Young Lonigan - James T. Farrell [464]
“Hey, stop the train!”
The conductor came to him and said:
“This is a through train.”
“Well, stop it. I got to get off. I got to get off.”
The conductor looked at him.
“Get off then,” he said. . . .
Studs ran to the end of the train, and . . . the last step, and there was Lucy. . . . He stood on the platform of the last car, knowing that he was a coward, and that out of cowardice he had failed to see Lucy, and he felt that he had forever lost something.
Studs Lonigan walked through a jungle looking for Lucy. About him were lions and tigers, and he was constricted by a fear within him. Out of this fear he suddenly lost his power of motion and he stood still, and felt himself shrinking, shriveling up and growing smaller. If he did not check this growing smaller because of his fear, he would shrink to a pinpoint. He saw Red Kelly walking by, unafraid, and he called:
Red.
Red Kelly walked on, dressed like a hunter with a sunshade, puttees, white shorts, shirt, and long rifle. He saw Red disappear through a snarling group of lions and tigers.
Fly, he told himself. He raised his arms, and like a bird he floated through the air, without arms, over snarling packs of hungry carnivorous animals. He floated on and . . .
He seemed to float and fly, flapping armwings for a long indefinite period, and the pleasure he had derived from it changed to boredom, and then to fear, and looking down at the blue water, a terrible thirst burning in his body, his tongue dropping parched from his dry mouth, he wondered would he ever touch land, and would he ever again have a drink of water. A fear of unknown and threatening consequence blotted from his mind other things that stood in his path of . . . and on and on he flew, parched and dry and afraid . . . he knew unless it stopped, unless he received water, unless his feet touched land, and he knew when and why he was there, he would come to some unhappy end. Clarity came to him, a clarity that told him that unless such a thing happened, he would die. Floating still, he knew that he was flying to death, and he knew that he did not want to die, and he . . . a deep and mournful sadness that he could not articulate but that he felt vaguely. He looked at the water beneath him and around him, water running. . . .
I’m dying, he told himself.
On and on he flew, and suddenly he was flying no more. He was standing in sand, and every step he took, his feet sank in it, so that walking was slow and difficult. He walked on slowly, tortured, directionless. He looked up at a sky in which there was a blazing hot sun, and he wondered, was he in Africa? He looked off, and beyond the stretch of sand he was crossing, in a far distance there were trees, some kind of shrubbery and vegetable growth. He knew he wanted to get there. He went along in sand, and he could not remember where he was and where he was going. All he knew was . . . he was himself. He said to himself as he traveled:
I am Studs Lonigan, the great Ham What Am!
He walked on. He had come from someplace . . . pain. He was glad to be away from it. He could remember how there had been pain for him in the place from which he had come, and it lingered in him . . . he stood for a moment, his feet sinking in sand. . . .
He could not remember it, or what it was. He did not know where he was going, he knew nothing, and he walked tiredly forward, and again he was thirsty.
He fell down. He crawled on his hands and knees, feeling that he did not know how to walk any more. Ahead of him he saw a man walking, a man with his back turned, but with a walk and a build that seemed familiar. He stopped and looked as the man moved ahead of him, unimpeded, with ease. He was awed that a man should be able to walk on his legs, instead of having to crawl. He was envious . . . a man could do that. He moved to catch up with the man to ask him how he could do such an astounding thing . . . walk on his legs. He crawled swiftly, and overtook the man, and he was Red Kelly, and Studs recognized him.
Red Kelly, why can you walk on your