The Studs Lonigan Trilogy - James T. Farrell [9]
Martin would be a lawyer or professional man of some kind; he might go into politics and become a senator or a... you never could tell what a lad with the blood of Paddy Lonigan in him might not become. And Loretta, he just didn’t know what she’d be, but there was plenty of time for that. Anyway, there was going to be no hitches in the future of his kids. And the family would have to be moving soon. When he’d bought this building, Wabash Avenue had been a nice, decent, respectable street for a self-respecting man to live with his family. But now, well, the niggers and kikes were getting in, and they were dirty, and you didn’t know but what, even in broad day-light, some nigger moron might be attacking his girls. He’d have to get away from the eight balls and tinhorn kikes. And when they got into a neighborhood property values went blooey. He’d sell and get out... and when he did, he was going to get a pretty penny on the sale.
He puffed away. A copy of the Chicago Evening Journal was lying at his side. It was the only decent paper in town; the rest were Republican. And he hated the Questioner, because it hadn’t supported Joe O’Reilley, past grand master of Lonigan’s Order of Christopher lodge, that time in 1912 when Joe had run for the Democratic nomination for State’s Attorney. Lonigan believed it was the Questioner that had beaten Joe; he wouldn’t have it in his house. He thought about the Christys, and decided he would have to be taking his fourth degree, and then at functions he could be all dolled up with a plume in his hat and a sword at his side that would be attached to a red band strung across his front. And then he’d get a soup-and-fish outfit and go to the dinners all rigged out so that his own family wouldn’t know him. He wasn’t a bad-looking guy, and he’d bet he could cut a swath all togged up in soup and fish. And when his two lads grew up, he was going to make good Christys out of them too. And he’d have to be attending meetings regularly. It might even help his business along, and. it was only right that one Christy should help another one along. That was what fraternalism meant. He looked down at the paper and noticed the headlines announcing Wilson’s nomination at St. Louis. There was a full-length photograph of longfaced Wilson; he was snapped in summery clothes, light shoes and trousers, a dark coat and a straw hat. He held an American flag on a pole about four feet long. Next to him in the photograph was the script of a declaration he had had drafted into the party platform forecasting the glorious future of the American people and declaring inimical to their progress any movement that was favorable to a foreign government at the expense of the American Nation. The cut was worded, THE PRESIDENT AND THE FLAG.
Now, that was a coincidence. On the day that Bill and Frances were graduated, Woodrow Wilson was renominated for the presidency. [June 15, 1916] It was a historic day, because Wilson was a great president, and he had kept us out of war. There might be something to coincidences after all. And then the paper carried an account of the day’s doings at the Will Orpet trial; Orpet was the bastard who ruined a girl, and when she was in the family way, went and killed her rather than marry her like any decent man would have done. And the baseball scores. The White Sox had lost to Boston, two to one. They were only in fifth place with an average of five hundred, but things looked good and they might win the pennant anyway. Look at what the Boston Braves had done in 1914. The Sox would spend the last month home. He’d have to be going out and seeing the Sox again. He hadn’t been to a game since 1911 when he’d seen Ping Bodie break up a seventeen-inning game with the Tigers. Good old Ping. He was back in the minors, but that was Comiskey