Angel Landing

by Alice Hoffman

  Immediately I found myself wondering if Finn was married; he had never said he wasn’t. There might be a woman waiting for him in the Camaro right now; perhaps children, a son with the same blue eyes. “What don’t I know?” I asked.

  “I’ve been in trouble before,” Finn said. “I’ve been arrested.”

  For all I knew, Finn might have been guilty of a dozen horrible crimes, perhaps even murder. In his crazy youth he might have set fire to one of the old sailors who slept on the beach or in the doorway of the rundown Fishers Cove Hotel. There might have been a crime of passion—the stabbing of a woman who had refused his advances. Perhaps a fatal knife fight inside one of the roadhouses on Route 18.

  “What were you arrested for?” I asked.

  “Does it matter?” Finn said. “I’m just telling you that I’ve had enough experience with lawyers and courts to know I don’t have a chance.”

  “It matters to me,” I said. “What happened?”

  Finn smiled and shook his head. “Everything that shouldn’t have. Or maybe I was lucky,” he said. “Maybe I found out right away, early in my life, that there was nothing out there for me.”

  As Finn began to speak I wanted to reach out and chart his pulse, to feel his skin with careful fingers. Instead I sat back in my chair and waited to discover what had been lying in wait out there, so long ago, when Finn first lost himself to the terrible sadness which had, by now, become even stronger than his own flesh and blood.

  TWO

  THE SCREEN DOOR SLAMMED. Finn was running away for the twenty-second time, and all he had with him were the clothes on his back, and the anger which cut through his chest each time he breathed. That morning, the last time he tried to escape from his parents’ house, Finn was sixteen. Already he was certain, even as he was walking out the door, that there was nothing for him to run to.

  Still, running away had become a pattern, a habit he couldn’t break. He had been running since the summer of his eighth year. Finn’s mother, Ada, was a cook in the hospital cafeteria, and his father drove straight to the Modern Times Bar as soon as the whistle blew to end the workday, and so Finn was alone a great deal of the time. He enjoyed coming home from school to the empty house; soon he learned to cook dinner for himself, although each meal was an experiment, and often a failure. The day the kitchen wall was set on fire, Finn was cooking spaghetti for the first time when the flames from the gas stove had leapt up; Finn ran to the bathroom for a towel, and he beat the towel against the wall until the flames were out. But, the wallpaper above the stove was ruined; a huge black hole wrecked the pattern of yellow daffodils. Water and spaghetti had boiled over and trailed down the stove in stringy wet puddles. It was an accident, but that would not matter to Finn’s parents. Finn knew already, in the summer when he was eight, that he was not allowed any accidents. Not even one.

  As soon as Michael Finn heard his father’s key turn in the door, he hid. He covered his ears when he heard Danny Finn’s yells in the kitchen; he knelt down in the bathroom, between the toilet and the tiled bathroom wall. And that was where Danny Finn found his son, in the bathroom, crouched down low, like a rabbit. Danny Finn was as drunk as he was angry; Michael Finn weighed only sixty-two pounds, and it took just one swing of his father’s arm to send Finn through the shower door. There, surrounded by glass and blood, Finn stared up at his father; he did not move or blink an eye, he did not even feel the cuts in his skin. Danny Finn had had seven beers at the Modern Times, but he was sober enough to know blood when he saw it.

  “Oh, shit,” Danny Finn said.

  Michael Finn lay on his back in the bathtub; across his face was an enormous gash, and blood spurted from beneath his shirt where he had been cut across the back.

  “Holy shit,” Danny Finn said. He knelt down, picked Finn up, and wrapped his son in a large blue bath towel. By the time they reached the emergency room at Saint Elmo’s Hospital, that towel was soaked in blood, and Danny Finn wondered if he would be charged with murder if his son should die. He prayed that his son would not accuse him in the emergency ward, when they were surrounded by doctors and nurses and Danny Finn would have no way to escape the charges of a terrible crime. But Danny Finn had nothing to worry about; in the emergency ward, wrapped up in the bloody towel, Michael Finn didn’t make a sound. The nurses did not accuse Danny Finn, they did not point their fingers at him and scream; they simply wrote on Michael Finn’s records what his father dictated: the boy had slipped while taking a shower. No one asked why Michael Finn had been dressed while showering, no one noticed that the child’s hair was not wet, no one mentioned that his shirt was slashed as if by knives. They cleaned the blood away, stitched up his back and his face, and sent Finn home with his father.

