The Studs Lonigan Trilogy - James T. Farrell [116]
He crossed the bushes in back of the bench where they were. He saw them in each other’s arms, and heard her say to Paulie:
“Honey, I love you!”
Made him want a girl! Put his arms around her, draw her tight so he could press into her, feel her hardening herself against him, feeling her quiver and shake with excitement because he touched her, wanted to know her. No girl had ever said she loved him like she’d just told Paulie. The Great Studs Lonigan, the battler... no girl ever seemed to think so. He wanted one, maybe he even wanted to marry one... maybe, perhaps, Lucy...
He met Elizabeth Burns crossing the drive from the Fifty-eighth Street entrance.
“Say, aren’t you afraid being over here alone in the dark?”
“Nobody would hurt little me.” she giggled.
“You need protection,” he said, taking her arm.
He walked her around the south bend of the lagoon, and over the stone bridge to the wooded island. They found a spot right near the tree where he and Lucy had been. She didn’t offer him any resistance.
He was tired, drowsy, walking back with her, their clothes all rumpled. She was too much for him. Never would get enough. What a bitch! But before he had got so tired that it hurt him, nice, and he’d looked up at the sky, blue, big, so many stars like jewels, feeling perfectly at peace. Only she wanted an army. And what she didn’t know at the age of fourteen wasn’t worth knowing. They walked slowly towards Calumet, not saying much. At the corner of Calumet, her old man, a big bastard over six feet, jumped out with a horse-whip.
“Get home, you whore!” he said, roughly pushing her aside. He snapped the whip, bearing it down on Studs’ shoulder. Studs was so surprised that he stood stock still. The old man lashed him three times, before he ran. Old Man Burns followed him down the street, cursing him, lashing him with the horse-whip till it stung and burned. Strangers stopped to laugh. He felt that he couldn’t run much farther, and he ran, gasping, his side paining sharply. He couldn’t stop, and Christ, that whip. He dashed recklessly in front of automobiles and got across to the park side of South Park Avenue. He turned and saw the old man flaunting his whip on the other side of the street, yelling:
“I’ll teach you whose daughter you’re monkeying with!”
He flung a rock, and ran through the bushes on the left-hand side of the tennis court. Old Man Burns didn’t follow him.
SECTION TWO
1922
VI
Holy Mary, the Mother of God, the Virgin of Virgins, Mother most Powerful and Merciful, Morning Star and Health of the Weak, Corn fortress of the Afflicted, Mother of God, Mary who had herself gone down into the valley of the shadow of death... she, Blessed Mary, she would understand the burden of distress and naked sorrow that lay on the heart of a poor mother whose precious baby son lay at death’s door; she, whose only begotten, Son had been crowned with thorns and crucified to save all mankind, she would under-stand, she would sympathize, she would intercede at the throne of God Almighty, the Creator of Heaven and Earth; she would beseech that if it be the will of God, to Whom all things were possible, that he spare the life of Mrs. Haggerty’s son, Paul.
Mrs. Haggerty, stout and shabby, her eyes raw with tears, dropped her tenth dime into the slot by the candle rack before the altar of the Blessed Virgin. She gazed adoringly and with tears of hope at the waxenly expressionless face on the blue-robed statue of the Mother of God. Her face accumulated intenseness, and the lips on the waxenly expressionless face seemed to move, miraculously, in calming words.
Mrs. Haggerty lit her tenth candle and placed it in a holder that it might burn as a prayer of entreaty.
She prayed in a church wombed in quiet. A jangling street car passed outside, and its racket was like a rough, uncouthly handled instrument lacerating the churchly hush. The beat of marching feet thundered on the ceiling. From outside came the shouts of school children, boys and girls. The swinging door in the rear was jammed back and forth; feet scraped on the aisles. A boy knelt before the center altar, and his face became wistful in prayer. Mrs. Haggerty looked at him with maternal eyes.