The Studs Lonigan Trilogy - James T. Farrell [317]
He had a sense he had often felt as a kid walking around in Washington Park, looking and wishing for something to do. But then he had had no real responsibilities, and he’d expected any damn thing to happen any minute. And now.
He saw in his mind, but not so clearly as he wanted to, the old Studs in short pants, playing indoors, on the small gravel diamond of the Washington Park playground, swinging, smacking the ball over the iron picket fence. And he remembered a rainy day when he was alone in the playground, and Miss Tyson, the playground director, had brought him into her office which was between the boys’ and girls’ cans in a rough-edged stone building. She had talked to him about what he wanted to be in life, and he’d felt that she was looking at him in a funny way. And when the rain had come down harder, she had closed the door, and she had sat with her legs crossed, letting him get a good eyeful, and she’d run her hand through his hair. Why had he been so dumb and innocent? He dropped into a bench along the walk that he and Catherine had passed last Sunday, and meditatively puffed at a cigarette. He felt as if he was the old Studs Lonigan, and he would see Dan Donoghue or Helen Shires before the day was out and.. .
“Got a light, lad?”
Studs looked up and saw a sandy-haired fellow with a seedy suit and blue shirt.
“What?”
“Got a match?”
“Sure. I was just sort of sitting here and forgot where I was, and didn’t hear you. Here.”
“Thanks,” the stranger said, accepting the book of matches and lighting a cigarette.
“I suppose you’re out of work like the rest of us.”
“Well, in a way.”
“I know I’ve been carrying the banner during these days of Hoover prosperity.”
“Yes, it seems pretty tough, but things ought to get better, and Hoover probably won’t be elected next year.”
“Things won’t get better for me, not under this system.”
“How come? There’s no use throwing up the sponge,” Studs said, thinking that, hell, the guy looked on the level, and like a white man and just down on his luck, and he might just as well try to cheer the guy up a little.
“I’m not throwing up the sponge. I’m just learning things, and I’ve learned, this last winter, that a guy like me isn’t worth any more than a rusty piece of machinery.”
Studs lit a cigarette and tried to think of something to say. The guy seemed sore at the world, the way he had just made that last crack.
“If you’re a workingman, buddy, none of those Democrats or Republicans mean anything for you.”
“Well, what’s the matter with Al Smith?”
“The same thing that’s the matter with all of them. They don’t mean any good to me. I’ve carried the banner all winter. And by God, I’m not going to carry the banner forever, sleeping in that Hooverville under Wacker Drive.”
“Things can’t always go down.”
“I know it. They can come up in war.”
“Who do you think we’ll go to war with, Japan or Russia?”
“By God, if the U. S. goes to war with Russia, I don’t shoulder a gun.”
Jesus, a Red!
“But you wouldn’t be a traitor to your country?”
“My country, what do I own here?”
“Aren’t you an American?”
“I was born here, but if I had the fare I’d go to Russia tomorrow.”
“But aren’t they Reds and anarchists there? Don’t you read the papers?”
“Sure, I read the papers. Lies. Lad, they’re filling us full of lies so they can rob us all. We got to wake up.”
“But Bolshevism means revolution.”
“How else are we going to win the means of production for ourselves?”
“But that’s anarchy.”
“What is it when guys like me all over the country carry the banner, sleep in Hoovervilles? What is it when they shoot down coal miners?”
“I’m not a Bolshevik. It’s against the country and the church.” Studs wished the fellow would go away. If he was his size and in better health, he might sock him. He got up.
“I got to be traveling. But you’ll never get anywhere with those ideas, fellow.”
“Yes, I’ll never carry a musket.”
“So long.”
Studs laughed at the crazy bastard. A Bolshevik. He supposed the guy was a nigger lover, too. Well, let the Bolsheviks get tough. They’d be taken care of, just the same as the shines were during the race riots of