  Danny Finn had scared himself; he had not expected to throw his son through the glass shower door; he was shocked by the huge gash across the boy’s face. “Listen,” Danny Finn said as they pulled into the driveway later that night, “it was an accident.”

  Michael Finn didn’t answer; he knew it was nothing of the sort.

  “I’m glad you understand.” Danny Finn turned off the motor. “We wouldn’t want to upset your mother.”

  Michael Finn turned his head slightly; he looked at his father and not one emotion slipped through.

  “I’m glad you understand,” Danny Finn said again.

  Two days later, Finn ran away for the first time. It was not something he had thought about, or something he planned. He was walking home from school when he saw his father’s car parked outside the Modern Times, and somehow, he had just kept walking. Right past the house, and through Harbor Heights. He walked for miles; through the old section of Fishers Cove and west on Route 18. Finn didn’t stop until he had reached the edge of town, where this branch of the Long Island Railroad ended at a small, wooden station beside a field of wild daisies. Finn sat down on a green bench outside the station; as he watched trains come and go and kicked his shoes against the bench, he began to feel his chest fill with something that swelled. After midnight, Finn was still there, sitting alone, with nowhere to go.

  Danny Finn pulled into the station parking lot early in the morning. The station door was locked tight and no train tickets had yet been sold. Michael Finn had fallen asleep; he was curled up on the green bench, his face resting against the cool wooden slats. Danny Finn shook his son’s shoulder roughly.

  “Let’s go,” Danny Finn said.

  Finn opened his eyes; his father was watching him, and his mother sat in the front seat of the car. There was no choice, and because he was eight years old and the stitches in his face and back hurt, Finn followed his father. That morning, Danny Finn didn’t hit his son; Michael’s stitches were still so new they looked like fresh tracks of blood across the boy’s face. Now Danny Finn was afraid of blood, and hospitals, and his own anger, though years later, he wondered if he hadn’t been too soft, if his palm hadn’t left a strong enough imprint on the boy. For although Michael Finn was beaten each time he fled again and was returned home, nothing stopped him from trying, not even the scar across his face, which marked him for life, or the welts his father’s belt left on his back and legs.

  Finn never had a plan, he had no destination, and he never really had any hope of success. Each time he ran away he knew he would be caught, he would be returned home, and after he was beaten, he would promise never to do it again. One day, when he least expected it, Michael Finn’s feet would take charge; before he knew it, before he had time to think, he was walking away from his parents’ house. And then, quite suddenly, he would be running.

  To Ada, Finn’s running away had become a joke—a quirk in her son’s personality, a sign of a wanderlust, a lark. But to Danny Finn it was no joke, Danny had lived his life without running away, and there had been plenty of times he would have liked to pack up and head west, leaving everything behind, including his memories. But he had stayed on, even when he felt next to nothing for his wife, and less for his son; he had done his duty, he had
stuck it out, he considered himself a moral person, a man. He planned to make certain that his son would not grow up to be the running-away sort. And so, each time Finn ran, his father grew angrier. That anger forged together and settled in Danny Finn’s heart and in his fists; and finally, it exploded the last time Finn ran away.

  Michael was sixteen; it was Indian summer when he picked up the keys to his father’s new Oldsmobile. In his fingers, the keys stirred; they fluttered and moved. Later, Danny Finn would report the car stolen, but Michael Finn was not thinking of stealing as he slid behind the wheel and started the engine. He was not thinking of anything more than moving fast along the highway. He pulled the car out of the driveway and drove through Harbor Heights. Finn had known how to drive since he was fourteen; there had been nights when friends of Danny’s would call from the Modern Times to report that Danny could not find the ignition of his car, no less the road. On those nights Michael Finn did not want to wake his mother. Ada now slept alone in the third bedroom which had always been used for storage before. She and Danny Finn no longer slept in the same room, and they no longer spoke to each other at the breakfast table or in the living room where together they silently watched color TV on Sunday nights. So Michael Finn would walk the half mile to the Modern Times; he would watch as his father was loaded into the back seat, and then he would slowly drive home. Finn was a good driver, he was sure of himself behind the wheel; so on that hot September day Finn took the curves in the road easily; and without any premeditation, he drove off and left Fishers Cove behind.

