Young Lonigan - James T. Farrell [111]
He laughed, forgetting, as he spotted a funny drunk leaning against a department store window. Studs gave him a disdainful hello. The fellow mummed his fingers to his lips, drew Studs close, almost suffocated him with an alcohol breath, and whispered that he couldn’t move because German spies had undermined the foundation of the building, and he alone was holding it up, and if he moved, it would come down on everybody. He, like Wilson, was a savior of Humanity. Red came along. Studs gave Red the wink. Red nodded. They each cut one of the drunk’s feet from under him and he went down, his head snapping and cracking on the sidewalk. Blood oozed from it. A singing bunch of marines stepped on the drunk as he lay there, and Studs and Red hurried away, afraid that maybe they’d killed the fellow.
They followed in the trail of five janes who were singing dirty songs and carrying a sailor on their shoulders. Studs wanted a uniform. Jesus! All the janes would be kissing him, and telling him to come on. He tried to think of himself in uniform, being kissed and grabbed by all the janes, carried about, taken to hotels, loved up by ten of them in succession. Goddamn it! He was nearly knocked down, and that brought him to his senses. Red grabbed him and said look at the funny bloke with the pig.
They went behind a fellow who dragged a pig along by a rope. There was a sign tied on the pig:
THE KAISER.
The fellow kept twisting the pig’s tail to make it squeal, and it was funny.
They followed him over to Michigan Avenue, hoping to get near enough to twist the pig’s tail. They spotted Kenny Kilarney on top of one of the lions in front of the Art Institute, flinging tomatoes into the crowd, and rushed over. Studs grabbed Kilarney’s last tomato, and let it go. He was glad when it hit a soldier in the ear. They dashed down the steps, and bumped square into a girl as she went for a sailor with open arms, shrieking:
“Here I am, sailor boy!”
Studs stood next to them, watching them kiss, the girl’s body straining, her lips pressing, her face going taut, tense, her arms and his arms tightening vise-like, their mouths opening, french-kissing in public.
“OOOHHHHHHHH!” muttered Studs.
Kenny grabbed his arm.
“Where to?” muttered Studs.
“We’ll brown the Kaiser,” shouted Kenny.
“And the Clown Quince too,” said Studs, his mind painful with the thought of girls.
They stopped at a fight. It was Tommy Doyle. He knocked a souse out. Red Kelly kicked him in the ribs.
“That’s the Fifty-eighth Street spirit,” yelled Studs, as they rushed on.
They ate in a restaurant and ran out without paying.
They saw a guy fall through a plate-glass window. He was pulled out, and laid on the sidewalk. They fought in a whole mob, that milled like cattle to look at the guy, as he lay bleeding and moaning.
It got dark. Studs saw the girl from the elevated train again. He rushed to her and said, “Hello,” but she didn’t hear him, and dove for a passing marine. Another jane copped the marine, Studs grabbed her and kissed her. She slapped his face, and stopped a soldier to kiss him. She simulated moans as the soldier kissed her.
“Come on, girlie!” the soldier said.
Studs watched them quickly disappear in the crowd, and he was hot and wanted it, and gloomy, and just like that his heart seemed to go out of the whole celebration, and he felt that he was only a punk to them, just as the kids around the neighborhood were only punks to him.
It was late when Studs climbed into bed. He was tired, but too excited to sleep, and the refrain of Pack Up Your Troubles In Your Old Kit Bag drummed in his head. He tossed in the bed most of the night, wishing the war wasn’t over, wishing he was a hero, wishing, wishing he’d had the dough for a can house, or had copped off a broad downtown. He tried to keep thinking of that girl on the train, and of making her, over and over again. His head got drowsy, his eyes heavy, and he tried to think even