Young Lonigan - James T. Farrell [118]
The old man dropped back to his rocker, held his head in his hands. Studs looked at him, imagined himself smashing the old bastard’s face till it bled and swelled. He stood impotently.
“You heard me! Tomorrow! Now get the hell out of my sight before I give you the trimming you deserve, you dirty little whelp!”
“Patrick! What’s happened?” the old lady said, coming to the entry way, as Studs, still bawling, turned to go.
“William! . . . William!”
“I’m leaving here!” Studs said, brushing past her.
“Did you hit him?” the mother demanded.
“And I’ll hit again. After all I done for him, the dirty little ingrate, defying me! All right, go on, get out, and don’t come back. I don’t ever want to see you again!”
“Patrick Lonigan! How dare you! Striking my son, my own flesh and blood! Ordering my precious first-born baby out of my home!”
“Mary, you don’t know what you’re talking about. Don’t tell me what I’m to do in my home! And don’t be wastin’ your sympathy. What he needs is to get the tar kicked out of him. And if he wants to live here, he’ll do what I tell him!”
In his room, Studs was proud of himself for having defied the old man. Glad, too, that his father and mother were having a big blowout. He cried; well, he was so goddamn sore, he couldn’t help it.
“You ought to be ashamed of yourself!” Fran said, stopping in his doorway.
“Mind your own goddamn business!”
“How dare you curse me!” she said, shocked.
“For Christ sake, shut your trap!”
She rushed into the parlor, and shrieked in a high-pitched voice. It was like a nut-house now. He slipped into his old lady’s room, and copped five bucks from her pocket-book. He got his rusty old gat from its hiding place at the bottom of his closet. He put on his cap, and went to the bathroom. He saw that his eyes were red from crying. He tried to hide the redness with Fran’s powder. He was ashamed of himself.
“My son . . . my son!” his mother muttered, trying to block his path at the front door.
“I’m going!”
“William, your father just lost his temper. Go in and tell him you’re sorry and. . . .”
“I can take care of myself!” he said, viciously slamming the door.
“You don’t know what you’re doing to dad. Come back,” Fran begged, pursuing him in the hallway.
“Take your lousy hands off me!”
His parents called him from the window. He didn’t look at them. At the corner, he turned, and saw his old man coming out of the building. He ran, ditching the old man by running through alleys and gangways.
III
With dew-soaked feet, Lonewolf Lonigan tramped across the ball field of Washington Park. He suddenly wheeled around, thinking that he had heard approaching footsteps. He looked in back of him; darkness. He gazed all around at the surrounding blackness, the extended shadows of bushes on the edge of the park suddenly losing themselves in an awfulness of night. To his right, and several blocks away, was the illumination of the park refectory. The lights of a passing automobile showed like fleeting electric pinpoints and vanished.
To get rid of the thoughts he was having about himself and the darkness, he whipped out his gat, and pulled the trigger, the hammer clicking.
How could he get bullets? Where did burglars go for their ammunition? He could see himself walking into a joint, looking tough, saying in a hard-boiled way:
Three rounds of cartridges for a forty-four!
Well, soon he would have a forty-four, instead of a twenty-two!
From Cottage Grove Avenue, he heard the muffled echoes of a street car. The air was cut with the inhuman shriek of ungreased automobile brakes that had been suddenly applied. The sounds faded deeply into all the surrounding silence. He heard many crickets.
Lonewolf Lonigan stopped, stricken with indecision. He could see himself captured, shot. . . killed.
If he hadn’t gone off the handle! He could have gone to work for the old man and it mightn’t have been half bad. Right after graduation, he’d wanted to. And the old man had been right in what he’d said. He had been wasting his time. But it was the way he’d said it, the bossy