  Finn drove east. No police cars pulled the Oldsmobile off the road; Finn looked older than his age, and he kept well within the speed limit. The gas tank was full, the radio blasted out tunes he knew by heart, and Finn felt as if his chest had opened up; and what escaped propelled him east; he was flying. Because Finn had not planned his escape, the land gave out when the gas tank was still half full. He was only two hours from Fishers Cove, but it was the farthest Finn had ever run and he glided into the rest area above Montauk Point as if on wings. He parked the car, opened the door, and breathed so deeply that he nearly lifted himself off the ground. At sunset, Finn hiked down to the ocean; he walked far out on the black rocks. Sea gulls hung above him, a new moon appeared in the western sky; and after he had climbed back up to the parking area Michael Finn slept soundly, dreaming about the Atlantic, curled up in the back seat of the Oldsmobile with a new feeling of safety.

  He had enough money to buy coffee and potato chips the first few days at the refreshment stand near the lighthouse. But after that, he liked the feeling hunger brought on; it seemed to Finn that he was seeing more clearly—the sky looked brighter, he could actually spot the red glow of a sea gull’s eye as it flew above him. He did not care if he ever ate again. He was free; perched on the hood of the Oldsmobile, he watched the ocean at daybreak and at dusk. He crouched in the woods near the rest area like a deer, and he slept better than he ever had in his parents’ house. He wondered if he might live the life of a hermit forever—sleeping in the woods, eating the bark off pine trees in winter, wandering over the dunes long after the Oldsmobile had turned to rust in the rest area and all signs of Michael Finn had disappeared.

  But Finn did not have a chance to live his hermit’s life. In less than a week he was found. In the days above the Point, the anger in his chest had all but disappeared. Now Finn had nothing but peace. When he was awakened late one night, when the glare of a flashlight in his face brought him back from his dreams, and the peace was shattered, Finn did not cry out. And when a man’s hand shook his shoulder, Finn did not strike out or struggle, he did not bolt from the car. He sat up quietly, nightblinded, unable to see anything but the beam of the flashlight.

  “The party’s over,” a young policeman said to Finn.

  “Let’s go,” a second officer said.

  Finn got out of the Oldsmobile and followed the two officers into the patrol car; as soon as the door was closed behind him, it locked shut. Still, Finn was not afraid; he really had done nothing wrong. He had thought of flying, he had driven without a license, he had watched the moon rise, and gone without food. While the older officer radioed for a tow truck, the young one turned to Finn and offered him a cigarette.

  “The next time you steal a car,” the officer said, “drive west. You head east on Long Island and you’re a sitting duck. Nothing waiting for you but the ocean.”

  “I don’t steal cars,” Finn said, accepting the cigarette and noticing how peculiar his voice sounded; he had not spoken for days and his words were thick and slow.

  The young policeman, who introduced himself as Morrison, shook his head. “This car’s reported stolen. I have the report right here.”

  He showed Finn some papers, which the boy could not read in the patrol car. Finn’s chest had begun to tighten.

  The older policeman turned to him. “Do you have a license?”

  Finn shook his head; he had only a permit.

  “That’s not a federal offense,” Morrison shrugged, remembering his own youth. “The real problem is the stolen-car rap. Your father called in and gave the report. Once that report is filed and on record, there’s nothing anybody can do about it. You’re a car thief.”

  Finn was read his rights and driven to the Montauk station house; he waited while Danny Finn was called and asked to take the train out and identify his Oldsmobile and his son.

  Morrison brought Finn a cup of coffee. “You’ll have to wait a couple of years to get your license after pulling this stunt. Poor planning is what I’d call your activities.”

  “I’ll never have my own car, so it doesn’t make a difference,” Finn said. “I don’t need a license.”

  What made a difference was Danny Finn. He arrived at the station house in a little over an hour. He looked hard at his son.

