Young Lonigan - James T. Farrell [138]
But the evening was all wasted, because he had made his decision and would stick to it.
He walked towards the poolroom thinking about a lot of things. He saw young Cooley, and motioned him over, calling him a dope.
“Droopy, when you gonna let it alone?” he asked, not knowing why he did it, and laughing to see the hurt, shocked look on the kid’s face.
He walked along. He had let himself get into the wrong attitude. Well, he didn’t have to go tonight. But he did. He didn’t like to admit it to himself, but he was afraid. Well, it wasn’t yellow. It was a different kind of fear. It was fear for his soul if something did happen to him.
He just felt all off kilter. Maybe afterwards, he would feel different.
II
Studs had what Father Gilhooley always called a feeling of gratification. Red, Tommy, and the guys had kept trying to talk him into going with them, and he had resisted all temptation.
He walked up towards the church, taking his time. There wouldn’t be a crowd there. He thought of himself as having already gone to confession. He saw himself saying his penance, saw himself kneeling in the confessional, talking through the screen to Father Doneggan, running through the catalogue of his sins, commandment by commandment. He tried to put himself into a contrite mood. He wanted his act of contrition after confession tonight to be a perfect act of contrition, as if it were his last confession.
Studs walked slowly; nervous, he lit a cigarette.
The thought of Paulie dead out there in the cemetery still hung on him. The thought of another, a waiting grave out in Calvary Cemetery hung more heavily.
Already this football season, he had read of five or six different fellows being killed in football games. When he had been a kid, he remembered having read about how a fellow named Albert at the U of C had been killed. In Thursday’s paper there had been something about a fifteen-year-old kid who’d had his skull fractured.
A voice within Studs, as if it were his conscience, kept assuring him that he was yellow.
He seemed to keep seeing that kid he had read about in Thursday’s paper, before him, prostrate, moaning, blood from his cracked head dropping to mix in the dirt, moaning, deathmoans persisting, ringing out as if in prophecy of his death, and of the death of everyone that he knew. He seemed to see Studs Lonigan in place of the kid with crushed head. He seemed to hear the deathmoans of Studs Lonigan.
He walked slowly.
The night was crisp. A mist swung down low. It was not the kind of a night to think of death. It was the kind of a night to make one want to live.
He paused at the curb on Fifty-ninth, to let a truck swing around the corner. He had a crazy impulse, that he couldn’t understand, to dive in front of the truck.
He crossed the street, walked on lazily.
He tried to examine his conscience. He hadn’t broken the first commandment. He had taken the name of God in vain, fifteen, no, twenty or twenty-five times a day, he guessed. Third commandment. He hadn’t missed mass. His thoughts wandered. He realized that he was lonesome. He wondered what he could do after confession. He didn’t want to go home. He figured he hadn’t better go to a show. It might cause him to have the wrong kind of thoughts after confession. He wondered what the bunch was doing.
He thought of himself, out on the football field for tomorrow’s game. The kickoff. Studs Lonigan running the first kickoff back a hundred and three yards. He wasn’t going to be hurt either. But suppose he was. Well, he was going to confession so he wouldn’t be. He’d be afraid to enter that game tomorrow if he didn’t, because he had that kind of a feeling.
He got back to the third commandment, and walked slowly towards St. Patrick’s Church.
In the church, a low-ceilinged structure of boxed-in gloom, he took a seat in the rear pew on the left-hand side. He bowed his head, and said a few