Young Lonigan - James T. Farrell [467]
Studs turned. He did not want to see. . . .
Something was happening to him, and he did not know what it was. If his wish came true it would not happen. He walked through an alley, down to Michigan, back along Fifty-eighth Street to Prairie, and there he saw Barney Keefe, his pecker hanging out with his false teeth tied to it.
Go home, you lousy Lonigan little brat, Barney said.
Studs looked at Barney and walked on, saying nothing. He turned in the alley in back of the elevated, and there saw Father Gilhooley on an ash wagon, emptying ash cans, and he asked:
Father, what’s all the ashes?
Remember, oh man, that thou art dirty dust and to dirtier dust thou shalt return. Come on in and give me your dirty ashes, the priest, dressed like an ash man, said, and Studs knew he was dying, and that his wish was to live, and he wanted life.
He ran from the priest, feeling that in running from the priest dressed like an ash man he was running from death, and he ran, but when he stopped . . . ashes, and he knew that he could not run. . . .
. . . and dirty, and the world was full of them, and they pelted Studs Lonigan.
Wherever he went they pelted him, and he had no escape, and he stood, stormed under by them, choking, crying out:
Help!
Mrs. Lonigan rushed sobbing into the room, and saw her son on the bed, and heard his feeble delirious cry.
Help!
Oh God! she cried.
“Mrs. Lonigan, please be patient,” the nurse said, moving toward her.
“Oh, God! Jesus, Mary and Joseph! Jesus, Mary and Joseph! He’s dying, he’s dying,” she cried.
“Mrs. Lonigan, please, please. Now you go and stop fretting yourself. He is not dying. . . .
Disregarding the nurse, Mrs. Lonigan flung herself on her knees beside the bed and looked through her teary eyes at her son, seeing him as in a fog. . . .
Lonigan, having heard the cries from the kitchen, where he had been slumped over the table with his head down, asleep, appeared in the doorway and winced, seeing Mary flung on the bed looking at Studs and sighing at the sight of her boy. He moved slowly toward her. The will was out of him.
“Mary,” he said.
“My son,” she murmured, ignoring her husband’s gentle word.
He patted her. He looked at his son, a sight that, he told himself, was scarcely bearable.
“Now, Mary, come, you must get some sleep.”
“My son,” she said.
She arose, went to the dresser, and lit a holy candle. She walked from the room and he followed her, a helpless man, looking at a mother’s sorrow. She went to the dresser drawer, fished out . . .
She blessed herself with it, and knelt down to pray before the holy candle.
VI
Before him stood a thin woman, and for a moment he knew not who she was. She was familiar, and old enough to be dried up. Her skin was tight against her bones. He looked at her. He realized it was his mother. He did not want her there before him like that, a figure standing alone, with nothing else in sight, and she not plain, but shifting, her features and form becoming clear, and then unclear, as if he was drunk and seeing her drunk, or as if she was drunk, and not steady on her feet before him. She was nervous and excited.
“Honor thy God and thy mother!” she said, pointing an accusing finger at him.
“Your mother is your best friend,” she then said, and he felt that her long, talonlike finger would be dug into his eye.
Yes, he said meekly, wishing she would go away, not wanting her there.
Jesus Christ, he exclaimed to himself.
“You’ll only have one mother,” she said.
“When your mother dies, you’ll never have another.”
Thank God!
“No one loves you like your mother.”
“God punishes a son who dishonors his mother.”
Does God punish a son who jazzes his mother? Studs asked.
“If a son gives a mother one gray hair, he will merit the punishment of God,” said his mother. His father pointed an accusing finger at him and said solemnly:
“Honor thy father and thy mother.”
Screw you, said Studs.
“Nothing is as sacred as the home,” the father and mother said.