Young Lonigan - James T. Farrell [446]
Across the street from the abandoned house some boys were playing ball in a narrow lot, shouting like hell. Golly, he had played ball like that and so had his brothers, Jack and Mike and Joe, and so had Bill and Martin around Fifty-eighth Street. And now here were these boys.
“Go on, you sonofabitch, I’m safe.”
He laughed. Tough kids, all right. A whole new generation, going through the same mill that he had. Going through the same kind of a mill that Bill and Martin had. No. Bill and Martin had been given advantages that he’d never had, and these kids weren’t getting them, either.
“If I’m a sonofabitch, you’re a . . .”
Swearing like teamsters. Well, when he was a shaver he’d done the same thing. What would become of these lads? They’d scatter like the kids he’d known. Some go to jail. Some just get nowhere. Some pull themselves up by their own bootstraps just as he had done. He remembered Packey Dooley. Packey had died young, of consumption. His mother had wanted him to learn the violin. Maybe if Packey had lived he might have been a great violinist. Ah, life was a funny thing, and Boots Brennan, the toughest kid in the whole block, who had always sworn like a trooper, Boots was now Father Brennan. But most of the kids hadn’t turned out so well, and they had come to no good end. He had escaped all that, but for what? Only now to be ruined and bankrupt. And was he coming to a good end? And how many generations of kids had come and gone since his time, and how many more would follow after those kids cursing and playing ball in the lot across the street? Oh, life was a funny thing.
He hadn’t remembered his childhood in years as he was remembering it today. Poverty, the cold house in winter with the wind breaking through the cracks. Days without food. His father, a big strong man, worrying, coming home drunk. He remembered his father once staggering in with not a cent of pay left. His mother had cried and cursed him. The old man had punched his mother and she had fallen, and Catherine, like a little tigress, had ripped into the old man until she’d gotten a whaling. And then for two weeks his parents hadn’t spoken. He could remember his mother, day after day, working and slaving, washing, scrubbing, cooking in their crowded little home. Ah, life was a funny thing.
Thrilling with pride, he told himself that he had taken his family away from such a life. Even now, if he was a ruined man, he had lifted them up, and they would have something better. His girls would. Martin? He was worried about Martin, and Bill. Oh, if only. . . . But where was he? He tried to convince himself that he was worrying too much, and he stood watching a black-shirted blond boy hit the ball over third base and run the bases while the others shouted. Oh, to be a shaver again, playing like these kids, stealing coal from the railroad yards. And then the days when he was a young buck, sowing his wild oats, the nights at dances and in saloons, and Mary. Mary such a sweet young girl, winning all the races at picnics. Mary whose dark eyes went only for him, Mary who had really made a man out of Paddy Lonigan.
When I first met Mary . . .
When I first met Mary . . .
He turned, staring ahead of him, slowly pacing this familiar, and yet not familiar, street. An old woman came toward him. Her skin was rough and wrinkled, her gray hair stuck out from a black shawl pulled tight around her shrewd, peasant face.