  “That’s him,” Danny Finn said. “He stole the Oldsmobile.”

  Finn stood up; he was taller than his father, in a fair fight the boy might have won. “I didn’t steal anything.”

  Danny Finn might have asked that the charges be dropped against his son; he might have begged that the record be wiped clean. Instead he spit on the floor. “That’s him,” Danny Finn repeated. “That’s the fucking thief.”

  Finn inhaled; his breath caught in his throat and refused to go through his lungs. “I didn’t steal anything,” Finn said. “I went for a ride. That’s all.”

  “Don’t look at me,” Danny Finn said to his son. He turned to the lieutenant at the station desk. “I don’t want him to look at me,” he said.

  “You’re crazy,” Finn said, as his father signed the papers identifying the car and the thief; charges against Finn for grand auto theft would be pressed automatically by the state.

  “What are you doing?” Michael Finn said.

  “You’d better learn your lesson,” Danny Finn said without looking at his son.

  “Let’s go,” Morrison said to Finn.

  “Wait a minute.” Finn shook off the officer’s hand. “Don’t I get a lawyer?”

  “Come on,” Morrison said easily.

  Finn felt the old gathering of anger in his chest; there it was in his lungs and under his skin, circling his heart.

  “I have rights,” Finn said. “I’m entitled to something.”

  “I’ll give you something.” Danny Finn advanced toward his son, waving his fists.

  “I want a lawyer,” Finn said to Morrison.

  “You’ll get one,” Morrison answered.

  “Court-appointed,” the lieutenant called from the desk. “All minors are entitled to court-appointed attorneys.”

  “I’m not moving,” Finn said. “You can’t make me.”

  Morrison touched Finn’s arm lightly. “Don’t cause trouble,” he said to Finn. “Believe me. It’s just not worth it.”

  There was a circle around Finn: Morrison was to his right, the older officer was behind him, his father stood in front of him, and the desk lieutenant had begun walking toward
the circle.

  “All right,” Finn said. “I’ll go.” As he followed Morrison, Finn’s face was quiet, but inside no part of him was calm.

  Finn stayed in the County Juvenile Holding Center for two weeks, but not until the morning of his court appearance did he meet his lawyer. Finn walked into the meeting room, and the thing inside his chest weighted him down like lead. The court-appointed attorney was studying Finn’s folder; he didn’t look up when the boy sat across from him.

  “Car theft,” the lawyer said. Finn sat still and waited; finally the lawyer looked up and slowly removed his glasses. “Car theft,” he repeated.

  “That’s right,” Finn shrugged. “That’s what they say.”

  “You’ll get one to three at a school upstate.”

  “Do you want to hear what happened?” Finn asked.

  “I know what happened,” Finn’s attorney said. “Car theft.”

  Finn turned away. He had nothing else to say to his lawyer, and there was no point in talking, or in trying to explain, not even once they were inside the courtroom. The judge was fidgety, anxious for his lunch hour, and the hearing was soon over. After the arresting officers made their statements, Danny Finn was called to the bench. He was dressed in a blue pin-striped suit he had not worn since the funeral of an uncle in Brooklyn; while he gave his testimony, he eyed his son as if Michael were a wild animal who might spring at any moment. Danny Finn spoke slowly; he hoped only that his son would be taken someplace where the boy could learn his lesson, and learn it fast. Finn, himself, paid no attention to what his father said, he didn’t listen to a word. Instead, the boy looked out the window and watched a row of bluejays sitting on a telephone wire.

  By this time, Finn had no hope. He no longer dreamed at night, and he couldn’t remember the time when his dreams were filled with the sound of the ocean. When the judge announced Finn’s sentence, the boy did not have to listen to know he had been sold out—by his father and his court-appointed attorney, by the judge and by laws which he knew were not made to protect him. It did not matter to him that he had been given a short sentence—only one year upstate—with good behavior he would be back in his parents’ home, back at his old high school, in less than eight months. Finn did not hear the name of the institution he would be sent to; he did not care how far outside of Albany the place was or what facilities they had for boys like him. He was too busy to listen to the judge; he was watching the sky, through the courtroom window, concentrating only on the low clouds which moved like a white sea right outside the courtroom.