He used to be in Homer’s grade starting off and Homer still told the story now and then about when Slim Crowley pissed in his pants in front of the whole class. The teacher had made him stand in front of everyone until he apologized for stealing some money from Homer. He never apologized, but his bladder let go, staining his pants and making a big, yellow puddle at his feet. He ran out of the school and didn’t come back that year, so he failed Grade One. The following year, Miss Fielding just put him ahead, which most people took as an act of surrender.
Now in the same grade as Finton, Bernard would go out of his way to antagonize him; on the school grounds, he occasionally gave Finton a shove with his shoulder to make sure the smaller boy knew who was boss. “Hey, faggot,” he’d say. “Did your grandmother dress you this morning?” Finton would say, “I dressed myself.” One day, he’d had enough and just told Bernard to go to hell. Bernard smirked and shoved him, but Finton stood his ground, fists curled, ready to fight. Bernard took him in a headlock and punched him in the nose. Eyes watering and nose bleeding, Finton squirmed to be free. Then, from out of nowhere, Skeet rushed at Bernard and knocked him back against the side of the school, forcing him to let go of his captive. He raised a fist to Bernard’s face and told him, “Lay another hand on ’im, Slim, and I’ll beat the livin’ shit outta ya.”
“Yeah?” said Bernard. He looked fearfully up at Skeet, who was a couple of inches taller. “You ’n what army?”
“Just watch yerself.” Skeet spat on Bernard’s shoes and released him.
Bernard skulked off with his gang, but not before turning with a scared, spiteful expression, shouting at Finton, “Yer boyfriend won’t be always there to save ya, faggot!”
Skeet stuck his hands in his pockets and turned to Finton, who wiped the blood from his lip and licked it away. “If he gives you more trouble, just give us a shout.”
“Thanks,” said Finton, as he flicked away a ladybug that had landed on his sleeve. “But I can take care of myself.”
“I’m sure you can. But people like Slim won’t quit till you puts them in their place. I’m used to dealing with quiffs like him.”
Finton nodded and wiped his nose again. The bleeding had already stopped.
“Jesus, I thought you were gonna bleed to death,” said Skeet.
“Fast healer,” said Finton.
Sitting in the foxhole with Skeet, nursing his psychological wounds from dealing with Sawyer, Finton was reminded of why he was friends with this odd boy, who smoked and swore and often did things Finton would never do. He supposed it was because he admired Skeet’s moral code—he’d often seen him stick up for other “weak” members of the Darwinian tribe. But he didn’t fool himself. Skeet Stuckey was also a part of Finton’s own plan to survive Darwin’s brutality. As long as Skeet was around, Finton had a guardian angel. Skeet, too, had failed a grade, but had quickly found a use for his new, smaller friend—someone to help him with the occasional piece of homework.
“Thanks for saving my arse,” Finton said.
Skeet spit into the foxhole, near Finton’s feet. “No problem—that’s my job.”
“Why?”
“I dunno.” Skeet shrugged. “It just feels like it should be.”
Finton didn’t push it any further. After all, even a lone wolf could use a friend.
The Gathering Storm
Tom thought it would be a good idea to take Finton with him to Taylor’s Garage, where he worked, although Finton wasn’t sure why. He had no interest in cars except as places to read a book or listen to the radio. But he was the only one of the three boys who showed no aptitude for vehicle repair. Clancy was heir to Tom’s wealth of automotive information, and even Homer, who preferred woodworking to car maintenance, could change the oil, fix a tire, or help out with a brake job. Finton was mystified by his father’s mechanical world, with its language of carburetors, belts, lubricants, and manifolds—hard words that rebuffed emotion, neglected wonderment, and resisted interpretation beyond the mundane.
That morning, his mother had looked pale and complained of a headache. The older boys, because it was Saturday, would spend the day with friends, but Tom thought it would be good to show Finton his place of work. “Who knows? Maybe he’ll take to it.”
But, after only a few minutes, Finton desperately wanted to go home. Tom must have seen the discontentment in the boy’s face because he told him, “You’re here at least until I’m off for lunch, so you might as well get interested. What’s wrong with you?”
