The Studs Lonigan Trilogy - James T. Farrell [69]
Studs promised.
A pause.
The old man’s face reddened. He started to speak, paused, blushed and said:
“Bill, you’re gettin’ older now, an’... well, there’s some-thin’ I want to tell you. You see, well, it’s this way, after a manner of speaking, you see, now the thing is quite delicate after a manner of speaking but you see, I’m your father and it’s a father’s duty to instruct the son, and you see now if you get a little itch... well you don’t want to start... rubbin’ yourself... you know what I mean... because such things are against nature, and they make a person weak and his mind weak and are liable even to make him crazy, and they are a sin against God; and then too, Bill... I wish you’d sort of wait a little while before you started in smokin’ .. .”
Silence. The boy and the father looking out at the lazy day, which was suddenly robbed of sunlight by a float of clouds. Studs felt self-conscious; he was ashamed of his body; he needed air and sunlight. Maybe if he ran he’d forget his body, or like it again, because running was good.
Studs promised not to smoke. Why the hell not? The old man would maybe give him a little extra spending money. The old man was glad, shook hands with him, as man to man, and gave Studs six bits. Studs pocketed the dough and got his cap. The old man read the Sunday paper. Studs went out. He felt better in the open air, and walked along, snappy; he wasn’t so ashamed of his body. He felt the seventy-five cents in his jeans. After a short debate with his conscience he lit a fag, and let it hang from the corner of his mouth. He told himself that he was tough, all right. He arranged his cap at an angle. He thought about Iris, and he wished her old lady was out, and he could go up there this afternoon. He remembered what the old man said about that thing making you crazy, and it bothered him. He tried his shutter trick to get rid of the thoughts, but it was hard. He walked fast and kept thinking his mind was a shutter, closing on these thoughts, until finally he got rid of them. He went over in front of the pool room, and spent the afternoon smoking cigarettes and listening to the lads talking.
V
One afternoon, when Studs missed the guys from Fifty-eighth Street, he wandered back around Indiana Avenue and met Helen Shires. She said hello to him, but he felt self-conscious, and said hello back, looking away and watching the clouds. He noticed some iodine on her left hand. He could ask what was the matter, and that would keep the talk off of himself not being around there any more. He asked her what had happened.
“Oh, I got a sprained thumb. It was that damn Andy Le Gare. He got fresh, and one day came up and tickled the palm of my hand. Well, I’m not letting anybody try and get dirty around me, so I hauled off on him,” she said.
“You hung one on ‘im, huh? Good!”
“Yeah, he started to hit me back, but I hit him again, and he changed his mind. But I sprained my thumb, and it’s pretty sore,” she said.
“Gee, that’s good, not the thumb, but your hanging a couple on goofy Andy,” said Studs, because he couldn’t think of anything else to say.
She asked him where he had been keeping himself and how he was getting along. He did not seem as confused now, and he started bragging about the swell time he had been having. She invited him to her sister’s playhouse, where it would be cooler and they could sit there and chew the fat.
“It’s been dead around here,” she said.
“Yeh!” said Studs, glad that the street was dead, because it showed that he had been a wise guy in shaking his tail from Indiana.
“I have been having a swell time,” he said.
“Well, I been swimming nearly every day. But my mother keeps naggin’. You know how a kid’s old lady is. They want to do what’s right, but they never understand a kid,” she said.
“My old lady wants me to be a priest. Can you imagine a guy like me bein’ a priest?” said Studs as he lit a cigarette, just as Swan lit his cigarettes in front of the pool room.
Helen said that she wasn’t getting on so well with the family, because they always kicked that she wasn