The Studs Lonigan Trilogy - James T. Farrell [427]
FREE TOM MOONEY
“Say, is that the Mooney they got on the coast in jail they’re yelling about?” Lonigan asked Doyle.
“I guess it must be.”
“Well, if these Jews and jiggs are yelling about him, he must be guilty, and he belongs in the pen,” Lonigan said.
“I’ll be damned. There’s two of the O’Neill kids,” Jim said.
“Who?”
“Remember Danny O’Neill from the old neighborhood? He used to live on South Park Avenue?”
DEFEND THE SOVIET
UNION
“Oh, yes, I think I’ve heard Bill and the girls speak of him.”
“Well, his kid brother and sister just passed.”
“Where?” Lonigan asked, searching the ranks.
“They’re gone now.”
“What a shame! What a crime! And they were taught by the sisters at St. Patrick’s. Once, you know, they must have been decent kids like my own. And they came to this,” Lonigan said, sighing as he spoke.
The workers’ flag is deepest red,
It shrouded oft our martyred dead,
And ere their limbs grew stiff and cold,
Their life-blood dyed its every fold.
“Their brother went to the A. P. A. University, and he’s probably responsible for it,” Jim said.
“Somebody ought to put a stop to them A. P. A. professors, all right.”
“I’d like to see them stand up to a smart priest like Father Shannon.”
“Yes, he was a smart priest. And an even smarter priest is Father Moylan, who speaks over the radio. He gives hell to the Reds, the same as he does to the bankers.”
We Want Bread Not Bullets
Lonigan looked down the street, and it seemed as if there were blocks and blocks of marchers still to come. He placed his weight on his right hip and leg, tired. He wondered if he hadn’t better be going?
DOWN WITH THE
HOOVER WALL STREET
GOVERNMENT
Good. But why couldn’t they be sensible about it? Be against Hoover and the bankers, but not want violence and anarchy. But Bill? How was he? And God, how was he himself going to end up, with all his worries, needing money as he did? He laughed, forgetting his thoughts completely while a stout Negress jigged before a policeman. He watched her pass on.
Again he thought of Bill. His boy couldn’t die. It was impossible. It wasn’t so. Bill couldn’t die. He heard boos behind him and saw two young Irish fellows with slanting caps. He turned to the parade and saw a banner carried at the head of the column.
IRISH WORKERS
CLUB
“Say, they must be left-handed turkeys and Orangemen to be with this outfit. You’d never find a good Irishman who was true to the church and the memory of his good old Irish mother in this outfit,” Lonigan said.
“Maybe they’re all Jews,” Jim said.
“They’re micks, all right. That big, red-faced smiling fellow. But they must be insane to be Reds.” He smiled superciliously. Still, they seemed happy. And himself? But there was a funny little Abie. He watched the stunted, unshaven man who megaphoned through his hands with a pronounced Yiddish accent.
“Hens off China.”
The demonstrators choked the street from curb to curb. Lonigan watched, spotting a fellow in blue denim overalls. The guy looked like a bum. Beside him, a Jew in a spotted blue suit. A tall, handsome brown Negro, limping. Powerful shine. A large woman wearing a blue gingham apron over a reddish purple dress, brushed by him.
“We’ll starve no more,” she shouted loudly, in an Irish brogue.
Must be a drunken biddy, Lonigan decided, seeing her step beside a thin Negress. The marchers cheered her, and repeated her slogan in a multi-voiced cry.
We’ll Starve No More
The menacing roar gripped Lonigan with fear. These people were the mob, coming to wreck, and they would take all that he had and live in his building without paying rent, and maybe send him and his family to live in a hole in this neighborhood. His shoulders dropped in relaxation. Before they would come to take his building, the banks would have it.
No more tradition’s chains shall bind us.
Arise, ye slaves, no more in thrall .. .
He just couldn’t make anything out any more. Too many things had been happening to him. He couldn’t piece them together, and he felt that the world had passed him by, and he was no longer able to deal with it.
Oh, why don