Within minutes he’d found a trail Clancy had showed him a couple of years ago from when the telephone company was erecting poles. It was hard going because much of the underbrush had grown back in, barren as it was this time of year, and the path was muddy. Every once in a while, he’d come to a wide strip of dirty-brown water, and he’d have to criss-cross the whole way to keep from stepping in it.
An hour later and soaked to his skin, Finton broke through the clearing behind the Battenhatch house. He tiptoed across the soggy marsh and crept along the edge of the swollen Moon’s River. It was twice as wide and probably twice as deep as normal, with the torrent roaring downstream at a pace that would make it impossible to cross. A dirty, white diaper that had snagged itself in the clutches of a large fallen branch waved at him from the undulating stream.
There was no other choice. Leaving the roar of the river behind him, he turned left towards the Battenhatch house. His sneakers still squished in the soggy grass, and he kept both eyes trained on the dark windows. Finally, as the rain started coming down harder, he ran. His clothes were saturated, but he managed to trot around the blind side of the house. The spruce trees in the front yard stood like sentries. Even though the road was just yards away, he feared he would never escape the Battenhatch yard.
From behind him, he heard the sound he dreaded most.
“Come here!” the voice yelled from the open front door.
Reluctantly, he turned and looked. There she stood, in all her gothic glory, shaking her grey head and beckoning him towards her. “You’re soaked to the bone, b’y,” she said in her quavering voice. “Come in and get dry.”
Halfway between the house and the road, Finton stood, unable to move. He was torn between running and giving in. A glance to his right, through the thin veil of trees between the Battenhatch and Moon properties, showed him an odd vehicle pulling into his parents’ driveway—a black cruiser with white doors, a cherry-red light on top, and an RCMP crest emblazoned on the door. Officer Dredge got out and lumbered towards the Moons’ front door, soon joined by the second policeman, probably Corporal Futterman. They stood and knocked, but had to stand for a while on the front doorstep in the rain.
“Come in, ya bloody fool!” Bridie fixed him with a threatening glare as she coughed sharply. She stepped onto the front porch, shielding her face with one hand. “Afore you catch your death, luh.”
Some combination of obedience and courage impelled him forward, as Finton followed her into the house.
“What in blue blazes were you doin’ out there?” Just like last time, she already had the kettle on and two places set. With this weather, he had expected to see buckets everywhere, catching raindrops. But there was a crackling fire in the wood stove, and the air was drier, almost cleaner, than he remembered.
“Nudding.”
“Aren’t you supposed to be in school?”
“I left.”
She didn’t respond, but bustled around the table, pouring tea and ripping open a fresh pack of Jam-jams, which she laid on the table in front of Finton. “Have a cookie—good for what ails ya.”
“I’m not ailin’.” Ravenous from not having eaten yet that morning, he snatched a cookie and broke it in two, taking one half of it in his mouth and staring at the other half as if to ponder its medicinal benefits. Munching slowly, he glanced out at the falling rain, scanning the road for a sign that the police had finished interrogating his parents.
“Oh, I’d say you are. That’s what you are, indeed.” Miss Bridie sat across from him, cradling a full teacup between her hands, coughing occasionally as if she had a tickle in her throat. “You’re soaked from the rain. I got some old clothes, I’m sure—”
“No, thanks.”
“Or a blanket.”
“I’m not stayin’ that long. I got to go home.”
She smiled, but with a worried look in her eyes that he had never seen before.
“You know that the fuzz are up in your driveway, don’t you?” He nodded. “And you know why they’re there.”
He fixed his gaze on the painted window through which he could just make out the shape of some trees and, beyond them, the shadow of a narrow, black road. The thumping of his heart marked each passing moment.
“You’re in a mess—you and your father,” she said. “Old Sawyer really did it this time, didn’t he? And there’s no comin’ back once you’re in that particular hole.”
He scrutinized her face, wondering, What makes her so mean? And how does she seem to know everything? He could count the lines in her face and smell the odour of her unwashed flesh. But he was unable to read her thoughts.
