Young Lonigan - James T. Farrell [383]
“Some of the boys here are wide awake, folks, and getting spryer and spryer every minute like the well-known Squirmy Stevens of team number four.”
He glanced at a squat fellow in a crimson jersey and tannish knickers, and the fellow’s dark, heavy-browed oversized Neanderthal face broke into a grin.
“How about it, Squirmy?
“Squirmy says he feels like he could eat a couple of beefsteaks and then sleep until next year,” the announcer said into the microphone, and Squirmy performed a brief, hopping dance, drawing applause and smiles when he clowned aside by sagging and bending his knees, creating the effect of deformed walking.
“Well, Squirmy, all you got to do is to strut your stuff longer than anyone else on the floor and you’ll get your wish. And when you do go on that sleep, sweet dreams.”
The contestant with the sore feet and thinning hair spoke to the announcer.
“Joe Hergel here says sleeping is natural to Squirmy and he should wish to wake up. Well, a little kidding adds to the gaiety of life, and let me say, ladies and gentlemen, that these marathon dancers we’ve got here on the dance floor of the Silver Eagle Ballroom in the World’s Championship Super Marathon just have the time of their lives with all their jokes and good-natured fun. They all know how to give it, and, what’s more important, to take it.”
“Goodness!” Catherine exclaimed in shock while Squirmy drew a laugh by bending over, projecting out his broad buttocks and wriggling them.
“Now, folks, the contestants are going to strut their stuff, for you, and I’m going to bring as many of them as we’ll have time to hear up to the mike for you. But, first, as a prelude, let me repeat for those radio fans who may have missed the opening of this broadcast. We are here now in the three hundred and sixty-seventh hour of the World’s Championship Super Dance Marathon in the ballroom of the Silver Eagle, and we still have eighteen couples and two solos battling for the title and the one-thousand-dollar prize which will be awarded to the winning couple. Some of them had a bad night of it last night, and others have had trouble today, but now all of the contestants are cutting up here as spry as if they had just started. They will have interesting things to tell you, and the first contestant that I will call on is Louise Strang, of team number twenty-one, that game little blonde girl from Carmody, Indiana. Louise is the smallest one on the floor here, but, folks, is she game! Is she game! Night after night she’s proven how game she is. And let me say this to you folks who haven’t come out here on the south side of Chicago at the Silver Eagle Ballroom to see the World’s Championship Super Dance Marathon Dance, let me tell you, it’s worth the price of admission alone just to see little Louise Strang. Here she is now right beside me, as fresh and as pretty as a daisy, one of the favorites out here, and her partner Joe Joslyn agrees with me when I say that she’s as game a girl as ever stepped out onto any dance marathon floor. Louise Strang.”
“She looks horrible,” Catherine said as a blonde girl in a lacy black dress shyly stepped forward. She was blown and puffed, with her eyes sunken and circled with fatigue, and her face was hideously caked with powder. Loud cheering and a rat-tat-tat of hand-clapping greeted her.
“Hello, folks,” she began, sleepy-voiced. “I’m awful glad to be able to say hello to you tonight, and I wanna say hello to all my friends and admirers of