Penny panicked and bolted for the stairs. The watchman followed, still yelling. He was still shooting too, only now he was trying to take aim at Penny.
This wasn’t easy because fear had given Penny a lead on him in the race down the fourteen flights of stairs. Each time he tried to draw a bead on Penny, the trespasser would round a bend in the stairs and be lost to sight. After a while the watchman realized Penny was only widening the distance between them and stopped trying to shoot.
But when they reached the bottom, with the straight-away hall, Penny lost the advantage of cover. The watchman could afford to take the time to drop to one knee and take careful aim at the fleeing culprit. Still, Penny might have gotten away if there hadn’t been the necessity of pausing at the lobby doors to unlock them from the inside before reaching the street. The watchman fired just as Penny had managed to turn the lock and was going through the door to the street.
The bullet, smacked into the left side of the back, propelled Penny across the sidewalk to the curb. In the split second before the gutter came up and hit Penny in the face, there was time for only one flash thought. “This is going to be fatal!” That was Penny’s thought.
There was truth in it. The bullet in Penny’s back had lodged in the heart. It was going to be fatal!
The lifetime lease was up!
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
If George Washington were to be unmasked as a Communist, Christianity usurped by witchcraft, the law of gravity pronounced unconstitutional by the Supreme Court, the Mona Lisa proved a forgery, atomic energy declared a monumental hoax, Albert Schweitzer revealed as a rum-runner—-if any, or all of this should occur, the disillusionment to the true believer in whatever would not be so great as that felt by Mrs. Potter just after Penny left that fatal afternoon.
Motherhood had been attacked—nay, routed! And Hell hath no fury like a Mother scorned!
At first, after Penny’s departure, Mrs. Potter felt merely numb. It was as if she was the flag-bearer in the honor guard at the public school assembly who tripped and trailed the banner in the dust in full view of all her schoolmates and the principal as well. More than the flag-bearer, more than the flag itself is involved; an institution has been demeaned.
So it was with Mrs. Potter. More than her feelings, more than the rejection of a mother by a son was involved. It was an institution which had been rejected--and in the most telling way possible. Motherhood’s death rights had been stamped underfoot. And what is a mother for, if not for dying?
Thus, if Mrs. Potter reacted slowly, it is understandable. She was dazed by the magnitude of the rejection. It was as if all the resentment against American Motherhood by all the products of American Motherhood had been directed against her personally in Penny’s terse repudiation of Mrs. Potter’s funeral rights.
But, finally, she recovered. Some hours had passed in the numbed state of shock when Mrs. Potter finally stirred herself to action. She took a cab to the Perma-Rest Funeral Home. She had to find out for herself if Penny had truly carried through on the nefarious threat.
Penny had. With quivering lower lip Mrs. Potter left the place with her worst fears confirmed. The funeral arrangements had been canceled. Her death rights had been destroyed.
Mrs. Potter remembered that she was a Mother, and that Mothers don’t give up easily. What has been undone can be redone. Penny was not to be allowed to do this and get away with it without recrimination. There are limits to permissive child-rearing. Penny must be made to face the consequences of actions. Penny must be made to realize that Mrs. Potter simply couldn’t die under these circumstances, that death was an inalienable right of Motherhood, and that no child had the right to deprive a Mother of this prerogative. Penny had to be located and convinced of his obligation to reinstate the funeral and burial program. And this had to be done before Penny disposed of the refund money Mrs. Potter had learned that Penny had taken. But where was Penny?
Mrs. Potter considered that. She put two — as the saying goes—and two together and remembered the police coming around saying that Penny had robbed his employer and concluded that there was a good chance that Penny might have gone to his office to replace the money. So Mrs. Potter took a cab to Penny’s office.
But when she got there, she discovered that the building was locked for the evening and that she couldn’t gain entry. By the time she’d determined this, the cab in which she’d come had already departed. The streets of the financial district were deserted. Mrs. Potter stood forlornly on the sidewalk, not knowing what to do next.
It was while she was standing there, undecidedly, looking at the building across the street in which the offices of the Fuller Lawn Manure Co. were located, that she heard the dull explosion like a crackle of grease and saw the male figure propelled through the glass doors, out onto the sidewalk, and finally sprawling in the gutter. It took an instant for her brain to register the fact that it was Penny. Then, with a gasp, she ran across the street to the fallen figure.
She reached it at the same time as the man in the watchman’s uniform with the still-smoking revolver in his hand. They bent together and bumped foreheads over the body. They straightened up and looked at each other. The watchman spoke.
“A thief,” he explained. “I almost didn’t nail him. Look, lady, do me a favor, will you?” He handed her the gun. “Stand here and watch him a minute in case he’s still alive while I go inside and call the cops.”
Mrs. Potter could only nod dumbly and watch as he went into the building. Then she came to her senses and bent over Penny once again. She picked up the limp wrist and felt a faint pulse. It was the only sign that Penny was still alive. It was the only sign, but it couldn’t be ignored.
The instincts of the flip side of Motherhood propelled Mrs. Potter into action. She had to get Penny out of here before the police came. And she had to get him medical care m a hurry. Time was of the -- as the saying has it—essence.
Mrs. Potter got to her feet and looked about frantically. Down the block she spotted a stray cab with the light on connoting that it was empty. She waved her arms and shouted and it drove up to her. “Where ya goin’, lady?” the cab driver asked suspiciously.
Mrs. Potter gave him her home address on the upper west side of Manhattan.
“Sorry, lady, I’m a Brooklyn hackie; I’m only takin’ calls back to Brooklyn.”
“But you don’t understand! This is an emergency!” Mrs. Potter wailed.
It was no use. The taxi was already halfway down the block. Mrs. Potter was frantic. The night watchman was sure to return any minute, and then it would be too late. But she calmed down at the sight of another cab and waved it down.
“I don’t pick up Niggers,” the cab driver told her as he pulled up alongside.
“We’re not Negroes.”
“Spies neither.”
“We’re not Puerto Rican.”
“Where ya goin’?”
Mrs. Potter told him.
“Sorry. No soap. Too close to the jungle.” He drove off, his “George Wallace for President” banner flapping on top of the “Poor People’s Campaign” sticker his dayman had pasted on the bumper of the cab.
Once again Mrs. Potter was distraught. Once again Fate called her a taxi. It turned the corner and pulled up in front of her.
“Help me,” Mrs. Potter told the driver, giving him no chance to turn down the call. She was trying to get Penny into the cab.