She tapped her right temple with a solitary finger. “You tell more than you think you do. And I listen clearer than most.”
Finton shoved the remaining half Jam-jam into his mouth, but struggled to chew. Under her omnipotent gaze, he felt the overwhelming urge to cry, but he held it in.
“He’s a goner.” She paused and looked out the window, trying to glimpse what he saw. Or maybe she was looking at his reflection in the glass. Or possibly her own. “Doesn’t matter.” She shook her head as if recovering her senses. “He had it comin’ and now he’s gone. All we can do is take care of what’s left and do what’s right.” She stopped once more and regarded him closely. “You know what I’m saying, and don’t let on otherwise—you know what you have to do.”
He looked into her haunted eyes and shuddered. Rain dripped from his hair and nose, splattering onto the plastic-covered tabletop. “What do I have to do?”
“You don’t need me to tell you that, child. Just go home and take care of them all that needs taking care of.”
Scraping the legs of his chair on the floor, Finton struggled to his feet. He was getting cold and felt a fever and headache coming on. His body ached for something it would never attain. He snatched a cookie and held it carefully as he ran towards the door and yanked it open. Leaping outside and over the steps, he clambered onto the road and took off running. He could feel her watching him as he crossed the flooded culvert.
A muddy brown rivulet flowed down the centre of Moon’s Lane. At the lane’s pinnacle squat a troubled bungalow and a troublesome car.
The police were still in the kitchen. He tried to be invisible, but they easily noticed him when he opened the front door and slipped inside. Both men seemed anxious, but neither spoke to him at first, as they finished discussing Kieran Dredge’s experiences upon returning to Darwin as a lawman.
“It’s been strange, indeed,” Kieran was saying. “And busier than I would’ve expected, for sure.”
Elsie nodded, sitting by the stove, arms folded across her chest. She turned towards Finton. “Where have you been?” she asked in her telephone voice.
“Out.” He scooted past the officers’ sharp-creased slacks and shiny shoes with the mud stains on the bottoms. They each held their hats with the shiny brims, their skulls sporting crew cuts.
“Shouldn’t you be in school?” Elsie asked.
“I’m sick.”
“Why didn’t you call?”
“I found my own way home.” He paused only for a moment and turned around to face them all. “I’m goin’ to bed.”
“These fellas want to talk to you, Finton.” Elsie opened her stance, laying one arm on the cold stovetop to her right and the other on the tabletop to her left. “Kieran and Officer Futterman are looking into the thing with Sawyer.”
“Maybe you heard something at school today?” prompted Kieran.
Finton shrugged. “I didn’t talk to no one today.”
“You must have talked to someone.” The older policeman, Futterman, the one with the mustache, was turning his hat over and over in his hands.
“Some people say he got drunk and fell down,” said Finton.
“Maybe,” said Kieran. “He might have fallen and smacked his head on a rock. Or someone could have hit him and caused him to fall. We won’t know for sure till we see the coroner’s report, but ther
e’s no harm in gettin’ a headstart.”
“We’re asking around to see who knows what,” said the older one. There might be something more to it, ya know?”
Elsie spoke up. “Well, Finton doesn’t know anything, Earl. He’s just a boy.”
“Yes, ma’am. And we do appreciate your time,” said Futterman. “But we were hopin’ to talk to your husband today. Is Tom around?”
“To tell the truth, I haven’t—”
She looked to be about ready to tell one of the biggest fibs of her life when the toilet flushed in the bathroom, separated from the kitchen only by a thin sheet of gyproc. “That would be him now.” He’d never seen his mother’s face turn so red.
She called out to Tom and, after a brief pause, in which the two officers exchanged unreadable glances, he appeared in the kitchen. His hair was tousled as if he’d just woke from a nap, and he pulled on his belt to insert the metal prong into the correct hole as he intermittently tried to stuff the hem of his white t-shirt into his pants.
“What can I do you for you, officers?” He leaned one arm against the stove, standing across from Finton and smelling like beer.
