Young Lonigan - James T. Farrell [288]
Wearing a gray suit, a gray fedora tilted over the left side of his face, Joey Gallagher strode confidently down the same street where he had appeared as a boy. He stopped, looked across the street at a sign board.
THE WORLD IS YOURS
He smiled, tossed away the cigarette. His face took on an expression of recognition, and a policeman rheumatically stepped up to him.
“Getting along these days, aren’t ye, lad?” Mr. Kennedy said.
“Oh, so-so.”
“Better watch your step, me lad.”
“Nobody’s got nothin’ on me.”
“Son, now take it aisy. Aisy, lad! I see ye with the King and his boys. Now, take the advice of one that’s in this game longer than yourself, and take it aisy, me lad. I’m tellin’ ye for your own good.”
The policeman wagged a sad head as Joey confidently passed along. The scene dissolved, and Joey entered the modest home where his mother sat knitting, and his shirt-sleeved brother read a newspaper.
“Mother, you old skate, I have a present for you,” Joey said, bending down to kiss her and dropping a fat roll of bills in her lap.
“No, son, I can’t,” she said in the choking voice of a mother’s sadness.
“Mother doesn’t need tainted blood money,” the brother curtly said, arising. “Look! Tell me you don’t know anything about it!” the brother challenged, handing Joey the newspaper.
Joey read the newspaper disinterestedly.
TWO MORE SHOT IN GANG WAR Bullet-ridden Bodies of Greasy Jones and Lefty Loomis Found in Alley.
“They probably didn’t keep their noses clean,” Joey said.
“That’s a good crack,” Pat said to Studs, Studs shaking his head.
“Get out!” the brother said, in a quavering voice.
“Why, you dirty . . .”
A surprise punch from the brother somersaulted Joey into a chair. He leaped to his feet, but his mother faced him, in tears, pointing at the door. He picked up the roll of bills from the carpet, shrugged his shoulders, walked out.
“Swell acting,” Pat muttered.
The blonde lounged in pyjamas on a cot in a large room filled with modernistic furniture.
“Joey, come here,” she called in a cooing, asking voice, and Joey sat in a comer, his head sunken in his hands.
She walked toward him with her abdomen jutting out prominently, and he gazed up at her with disgust when she patted his head.
Studs hoped that it wouldn’t turn into a scrap, because, after all, with a dame like that wanting something, and he wished like hell he was Joey Gallagher folding her into his arms, kissing her in that long, close way, and knew that the next step was to pick her up, carry her to the couch and. . . .
Joey shoved her away from him angrily.
“Say, Joey, what’s the matter?”
“I don’t know. Just let me alone for a while,” he said absently.
“What’s eating you, Joey. Getting a swelled head?”
“Never mind taking any tailspins there, baby,” Joey said in his curt, tough manner.
“Losing your nerve. Gettin’ yellow,” she sneered.
“Why, you dirty. . . .”
He hit her in the chin with the heel of his left hand.
“Keep your hands off me. Why, you, you’re nothing but a small-time gorilla,” she cried, stumbling against a table.
“Look!” he said, pointing behind her.
She turned.
“Just a present from a small-time gorilla,” he said, planting his foot into her buttocks and propelling her into the table, smashing a lamp.
“Small-time, am I,” he soliloquized, getting into his roadster. He cut around a corner at breakneck speed.
Studs wondered why Joey couldn’t have let well enough alone with the blonde. But still, that kick in the slats had been funny. The way to treat a high-hat broad like that.
“Come on, Spike, get your coat on,” Joey said, entering a room where Spike sat in shirt sleeves with a baby-faced girl in negligee on his knee.
“Every time I get set, somebody tips the glass on me,” Spike complained, knotting his necktie before a mirror.
“Say, what’s the idea?” Spike said, perplexed, entering the roadster.
“Got to