He didn’t answer, just wandered around the garage, poking at old tires or kicking loose screws around on the dirty concrete floor. When he finally got bored enough, he pulled a Tintin comic from his jacket pocket and sat reading in the corner on a gigantic grader tire. Now and then, some man came into the garage and Tom would nod towards Finton and say, “That’s my boy over there.” Finton would look up, give a two-finger salute, and return to the fantastic world of Tintin, Snowy, and Captain Haddock.
The bright-coloured pages, simple dialogue, and the captain’s cursing kept him amused while his father lay under a jacked-up, black Volkswagen, making clanking noises with a wrench and occasionally muttering obscenities. Tom seemed happiest when he was working on cars, but that was also when he did the most swearing.
It was the scraping, metallic sound of something giving way that made the boy look up, just as his father screeched a bloodcurdling, “Fuck ya!” One of the cinder blocks had slid away, lowering the Volkswagen just enough to pin Tom underneath. It was only by a hair’s breadth that he escaped being crushed. “Finton!” he yelled. “Come here!”
Within seconds, Finton was on his knees beside his father’s blueclad leg, looking underneath the car and asking if he was all right.
“See can ya pull me out, b’y—Jesus’ sake! Hurry up!”
Finton positioned himself at his father’s feet. A quick look around confirmed that no one else had come running, so he grabbed his father’s ankles and pulled.
“Harder, b’y! Put some muscle into it!”
“I’m trying,” he said, panic setting in. “I’ll be right back.” He scurried outside and yelled, “Somebody! Help! Dad’s stuck under a car!” Within seconds, three men came running from the scrap yard, assessed the situation and, within a short time, two men—and Finton—lifted the small car while another man pulled Tom from beneath the VW. His father was dazed, even a little shocked, as he sat on the concrete floor, holding his grease-blackened, quivering hand in front of him. Blood dripped onto the concrete between his legs and pooled into a dark circle.
“We’ve gotta get you to the hospital, Tom,” said the oldest of the three men, with grey sideburns and wearing a baseball cap with “Pat” on the front. Finton recognized him as Pat Taylor, who owned the garage.
“I’m coming,” said Finton.
“No,” said Tom. “Stay here with Pat. These men will take care o’ me.”
“No—I’m going.”
“I’ll get my car,” said one of the men, and the other one followed him, while Pat stayed behind and bent down to assess Tom’s hand.
“Looks pretty bad, b’y—I’ll get ya a clean rag. Must be one somewhere. Look after yer old man, young fella.” He gave Finton’s hair a quick scrub and went off to look.
“Give it here,” said Finton.
“Wha’?” Tom looked startled, as if the boy was speaking a foreign language.
“Let me see it—quick.”
Appearing stunned, Tom held out his trembling hand for Finton to see. It was bruised so ugly that Finton couldn’t look at it. The blood ran freely and was particularly dark around the wound in his father’s palm, where the skin had been scraped and pulled. The bluish discolouration reminded him of a cut he’d had in his own palm once when he’d wrecked Homer’s bike in the lane. That one had healed within seconds and had needed only to have the rocks picked out of it. This one was much worse.
Carefully, he cupped his hands and placed one on each side of his
father’s bloody palm. He drew a deep breath. The hand quivered violently, but Finton managed to steady it enough. Within seconds, his father’s breathing began to stabilize. “Holy Mary Mother of God,” Finton kept saying over and over. Eyes closed, he imagined a place far away—high above the garage, in a different dimension, beyond the earth and its planets—and, at last, his Planet of Solitude.
“We’re here,” he said and glanced down to see his father’s head in his lap, peaceful and happy, no angry lines on his face. “Everything’s okay, Dad. I’m here.”
Tom didn’t speak, just kept beaming up at his son.
“There,” Finton said. At the sound of a voice, he opened his eyes. He was holding his father’s hand, while Tom was sitting up, head laid back against the side of the Volkswagen, his face twisted in anguish and appearing ready to pass out.
