Young Lonigan - James T. Farrell [440]
Catherine crumbled forward to the floor. She had fainted.
Chapter Eighteen
I
“MORT, old man, I’m sorry to see things come to a pass like this,” Lonigan said, standing by a scratched desk piled with papers and samples of wall paper, and glancing away from Mort at a smoke-dulled scene of railroad tracks and sooty buildings.
“I know. I know, Paddy. I was saying to my oldest kid only the other night, I said to Joe, it must hurt Mr. Lonigan more than it does me, because I’ve been working for him all these years, and it isn’t just like he was my boss, because we’re friends. I know, Paddy, that times is hard, harder than I’ve ever known them before. Business is business, and we’re all in a rough spot.”
“That bank failing, Mort, has just put the kibosh on me. I had my money for the next mortgage payment on my building that’s coming due next month. And the bank won’t give me any time.”
“Yes, it’s a shame, Paddy. An honest man like you, the squarest man I ever met,” Mort lamented.
“I don’t understand why it’s got to be me, Mort. I’ve worked like an honest man all my life, and I pulled myself up by my own bootstraps. I earned every penny I ever made. It isn’t right, Mort, and it isn’t fair. It ain’t fair. Why do I have to be a goat? Why?”
“Yes, Paddy, it’s a dirty shame.”
“I’ll tell you what it is, Mort, it’s the Jew international bankers. They did it. They are squeezing every penny out of America and Americans. And it ain’t fair.”
“Paddy, you took the very words out of my mouth. Here are you and me, two men who worked hard all our lives, honest men who were good providers, and the worst we have ever done is tip the bottle once in a while. And now, at the end of our lives, they take everything we got.”
“Mort, it’s all, everything, has been turned into a skin game, and the Jew international bankers are running it,” Lonigan said, Mort nodding agreement.
“And, Paddy, I wanted to ask you, how is Bill?” Mort asked, worry clouding Lonigan’s sagging, ruddy face.
“Bad. Bad, Mort,” Lonigan said, shaking his head, emphasizing his words by lowering his voice.
“Bill’s such a fine fellow, too. Many’s the times he and I have worked on jobs, and I never worked with a better man.”
“A man could not want a finer son than my Bill. But the game’s up for him, Mort, I fear. He’s sick, very sick.”
“Paddy, you sure have your troubles.”
“Troubles, Mort, always come in bunches.”
“Isn’t it so, Paddy?”
“I’m afraid, Mort, that only a miracle can save Bill.”
“Well, Paddy, maybe the best will happen yet.”
“Goddamn it, Mort, some good luck has to come to me.”
“Paddy, you sure deserve it. You’re the squarest shooter I ever met.”
The two men stood facing each other, gloomy and silent.
“Anyway, Mort, if I line up any jobs, I’ll call you first. But all I’ve got to say is that things look pretty fierce. A long time ago I said that things would happen just like they have, because Hoover was elected. He’s just a tool, if you ask me my opinion. If there hadn’t been such a dirty A. P. A. anti-Catholic prejudice against Al Smith, he would have been elected, and this country would not be where it is today. Because Al Smith would have been a president just like old Abe Lincoln was, a man of the people, governing for the people,” Lonigan said, and Mort agreed with strenuous affirmative nods.
“And Paddy, another man who would not have let the country come to the pass we’re now in is Cal Coolidge. Coolidge, now, he was too smart for them. He saw what was coming, and he cleared out so they couldn’t pin the blame on him. And say, Paddy, do you read what he writes in the paper? He writes