A tree grows in Brooklyn - Betty Smith [114]
There was a sound. Francie looked up and saw her mother running down that last flight of stairs. Katie was running awkwardly, not balancing well on account of having both hands clutched under her apron. The man saw her. He couldn’t see that she had a gun. Reluctantly, he loosed his hold and backed down the two steps keeping his wet eyes on Katie. Francie stood there, one hand still gripping the banister spoke. She couldn’t get her hand opened. The man got off the steps, pressed his back to the wall and started sliding against it to the cellar door. Katie stopped, knelt on a step, pushed her apron bulge between two banister spokes, stared at the exposed part of his body and pulled the trigger.
There was a loud explosion and the smell of burnt cloth as the hole in Katie’s apron smoldered. The pervert’s lip curled back to show broken dirty teeth. He put both hands on his stomach and fell. His hands came away as he hit the floor and blood was all over that part of him that had been worm-white. The narrow hall was full of smoke.
Women screamed. Doors banged open. There was the sound of running feet in the halls. People in the streets started pouring into the hall. In a second, the doorway was jammed and no one could get in or out.
Katie grabbed Francie’s hand and tried to pull her up the stairs, but the child’s hand was frozen to the spoke. She couldn’t open her fingers. In desperation, Katie hit Francie’s wrist with the gun butt and the numb fingers relaxed at last. Katie pulled her up the steps and through the halls. She kept meeting women coming out of their flats.
“What’s the matter? What’s the matter?” they screamed.
“It’s all right now. It’s all right now,” Katie told them.
Francie kept stumbling and going to her knees. Katie had to drag her on her knees the length of the last hall. She got her into the flat and onto the couch in the kitchen. Then she put the chain bolt on the door. As she put the gun down carefully next to the bar of yellow soap, her hand accidentally touched the muzzle. She was frightened when she found it warm. Katie knew nothing about guns; she had never shot one before. Now she thought the heat might make the gun go off by itself. She opened the washtub cover and threw the gun into the water in which some soiled clothes were soaking. Because the bar of yellow soap was mixed up with the whole thing, she threw that in after the gun. She went to Francie.
“Did he hurt you, Francie?”
“No, Mama,” she moaned. “Only he…his…I mean it…touched my leg.”
“Where?”
Francie pointed to a spot above her blue sock. The skin was white and unharmed. Francie looked at it in surprise. She had an idea that the skin would be eaten away there.
“There’s nothing the matter with it,” Mama said.
“But I can still feel where it touched.” She moaned and cried out insanely, “I want my leg cut off.”
People pounded on the door demanding to know what had happened. Katie ignored them and kept the door bolted. She made Francie swallow a cup of scalding hot black coffee. Then she walked up and down the room. She was trembling now. She didn’t know what to do next.
Neeley had been loitering on the street when the shot sounded. When he saw people crowding into the hallway, he, too, worked his way in. He got up on the stairs and looked over the banisters. The pervert was huddled where he had fallen. The crowd of women had torn the trousers from his body and all who could get near were grinding their heels into his flesh. Others were kicking at him and spitting on him. All were shrieking obscenities at him. Neeley heard his sister’s name.
“Francie Nolan?”
“Yeah. Francie Nolan.”
“You sure? Francie Nolan?”
“I tell you I seen.”
“Her mother went and…”
“Francie Nolan!”
He heard the ambulance gong. He thought Francie had been killed. He raced up the stairs sobbing.