The Studs Lonigan Trilogy - James T. Farrell [32]
“I never knew that,” Studs said.
“Well, he did. I don’t like him; I hate him, the skunk; he’s a bastard,” she said.
“I don’t care so much for him, either. But you got to give him credit for being a damn good scrapper. He ain’t yellow.”
“You can fight him, can’t you?”
“I’m not afraid of him,” Studs said.
“Sure, you can lick him,” she said.
“Well, I never backed out of a fight with him,” Studs said.
“Say, let’s get a soda,” Helen suggested.
“I’m broke,” Studs said.
“I’ll treat,” she said.
They walked down to Levin’s drug store at the corner of Fifty-eighth and Indiana and they had double chocolate sodas; they sipped with their spoons, so that the sodas would last longer. Studs told himself that there was something very fine about Helen. She was a square shooter, and she understood things. If he tried to sip a soda with a spoon before anybody else, they would laugh at him. When he and Lucy got to be sweethearts, she’d understand things, like Helen did. A guy couldn’t find a pal like Helen every day. They sat, and Studs mentioned Lucy, saying that she was a nice-looking kid. Helen smiled like a person who knew too much. She said she liked Lucy, because she was a sweet kid, and full of fun, and not an old ash can like Helen Borax, who was too stuck up to live on a street like Indiana. She said it served Helen right that she had gotten a crush on a guy like Weary, because Weary would take some of the snootiness out of her and, well, Weary would probably make her do you-know with him, and it would be a good thing for her to be ruined, because she might come down off her high horse, and it would be a swell chance to talk about her, instead of having her talk about every-body else. But Lucy was a good kid for a guy to like, she said; and Studs said he wasn’t so sure how much he liked her. She said, well, a guy like Studs was better off liking a girl like Lucy, and going with the bunch around Indiana Avenue, than he was, say, hanging out with the gang around Fifty-eighth Street. Red Kelly, Tommy Doyle, Davey Cohen and those guys were all louses; the only decent one among them was Paulie Haggerty; and Paulie had been better off when he used to come around Indiana and he was sweet on Cabby Devlin. Studs said he didn’t give two whoops in hell for them; but he wasn’t afraid of any of ‘em.
Finishing their sodas, they returned toward Helen’s. They paused before the clapboard frame house of the O’Callaghans. It was set about twenty yards back from the sidewalk, with a well-kept lawn and a large oak in front. Studs and Helen wondered why people lived in such an old-fashioned house, especially when they were rich like the O’Callaghans were. They were stumped by this. Studs tried to think what the neighbor-hood had been like when Old Man O’Callaghan first settled there and built his house, cutting down trees and living alone just like a pioneer. It must have been like a forest. That must have been good except for the wind at night. Even now, when you lived in a brick house that was all burglar-locked, and there weren’t any trees for the wind to blow through, the wind at night was something you almost couldn’t stand to hear. What must it have been then? It must have sounded like a horde of ghosts rising from a rainy cemetery, or an army of devils and demons; and he didn