Young Lonigan - James T. Farrell [99]
“Say, Red, that’s an idea.”
“What you say? We’ll both join the marines?”
“Maybe we’ll get all the guys. We’ll have a company from Fifty-eighth Street,” Studs said.
“It’d be good if we all could become aviators, and have our own squadron,” Red suggested.
“We’ll have a swell time. And we’ll bring Kenny Kilarney along, too.”
“Say, he’ll be a one-man circus in the war. . . . But did you hear, Kenny’s got a job?”
“No kiddin’.”
“Sure, he’s deliverin’ orders for Ortenstein and Vauss’ drug store down on Garfield Boulevard. I wouldn’t believe it myself if I didn’t see him there.”
“If he goes to war, he’ll probably pull off some stunt like capturing all the rats in our trenches and sending them over to the Huns. That’ll be the way we’ll win the war,” said Studs, laughing.
“And I hear the hustlers are yum-yum in France, too,” Red said.
“We won’t do nothin’ atall with those French chickens,” Studs bragged lasciviously.
“If we save civilization and France, I think we’ll have a right to.”
“You know, I got to laugh, just thinkin’ of what a guy like Kenny wouldn’t pull in the war. He’d probably go over and cop all the German soup-kitchens, or he might nab Berlin from right under the Kaiser’s nose, without the Germans knowing it was gone.”
They talked of how they would come home in glory and victory, marching down Michigan Boulevard with their medals and souvenirs. And Kenny Kilarney would probably have the Kaiser’s mustache, iron helmet and his iron cross, and he’d hold them up, shouting RAGO-LIRON, as he marched out of step.
Kenny happened along, carrying a bottle of seltzer water for delivery, and singing, Reuben, Reuben, I Been Thinking. They told him about enlisting. He looked at them in that goofy surprised way of his, waved his arms, and sang, I Didn’t Raise My Boy To Be A Soldier. It was so funny they had to laugh, because Kenny was a funny guy. They said he ought to go into vaudeville. He said that, all kidding aside, the idea was jake with him. He showed them how he would jam a bayonet up the Clown Quince’s.
“Hey, there’s that Jew punk, Stein. His old man speaks German. I’ll bet he’s a German spy,” Red said.
Studs grabbed Stein, a neatly dressed, twelve-or-thirteen-year-old, four-eyed sissy. Bawling like a mama’s cry baby, Stein asked what he had done. Kenny squirted seltzer water in his face. Stein shrieked to be let alone. Kenny appointed himself judge for a court martial and told them to hold the prisoner until he came back. He dashed away. While they waited, they tortured the kid with questions. Kenny quickly returned with a small American flag which he’d copped from the nearby five-and-dime store. Stein was sentenced to kneel down and kiss the flag. He demurred, but rough handling changed his mind. He knelt down and pressed his lips towards the flag which had been placed on the sidewalk. He was hurtled forwards by three swift kicks in the tocus. He was still bawling when Kenny grabbed his feet, and Studs and Red nabbed him under the arms. They gave him the royal bumps, slamming his can against the sidewalk. A stranger told them to let the kid alone. Kenny said that the kid’s father was a German and that he had just yelled “Down with Wilson” and “Hoch der Kaiser.”
MacNamara, the pot-bellied cop, came along, twirling his club. He intruded to halt the punishment. They told him Stein had spit on the flag. Stein, stuttering and tearful, denied the accusation. MacNamara asked him his name. Stein replied meekly. The cop said you could expect anything from one with a name like that, kicked his tail, and told him to get home. He told the guys that they’d done right, but the next time to go back in the alley where they wouldn’t cause such a commotion. He flatfooted along twirling his club.
Kenny turned his cap around backwards and sang:
Oh, say can you see, any bedbugs on me. . .
It was funny. Red pointed at the empty seltzer bottle on the sidewalk, and asked Kenny wouldn’t he get canned on account of what he did with it. Kenny said no because he’d quit. He struck a Napoleonic