“We’re looking for clues regarding Sawyer Moon.” Futterman tightened the grip on his hat as he spun it around in his hands. “Just asking around to all your neighbours.”
“And all over town,” Kieran added.
“Routine, eh?” Tom fished in his pocket for his lighter at the same time that he lifted a cigarette pack from his shirt pocket and squeezed a smoke from the package and into his mouth. He had the cigarette lit and a ring of smoke blown across the kitchen before they even had a chance to reply.
“No,” said Futterman. “Nothin’ routine about it. A man is dead, and no one seems to know how he got to his final resting place. But everyone knows he was a friend of yours.”
“I’m a popular fella.” Tom squinted like Clint Eastwood in Dirty Harry, one of the movies he and Finton had watched on Academy Performance last summer. “Got an awful lot o’ friends.”
“That’s what we hear,” said the younger one.
“Been asking around about me, have ya?”
“We’re not jumping to conclusions,” Futterman said. “But we’ve heard things.”
Kieran coughed and cleared his throat. “Is it true you and Sawyer had an argument on the same night he disappeared?”
Tom’s demeanour shifted slightly. He practically became Clint, exuding that same squint and careless swagger in his voice. “Who said that? What lousy prick is talkin’ about me behind my back?”
“Can’t tell you that,” said Kieran “But is it true?”
“We had a few words.” Tom spit on the stovetop, his spittle performing a little dance on the iron black top. “But it never amounted to much.” Finton observed that his father’s lips were wrapped a tad tightly around that cigarette.
Futterman nodded thoughtfully. “What did you argue about?”
Tom reached across the table and tapped his cigarette on the edge of the ashtray. “Just some stuff I heard about ’im. We’ll just leave it at that.”
“You know we can’t do that, Tom.”
“Look, I heard he was diddlin’ some youngsters, okay?” Tom stared ahead at the wall, studiously avoiding eye contact with anyone.
“One o’ yours?”
Tom hesitated, glanced at Finton, then Homer, and finally just sighed. “He said he never done it. I didn’t know what to believe. I shoved him a bit and said if I ever caught him doin’ the like, I’d come after him.”
Again, Kieran coughed. “You actually said you’d kill him, didn’t you?”
“Sure,” said Tom, “I said it. But that don’t mean I’d do it. I only tried to scare him, but that was all. I never had nudding else to do with him after that. Ask anyone.”
“That’s the problem,” said Futterman. “There’s no one to ask. A few people saw you arguing, and they never saw Sawyer again.”
“So you’re accusing me without evidence.”
“If there was more evidence, we wouldn’t be allowed to share it, Tom.” Futterman sniffed, glanced at the floor, then met Tom’s gaze.
“It could taint the case.” Tom swept a hand through his hair as a cold draught seemed to sift through the kitchen. In fact, to Finton, it felt as if the entire house shuddered. “Case?”
“If there’s a trial—you know, after the coroner’s report.”
“Sounds like ya know what you’re lookin’ for. Just haven’t found it yet.”
“Not necessarily,” said Kieran.
“But we couldn’t tell you anyways.” Futterman scowled as he folded his arms across his sizable chest.
“No, I don’t suppose you could.” Sticking one hand in his pocket and gesticulating with the one holding the cigarette, Tom’s nervous habits seemed to be getting the better of him.
“I don’t feel so good,” Finton said. While everyone was looking at Finton and politely asking if he was okay, he threw up on Kieran’s shiny black shoe, causing him to curse mildly and whip out a handkerchief.
“I’ll get the mop.” Elsie said as she rushed to the porch.
“I’d better put him to bed.” Tom placed a warm hand, the one still holding the cigarette between its nicotine-stained fingers, at the back of Finton’s neck.
While Finton was still marveling at his ability to vomit on command, both the officers and the parents mumbled their most sincere apologies and mutually agreed that now was a good time to end the inquisition. There were other houses to go to, other leads—“or lack thereof,” as Futterman added—to pursue.
