Young Lonigan - James T. Farrell [89]
He was different. He liked to read books. He thought of the books he read when he got a chance, late at night, after his goddamned old man was in bed, snoring. He thought of the characters, the goddesses of his own pretendings, who were like all the nice and fine things in the world. The Lady of the Lake, who had a breast of snow; Guinevere, who was the fairest of all flesh on earth; Elaine, the lily maid of Astolat. He was their champion, their knight; and he roamed through a wild world of his own imaginings . . . all for them. They were his, and none of the Irish bastards could know them, touch them, think of them, see them all white and fine and beautiful and understanding, and like a fine day. They were his. What did he care for fourteen-year-old Iris, the dirty . . . Her age limit was eight to eighty, and maybe she even got kids five and six. He walked and wondered which of the three goddesses he dream-loved the best—or maybe it was Rebecca from Ivanhoe? He tried to think of them all as one, and his thoughts got soft and beautiful like music. He wished that he could go home and read about them, imagining himself as their knight, fighting on a white charger to protect their innocence. Then Studs Lonigan and the other dirty micks could have their Iris. But if he went home, his old man would blow his snoot off, calling him a nogoodfornothing loafer, who wouldn’t never deliver clothes, but always wanted to be out fighting with the Irish, or else reading books that would never do him no good. It was the sort of crap Davey could remember hearing ever since he could remember hearing anything. He hated like hell delivering clothes for the old man, but he never got any money any other way, unless he stole it. But he got sick of hanging around the tailor shop, listening to his old man nag as bad as if he was an Irish hag.
He wondered. He sniped another butt. He got chilly with fear, thinking of what might have happened if he hadn’t cleared out of Iris’, and she had got Studs, maybe Studs and Weary, to bust him. He kept feeling more and more sorry for himself, and making dream resolves that he would get even with them all some day. Maybe he would get rid of all yellowness and become a great fighter like Benny Leonard, who was one smart hebe that could beat the Irish at their own game; and when Benny got in the ring with Freddy Welsh, the champ, well, he’d kill Welsh. He would be a champ as scientific as Benny. They would see then. Or he would write a great poem about someone like Elaine or Ellen or Rebecca, with himself the knight, and Iris, the dirty . . . as the woman who cleaned out the chamber pots. Dirty Iris made him sore as hell. He hoped to hell she’d have a baby that looked like Studs Lonigan, only uglier, or that her old lady would come home and catch the bunch and call the police, and get them all a jolt in reform school. Then it would be his turn to laugh. She was so low that she wouldn’t even bar a cockroach, a nigger, or a flea. She was nearer the ground than a snake.
He wished that he had a nickel for an ice cream cone. Studs and the other guys generally had spending money, and he always had to cadge off them. Himself with a chocolate ice cream cone, licking it with his tongue, slow. He thought of this until he passed a pretty girl, and that brought the scene at Iris’ back to him. It made him sick and sore with wanting, and it cut him again, when he thought of her calling him a kike, and a Jew, and ordering him out after she had let him hang around, see her, shoot craps for his turn, and all that. And the ice cream cone. Himself and an ice cream cone, and a jane, like the one that passed, over on the wooded island at night, when the sky was choked with stars, like diamonds on the head of Elaine, and the moon was cool and blue, and the air nice, with the smell of the trees hitting you, and