Young Lonigan - James T. Farrell [68]
“We’ll find something to do,” said Davey.
“Sure,” said Paulie.
They walked along, looking for something to do.
SECTION THREE
Chapter Six
I
STUDS LONIGAN, looking tough, sat on the fireplug before the drug store on the northeast corner of Fifty-eighth and Prairie. Since cleaning up Red Kelly, he, along with Tommy Doyle, had become a leading member of the Fifty-eighth Street bunch. Studs and Tommy were figured a good draw. Studs sat. His jaw was swollen with tobacco. The tobacco tasted bitter, and he didn’t like it, but he sat, squirting juice from the corner of his mouth, rolling the chewed wad from jaw to jaw. His cap was pulled over his right eye in hard-boiled fashion. He had a piece of cardboard in the back of his cap to make it square, just like all the tough Irish from Wentworth Avenue, and he had a bushy Regan haircut. He sat. He had a competition with himself in tobacco juice spitting to determine whether he could do better plopping it from the right or the left side of his mouth. The right hand side was Studs; the left hand side was a series of rivals, challenging him for the championship. The contests were important ones, like heavyweight championship fights, and they put Studs Lonigan in the public eye, like Jess Willard and Freddy Welsh. Seriously, cautiously, concernedly, he let the brown juice fly, first from the left, then from the right side of his mouth. Now and then the juice slobbered down his chin, and that made Studs feel as goofy as if he was a young punk with falling socks.
People paraded to and fro along Fifty-eighth, and many turned on and off of Prairie Avenue. It was a typically warm summer day. Studs vaguely saw the people pass, and he was, in a distant way, aware of them as his audience. They saw him, looked at him, envied and admired him, noticed him, and thought that he must be a pretty tough young guy. The ugliest guy in the world passed. He was all out of joint. His face was colorless, and the jaws were sunken. He had the most Jewish nose in the world, and his lips were like a baboon’s. He was round-shouldered, bow-legged and knock-kneed. His hands were too long, and as he walked he looked like a parabola from the side, and from the front like an approaching series of cubistic planes. And he wore colored glasses. Studs looked at him, laughed, even half-admired a guy who could be so twisted, and wondered who old plug-ugly was, and what he did. Then Leon ta-taed along, pausing to ask Studs about taking music lessons. He put his hands on Studs’ shoulders, and Studs felt uncomfortable, as if maybe Leon had horse apples in his hands. Leon wanted Studs to take a walk, but Studs said he couldn’t because he was waiting for some guys to come along. Leon shook himself along, and Studs felt as if he needed a bath. Old Fox-in-the-Bush, the priest or minister or whatever he was of the Greek Catholic Church across from St. Patrick’s, walked by, carrying a cane. Studs told himself the guy was funny all right; he was Gilly’s bosom friend. Studs laughed, because it must be funny, even to Gilly, listening to a guy talk through whiskers like that. Mrs. O’Brien came down the street, loaded with groceries, and Studs snapped his head around, like he was dodging something, and became interested in the sky, so that she wouldn’t see him, not only because he was chewing, but also because if he saw her, he’d have to ask her if he could carry her groceries home for her. Hell, he was no errand boy, or a do-a-good-deed-a-day boy scout. And there was old Abraham Isidorivitch, or whatever his name was, the batty old halfblind Jew who was eighty, or ninety or maybe one hundred and thirty years old, and who was always talking loud on the corners. Abraham, or whatever his name was, did repair work for Davey Cohen’s old man sometimes, and the two of them must be a circus when they’re together. Mothers passed with their babies, some of them brats that squawled all