Young Lonigan - James T. Farrell [442]
“Paddy, I always think that I’ve got this one consolation. Maybe it was the wisdom of God taking my woman away from me before she had to go through times like these.”
“Yes, Mort, often mere mortal men like ourselves cannot see the ways of the Almighty and what looks to us like misfortune often turns out different and only proves the wisdom of God,” Lonigan orated.
“True, Paddy, true.”
“Well, goodbye, Mort, old man, and whenever I have any work for you, I’ll get in touch with you. Goodbye and good luck, old man,” Lonigan said.
“So long, Paddy. I know how it is. I know,” Mort said as the two men spiritlessly shook hands.
Mort trudged out of the office. Lonigan stood as if transfixed, thinking that Mort was too old and too slow to do much work for him. He had to use younger men, who could do the work quickly.
He picked up the telephone, put it down. He was afraid to call home and get bad news. Bill might be dead. Was in bad shape when he left this morning, and Mary had spoken of having the priest.
He locked his office door and left.
II
Lonigan sat at the wheel of his battered, dusty Ford coupé. There was really no place to go, and it didn’t matter where he went or why. If there was ever a man plagued by the seven devils, he knew that man was himself.
He stepped on the starter. The engine turned, and the car lurched forward. Driving mechanically, Lonigan decided that he might pay a visit to Saint Patrick’s. He parked his car before the broad and pillared facade of the church. Inside, he looked around in awe and wonder, rediscovering the stained-glass windows, the hollowed dome of colored glass, the marble altar, the statuesque stations of the Cross along the wall. He knelt in the last pew on the right of the center aisle, his eyes fastened on the candle burning with flickering steadiness inside a red glass hung above the altar.
A sense of mystery filled him, an awe of God, his God. He blessed himself a second time, palmed his hands together, looked from the altar light to the golden tabernacle door which housed the Lord in Whose honor the candle burned perpetually. He beseeched comfort and solace. Divine help, that his God would intervene, if it be His Will, and spare his son. His Our Father was interrupted by the remembrance of how Dr. O’Donnell had shaken his head and said that Nature would have to take its course in Bill’s case. His eyes shifted from the tabernacle door to rest on the hanging imprint of the bleeding and crucified Jesus set high in the hollowed half dome which curved above the altar. He begged it for hope, feeling that he was a weak and tired man, deserted, at the mercy of a world beyond his powers.
His knees tired, he sat back in the pew. Bewildered, he tried to force himself to understand what was happening to him, what was happening in the world, why so many things should be crushing down on the shoulders of Paddy Lonigan who had once been so confident, so well equipped to deal with his difficulties.
Vaguely, he remembered an afternoon in October, 1929, when he had come home around a quarter to five as usual. In the newspaper delivered at his door he had read the account of a break in the stock market. Now he saw that that was the beginning of this depression, this depression that was robbing him of everything he had acquired through the long years of work. And more clearly he remembered that New Year’s morning of 1929, when he had been awakened by a call from the Washington Park Hospital at Sixty-first and Vernon and told to come down and see about his son, who had been picked up on the street, in the gutter, drunk and unconscious. That day was one he could never forget. And both of these days had brought upon him troubles that now linked up in one whole series that was breaking him. And he was getting old himself. This all meant the ending