The Studs Lonigan Trilogy - James T. Farrell [290]
“It wasn’t anywheres near as frightful as this one.”
“I was younger and the old man was doing better. But I never saw anything like this,” Studs said.
“I remember the panics of 1907, and 1893, and they were bad. But not as bad as now. I don’t know how many millions of men there’s on the streets.”
“How did the depression in those years end?”
“Well, they got to end. There’s action, and then reaction, and then action again. When a thing goes up, it has to come down, and then when it comes down, it has to go up again.”
“Mort, what do you think of the stock market?”
As Mort shrugged his shoulders, Studs saw by the restaurant clock that it was a quarter to one. Fifteen minutes more, and work. Fifteen minutes was damn short. And then . Christ, if the day was only over and he was home, just sitting doing nothing or reading the newspaper, resting. If he was as tired when he got home as he was now, he’d have to call off his date with Catherine.
“I never had much money to fool around with stocks. And I’m no good at figuring, and stocks involve a lot of figuring.”
“Maybe it isn’t the thing to fool around with.”
“If you got the money, it might be all right, and then again it might be crooked. Nearly everything in the country seems to be crooked these days, and banks aren’t safe, a man’s job isn’t sure. So I guess if a man has anything it’s best to thank the Lord for what he’s got and not want more.”
“Maybe you’re right, Mort,” Studs said reflectively, looking again at the clock: ten to one.
“It takes money to make money, of course, but I don’t know. If I had anything, I’d rather hang on to it. But I’m a poor man. I tried to save, but it was no use, and my wife sick for so many years, and then the funeral expenses when she died, and the kids I had to raise and educate. And now one of my boys had to move in on me with his wife and two babies because he was evicted.”
“I know how it is,” Studs said.
As they rose, Studs laid a dime tip under his plate. He lit a cigarette and paid the check.
“Christ, I wish the day’s work was done,” he said.
“We’ll get it done, all right. I never fell down on a job for Paddy Lonigan yet, and I’m too old a dog to be learning new tricks. I told him we’d finish today and by God, we will.”
Studs noticed that Mort was a little stooped, and had about him the manner of a man weakening with age. Christ, would he become like that some day? Or like his father? Or wouldn’t he even live long enough for that? The doctor turning him down for the insurance company.. Thinking of that, he hastily shot the butt of his half-smoked cigarette. His body was heavy, sluggish.
“Say, what’s the crowd?” he said in sudden surprise, pointing at a crowd around the corner ahead, seeing a policeman whose car caught and reflected glints of sunlight.
“Must be the bank or else an accident.”
“Let’s step on it and see,” Studs said, a sense of eagerness and curiosity tingling him into an energetic state.
“I don’t see that it’s worth hurrying about. We’ll come to it.”
“It’s something funny, all right. Cops there, too,” Studs said, walking a pace ahead of Mort.
Approaching, he saw that the crowd was milling about a bank, and that a line of people cut out from the bank entrance onto the sidewalk. He felt the same as if he were running to a fire. Excitement. He saw that there were a number of policemen and that people in the crowd were talking and gesticulating.
“Watch out,” Mort called, pulling him back from the cartrack.
He heard the dinging gong of the street car and saw one sweep past him. His heart beat rapidly. He held his breath in an after-fear.
“Got to watch yourself, lad.”
He looked ahead and to his side for traffic.
“Close,” he said, sighing, the terror of being run over clinging.
“Robbers,” a thin and wizened man of about forty-five said loudly as they stepped onto the curb.
Studs edged through the crowd, squeezing close to the line of people, crushed together, waiting to go forward, held in order by police who swung and twirled their menacing nightsticks in the air. His eye ran up and down the faces, anxious men and women. He saw a Jewish woman, frantically biting her fingernails, and beside her a powerful man in his prime with a pale face, nervous eyes, almost trembling lips. Almost crapping in their pants, all right, he reflected. Maybe his dough was, after all, just as safe in stock as the banks? Hell, if it went on like this where would a guy