The Studs Lonigan Trilogy - James T. Farrell [126]
For no reason at all, he glanced up at the low ceiling. He had to get himself into the right attitude. Feeling contrition was hard. He had to feel it deeply, with his whole heart and his whole soul. Oh, my God, I am heartily, heartily sorry..
He had taken God’s name in vain twenty-five or thirty times a day. He had been late for Mass on his own account, but they were only venial sins because he’d gotten in before the Consecration.
He looked behind him. Four and five people in the line before Father Doneggan’s box. He turned and glanced off from his right towards Father Roney’s box, five and six people in two lines.
An old man walked down from the altar, where he had been praying, and on back towards the rear, his heels rattatting on the rubber aisle.
A feeling of fear came over him, fear of being injured in the football game, fear with a sudden realization that Hell was a place of torments, endless torments in a fire that never ended, the monotony of its hissing flames, a sudden fear of life. He wanted to be outside in the fall night. He wanted to get it over with. He couldn’t get himself to arise and join one of the waiting lines before Father Doneggan’s confessional box. He heard the swinging doors of the entrance, and heels on the marble steps leading from the vestibule. He heard the closing of a door in back of him, then, the closing of a door of Father Roney’s confessional. He had violated the fifth commandment by anger towards others, maybe... maybe... maybe... His eyes were again attracted by the ceaselessly glowing altar light. He had violated the fifth commandment by anger.
Suddenly, he found that he had lapsed into dirty thoughts. He labored through an Act of Contrition, trying to make it a perfect one. A feeling of death was in him, and went from him to the gloomy church, and the autumn night without. He just couldn’t seem to be able to get through the commandments.
Suddenly, he just raced through them, estimating his sins, in violation of each commandment, and arose. He took a place in line, his back to the altar, before the left-hand door of Father Doneggan’s box. There were four ahead of him. He waited.
The door on the other side opened. Art Hahn, a tall, slim fellow, blond, several years older than Studs, emerged. A woman entered the box. Art smiled at Studs, as he passed him, down the aisle, and Studs pointed toward the exit door. Art nodded. Father Doneggan was quick in everything he did. Studs soon got inside the stale-smelling box. The slide opened, and he saw, dimly, the blond priest inside the wire screen. He confessed his sins, said the Act of Contrition, was absolved and received a penance of nine Our Fathers and nine Hail Marys.
Outside, Studs and Art lit cigarettes and went north along Indiana Avenue, the street along which Studs had, in his day, always come to and from school. The past came back into his thoughts. The day that Paulie had been licked by Johnny O’Brien. The day in winter that he had clipped a truck driver on the ear with a snowball and they had all been shagged. He felt as if tomorrow he would be going to communion with the boys’ sodality at the eight o’clock Mass. But what the hell!
Studs asked Art how he happened to be going to confession.
“I’d never think of playing football without receiving communion. You never know what’s going to happen to you in a prairie football game like that one we’ve got scheduled to-morrow. And I always play safe.”
“Yeah,” said Studs, feeling good that he wasn’t the only guy who’d felt that way.
“Why did you go—same reason?” asked Art.
“Oh, I just thought it was about time that I’d receive. And then I thought I’d do it for Paulie Haggerty.”
“Say, that reminds me, I ought to be offering up my communion for Paulie tomorrow too,” said Art.