Young Lonigan - James T. Farrell [140]
Outside, Studs and Art lit cigarettes and went north along Indiana Avenue, the street along which Studs had, in his day, always come to and from school. The past came back into his thoughts. The day that Paulie had been licked by Johnny O’Brien. The day in winter that he had clipped a truck driver on the ear with a snowball and they had all been shagged. He felt as if tomorrow he would be going to communion with the boys’ sodality at the eight o’clock Mass. But what the hell!
Studs asked Art how he happened to be going to confession.
“I’d never think of playing football without receiving communion. You never know what’s going to happen to you in a prairie football game like that one we’ve got scheduled tomorrow. And I always play safe.”
“Yeah,” said Studs, feeling good that he wasn’t the only guy who’d felt that way.
“Why did you go—same reason?” asked Art.
“Oh, I just thought it was about time that I’d receive. And then I thought I’d do it for Paulie Haggerty.”
“Say, that reminds me, I ought to be offering up my communion for Paulie tomorrow too,” said Art.
Studs suddenly recalled that he had intended to make it a general confession for his whole life. And it had skipped his mind. He was afraid all over again, because of that slip. He saw himself killed in the football game. But he was offering his communion up for Paulie, and Paulie in Purgatory, if he was there, would pray for him in return.
Jesus, what the hell was happening to him, getting like he was.
He went down to the Elevated to get a Sunday-morning paper, vowing to himself that he wouldn’t stop at the poolroom. He did, and found Bill Donoghue there. He told Bill he’d gone to confession, and they played several games of straight pool. Studs won. Then they had coffee in fat Gus the Greek’s restaurant, between the Elevated and Prairie Avenue. They talked about the old days when they were kids at St. Patrick’s. Studs had a good Saturday night, and got home about a quarter to twelve. He told his old man that he should tell his mother not to get him breakfast, he had gone to confession. Lonigan beamed.
VIII
WORRY did not sit well upon a jolly, red, robust face like Mrs. Sheehan’s. But she had a premonition. Last night in a dream, she had seen her Arnold lying dead in a football uniform. Oh, if only sons would heed their mothers, there would be less trouble, fewer broken-hearted mothers in this world. And how much happier a world it would be!
She remembered that Saturday in Rockford; how she had sighed with such relief when Arnold came home and said he had played his last game with the high-school team. She had had her premonitions in those days, too, when he would be playing, and she knew that he would have been maimed for life or killed, but for her prayers. A boy could only trifle so much with the Grace of God, though. She felt it in her that Arnold would be carried home, perhaps dead.
She took a chair by the parlor window, and prayed. She looked out across the street at the leafless trees in the graying October Sunday. Down at the other end of the park, he was playing; perhaps at the very moment, he might be injured, dead. She knew, knew in her mother’s way, that something would happen to her oldest boy.
Arnold was her favorite child, her first-born. Her four girls gave her no trouble. They were well-raised, and she could trust them; only sometimes she worried that they couldn’t have more clothes. But their father was only a motorman. The youngest lad, Arthur, he was an altar boy, a bright, fine, innocent lad who always obeyed. And Horace, he worked in a gambling house, but he was steady, and brought money home to her regularly, and he didn’t drink like Arnold. Arnold, her baby, he worried her. He was the most generous of her children, when he had it to give, with a heart of pure gold. Only he had gotten in with the wrong sort. With the Grace of God, he would settle down.
Her premonitions would not down, and her prayers