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By Root 24704 0

“I’m in the political game now, and a fellow doesn’t get into that for nix. Naturally, I’m aiming to go as high as I can, and to get out of it whatever I can.” He paused. “You know, boys, the stuff about politics and political issues that you see in the newspapers, well, between us, it’s mostly so much crap. Politics is a game you got to play, and you got to get what you can out of it. If you don’t, you’re a chump, and the next fellow that comes along takes the pickings while you hold the bag. That’s what happens to these honest reformers. They are sincere and think they are doing the right thing, but they don’t play the game and string along, and in the end they make the next election twice as hard for the party that put them in. That was the trouble with our last Democratic mayor, Dever. He was an honest man, but he didn’t know the game of politics. And, well, there’s one thing boys that you can lay it on the line on, and that’s this... Red Kelly is in to play the game, and get all the legitimate getting that comes his way.”

“In hard times like these, I guess it’s best to get what you can.”

“You said it, Stan, because even then, there’s none too much, but you watch! In the primaries, it’s going to be Thompson and Cermak, and this spring will be a Democratic one. Cermak and the whole ticket will get in. Thompson is dead politically, and he deserves it. He’s a demagogue, and he goes campaigning down in the black belt, kissing nigger babies and playing up to the shines. Any man who does that ought to be run out of town on a rail. The jiggs in Chicago are dynamite, and if they ever break loose, it’s going to be hell to pay. And right now the dirty nigger-loving Reds are playing up to them to stir them up. and Thompson, kissing nigger babies, is playing right into their hands.”

“Let the niggers just get tough. We’ll hang them up on every telephone pole in the city, just the same as we did in 1919,” Studs said.

“I agree with you, Studs. We ought to give them the same kind of medicine they get in the South and not even let them sit next to a white man in a street car, let alone vote,” Red said.

“I don’t like niggers none, either,” Muggsy said.

“They smell pretty bad,” Stan said.

“But getting back to politics, boys, this spring is only going to be a preview to the presidential election in 1932. Then we’ll have Democrats all the way from the White House to the street cleaners on every block. And there’ll be better times, too,” Red said with smug pride.

“Somebody better get in and do something, because I tell you, it’s goddamn tough,” Stan said.

“Well, Hoover is nothing but the tool of the international bankers, and he’s the guy who put the country on the fritz,” Red said.

“That’s just what Father Moylan has been saying on the radio,” Muggsy said.

“There’s a man for you. Boy, what Father Moylan doesn’t say about the bankers, and the Reds, too,” Kelly said.

“Yes, boys, things have been happening these last few years that you’d never expect to happen,” Stan said.

“Well, all I know is that I wish I had a job,” Joe Thomas said.

“Look at me, fellows. After all the years I put in the service of the Continental Express Company, what am I doing? Working as an extra, getting a few hours work every week with Long Johnny Continental,” Les said whiningly.

“Say, Studs, by the way, how is your old man weathering the depression?” Red asked.

“Petty good,” Studs answered, figuring that there was no use in advertising about his old man’s business.

IV

“You know, I honestly got the creeps when I saw poor Shrimp in that coffin, looking so wasted, just like a bag of bones,” Stan said.

“Such are the mysterious ways of life,” Red pronounced.

Remembering the pallid yellow corpse of his old friend, Shrimp Haggerty, lying in the small parlor in a blue suit, the heavy odor of flowers, the gray-haired mother sobbing, the father like a broken man in a dazed fog, hardly seeing anybody, not hearing what was said to him, arising to walk to the casket and stare at his dead son, turning away to pat his mourning wife, Studs felt pretty damn low. He was afraid, afraid of death, of his friends dying, of the day when he would be stretched out in a coffin and people would be sitting at his own wake saying how sorry they were that Studs Lonigan was dead. He remembered back on a night just before his twenty-first birthday, when they had all gone to see Paulie Haggerty, trying to cheer him up and make him think he wasn