Young Lonigan - James T. Farrell [148]
“We can get enough witnesses,” said Studs.
The rumor was still being discussed when Studs left for home. If they did throw them all in the jug! He saw himself in the pen for a manslaughter charge. But they couldn’t get him. He’d played a clean game.
He realized how tired he was, and his shoulders drooped. But it had been a great game, and a great fight, and he could feel proud of his part in both. He’d showed them all. He remembered that first clean tackle he had made, leaving his feet, the way he smashed into the runner, that sudden rush of his body through the air for a split second, and bang, the guy was down. Hundreds of people, too, had seen it. He was nostalgic to be still playing, making tackles like that.
Dumb, too, not to have gone to high school. If punks like O’Neill could make the grade, what couldn’t he have done? He cursed, though, realizing that they would lose their permit to play in Washington Park, and that they couldn’t get up a good team to travel, particularly after a fight like this; because if they traveled and didn’t have a big enough mob along, they’d get the clouts plenty somewhere. Damn Reilley! And just when the scrap had started, he had been getting into top form, he felt. But the fight, too, had been a wow. The way he had hit that big yellow bastard. Only, gee, he might have been a bigger star in the game than even Schwartz, if it hadn’t started.
He stuck his shoulders back, and forced himself to walk briskly. Proud of himself and his body. In his prime right now.
He became aware that it was dark, and an autumn mist was settling over Fifty-eighth Street. Street lights were on at the alley between Indiana and Michigan. There were lights in windows. He heard the scrape of shoes in back of him, and the rumble of an elevated train. Down at State Street a street car was going, the bell donging. An automobile passed. The lonesome part of the day.
If Lucy had seen it, him! Well, what if he did admit to himself; he had played and acted like a hero!
That poor bastard Schwartz, game, had to grant that, lying dead in a hospital or morgue. It could have been him, perhaps. No, he knew he wouldn’t die that way; he knew that he had some kind of a destiny to live for, and that he would live until that destiny was fulfilled. Maybe he would be a damn important guy later on, politician or something. That poor Jew bastard in a morgue. On the impulse, he mumbled a prayer for the guy!
The street around him seemed gloomy, and he was gloomy too. He couldn’t get the thought of that dead Jew out of his mind. He didn’t feel so cocky. He felt now like he wanted something in life, and didn’t know what. That game and fight now, it had been swell. But there was something more he wanted than the glory of it, and he didn’t even know what it was. Funny that he kept coming back to thoughts like this.
IX
“MONEY’S pretty tight right now,” Lonigan said.
“I know, Paddy. I wouldn’t come to you if I could go anywheres else. I’d borrow on my insurance only I can’t, because I had to do that when Ann had appendicitis,” Lonigan’s brother, Joe the motorman, said.
“How old is Tommy?”
“Twenty,” Joe said deferentially.
“You say he stuck this guy up and spent the dough, and you got to make it good?”
Joe nodded.
“He can’t get off on first offense?”
“The Jew is sore, and threatens to press charges if he don’t get his money back. You know these Jews, always wanting their pound of flesh.”
“Joe, you should have watched him.”
“I tried, Paddy, but I was working every night on the cars. I did all I could, and it was a great sacrifice sending the boy to high school. But now, Paddy, I think the kid has learned his lesson. And I can’t stand by and see my boy go to the pen. That would ruin his life sure.”
“A bad business! You should have watched him more. You know, Joe, when a boy goes wrong, it’s not only his fault. It’s also the