When they had finally gone and Finton was tucked into bed, amazed that he now had a fever to go with his vomiting, his mother kissed his forehead while Tom observed from the bedroom doorway. Their eyes met each other’s, but silence remained their chosen form of communication. Finton’s mind wandered to that Sunday morning when they’d passed Sawyer as he was emerging from the woods. I’ll tell ya about it when we gets there. But not while he’s here, Phonse had said. Finton could only wonder what his father was thinking when he turned his back and left.
Listening to Tom’s grim shuffle down the hallway, Finton imagined what it would be like to have a father in prison. He could picture it. Unshaven and scraping a tin cup across the bars, black-and-white stripes on his pajamas, calling out for the warden and yelling, “I was framed! It was the kid, I tell you! Get the kid!”
Finton shut his eyes and listened to the rain pattering on the roof.
Finton Moon Lassos Moon
He had something to give her, but she was rarely alone, and he dreaded the thought of being a spectacle.
Everywhere he went, he thought about Mary. Weekday mornings on the school bus, she sat by the window, five rows down, near the window and next to Dolly. Finton sat behind her, watching her reflection in the glass; sometimes, he’d grip the back of her seat so that a strand of her hair might graze his hands. Saturdays at the library, he kept an eye on the door in case she came in. Sunday mornings, he’d attend the early mass because she would be there. In the evenings, he would pretend to need something at the store just so he could wander past her house, gaze up at her bedroom window and imagine what she was doing—braiding her sister’s hair, gossiping about boys, doing homework, or watching TV with her family.
Every day, from his desk in the corner, he would watch her. Mary’s desk assumed the centre of the room and, while the teacher addressed the class, she and her crowd would exchange notes and giggles. Sometimes they’d chew gum, then plant it under the desktop behind Mary’s, which was occupied by Alicia Dredge.
The last day before the Christmas holidays, the mood bordered on hysteria. Somehow, though, Alicia seemed outside of it all. Mary and her friends were the hub of the commotion as the teachers went through the motions of checking homework, asking questions, and writing on the blackboard. Some students feigned interest as they jotted a few notes and laughed extra hard at the teacher’s jokes. But no one forgot, even fo
r a second, that Christmas began at noon. Fourteen days of freedom and fun in the snow.
Finton was worried.
It wouldn’t be a normal Christmas, even by Moon standards. There would be extra food, such as apples and oranges, but no pantryful of groceries like other families had. And yet it was a special time because the apples would be five-pointed and the oranges extra large, with a variety of cookies and a bucket of hard candy from the States.
Christmas Eve, his father would get drunk. Partway through putting up the tree, Tom would get angry because the lights wouldn’t work, and he would take it out on the tree or yell at Elsie or one of the youngsters, usually Finton. Late evening, he would leave the house in search of someone to get drunk with, Phonse Dredge being the likely candidate, leaving Elsie and the boys to decorate the tree. The two older ones sometimes went out with friends while Finton watched It’s A Wonderful Life. He’d seen it two Christmas Eves in a row and was in love with Donna Reed, with her dark, smouldering eyes and nurturing ways. His favourite part was when the main character, George, tried to prove his affection—“What is it you want, Mary? You want the moon? Just say the word and I’ll throw a lasso around it and pull it down”—and when she agreed to take it, he said she could swallow it and the moon would dissolve and “moonbeams would shoot out of your fingers and your toes and the ends of your hair.” They were the best lines from any movie he’d ever seen.
The excitement was heightened, both in school and at home, by a snowstorm the day before school closed. In winter, Tom could usually get extra work at Taylor’s because so many people needed snow tires installed. This year, however, there’d been no such call until this morning. When Pat Taylor asked Tom to come in to work, he turned it down, saying he didn’t feel too good. Finton didn’t know how much money his father normally made, but without that extra, it would be a hard Christmas.
But Finton had bigger worries. All morning, he’d watched for his moment. In between lessons, Mary chatted excitedly with Dolly or Willow or another girl. The chances for a shy boy to walk up to her and say, “I have a present for you,” then sneak away unnoticed were nil.
Finton Moon Page 12
