The Studs Lonigan Trilogy - James T. Farrell [283]
Umm! Guessed that, after all, he’d better hang on to his stocks and wait a bit. Imbray ought to know what he was talking about.
“As I was going to say, though, Bill, I’m sorry you missed Amos and Andy. You would have laughed yourself sick at them.” Lonigan’s belly rolled as he laughed. “They’re so much like darkies. Not the fresh northern niggers, but the genuine real southern darkies, the good niggers. They got them down to a T, lazy, happy-go-lucky, strutting themselves out in titles and with long names and honors, just like in real life.” Studs wished that his father would finish, so he could read the paper without distraction. “Amos and Andy got their taxicab now.” He laughed again. “But it won’t run. Andy elected himself president, and calls their cab The Fresh Air Taxicab Company of America. And Amos, jest like a nigger, he wants to be a president. Well, Andy, he’s the wise one anyway, he tells Amos, so Amos will be able to tell Ruby Brown about his titles, you see, he says to Amos that he, that is, Amos, can call himself Chief Mechanic’s Mate, Fixer of Auto-mobiles, and Chief Business Getter. Golly!” Lonigan chuckled; Studs pretended to listen. “Well, Amos is satisfied because he has his titles, too, but he doesn’t understand that his titles mean he must do all the work, while Andy sits on his you-know. So then, Andy tells Amos to fix the car, and Amos asks why, and Andy tells him that fixing the automobile is in his department, and it would be shameful if the president of The Fresh Air Taxicab Company of America had to fix the car like a mechanic.” Lonigan laughed. “Golly, Bill, they sure are a card.”
“I’m sorry I missed them,” Studs muttered, flipping the pages of his newspaper to the stock-market quotations and reading that his stock was unchanged, 24.
“Martin still out?”
Studs nodded, and turned to the back page, his eye catching the picture in the upper left-hand corner, a scene from the day’s Red riots, with a fallen man in the foreground, against an indistinct background of struggling figures. Over the fallen man on the left was a policeman with a raised club, and on his right a hefty detective in dark overcoat and gray suit who had, when the picture was snapped, just completed making a swinging punch at the fallen man. He glanced at the next photograph showing a young girl, seated, blond, with crossed legs and one knee in sight, who had just married a sixty-eight-year-old millionaire. Good legs. Nice. Poor old bastard of a husband, too old for such nice stuff.
“Bill, there’s something I want to speak to you about,” the father said in a heavy voice, and Studs looked up from the newspaper, noticing that his father was embarrassed by what he had to say... “Bill... how much money have you got in the bank?”
“Why?” Studs asked, taken aback, immediately wishing that he had said something different, because his father flinched at his question.
“Bill, I never thought that I would have to ask any of my children for a cent, but lots of things happen that we never counted upon.” Lonigan disconsolately wagged his head. “I’m afraid I’m going to need money goddamn bad. I haven’t told your mother how bad things look to me, but they are bad. They’re fierce. I’ve got to figure out how much I can rely on in a pinch. Well, I might as well tell you the whole story. I’ve got some stocks. I bought them on margin about two years ago, and I’ve had to keep feeding money into my broker so I wouldn’t get sold out. I’ve pulled through this far, but I don’t know what’s ahead of me. And then about four months ago I got a hot tip on a stock, so I bought a little of it on margin, and that leaves me pretty worried now, because my stock hasn’t gone up like I supposed it would. So you see, with it, and with the mortgage, and running expenses, and every damn thing that comes along, I’m in a pickle, and I want to figure out how much I can rely on in case I need it, and in case you’re willing to loan money to your father.