The Studs Lonigan Trilogy - James T. Farrell [229]
“You all is white and young. You is not black, you all has a chance in dis wort’.”
“Someday you will, too, maybe.”
“Ah, no, not in dis worl’, son!”
He watched the Negro slowly leaving, a wistful snapshot as he crossed the station driveway, and turned down Wabash Avenue. He was returning with the kerosene for the lamps. He lived in, one of the hovels along Wabash Avenue. He gave O’Neill a sense of the misery of the world, perhaps the unnecessary misery in it.
It would all go in a newer, cleaner world. He seethed with sudden dizzying adolescent dreams and visions of this new world. He, too, he would destroy the old world with his pen; he would help create the new world. He would study to prepare himself. He saw himself in the future, delivering great and stirring orations, convincing people, a leader, a savior of the world. He became aware of the clock. It was fifteen minutes past his closing time. He hurriedly closed up the station, and walked to the elevated at Twenty-sixth Street. Riding home, tired, he felt that people didn’t realize they were riding home with somebody who was destined to do big things. His dreams again collapsed on him like a tire gone suddenly flat. He repeated and repeated a line from Swinburne’s poem:
“Even the weariest river winds somewhere safe to sea.”
He was a disillusioned young man.
He wanted to get coffee in the Greek restaurant. But he might meet some of the guys. He hated them. He didn’t want to see them. And Christy, whom he had always talked to in the restaurant, was gone. He didn’t know why. The new waiter had just said he had left. He walked home, carrying a brief-case full of books. Studs Lonigan, Red Kelly, and Barney Keefe passed on the other side of the street. They called him goof and told him to leave it alone. He didn’t answer. Some day, he would drive this neighborhood and all his memories of it out of his consciousness with a book. He swerved again from disillusionment to elation.
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
Studs and his father stood in the parlor and the early morning sunlight glared through the unwashed, curtainless windows. They looked around at the covered furniture. The room had an appearance of disruption.
“Bill, I’d rather let the money I made on this building go to hell, and not be moving,” Lonigan exclaimed, with wistful regret.
“Patrick, are you sure all your things are packed,” Mrs. Lonigan said.
“Yes, Mother,” Lonigan said, very gently.
It seemed to Studs that his mother wiped away a tear. She turned and went towards the back of the house to ask the girls if they had all their things packed.
“Hell, there is scarcely a white man left in the neighborhood,” Studs remarked.
“I never thought that once they started coming, they’d come so fast.”
“You know, Bill, your mother and I are gettin’ old now, and, well, we sort of got used to this neighborhood. We didn’t see many of the old people, except once in a while at Church, but you know, we kind of felt that they were around. You know what I mean, they were all nearby, and they all sort of knew us, and we knew them, and you see, well, this neighborhood was kind of like home. We sort of felt about it the same way I feel about Ireland, where I was born,” said Lonigan.
Studs didn’t like the old man to let himself out like that because how could he reply? The old man and old lady were taking it hard.
“Yeah, it used to be a good neighborhood,” said Studs.
“Well, Patrick, we’re going to have a new home,” Mrs. Lonigan said, returning to the parlor.
“Yes, Mary, but no home will be like this one has been to us. We made our home here, raised our children, and spent the best years of our lives here.”
“Sunday in church, I watched Father Gilhooley. Patrick, he’s getting old. He’s heartbroken, poor man. Here he built his beautiful church, and two years after it’s built, all his parishioners are gone. He’s getting old, Patrick, poor man, and he’s heartbroken.”
Studs stood there, looking at nothing, feeling goofy, vague, as if he was all empty inside.
“We’re all getting old, Mary; it won’t be long before we’re under the sod.