Young Lonigan - James T. Farrell [455]
“I’ve lost plenty, plenty,” Lonigan said, his chin sagging. He silently warned himself to hold his tongue. “I lost everything. Money. My building. And now my oldest son lies home, dead.”
“Condolences, friend, condolences,” McGuire muttered, extending a wrinkled and dirty hand.
“I don’t mind the money,” Lonigan said, weakly sighing. “But my boy. My oldest son, the best damn son a man ever had. He died today of pneumonia.”
“Friends,” McGuire called, arising, supporting himself against the table. “Friends, Romans, lend me your ears. My friend here, an Irish gentleman, they took all his money, and now his son is dead. Friends, Romans, lend him your sympathies.”
McGuire fell back into his chair. Lonigan slumped, his face puffed, his expression saddening, the fat bulging around his jowls. He arose and floundered blear-eyed toward the two young lads at the bar.
“Pardon me if I bother you, boys. You make me think of my own son lying home, dead. I’ve been a good father, and he’s been a good son to me and my old lady, and he’s dead. Dead! A good son, know him, Bill Lonigan? Everybody calls him Studs. Did you know my boy?”
“Where’s he from?”
“I raised him near here, down at Fifty-eighth Street.”
“No, sir, I don’t. How about you, Jack?” the lad in the blue suit said.
“Friend,” McGuire said, pawing at Lonigan’s coat sleeve.
“Boys, you’ll excuse me for troubling you, but you don’t know what it means to a father in his old age to lose his son.”
“Friend, here, take my sympathy,” McGuire said in tears.
“What was the trouble with your boy?” the bartender asked.
“Double pneumonia.”
“Tough. Here, friend, better have a drink on the house. It’ll brace you up,” the bartender said, pushing a whisky toward Lonigan. “My brother, he had an attack of the same ailment, and while he pulled through, he’s never been a well man since. I tell you, sometimes the death of our dear ones is the mercy of the Lord, and we must abide by His will.”
“God called him, and there is no gainsaying the will of the Almighty,” Lonigan said, shaking his woozy head. “But I’m an old man. Why couldn’t it be me? I’m old, and I’d give my life if my boy could have been saved.”
“Many are called but few are chosen,” McGuire said, toppling, saved from striking his face on the bar by a stranger. “Chosen,” he muttered while the stranger leaned him against the bar.
“God’s will is God’s will,” Lonigan muttered.
Drinking, Lonigan spilled half his whisky on his coat and tie. His head turned like a merry-go-round, and he had a vision of his home, all of them waiting for him, the father. Mary, her mother’s heart suffering a mother’s agony. They would put Bill under the sod, and the crooked bankers would take his building. He was drunk and he did not want to go home and face it, and he felt like a traitor for not going home.
“Brace up, friend,” McGuire said, his feet sliding from under him as he pitched face foremost on the floor. “Brace up,” he repeated, groveling on the floor.
Lonigan puffed, lacking the strength to lift McGuire. The two young lads dragged him to his feet and dumped him in a chair.
“It’s a tough old world,” the bartender said, meeting Lonigan’s eyes in a glance of mutual sympathy. “Now I well remember the day my poor old mother passed away. She was ninety-two, and you know, after she died, they couldn’t get her mouth closed. My sister, she was crying, and cutting up for a fright, because she was sad to see my poor old mother lying there so cold, and nobody able to close my mother’s mouth. And my aunt who was ninety-four, when my sister told her how they couldn’t get the mouth of my mother closed, she, that’s my aunt, she said to my sister, ‘Well, you children never let her open it when she was alive. Let her open it in