A tree grows in Brooklyn - Betty Smith [117]
Eventually, the whole affair faded away into the background. Katie was a neighborhood heroine for a while but as time passed, the neighborhood forgot the murdering pervert. They remembered only that Katie Nolan had shot a man. And in speaking of her, they said that she’s not one to get into a fight with. Why, she’d shoot a person just as soon as look at them.
The scar from the carbolic acid never left Francie’s leg but it dwindled down to the size of a dime. Francie got used to it in time and as she grew older, she seldom noticed it any more.
As for Johnny, they fined him five dollars for violating the Sullivan Law—having a gun without a permit. And, oh, yes! The watchman’s young wife eventually ran away with an Italian a little nearer her own age.
Some days later Sergeant McShane came over looking for Katie. He saw her lugging a can of ashes out to the curb and his heart turned over with pity. He gave her a hand with the ash can. Katie thanked him and looked up at him. She had seen him once since the Mattie Mahony outing, the day he had asked Francie was she her mother. The other time was when he had brought Johnny home, the time when Johnny couldn’t get himself home. Katie had heard that Mrs. McShane was now in a sanatorium for incurable tuberculosis patients. She was not expected to live long. “Would he marry again—afterwards?” Katie wondered. “Of course he will,” she answered her own question. “He is a fine-looking, upstanding man with a good job and some woman will snap him up.” He took off his hat while he spoke to her.
“Mrs. Nolan, the boys down at the station house and myself do be thankin’ you for helpin’ us out in the catchin’ of the murtherer.”
“You’re welcome,” said Katie conventionally.
“And to show their appreciation, what did the boys do but pass the hat for you!” He extended an envelope.
“Money?” she asked.
“It is that.”
“Keep it!”
“Sure you’ll be needin’ it with your man not workin’ steady and the chilthern needin’ this and that.”
“That’s none of your business, Sergeant McShane. You can see that I work hard and we don’t need anything from nobody.”
“Just as you say.”
He put the envelope back into his pocket, looking at her steadily all the while. “Here’s a woman,” he thought, “with a trim figure on her and a pretty white-faced skin and black curling hair. And she’s got courage enough and pride for six like her. I’m a middle-aged man of forty-five,” his thoughts went on, “and she’s but a slip of a girl.” (Katie was thirty-one but looked much younger.) “We’ve both had hard luck when it came to marryin’. That we did.” McShane knew all about Johnny and knew that he wouldn’t last long the way he was going on. He had nothing but pity for Johnny; he had nothing but pity for Molly, his wife. He wouldn’t have harmed either of them. He had never once considered being physically unfaithful to his sickly wife. “But is hoping in my heart harming either one of them?” he asked himself. “Of course, there’ll be the waitin’. How many years? Two? Five? Ah, well, I’ve waited a long time without hope of happiness. Sure and I can wait a bit longer, now.”
He thanked her again and said good-bye formally. As he held her hand in the handclasp, he thought, “She’ll be my wife, someday, God and she willin’.”
Katie could not know what he was thinking. (Or could she?) Maybe. Because something prompted her to call after him.
“I hope that someday you’ll be as happy as you deserve to be, Sergeant McShane.”
34
WHEN FRANCIE HEARD AUNT SISSY TELL MAMA THAT SHE WAS GOING to get a baby, she wondered why Sissy didn’t say have a baby, like other women said. She found out there was a reason why Sissy said get instead