The Studs Lonigan Trilogy - James T. Farrell [74]
“Jesus, Andy, you got his eye swellin’ like a balloon,” Benny Taite yelled.
“Hit ‘im again, he’s only a shonicker,” said Davey.
They gave the guy the clouts, and left him moaning in the alley. Kenny ran back, frisked the guy, and took a pearl-handled pocket knife.
They walked on over to the park, and Andy and Johnny gloried in congratulations. Red said they would make Andy their mascot and let him start fights with hebes, because he was small, and then they all could pitch in and finish the job.
“Now it will be a perfect day, if we can only catch a couple of shines,” said Weary.
They all wished that.
They passed the duck-pond at Fifty-third, but didn’t try any rough stuff there because two cops watched them. Over in the ball field they parked under a massive oak. They played pull-the-peg, and told dirty jokes while the knife passed from left to right.
The park spread away from them in a wide field of grass, shrunken and slowly withering through August, with many spots where the grass was worn down and dirt showed. The baseball diamonds started cater-corner from them and rimmed the park, around to the field house that was off toward their left. A scabby line of bushes extended almost completely around the park, and behind the shrubbery the dazzling, shimmering sky fell. Fellows and kids were scattered about playing, some so far away that they seemed like white-shirted dots, and their voices like muffled echoes. About a block to their left, and near the field house, a gang of older fellows lazed under a tree, watching a guy in a sweat shirt lam out flies to four or five guys and a kid. The kid was young Danny O’Neill. For a kid he was a sweet ball player, and it was swell to watch him making cupped catches, spearing drives over his shoulder as if it didn’t take any effort, making one-handed running catches, snapping up line drives at his shoestrings. He was a perfect judge of fly balls, and he never overran the pill. They talked, deciding that Danny was cracked, but he was a damn good player. Andy said he wasn’t so good. They ragged Andy, because O’Neill was one of the few punks in the neighborhood who had beaten Andy up. Kenny halted the knife game while he mimicked Danny walking along Fifty-eighth Street, unconscious, with his goggles stuck in the box scores. They laughed, because Kenny was a scream when he took someone off like that. The knife game ended, with Andy the loser. He squawked when they hammered the burnt match deeply into the ground, and refused to pull the peg. They told him he had to, or get his pants taken off and then dropped in the lagoon at the other end of the park. Andy bent down and dug his teeth in the ground. He gnawed around, paused to squawk, and finally came up with the match and his face smeared with dirt. They kidded Andy because he was of French extraction, and Kenny punned the word French. Andy missed the pun and defended the French, and that was funny. Red Kelly said that Andy wasn’t a frog; he was a kike, and his old man ate kosher, gefilte fish and noodles. Kenny said Andy was playing a joke on them, because his old man was that sheeny fox-in-the-bush they always saw on Fifty-eighth Street. Studs asked Andy when his old man was going to wash his whiskers. Andy said his old man was the best old man in the world. Red said he couldn’t be, because he belonged to a labor union. Red said his old man was a police sergeant, and he was always saying labor unions were a disturbance of the peace, because they destroyed property. “That’s what my old man, and what High Collars always says,” Studs interrupted. Andy repeated that he had the best old man in the world. Davey said Andy meant the best noodle-soup drinker.
Andy said he’d get his big brother after them, and his big brother was tough because he had been in the ring, and fought a draw with Charlie White.
Shadows slowly spread and softened over the park, and the scene was like a grass idyll. They sat there talking. Studs watched Danny turn, run with his back to the ball, face around, and catch a fly simply and easily; it was pretty. Studs said Danny was good and that every Sunday he played with men. O