Young Lonigan - James T. Farrell [334]
He lit another cigarette and thought how easy it seemed for some people to make money. Jesus, why couldn’t he have that kind of luck? Others didn’t deserve it any more than he did. He wished he could meet someone to talk to, and make himself forget it. Hell, just think how many guys there were in the world who could lose that much dough just like it was only cigar money.
He shrugged his shoulders and tried to squeeze consolation out of the thought that that was the way the world went. Only, hell, it seemed so simple to make money on stocks, so easy for the market to go up rather than down, and after he had cleaned up, for it then to go any damn way it pleased. It had been pie for many guys, why not for him?
It was just like watching a baseball game. The pitcher on the side you wanted to lose would seem to have nothing on the ball, and would only appear to bob it up to the plate with lanterns hung on it. Watching the batters on your favorite team step into the batter’s box, you would look over the field. Suddenly it would seem as if there were so many places where safe hits could be driven, and so many breaks could happen to make your side win. And the batters would swing hard enough to knock a house down, massacring the air, popping up, poking out dinky, measly grounders. Or if somebody would connect with a safe hit, he wouldn’t be driven home for a run. Inning after inning would pass, and it would still seem so easy for your team to win, and maybe your team would fill the bases with one out, and it would look sure like they were going to put the game on ice. And then pop ups, double plays, and you’d wonder why, Jesus Christ, why, it seemed so easy for the game to be won, and still it was lost. It was just the same with the market and his stock.
He tossed his cigarette away. He was very lonesome, and he didn’t want to be alone and thinking about such things. But it was always that way. You couldn’t think of anything you wanted to, and when you were in the dumps you thought of all your gripes and troubles and felt yourself to be a miserable no-good, bad-news bastard, and that was just how he felt. He looked around at the quiet street, the night, half dark only because the moon was so full and shiny, and he looked at it, and at clouds covering it, and at the lamp-post-lights cutting areas out of the shadows, and he wanted things, wanted something, wanted his luck to change. He couldn’t stand this, and he quickened his steps to get home and read the newspaper, listen to the radio, do anything to get those thoughts out of his head.
IV
“Hello, dad,” Studs said, still breathing rapidly as he entered the parlor.
“Hello, Bill. What’s in the paper tonight?”
“A break in the stock market, and it looks like they got the goods on that Methodist minister who’s mixed in that divorce suit out in California.”
“The dirty Protestant A. P. A. Fooling around with a decent little girl who sings in his choir. Stringing him up would be too good for him. You wouldn’t find a Catholic priest doing a thing like that,” the father said with venom.
“How was Amos and Andy tonight?” Studs asked.
“Oh, they were all right,” Lonigan said.
There was something on the old man’s mind. Must be the stock-market break. He could see that the old man had something to say to him, too. He’d need that money now. For a moment, he felt as he used to when he was a kid, and his father was really a boss over him. He grew fearful of his father as he had done in those days when he’d done something the old man didn’t want him to do. Then he realized that he wasn’t a kid any more and he and his father acted differently toward each other.
“Let’s see that paper, I want to look at the stock-market news.”
Studs handed him the newspaper and watched his father’s fretting face as he read.
“Looks damn rotten, all right, Bill,” he said as if to himself.
“Think things are going to keep on this way?”
“I