The Studs Lonigan Trilogy - James T. Farrell [316]
Says Hiram Cole
That sounded good.
MUSSOLINI PLANS CORPORATIVE STATE
He guessed Mussolini was a smart man, but flipped the pages to the funnies.
Throwing the newspaper aside, he left, thinking of how Moon Mullins was a real character. Slug Mason had been a little like Moon, poor Slug.
He drifted toward Seventy-first Street, looking upon himself as a man with business interests who was puzzled by the problem of selling out or holding onto his investments. Maybe if he held, he’d lose more. Maybe not. Best to think it over so as not to make a mistake.
And he hoped something interesting or exciting would happen in the park. He crossed over Sixty-seventh Street, cut through a path in the bushes and emerged at the extremity of the large golf course. A feeling of being lost and empty, with nothing to do, came upon him, and he stood with his eyes fixed on the sprouting green before him. He’d been anxious to get here, and now that he was in the park, what?
He hoped that he would meet some girl and that they’d get on together. He set off strolling along the edge of the course, with the image of a girl in his head as if she were walking beside him, tall and dark, and sexy, and if he took her rowing she would sit facing him, showing off her thighs, and if they sat on a lonely bench she would wait to be kissed and felt. Jesus Christ, he exclaimed, his desire reaching a painful point.
He looked around, the trees in front of him having grown larger as he approached, the sounds of automobiles as they skimmed through the park like an overtone. He had the feeling that something was going to happen, and he was nervous for it to hurry up, whatever it was. He picked up a branch, swished it, flung it aside. He thought, Christ, he did want a girl, hot, and pretty, and willing, who knew tricks that would set him nearly nuts, the kind that would go shiveringly crazy for him the moment he laid his hand on her. And they would lie around together in the park, or else at her apartment, where they would be stripped, and even maybe taking a bath together.
He saw a patch of grass with surprise, and realized that he had lost his sense of where he was. He felt as if he had just come from a hot time with a girl, and then realized that it had only been wishes, and he wished it had been the real article in the flesh. Across the golf course, so small that they were like images in a picture, he watched a man and woman pursuing golf balls they had just driven. He wondered who they were, what they were, were they in love, and did they sleep together, and were they well off and not bothered by worries over money? Envy of them grew in him, because they had something to do, and he hadn’t. He grew dreamy, forgot them, lost consciousness of the fact that he was even walking, and imagined himself a golfer like Chick Evans or Bobby Jones, only greater, smashing records in a tournament, with a large gallery following to cheer him as he made impossible drives and shots with ease, and even made a hole in one.
A frown suddenly settled on his face, and like a gloomy cloud the thought of his stocks came back to him. He walked in an aimless course, grabbed a handful of budding leaves off the bushes, scattered them, picked up a piece of broken branch, peeled the bark off with his finger nails, dropped it.
He lit a cigarette and looked around him, seeing with suddenness, and as if for the first time, the earth, grass in sunlight, with a few sparkles of dew, and in the distance, over trees, a light sky. A desire as if to catch these things he saw came on him, and then again the worry about money and stocks returned to fill his mind. He stopped to stare at an oak, its limbs rattling a trifle in the wind, hoping that by concentrating on it he would drive the worry away.
Christ, he was getting goofy as a loon! Studs Lonigan was a poet and didn’t know it.
“Fore. Fore.”
He turned to see golfers shouting and waving at him, and briskly returned to the bushes by the edge of the course. He saw a golf ball land, scud along the ground, stop. He saw grass and earth stretching away, people moving over the course, and, as he glanced upward, a bank of clouds smothering the sun and draping shadows over the park.