“This should do the trick,” said Pat, getting down on his knees beside the patient and snapping open a first-aid kit. He pulled out a gauze bandage and began to unroll it. “This might hurt a bit, Tom. Hold out your hand.”
With glazed eyes, Tom scrutinized his boss and then his son, as if unable to recognize either one. He opened his hand.
“Hmm.” Pat cautiously, awkwardly began winding the gauze around Tom’s hand. “Put your finger there, Finton. That’s the boy. Your dad’s gonna be okay.” He stopped what he was doing and peered at the injury. “Doesn’t look too bad, though, Tom, b’y.”
“Whattya mean?”
“Jesus, b’y, I thought you were gonna bleed to death. But it’s startin’ to heal already. Looks like the wound’s closed up on its own. Still might need stitches, though.”
After Pat had firmly wrapped the wound and asked Tom to hold it closed with his good hand, they stood him up. “I’m not crippled,” Tom said. But they helped him to the other man’s car. Finton accompanied them to the hospital and sat in the back seat with his father.
“What did you do?” Tom asked him in the waiting room.
Finton shrugged. “I did that thing.”
“That thing?”
“That thing I can do.”
“Oh. That thing.”
Finton wasn’t sure if his father didn’t know what he was talking about or simply didn’t believe him. Regardless, when the doctor saw Tom about twenty minutes later, he informed him that the wound was mostly healed, that he was a lucky man and should be more careful next time he was getting under a car.
When they were in the Valiant and on the way home, Finton finally exhaled. Tom lit a cigarette and said, “Don’t tell your mother.”
“Why not?”
“It would worry her.”
“Which part—you getting hurt or me fixing your hand?”
Tom blew a smoke ring and said, “Don’t tell her anything.”
As soon as he got home, Finton washed the blood from his hands and went in to check on his mother. He knocked gently on the bedroom door and she told him to come in. Elsie lay on her back, covered in blankets and looking up at the ceiling. Her face was flushed. Finton crept over to the bedside and laid a hand on her forehead.
“Are you all right, Mom? You’ve got a fever.”
“I’m all right.” She didn’t look at him. “Enjoy your morning at the garage?”
“Not really.”
“Why not?”
He shrugged. “I’d rather be home.”
Elsie smiled wanly. “I’m beginning to worry about you. You need to take more of an interest in things.” He laid his hand on her forehead again. “I’m okay,” she said and closed her eyes. “That feels kinda good, Finton. Your hand is cool.”
He stood beside her for fifteen minutes, long enough for her to fall asleep. Before he left the bedroom, he kissed her forehead, noting how he felt kind of dizzy. Fifteen minutes on the Planet of Solitude will do that, he reminded himself, thinking it wasn’t a place he could stay for very long.
“I’m not staying here if she comes.” Elsie clanked the dishes so hard in the sink that Finton was amazed they didn’t break. It had only been a day since her “spell,” as she called it, but Elsie was already up and back to normal. Her fast recovery didn’t surprise anyone, though, since no one but Finton knew how sick she’d been.
“She got nowhere else to go.” Tom ran a hand through his mass of black hair, obviously exasperated. He winced from the pain in his bandaged hand. He’d told Elsie he’d slammed the car door on it, and it was nothing to worry about.
“Don’t she have family in the States? And what about her good-fornudding nephew?” Finton heard desperation in his mother’s voice. She didn’t like visitors because, as a general rule, people were just too much trouble.
He nibbled his dry toast. “She smells funny, Dad.”
“Well, so do you, but we don’t send you to the States.” His father winked in a way that made the boy wonder if Tom might actually consider doing it. He wished they would. He’d probably like the States. It had to be more fun there where they had The Wonderful World of Disney.
“She looks at me funny.”
“’Cause you are funny.” His father munched on his toast and blueberry jam, sipping his milky tea every few seconds. He wiped a smear of butter from his chin, and the motion made a scraping sound.
Finton fell silent. He felt odd enough without having his elders point out his shortcomings. “Everybody in school says Miss Bridie is a witch.” He laid down his toast and looked pleadingly at his father. “I can’t sleep in the same house as her.”
