Young Lonigan - James T. Farrell [321]
Studs wove through the crowd, closer to the stand.
“Will some one of you come up here and tell us just what has happened, please?”
Studs raised his hands, thinking that he would explain it to Gorman, make himself known to all the candidates here, and use his good offices in knowing the Judge to settle this trouble.
“Here’s a gentleman now from your own number who will tell us. Come up here, please, sir!”
“Tell him the straight stuff, lad!” someone said as Studs mounted the stand.
“Mr. Gorman, don’t you remember me, Lonigan, from Fifty-eighth Street?” Studs said, extending his hand.
“Why, yes, yes.”
“Well, Mr. Gorman, you see, this sergeant-at-arms must have had a few shots too many and. . . .”
“Here, please, turn around and tell everybody.”
Studs fidgeted at the sight of so many faces below him. He looked over their heads at vacant chairs, and opened his mouth without saying anything.
“Gentlemen, now we can get down to the facts in this situation.”
Studs grinned weakly. He wanted to make a hit, and he’d never spoken to a crowd before, and he was no orator, and. . . .
“Well, first we are in the room, ah, a room like sardines in a can and the fellow comes in and he shoves everybody around, insults the priest, and when one fellow gets sick, he locks us in. For all he cared, the fellow could have died,” Studs said, beginning nervously, the last words of his statement dying as he uttered them.
“Unheard of! Unheard of!” Judge Gorman exclaimed, shocked.
“Well, it’s so,” Studs said doggedly, stimulating corroborative cries.
“Is there any more to this? Here, will you come up here and tell us what happened and back up this man’s charges?” the Judge said, pointing to a thin fellow with a turned-up nose and over-sized ears.
“You bet your boots!” the fellow replied, confidently mounting the stand.
Studs, feeling that he had failed, unobtrusively slid down from the platform.
“That’s the stuff, lad,” someone said, lightening Studs’ disappointment.
“Quiet, please, gentlemen, while we proceed with this investigation. We must get to the bottom of these facts, because the Order of Christopher would be deeply humiliated if it allowed these allegations against one of its officers to go unpunished, if they be proven.”
“All right, I’ll tell you! We’re candidates, see, and we come here to be initiated. We plunk down our ten bucks, and we’re all anxious to be put through the degrees in our initiation. That’s the layout. We come here to be initiated and not to be treated like a bunch of dogs!” the little fellow with the large ears said in a resonant voice.
“Pardon me, but what has this got to do with the facts that have been charged against our sergeant-at-arms?”
“I’m coming to that. All right, then, we didn’t come here to be treated like dogs, did we?”
“No!” the crowd boomed.
“All right! We come here to join the Order of Christopher because we know that it stands for decent things, sports, religion, good fellowships, the church, decent things.”
“If it stands for men of God being insulted by the likes of that drunken bully, give me my money back!” a voice cried out with a trace of an Irish brogue in it, bringing cheers and catcalls.
“All right, he comes into that room with a breath that would make a Mack truck run backward, shoves us around, and he says to one lad, ‘Are you a Polack?’ And then what does he do? He insults a priest.” Turning to Judge Gorman, the speaker raised his voice. “Now, does the Order of Christopher stand for insulting priests or doesn’t it?”
“Of course not. If that be true, the proper punitive measures will be taken.”
“And we’re going to take the same things!”
Studs added his voice to the riotous outburst, keen for excitement, watching the speaker and thinking how he might have done what this fellow was doing instead of fizzling his chance away.
“How was the priest insulted?”
“There’s Father. He can tell you!” the speaker said, pointing.
“It is true!” the priest called from the crowd.
“Thank you!” Judge Gorman said, his voice squelched in applause, and when it died, he continued,