Young Lonigan - James T. Farrell [25]
IV
“Vinc, listen to this!” said Three-Star Hennessey.
Vinc listened.
Three-Star made lip-noises.
The others almost strangled themselves checking guffaws. Davey held his nose and whispered to the guys that it was Vinc.
“Ugh!” he muttered.
People near them looked askance.
The guys all told Vinc that he should be ashamed of himself.
“It was him! It was Three-Star, Dave. I didn’t do it. I didn’t. Hones’! Hones’! Hones’! I didn’t. I tell you I didn’t. I’ll take an oath. Cross my die and hope to heart, I mean, I’ll cross my heart and hope to die if I did it. I’m tellin’ you that I didn’t. Hones’!” pleaded Vinc with pained sincerity.
Three-Star told Vinc to tie his bull to another ash can.
“Why, Three-Star!” Vinc said, shocked.
Someone in the audience told them to shut up.
“Didn’t your old lady teach you any better manners?” said Paulie.
“She’s better’n’ your old lady,” said Vinc aloud, but his remark didn’t carry up to the stage. People turned, annoyed.
“Yeah!” whispered Paulie to Vinc.
Vinc was open-mouthed and hurt; hurt that he should be treated so unjustly.
V
“Alas, my dear young friends, you must move down the hard and stony paths of life. And at times, it will be a difficult road. It might be a long and lonely journey, unless you take, Gawd forbid, that false path which the grreat and Catholic-minded William Shakespeare described as the primrose path to the everlasting bonfire; the primrose path to the everlasting bonfire sown with the flowers and fruits of the Devil, bounded by beautiful rose bushes behind which hide old Nick and his fallen angels; the foxy, the sly and foxy hordes of hell. You must beware of old Nick, and you must not allow him to snare your souls. Old Nick, the Devil, is tricky, full of the blarney, as they say in the old country. He is like the fox, tricky, cunning, clever. He will always make false promises to you; he will seek to deceive you with all the pomp and gold and glory of this world. He is a master of artifice, and he will pay your price in this . . . if you will pay his price in the next world; if you pay his price in the next world, where hell hisses and yawns, and the damned suffer as no earthly being can or has suffered. False friendships, fame, riches, power, success, all will be strewn at your feet by old Nick, if only you sell your soul, like Mephistopheles . . . if only you deny our Lord, Jesus Christ.”
From the second row, center, Mr. and Mrs. Reilley listened to the priest. She was a reddish woman, generously supplied with flesh and bust. He looked like a conventional cartoon of a henpecked husband.
“Sure, isn’t he the walkin’ saint of God? And isn’t he the saint?” she said.
Reilley nodded his head from a long-standing habit of acquiescence.
“And isn’t he the grand scholar?”
Reilley nodded.
“And maybe the lad will take all of what he says to heart.”
Reilley nodded.
“And maybe he’ll not run around like he does.”
“I hope so,” Reilley muttered.
“And sure, doesn’t the lad and the lass take the cake up there on the stage?”
“Uh huh!” from Reilley.
VI
The priest described the glee of the Devil when he, Lucifer, snares a young and innocent soul; and the boy Studs Lonigan on the stage had an imaginative picture of Satan in a tight-fitting red-horned outfit, like the creature on a Pluto water bottle, hopping out from behind a bush, clutching the soul of a young guy or a girl from the stony road