The Studs Lonigan Trilogy - James T. Farrell [204]
“He doesn’t know whether Christ was crucified or killed witha second-hand book,” Barney said.
“Sure, he’s one of those liberal-minded fellows with no faith, who wants God to prove his existence by hiding behind every tree,” Bishop Boyle said with a brogue.
“If I could see God behind a tree, I’d believe him.”
“God made the tree; isn’t that, my friend, sufficient proof? Or is the incomprehensibility in your anthropoid skull too dense to perceive that one fact of experience?” Bishop Boyle said.
“I’d like to see God. I’d like to tell him a few things. I’d like to say, `God, why do you create men and make them suffer and fight in vain, and live brief unhappy lives like pigs, and make them die disgustingly, and rot? God, why do the beautiful girls you create become whores, grow old and toothless, die and have their corpses rot so that they are a stench to human nostrils? God, why do you permit thousands and millions of your creatures, made in your own image and likeness, to live like crowded dogs in slums and tenements, while an exploiting few profit from the sweat of their toil, produce nothing, and live in kingly mansions? God, why do you permit men to starve, hunger, die from syphilis, cancer, consumption? God, why do you not raise one little finger to save man from all the turmoil, want, sorrow, suffering on this human planet?’ That’s what I’d say to God if I could find him hiding behind a tree. But God is a wise guy. He keeps in hiding.”
“You could make a better world, couldn’t you, fellow?” Red Kelly yelled.
“Red, hell with him. He’s a crazy radical,” Studs said.
“Friend, if I had the powers attributed to Bishop Boyle’s God, I certainly would not have created as botched a world.”
Bishop Boyle tried to explain that the ways and purposes of God were mysterious, and that man suffered because of the fall of Adam. The atheist, a starved-looking little man, said it was disgusting, and walked out of the crowd. Red grabbed his arm.
“Fellow, are you healthy?” Red asked.
“I do not understand you, friend.”
“If you want to preserve that health, lay off the Catholic Church.”
“Yeah, keep your trap padlocked while you’re all together,” Studs said.
“You hoodlums cannot abrogate my rights of free speech.”
“See this!” Red said, showing a closed fist.
“I’ll have you arrested if you dare touch me!”
“It would be worth going to jail to punch in your filthy blaspheming mouth!”
“Yeah, blow!” Doyle said.
The atheist slunk off. Red said it was the only way to talk with fellows like that. They had no brains, were ignorant and filthy-minded, and you couldn’t argue with them. The whole human race should treat them the same way.
“I don’t see why they let these radicals congregate here and speak like that,” Shrimp said.
“The cops used to clean them out, but they got an injunction. I’d like to have been the judge. I’d have made them all go to work,” Red said.
They listened in on a political argument. A Single Taxer was defending Davis, declaring that the Republican Party was corrupt, that La Follette was trying to destroy the Supreme Court, and that also, when the last war had been declared, La Follette had proven himself to be a traitor to his country. A six-foot-four giant was defending La Follette’s progressiveness. A communist was saying, in a foreign accent, that La Follette was a class betrayer. Red got into the argument and spoke for Davis, but he didn’t get tough because the communist and La Follette man both looked pretty big.
They wandered to another group. Jim Doyle said there was Father Kroke, who thought he was God. He pointed to a skeleton of a man over six feet, not weighing more than one hundred and twenty pounds, whose hollow eyes and face contrasted with a full Jesus beard and seemed ghostly.
“I suppose, Father Kroke, that you’re the second coming of Christ?”
“Say, this guy’s belly must have the same feeling for a meal that mine has for gin,” Shrimp said.
“Hell, if he got a meal, he’d die of indigestion,” Red said.
Father Kroke tried to say something, but stuttered so badly that no one understood him. Red told him to say it in Greek. Jim Doyle said the nut had taught himself Greek and nine other languages. Red countered that he