed with the other men, as if Lucy might have been in Africa. She paused on the sidewalk, only a few yards away from Studs, watching the battle. She didn’t look at him. He tried not to look at her. He watched her out of the corner of his eye. She might be going to the store. He could go along, help her carry the groceries home, go to the park with her, like last summer on the day when they’d sat in the tree, and he’d kissed her, and seen her blue wash bloomers, and she’d sung In the Blue Ridge Mountains of Virginia, swinging her legs in the tree, as if they two had been all alone together in the world. He looked at her out of the corner of his eye, at her shapely legs, and her growing girlbreasts, Lucy. Gee, she was even prettier than she was last summer, and growing, too. And she wouldn’t bat an eye at him even.
Screwy spoke of playing pirate in Missouri, when he was a shaver living only about a hundred miles from Hannibal, that Mark Twain had written about. The bakery man spoke of barefoot-boy days in Indiana. Studs listened and laughed as they detailed their boyhood pranks. He looked at Lucy cold. She looked back. Their eyes met. She turned away, as if he were a total stranger.
The tin-can battle raged on, and after an attack was repulsed, Andy again went batty, jumping and yelling that the Americans were winning.
And Studs wanted to be a soldier now, marching away in uniform, and become a hero, and then if he died, well, it would serve her right. Because he loved her with the best and deepest part of himself, and what did she care! And if he came back with medals all over his chest, then she might change her tune. He’d walk along Indiana in his major’s uniform, sword at his side, and she’d maybe come up and say, very penitent and meek:
“Studs, I’m sorry.”
And Major Lonigan would walk past her as if she was a flea.
The battle raged.
Lucy walked on. Maybe on her way back, with her arms full of groceries, she’d talk, and he’d help her carry them. Or maybe he wouldn’t. She’d say hello Studs, and he’d say hello, or maybe not, and then let her go on with all her groceries. And if she dropped them, he’d just laugh. She’d laughed at him, not caring how he felt. He wouldn’t care about her feelings. He who laughs last, laughs best, and Studs Lonigan was the kind of a guy who got the last laugh on everybody, and he’d get it on her. He watched her go. She didn’t look back. The hell with her. Only the image of her girlbreasts, underneath her dress, stuck in his mind. Lucy!
“Yeah, great sport,” Screwy said for the sixth time, with nostalgia aching in his voice.
“Say, I see trenches like this all over,” the bakery man said. “You