Young Lonigan - James T. Farrell [61]
They sat, and more precious minutes were squeezed, drained dry. When they finally climbed down, the sun was dead in the sky. They hurried home, half-running, not speaking. Leaving the park at Fifty-seventh, they saw Sunny Green and Shorty Leach playing tennis, lamming the ball at each other in the half-darkness, playing and volleying better than most men could. Lucy asked him if he could play tennis better than the two kids, and he said yes. He was sorry he told her such a lie, almost before the words were out of his mouth, just like he felt pretty lousy because he had exaggerated the story about how he and the guys had gone riding in Red O’Connell’s car, shooting beebes. He promised to teach her how to play tennis. They parted in front of her house at a quarter to eight. She stood a moment on the porch, smiling at him through the summer dusk; and the spray from the sprinkler on her lawn tapped his cheeks; the boy, Studs, saw and felt something beautiful and vague, something like a prayer sprung into fresh. She threw him a kiss and fled inside. He walked home, pretending that he was carrying her blown kiss in his handkerchief. As soon as he arrived home, he rushed to his bedroom and kissed his handkerchief. He brought out his tennis racket and gestured before the mirror like a star tennis player, and resolved to practice his game, and some day for Lucy he might make himself as good as McLaughlin. He was proud of his form, too. Then he shadow-boxed, and imagined that he was beating up some hard guy to protect Lucy’s character. Soon he was beating up a whole gang of them. He imagined her rewarding his heroism with a kiss, and folding his arms around the bed-pillow, tenderly, he kissed it. He sat on his bed, and contemplated the fact of Lucy. He told himself that he was one hell of a goddamn goof; he sat on the bed, thinking of her and becoming more and more of a hell of a goddamn goof.
V
STUDS LOVES LUCY . . . LUCY IS CRAZY ABOUT STUDS ... I LIKE TO KISS LUCY—STUDS . . . STUDS KISSED LUCY A MILLION TIMES . . .
Studs saw chalked writings like these all over Indiana Avenue, on sidewalks, fences, buildings. It was two mornings after he and Lucy had been in the park. On the previous day, he had cleaned out the basement for his old man, and he had been too tired at night to wash up and come around. When he read the scrawlings all over, his face got red as a tomato, and he got so sore he cursed everybody and everything. He promised himself that a lot of guys were going to get smacked. He was so sore that he didn’t take the trouble to examine the childish writings, a scrawl quite like that of his sister Loretta and her girl-chum, June Reilley.
Danny O’Neill came along, and stopped at Studs’ side. He read the words aloud, and laughed. Studs socked him. Danny, in a temper, stuck his tongue out at Studs, called him a bully, and said, mimicking:
“I’m gonna tell Lucy!”
Studs cracked Danny in the jaw with all his might, and the punk, holding his mush in his hands, bawled.
Most of the guys saw Danny’s swollen jaw, so they didn’t try to kid Studs. The older guys sat on the grass, talking, blaming the punks, planning how they would swoop down on them and get even by taking their pants off and hanging them on trees, making them eat dirt, giving them a dose of it that they wouldn’t forget until kingdom come. But the punks had all smelled