The Studs Lonigan Trilogy - James T. Farrell [271]
THE END
Walking out of the show, he told himself that, hell, it had only been a picture. Still, why couldn’t it have ended differently? They didn’t have to kill off Joey Gallagher. He was gloomy.
CHAPTER FOUR
I
Dropping into his father’s overstuffed chair in the parlor, Studs asked himself if he had been a sucker. He lit a cigarette. Determined hopes forced themselves into his mind, and he expressed them by slapping his thighs and clenching and unclenching his fists. He viewed himself as a gambler, a chance-taking fool, prepared to face the risk of losing all the money he had saved for years and to drop it with a game smile on his face. Ashes slipped from his burning cigarette. Disinclined to arise and get an ash tray, he carelessly rubbed them off his trousers. He hoped that the cigarette wouldn’t burn too rapidly and cause more dropping ashes. He cast a drifting glance at the gray of the expiring day. And he heard the muffled shouts of boys at play.
He looked across the room at the crumpled copy of the morning paper. He hadn’t understood clearly the meaning of the news account of yesterday’s stock market, but it had fallen. His stock, though, had just slipped one point, and meant a loss so far of only eighty dollars. It could easily come back if today’s market was better. He recalled how enthusiastically Ike Dugan had talked to him about the stocks. They were backed by all of the Imbray holdings and public utilities, and directed by the brain of a man like Solomon Imbray, and you couldn’t go wrong on such stock. Jesus, he hoped the guy was right. But there was something snaky about that guy, and..
The cigarette stub burned his lips, more ashes falling as he arose to squash it in an ash tray. Hell, you never got anywhere unless you took a chance, and that was Studs Lonigan all over, he counselled himself.
He looked at himself in the wall mirror. Guessed he was looking better. But his cheeks were still thin, not a lot of color in them. When he’d been beefier, he hadn’t seemed to himself to be so small, but now, he looked pretty much like a weak little runt. He told himself to cancel this stuff. He imagined meeting Stan Simonsky or some other friend, and casually telling them how he had taken this flyer in Imbray stock, talking as if it were nothing more than risking a few shekels in a crap game.
And when his investment rose, he’d sell, bank his original capital, use the profits to play on other stocks. All these years he’d been so dumb he hadn’t thought of making money this way. Other guys had cleaned up doing it, and he had been just too dumb to know it. Well, it still wasn’t too late, and he’d be worth a hell of a lot more than Red Kelly ever would be, and it wouldn’t be long, either. And what a nice little nest egg they’d have for their marriage.
He flung himself back into the chair, imagining himself and Catherine married, getting along as well as, better than, Phil Rolfe and Fritzie. Yessir, Studs Lonigan was going to be up in the bucks, way up.
He got up, nervous, and stood by the window, watching kids chase each other about the weedy vacant lot across the street, bang-banging and dueling with sticks of wood. Wouldn’t they like to have what those Italian kids had that he’d seen in the movies about two weeks ago? Wooden guns, trenches, regular imitation war. And maybe Mussolini was smart, all right. It might be good for this country to give kids the same thing, training them, because when they grew up, if they were needed for war to repel a foreign invader like the Japs or the Russian Reds, they’d not go into it green.
“William, come and have a glass of milk,” his mother called, and he turned from the window, grateful for the distraction.
He passed through the dark, narrow hallway and planked himself down at the enamel-topped kitchen table. He munched a graham cracker and slowly sipped milk.
“Your father will be coming home early,” she said, a gray-haired woman with fatigue indelibly printed into her gaunt face.
“Dad seems to be in the dumps a lot these days,” Studs said, grinding on a new cracker, glancing at her as she sat by the sink peeling potatoes.