Having long made a study of his father’s habits and moods, Finton knew he would seriously consider his fears. Tom had certainly heard the same rumours, but had dismissed them as gossip based on the rundown appearance of house and person, the secretive manner in which the door was always barred, and the fact that Miss Bridie lived without electricity or telephone. The house was always dark, lit at night by a candle on the kitchen table. If you wanted to talk to Miss Bridie—which no one except himself ever did—you had to knock really hard on her front door. Even then, no one would answer. The only time she came out of the house at all was to hang clothes on the line, run errands at Sellars’ store or, once in a blue moon, go for a walk down at the landwash or in the woods. Finton had seen her down by the saltwater once, humming “Molly Malone” while she was bent over to pick up a piece of driftwood, which she then stacked atop the pile of wood in her arms. He ducked behind some large spruce trees and waited for her to wander down the shoreline. Everyone seemed to know that she wandered the beach and the woods by herself sometimes. Phonse Dredge had stopped by the house for a beer one night and mentioned casually that he’d seen her one evening, standing on the shore looking out to sea. Elsie had added that she’d seen Miss Bridie in the woods one time, sitting under a big spruce and saying some kind of prayer. “Although not like any kind of prayer I ever heard before,” she’d said. But Tom had always concluded that none of those things made her a witch.
“People are just afraid of her because she’s different. She’s just lonely,” he said.
“She’s a witch,” said Finton. “That’s why people are afraid o’ her.”
“She’s not so harmless as all that, and you bloody well know it.” Elsie suddenly stopped scraping dishes and turned to face her husband, a frilly blue apron around her waist, a green cup towel attached to her right hand and a peanut butter glass pressed to her left. Her eyes shimmered with fear. “She might be lonely, but she made her own bed. She shoulda kicked Morgan outta the house the day she quit school. I know I wouldn’t have the like in my house. And I wouldn’t have her mother either. She’s wicked, Tom. I don’t like the way she looks at me.” Her voice trembled, as she pounded the glass once against her thigh. “It’s like she hates my guts or something.”
Tom sighed, swallowed his tea. “You’re imagining it, Elsie. She looks at everyone that way.”
“The youngsters—especially Finton.” Finton’s head jerked towards his mother. But she would not meet his gaze, merely continued to focus on drying
the glass in her hands until it surely verged on cracking. “The youngsters are all afraid of her.”
“And I s’pose you’re not.” Tom set his tea cup gently in its saucer. Then he deposited the saucer onto the empty plate, eliciting a tiny clinking sound. He stood up, walked out the front door, and closed it softly behind him.
“To bring that woman under this roof,” he heard his grandmother rasp unseen from the dark living room where the curtains were drawn shut, “is dancin’ with the devil. And we all know how that works out.” Her rocking chair creaked steadily. “Whole nudder tune then, by God.” Finton hadn’t a clue what she meant, but her words gave him chills. His mother draped her cup towel over the oven handle and crept to her bedroom where she stayed for the rest of the morning.
Miss Bridie’s living situation wasn’t mentioned again. She simply continued residence in her burnt-out home. The shell remained intact—the roof would hold, but would certainly leak when it rained. The outside was charred like burnt paper and smelled of smoke. But at least the Indian summer had returned, and the nights were usually not too cold.
Finton was impressed by how hard his father worked all month and well into October. Joined on the weekends and in the evenings by kindhearted Francis Minnow, Tom toiled every day at Miss Bridie’s house, first installing a new plywood door, then systematically pulling out the burnt planks of siding and hammering in new ones before tackling the roof that needed to be rebuilt. Homer would help out occasionally by driving the nails where his father told him. The middle brother seemed to enjoy his apprenticeship role, demonstrating a talent for making and building, while Finton preferred an observational position. Clancy was more interested in mechanical repairs, but even he showed up at Miss Bridie’s to help with painting and lifting. All autumn long, the pounding of nails echoed like gunshots from across the river. Sometimes Finton would perch on a large branch overhanging Moon’s River and watch, pretending he was under siege and singing “Davey Crockett” to himself.
Finton Moon Page 5
