Young Lonigan - James T. Farrell [108]
The train passed Forty-seventh Street. He was all nerves to be downtown and off the train. The whistle wah-wahed. Kenny let out a long and funny wahooo that took down the car. Studs glanced around for a woman, wondering how he’d never before thought of the possibilities of getting against one in crowded el trains. Suddenly everybody was laughing. He looked to his right, and saw that Kenny Kilarney had fallen into the lap of a young chicken and didn’t want to get up.
He heard the fox-in-the-bush squeaking that the war was over. He imagined himself socking the guy. He was shoved near him, and as fox-in-the-bush said something else to hot grandma, Studs felt like asking why he didn’t give towels with his shower baths. A drunk in front of Studs ponderously muttered uh huh the war was over. Two girls near Red Kelly sang Over There, making Studs lonesome to be in France. He looked at the young janes, and thought that Red was a lucky guy, and there was gold in them there hills. To attract their attention, he started singing, We’ll Make the Hindenburg Line Look Like a Dime, very loudly.
The train stopped at the Indiana Avenue station, started, switched onto the express track, took the curve to go north again, and quickly gained momentum. The passengers were thrown every which way, Studs saw that fox-in-the-bush had grandma leaned forwards on him, and he was jabbing to her a mile-a-minute. They meant business, but how could any dame, even grandma, kiss a guy like that. Her tongue would get lost in all the thickets on his map. He edged down towards the janes by Red.
The train whistle wah-wahed. It roared downtown, over the slums and filth of the black belt.
A drunk yelled that America had won the war. A long-faced bozo shrieked that the world was safe for democracy. A cabbage-faced woman with a brogue a yard long hollered:
“Bully for Wilson and Ireland!”
“Six cheers for the Scandinavians,” whooped a jag.
“Aw, quit your kiddin’,” Kenny innocently shouted back at the jag, and people nearly busted their guts laughing.
They passed the Thirty-third Street station. It was crowded with happy, singing dinges.
A monkey-faced mick blubbered tears, whining that Padraic Pearse was dead, whoever that guy was.
The trainwheels clattered with the friction of steel, rolling over steel rails. The whistle wah-wahed. The car grew more and more rancid with alcohol and tobacco breaths, stale perfume, perspiring human odors.
Studs noted fox-in-the-bush, still barbering like an express train. He was envious, knowing she’d give the guy what he was after. He slowly squeezed nearer to the janes by Red, casually eyeing the train advertisement above the window. Chew Wrigley’s Gum! American Family Soap made it cheaper to wash than buy new clothes. The latest war news was to be found in the Chicago Daily Tribune. Red, the lucky bastard!
The train rocketed onward. Studs became suddenly oblivious to its strains and jerkings. He thought of France . . . Doughboys marching, fighting, loving the mademoiselles. The Yanks were there rum-tum-tumming up everything. And if he was only one of the Yanks who’d come. He was seventeen, and just ready to try again, after that time he’d eaten the bananas, and everything at home was just grief. If he’d gone, he might be dead now. . . . But no, the Blessed Virgin would have protected him because he would have worn her scapular. And the next war we had, with Japan, or Mexico, or the Bolsheviks, he’d go and be a hero. If he was only a Sammy now, in Paris, celebrating the Armistice!
A fat, gray-haired woman in tears said that her son Allen had been killed, but that she was happy the war was over,