The Studs Lonigan Trilogy - James T. Farrell [203]
“I’m not in the best condition, and I think a few more work-outs like that will do me good,” Studs said.
“Yeah, he is good. He got in some nice lefts,” Red said. He continued: “But I still say it’s totally different, just boxing good-naturedly with gloves, and going to it with fists. That’s why I told that snotty O’Neill so. I don’t want him to think he can get tough now, because if he does, I’ll slough him,” Red said.
Studs agreed. Doyle said that if he had ridden a bicycle, he could have caught O’Neill. Barney sneered at them. Studs was glad when Tommy suggested they sit on a bench on the short walk near the boathouse. He brooded, and the whole thing about Lucy came back to him.
“You know, boys, the goddamn shines are getting too frisky coming around here,” Red said.
“You Irish oughtn’t to kick. You and the niggers can both look up to a snake,” Keefe said.
“I came around the boathouse last Sunday, and it stunk with niggers. You know, it’s so bad, that a decent girl can’t walk alone here any more for fear a nigger might rape her. They ruin the park. When they come over here, you need a gas-mask if you want to stick around... Why, you can tell they are inferior to the white race by the clothes they wear. Those goddamn loud clothes, wearing pearls in their bell-bottoms, purple suits, pink shirts. They’re worse than the Polacks. You know, you can tell an inferior race by the way they dress. The Polacks and Dagoes, and niggers are the same, only the niggers are the lowest. That’s why I say we ought to get the boys together some night and clean every nigger out of the park. They’re all yellow and if we do it once, they won’t come back. We can get a few billies and clubs, and if they try to use razors, make them just wish they hadn’t.”
Barney told Red to hire a hall. Shrimp agreed with Red, and Barney kidded him, saying he’d run if he saw a mammy coming after him. Doyle said that it always turned out the same way. If you give a nigger an inch, he always took a mile.
Studs wished there was something distracting to do, wished he could get Lucy out of his mind. He was pooped and felt that he was slipping because of what Morgan had done to him. The cuts inside his face hurt. Finally they walked over to the Bug Club.
III
They saw a crowd at the Bug Club near the hills by the Cottage Grove side of the park. There was one large circle, many smaller groups and numbers milling about.
“Well, I say that the world is coming to an end,” Studs said, pleased when people from various groups frowned at him.
“The Bug Club will save the world, and drive everybody to drink or hell,” Red shouted.
Smirking, they edged into a group, and saw, in the center, a well-fed, hefty, elderly, Jewish man shaking an Eversharp pencil at malcontent debaters.
“I should believe that. Rosenblatt here should tell me that I should think that. I should believe that Rosenblatt knows more than Einstein. I should think he can explain the theory of relativity in one sentence. Yah!” a sloppy fellow bellowed at the well-fed Hebrew.
“Friend, I shall explain the basic principle of relativity in one sentence that even you can understand.”
“And I tell you I’m the traveling salesman that made Mary heavy with Christ. Yah.”
“Relativity is a theory which assumes that, on a high basis of probability, there is no hitching-post in the universe.”
Red lip-farted, and Slug said they were over his head. Red added that they were over the head of the human race. “Friend, look at Orion up there in the sky...”
“I should think maybe they got a hitching-post for mules like Rosenblatt up there.”
“Finklestein, you’re impossible!”
“Rosenblatt, get some monkey glands.”
Jim Doyle brought them to hear Bishop Boyle in another noisy group. Bishop was a witty little Irishman, always kidding, and all right; he had a son a priest, and he was smart.
“Sure, Bishop, Jesus Christ was a bum. A hobo, with no place to lay his head. Why shouldn’t he have been one when he wouldn’t work and produce?”
“Arkwright, you’re wrong there. Jesus Christ was the first communist.”
“That guy talks like an atheist,