Young Lonigan - James T. Farrell [454]
“Sir, doesn’t God love the Irish?”
“You’re right, dad,” Lonigan said with a smile, finishing off his drink.
“Dad, bejesus no. I want the likes of all you to know that Timothy McGuire is a granddaddy,” he said shaking with laughter that sounded ribald.
Two lads in their early twenties, one wearing a nicely pressed blue suit, the other in splotched working clothes, entered and strolled up to the bar smiling. They reminded Lonigan of his son, and he saw Bill in other days, stopping off after work for a drink, stepping up to a bar the same as these lads, talking, kidding with a drunk as these two were with McGuire, maybe thinking the same kind of thoughts as they were. Martin, too, was like these lads. And once he himself had been. He wanted almost to cry, and he sipped his third glass of whisky.
“Boys, I’m just a no-good Irishman,” McGuire said, staggering up to the newcomers.
“You’re no good, and we’re no good. That’s what we got to brag about. Ha, ha,” the lad in the blue suit said.
“By Jesus, I’ll shake on that profundity. No good. Was there ever an Irishman that was good for anything but the bottle and a song and the ankle of a pretty lass? Ha, ha,” McGuire drooled, shaking hands with both of them.
“Come on, Pop, have one on us,” the lad in the blue business suit said.
“By gosh, you’re gentlemen, even if I do say so,” McGuire said, supporting himself against the bar.
“Join us, stranger,” the lad in working clothes said, and Lonigan raised his fourth drink in response, feeling warm with a sense of companionship.
“Well, spittin’ in your eye,” McGuire said, gulping a thimble-glass of moonshine.
McGuire staggered to a thin man who sat slumped at a table over a cocktail.
“Why so pale and dour, fond friend?” he said, unsteady before the man.
The stranger frowned. McGuire made a face and returned to fall over the bar.
Lonigan looked into his fifth drink with melancholy, feeling like he wanted to hear songs, to sing sad old songs himself, like The River Shannon, and Dear Old Girl, and When I First Met Mary, and Silver Threads Among the Gold, and After the Ball Is Over. With a gesture of despair, he downed his whisky. His head began to feel light, and he did not think that he could control himself any longer. And he ought to go home, but he didn’t want to. Those two young lads, talking of girls and whorehouses, forced Bill’s image back into his mind. What should he do, just sit down here and cry? He frowned. Goddamn it, he cursed, thinking how he had done nothing to merit these sorrows. He didn’t care now. He was beyond caring, and he was going to drown his sorrows in drink.
“Another.”
“Friend, you look glum. Why look glum? Why look glum and sour? Why so glum and dour? Sing, friend, sing. I always sing, and sing again, and sing. Listen!” McGuire babbled.
Since Maggie Dooley
Danced the Hooly-Hooly,
Ireland’s been fading away.
The Sweeneys and Dalys
Have sold their shillelaighs,
The fat Miss Kelly
Wiggles just like jelly
To that taunting sway.
And all the colleens on the street
Are all dressed up like shredded wheat
Since Maggie Dooley
Learned the Hooly.
McGuire, exposing his gums in a grin, acknowledged the applause he received.
“Have one on me,” Lonigan called to McGuire.
“Oh, ’tis a pleasure to drink with a gentleman. Sir, what is your name? You are speaking with Timothy McGuire.”
“Lonigan.”
“Irish, too. Well, friend, drink to the dear old sod,” McGuire said, Lonigan smiling, proud to be Irish, trying to drag through his foggy brain remembrances of old days in saloons, when Paddy Lonigan was young, and free, and light-hearted.
“I’m a Kilkenney Irishman,” McGuire said, touching glasses with Lonigan.
“Let’s sit down,” Lonigan said, beginning to tire.
He walked unevenly to a vacant chair, and McGuire crashed into a chair opposite him. His eyes grew misty, and he looked at the figures at the bar in a semi-daze. The insides of his head spun like a top. He told himself that he was drunk and he didn’t give a good goddamn.
“My friend, these are hard times, and the world, oh, the world exists in