The Studs Lonigan Trilogy - James T. Farrell [361]
“I guess this is what happens,” she said.
He watched number two, a little fellow with thinning light hair walk with a steadily more pronounced limp. Then he turned his attention to number seven, a solid, broad young lad of almost six feet who was without a partner. He walked, asleep, wagging his head, floundered. His head and shoulders lurched forward. He swerved sidewise. His head jerked back. He staggered like a man hopelessly drunk. He fell against the box seats below Studs. Two contestants turned him around, shoved him slightly. He reeled to the center of the floor, swayed precariously, stumbled to his right, and stood listing. He crumpled, his body hitting the floor with a thud.
“I suppose that guy is finished,” Studs said to Catherine.
“He’s been that way for four days since his partner was forced out with swollen feet,” the fellow beside Studs said.
“The winners will earn their dough,” Studs said.
Amid cheers number seven arose, shaking his head, grinning. He marched in the dragging procession. The orchestra played a snappy tune. The contestants dragged themselves around and around and around.
III
A medium-sized slick, light-haired announcer swayed his girlish hips before the microphone in the center of the floor, and the contestants clustered around him.
“Well, folks, we’re now in our three hundred and thirty-seventh hour of the World’s Championship Super-Marathon contest at the Silver Eagle Ballroom, and as I look around at the boys and girls, I can see that there are no signs of let-up. Game to the core, fighters all, these eighteen couples and two solos are still sticking. And when I say sticking, I mean just that, sticking it out, hour after hour, day after day, battling to win the world’s marathon championship and the thousand-dollar prize which will go to the winning couple. The courage which we see here on the floor daily, even hourly, is something astounding, and it forces us to admire and pay tribute to all these game and courageous contestants out here on the dance floor of the Silver Eagle Ballroom where the World’s Championship Super Dance Marathon is now in its three hundred and sixty-seventh hour.
“Some of the boys here are wide awake, folks, and getting spryer and spryer every minute like the well-known Squirmy Stevens of team number four.”
He glanced at a squat fellow in a crimson jersey and tannish knickers, and the fellow’s dark, heavy-browed, oversized Neanderthal face broke into a grin.
“How about it, Squirmy?”
“Squirmy says he feels like he could eat a couple of beefsteaks and then sleep until next year,” the announcer said into the microphone, and Squirmy performed a brief, hopping dance, drawing applause and smiles when he clowned aside by sagging and bending his knees, creating the effect of deformed walking.
“Well, Squirmy, all you got to do is to strut your stuff longer than anyone else on the floor and you’ll get your wish. And when you do go on that sleep, sweet dreams.”
The contestant with the sore feet and thinning hair spoke to the announcer.
“Joe Hergel here says sleeping is natural to Squirmy and he should wish to wake up. Well, a little kidding adds to the gaiety of life, and let me say, ladies and gentlemen, that these marathon dancers we’ve got here on the dance floor of the Silver Eagle Ballroom in the World’s Championship Super Marathon just have the time of their lives with all their jokes and good-natured fun. They all know how to give it, and, what’s more important, to take it.”
“Goodness!” Catherine exclaimed in shock while Squirmy drew a laugh by bending over, projecting out his broad buttocks and wriggling them.
“Now, folks, the contestants are going to strut their stuff, for you, and I’m going to bring as many of them as we’ll have time to hear up to the mike for you. But, first, as a prelude, let me repeat for those radio fans who may have missed the opening of this broadcast. We are here now in the three hundred and sixty-seventh hour of the World’s Championship Super Dance Marathon in the ballroom of the Silver Eagle, and we still have eighteen couples and two solos battling for the title and the one-thousand-dollar prize which will be awarded to the winning couple. Some of them had a bad night of it last night, and others have had trouble today, but now all of the contestants are cutting up here as spry as if they had just started. They will have interesting things to tell you, and the first contestant that I will call on is Louise Strang, of team number twenty-one, that game little blond girl from Carmody, Indiana. Louise is the smallest one on the floor here, but folks, is she game! Is she game! Night after night she