Young Lonigan - James T. Farrell [452]
“Aw, nuts.”
“The day will come.”
“Bull . . .”
Defend the Soviet Union
“Dirty-neck Reds,” the pimply fellow hissed, ranging himself alongside of Lonigan.
“What I don’t understand is why they are allowed to make trouble and incite to anarchy like this. With times so bad, and people so poor, this stuff is dynamite, especially with them getting the niggers in it. If the police allow these people to carry on like this, there might even be a revolution,” Lonigan said, his voice intense with protest.
“If I was the cops I’d haul ’em in,” the pimply fellow smirked, raising his left hand in a gesture of assurance. “Then, bam. Banana stalks.”
NO WORK NO RENT
“I don’t suppose most of them would work if they had the chance, and the instigators of it probably get their palms greased by Moscow gold,” Lonigan said as if he knew a lot.
“Say, got a cigarette?”
“Sorry, but I don’t smoke ’em,” Lonigan said, uneasy in the pimply fellow’s presence.
Lonigan was attracted by a marcher in a light gray expensive suit. The lad looked refined, like he came from a good home. He looked as refined as his own son-in-law, Carroll Dowson. What was such a boy doing here?
“All right, get back! Get back!” barked a husky cop with a beefsteak face.
Lonigan was slow in obeying the command.
“You’re wise, huh?” the policeman said, shoving out his jaw at Lonigan. “Maybe you’d like to take a little ride and have a talk with the judge, huh?”
“You’d just better figure out who you’re fooling with,” Lonigan said, while people crowded close to gape at them.
HANDS OFF HAITI
“You’re resisting arrest and inciting to riot. I’ve a good mind to run you in.”
“Go ahead. I’ll be right out, and you might find out you made a mistake,” Lonigan said, determined to show this cop.
“Who are you? What’s your name?”
“Lonigan.”
The cop eyed Lonigan with an apparent and growing indecision.
“Well, I got to keep people back, you know, Mr. Lonigan. No hard feelings. Only try and keep on the curb. These bastards around here are tough to handle, and it’s no soft job for us. This is all extra duty. We got orders to prevent trouble today and I’m only following my orders. But if I had my way,” the cop raised his club slowly, winked. “It isn’t no picnic for us.”
“Have a cigar.”
“Thanks, I will. My name’s Roonan,” the policeman said, inserting the cigar in an inside pocket.
Down with Hoover
“I suppose that makes Hoover afraid,” a young fellow with Semitic features said, and Lonigan turned, noticing that he was well dressed and carried a briefcase.
“Hoover is a tool of the capitalists just like the Czar was,” a wellbuilt, middle-aged Jewish man in a brown suit said with a slight Yiddish accent.
“Yes, but I suppose that makes his knees quake.”
Down with Cermak
“Young fellow,” the older Jewish man said, “in Russia they say I will never see the revolution. So I will never live to see it, hanh? So we couldn’t make the Czar afraid, hanh? Vell, I heard all that before.”
Down with the Bosses Government
“Back in the old country they told me I will never live to see the Czar overthrown and the Ochrana kicked out. And the Cossacks and peasants, they told me, they will murder you, not follow you. That was in 1905. My sainted mother, she cried, ‘They will find you, kill you, send you to Siberia, my darling.’ And they did. They chase us, they beat us because we are Socialist, they hunt us like wild animals.”
We Demand Unemployment Insurance
“Twelve years later, I see it all. I see it. We kick the Czar out on his tuchas, the Ochrana, and the Generals, too. Now Cossack and Jew are friends, work together to build Socialism. Tomorrow? Hoover is not afraid?” The older man spit contemptuously and the younger one smirked. “Tomorrow, here