Young Lonigan - James T. Farrell [164]
He felt moody over having seen Helen, noticed the way she seemed whipped, and wasn’t the old Helen. And then losing that game too. He yawned, tired. He remembered what good times he and Helen and the old bunch used to have roasting marshmallows and baking potatoes in a bonfire nights over by the foundation when the Prairie Theater was just being built.
XI
A HOLLOW ROAR, like heavy thunder splitting the sky in a storm, boomed over the neighborhood. People near Fifty-ninth and South Park Avenue heard falling glass, and in some cases, their buildings, and the very bedrooms in which they slept, quaked. Inside of five minutes, a crowd was collected in front of a low, two-story, red stone house between Fifty-ninth and Sixtieth on South Park Avenue. Two policemen stood before the crumbled steps, and the long wide porch before the building was splintered and half-wrecked.
The crowd was steadily enlarged by people of all ages who displayed the signs of hasty arousal from sleep; men with trousers and coats pulled on over pyjamas, kids with tousled hair and sleep still in their eyes, surprised and half-dressed women. There was much talk and speculation, and amongst them there was a general consensus that the bomb had been placed there through the machinations of real-estate people who desired that Abraham Clarkson, the leading colored banker of Chicago, should sell his property and cease living in a white man’s neighborhood. Most of the excited and gaping people present also eyed the wreckage with approval, wishing that it would have a proper and fearful effect. But they knew that the bomb would teach no lessons and inspire no fear. For Abraham Clarkson had been bombed before, and he had stated defiantly that he would move from his home to another one only in a casket. It was nerve for the nigger to say that and go on ruining a white man’s neighborhood, living amongst people who didn’t want him. Secretly, many of those present wished that he had been killed. Some of the Catholics wished only that it had wounded him, un-mortally, for didn’t he always give Father Gilhooley a hundred dollars in the annual Easter and Christmas collections. The crowd increased. After about three quarters of an hour of gaping, it slowly dispersed. Red Kelly walked off arguing with Tommy Doyle, Red insisting that it was the fifth time that the jigg had been bombed, Tommy contending that it was only the fourth time.
Chapter Eleven
I
“PAPEE! Box score!”
Studs Lonigan laughed at Sammy Schmaltz like a drunken apparition.
“Which one?”
“There ain’t no box scores on Christmas Eve,” Studs said, continuing to laugh.
“Papee! Latest papee!”
“Merry Fourth of July!” Studs bellowed, with an uncontrolled wave of his hand; he staggered over to plaster himself against the bellied front of the Fifty-eighth Street elevated station. He saw Phillip Rolfe and bellowed a command for him to come over.
“Say, are you a fag?” Studs sneered.
“You’re drunk, kid,” Phillip replied, taking Studs’ arm. “The boys said you’ve been home laid up with the flu for several weeks. Do you feel all right now?”
“I’ll bet you are a pansy,” Studs said, brushing Phillip’s arm aside, and eyeing him with curiosity, as Rolfe inched backwards.
“Why do you punks wear those goddamn monkey suits? You can’t keep them pressed when you get on your knees,” Studs said, studying Phil’s bell bottoms.
“They’re the rage, kid,” Phillip said, walking away.
Studs fell back against the building. He coughed. He saw people passing as in a dream, and imagined himself just walking up to them one by one, and laying them cold.
“Hey, Jew, commere!” he commanded.
Smirking, Jawbones Levinsky halted a respectable distance from Studs.
“So you’re the goddamn Jew who’s prejudiced against the N. D. football team.”
“Yeah,