The Studs Lonigan Trilogy - James T. Farrell [382]
“Let’s go in,” he said after jumping up sprightly.
She offered him her hand and laughed while he pulled her to her feet. He dragged her swiftly to the water edge, determining to make her get exercise, and he was thinking that, all things considered, she was a damn good egg. They stopped with their feet in the water, breathing quickly. Still holding her hand, he suddenly asked himself who the hell he was, wanting so damn much, and thinking she wasn’t enough for him. He was small and became ashamed of his body and his size, and he wished he were a six-foot handsome bastard, built like a full-back, attracting the attention of the crowd of bathers. He splashed into the water.
III
With pain, he sensed a world that was black and twirling, and with grooves which curved around and downward and around and downward, and blackness shot through these grooves. A great pain seemed to pulse and throb in this blackness, and at its ends, somewhere, there seemed to be a sense of distant noise and excitement. He was somehow aware of spinning around and down and around and down these grooves, as if on a roller coaster. The blackness seemed to contract, and he felt himself growing smaller and smaller within himself, and it narrowed, and he narrowed, and he was shooting straight now toward a point in the center of the blackness, and a greater pain coiled in his mind, and out of this pain there grew the word death.
And he opened surprised eyes to find himself lying on the beach, weak, his head, light and throbbing, resting on Catherine’s knee, while a man in a reddish swimming suit with a close-cropped mustache worked over him, and a policeman drove back a gaping, circling, shoving crowd. He closed his eyes, felt Catherine’s hand on his forehead, moaned in weakness and fright, and heard someone shout:
“Give him air!”
“Bill, darling, are you all right?” Catherine asked, her voice almost frantic.
“Take it easy. Mr. Lonigan,” the man with the close-cropped mustache said.
“I’m all right. What happened?” he asked, opening his eyes, still weak and dizzy, with a nausea arising from his stomach.
“Rest now a minute, Mr. Lonigan, and you’ll be able to get up,” the doctor said, touching Studs’ forehead.
Shame mingled with surprise in him, and he felt like a circus with all the damn gapers crowding around to look at him. He remembered diving into the water, and nothing else. Jesus, he could have died! And the goddamn gapers. Jesus Christ, go way, go way, you bastards! He became more aware of his wet body lying on the sand, so tired, the wet suit clinging to him, the sand sticking uncomfortably to the suit, his arms and legs.
“You fainted in the water,” Catherine said.
Catherine covered his face with a handkerchief, and he could feel the burning sun. He had just caved in, that was all, and his heart was pounding on him like a racing machine. He wanted just to lie where he was and fall asleep, forever. But he was ashamed of the weakness he had shown before so many people. Now they gaped at him as if Studs Lonigan was a monkey in a zoo. He tried to think of himself arising and walking off with a brave I-don’t-give-a-good-goddamn air about him, while they gawked their pants off after him. But he was too weak, and he had a sick headache. He didn’t want to move, but, ah, if he was only home lying between clean white bed-sheets, lying there for days with nothing to do, no worries. He heard voices, people still around him, what happened, who was it, is it serious, goddamn them. A flush came to his pale cheeks.
“Just rest a little longer, Bill, and we’ll go home,” Catherine said, petting him.
“I’m all right,” he said, commencing to swoon.
Suddenly, he sat up, the handkerchief dropping to the sand. Still pallid, he looked at the greedy curiosity on so many of the faces in the crowd, many of them shoving to get a closer glimpse of him. A look of terror contorted his features, and the doctor gently eased him down.
“Darling!” Catherine exclaimed.
“I guess I fell asleep for a minute,” he said grimly.
“How do you feel now?” she asked.
“I’m all right. Don