The Studs Lonigan Trilogy - James T. Farrell [77]
He wondered. He sniped another butt. He got chilly with fear, thinking of what might have happened if he hadn’t cleared out of Iris’, and she had got Studs, maybe Studs and Weary, to bust him. He kept feeling more and more sorry for himself, and making dream resolves that he would get even with them all some day. Maybe he would get rid of all yellowness and become a great fighter like Benny Leonard, who was one smart hebe that could beat the Irish at their own game; and when Benny got in the ring with Freddy Welsh, the champ, well, he’d kill Welsh. He would be a champ as scientific as Benny. They would see then. Or he would write a great poem about someone like Elaine or Ellen or Rebecca, with himself the knight, and Iris, the dirty . as the woman who cleaned out the chamber pots. Dirty Iris made him sore as hell. He hoped to hell she’d have a baby that looked like Studs Lonigan, only uglier, or that her old lady would come home and catch the bunch and call the police, and get them all a jolt in reform school. Then it would be his turn to laugh. She was so low that she wouldn’t even bar a cockroach, a nigger, or a flea. She was nearer the ground than a snake.
He wished that he had a nickel for an ice cream cone. Studs and the other guys generally had spending money, and he always had to cadge off them. Himself with a chocolate ice cream cone, licking it with his tongue, slow. He thought of this until he passed a pretty girl, and that brought the scene at Iris’ back to him. It made him sick and sore with wanting, and it cut him again, when he thought of her calling him a kike, and a Jew, and ordering him out after she had let him hang around, see her, shoot craps for his turn, and all that.
And the ice cream cone. Himself and an ice cream cone, and a jane, like the one that passed, over on the wooded island at night, when the sky was choked with stars, like diamonds on the head of Elaine, and the moon was cool and blue, and the air nice, with the smell of the trees hitting you, and... the jane there... and... The goddamn Irish! Goddamn ‘em! Goddamn Studs Lonigan and the whole race of ‘em! They got everything and deserved nothing. They were thickheaded. The dumbest Jew was smarter than the smartest Irishman. Well, some day!
He met Vinc Curley.
“Hello, Vinc,” said Davey.
“Hello! Say!”
“Yeh?”
“Say!”
“What?”
“Say, Davey! Say!”
“What in hell do you want?”
“Say, did you see Andy?”
“Yeh. Why?”
“Oh, I just wondered where he was, ‘cause he said he’d see me aroun’ this afternoon.”
Davey said that Andy was with the older guys at Iris’, where they were all having a gang-shag.
“What’s that?”
“You’re too young to know.”
Vinc slowly realized what it was, and his feelings seemed hurt.
“What did he do a thing like that for?” Vinc asked, speaking in that slow sort of drawl he had.
“He wanted to. What do you suppose?”
Davey was impatient with the idiot.
“I didn’t think Andy was like that,” said Vinc sadly.
“You’ll be the same some day, only don’t pick ‘em like Iris.”