None of them were readers, except for an occasional Word Jumble or his father’s Mickey Spillanes. But Finton lived his life in books. They all complained he was too reclusive. “Too much to yourself all the time,” they mocked him. His father would call him “the lone wolf.” Novels were his means of escape, and he was keenly aware that they sharpened and defined the separation between him and them. The nature of that separation was something he couldn’t quite name, and yet he was sure it was symbolized by the fact that both of his brothers were given bicycles on their respective eighth birthdays, and yet Finton remained bikeless, walking everywhere. It wasn’t a big deal and yet, it was, for the small neglects contained larger meaning. His difference was further emphasized each time he was called out of bed to entertain some stranger with his ability to read. Sleepy-eyed and dressed only in his pajamas, Finton would stand in the kitchen in front of a visitor, and his father would hand him a book. “He’s some hand to read—just watch,” Tom would say. “Finton, read for the man. Show him what you can do.” The reward for meeting their expectations was usually a quarter, though sometimes as much as a dollar. But the effect on Finton was a burgeoning sense of difference, as they made a show, for strangers, of his ability to do something they themselves found mysterious and useless. The more he thought about it all, the more he wanted to get away.
Somewhere in the thicket behind him, a twig snapped and suddenly the woods seemed to split wide open. Flipping onto his stomach and supporting his rigid body with his elbows, Finton scanned the trees. Ceased breathing. Listened for another noise. His heart hammered. The hungry eyes of a girl he knew peered back at him from the shadows. A flash of red. For a half-minute, he didn’t breathe. Gazing and gazing, but finally, seeing nothing more, he gasped for air. The hungry eyes of Alicia Dredge had vanished, and the twig-snapping became increasingly distant. Although she never spoke to him, sometimes Alicia seemed to be constantly waiting for him and scouting him from a distance. To Finton, her behaviour was annoying. He wanted nothing to do with her. As he was thinking that fact, a mosquito buzzed near his ear, and he flicked it away.
Tucked away in the bottom bunk bed that night, staring at the picture of the tortured Jesus that hung on his wall, he wondered if there was anywhere in the world where he could ever feel secure and normal.
Battenhatches
(Autumn 1969)
By the time he’d turned nine, Finton had scurried hundreds of times past the Battenhatch house’s grim exterior. Arms flailing and heels kicking himself in the backside, he wouldn’t slow down until he had turned into Moon’s Lane a few yards down the road. He would peek out of one eye as he passed the mangle of birch and spruce that festooned the front yard. The interior layer of trees formed a ruddy wall of impenetrable red pine that cradled the house as the arms of a frail woman would embrace an unattractive baby. Their intent wasn’t to nurture, but to hide and suppress.
There had never been a husband as far as he knew—questions to his parents initiated a change in subject—and Miss Bridie Battenhatch’s daughter Morgan was rarely home. Lately, rumour had it, Morgan split her time between Moon’s Lane, her mother’s house, and the psychiatric ward at St. Clare’s in St. John’s. Sometimes, though, her dead father’s relatives would send for her to come stay with them in Halifax. “For her own protection,” Tom would say, as if twenty-year-old Morgan was harmless to anyone else.
For most of his life, Finton saw her only as his golden-haired babysitter, but there were often whispers that Morgan wasn’t normal. She was always swearing and talking back to her mother. Although most of what happened behind Battenhatch doors was unknown to the rest of Darwin, a passerby could hear bloodcurdling screams and the shattering of glass against walls, furniture being upended—all adding to the legend of Miss Bridie and, increasingly, that of her untamable daughter. While he didn’t witness any of those wilder moments, Finton could distinctly recall a specific summer afternoon when Morgan had demonstrated to Finton and Homer how to fry ants in their backyard with a magnifying glass, the sun’s rays, and a little patience. They’d accidentally set fire to the grass and Homer had dashed inside to tell. After Clancy and Elsie put out the blaze with buckets of water, both disciples were grounded and Morgan was sent home with a whack on the arse.
“The girl is not right,” Elsie said. “I don’t want her babysitting anymore.” Finton complained bitterly, since he was in love with how Morgan sometimes made fudge for the boys, swore violently when she lost at poker, and let them stay up late when their parents were gone to the Saturday night dances and political rallies. Nanny Moon agreed with Elsie, however, remarking how the Battenhatch girl sometimes stared off into space and talked to herself. “With a mother like that? It just goes to show,” Elsie said.
“All they’ve got comin’ in is Morgan’s babysitting and Miss Bridie’s welfare cheques,” Tom argued, but to no avail. Ultimately, he gave in to the nagging and banned Morgan from babysitting at the Moon house. Still, there were plenty of other places in Darwin for her to find work. Gradually, however, word had spread of Morgan’s exploits, and there was a rumour going around that she’d been caught in bed with one of the boys she was supposed to be looking after.
The other rumour was that, when she was eighteen, Morgan had thrown a rope over an exposed beam in her bedroom, stood on a chair and put a noose around her neck. Even bending her legs, of course, the ceiling was too low, and her mother had caught her before she could kill herself, throwing her arms around Morgan’s legs and thereby saving her from “an eternity in purgatory.” Instead, Morgan was sent to the psychiatric ward at St. Clare’s in the hopes that she could be cured of the darkness tormenting her soul.
One cold night in early September of ’69, there came a thunderous pounding upon the front door. Finton was parked on the floor, hugging a pillow and watching Gilligan’s Island, thinking he would never want to leave any island that had both an exotic Ginger and a pretty Mary Ann. He heard mumbling from the porch: “Morgan home from the mental—Miss Bridie—fire, Tom.”
As if on cue, a mournful siren’s wail pierced the night. Finton dashed to the kitchen and climbed onto the kitchen counter to peer out the window. He was just in time to watch the sleek, red truck, glistening in the moonlight between gathering dark clouds, its blood light flashing as it pulled in front of the ghostly residence.
Tom cursed under his breath, wondering aloud what that “bloodofabitch” was after doing now. He slipped his feet into his shoes and tied them rapidly. “I’ll go have a look, Else.”
Finton hopped off the counter in his bare feet. “I’m goin’ too!”
“Nearly bedtime for you. I’ll tell you about it in the morning.” Tom popped a cigarette between his lips, a frightened look in his cobalt eyes that made Finton all the more eager. Both of his brothers were out—likely down at the fire. So Finton feigned sleepiness, went to bed, and waited for the telltale creaking of his mother opening and closing the front door. Careful not to make the floorboards squeak outside Nanny Moon’s bedroom door, which was always barred tight when she was praying, he crept out into the night air.
Even from his own front step, he could see that the blaze had painted the sky a lurid orange-blue. It was like stepping inside the hell of his nightmares. Flames seeped like liquid from the eaves of Miss Bridie’s house. Orange sparks spattered upward and twirled about like fireflies before settling mischievously among black branches. Suddenly, Finton was terrified: it had been a warm, dry Indian summer up until that day, and the fire would spread quickly to the trees and houses on Moon’s Lane.
He galloped down the lane, feeling as if he were entering the screen of a colour television like he’d seen on display at Sam’s Stereo. About a hundred Darwinians had congregated before the burning house while, all around them, treetops blazed and the velvet stream that flowed between Moon’s Lane and the Battenhatch estate glowed silent orange and blue. Red parking lights winked on and off for half a mile, while the flashing lights of an RCMP patro
l car bathed everything in hysterical crimson.
At first, Finton watched the show from the bottom of Moon’s Lane. Nearly everyone he knew was standing there, driven out of their homes and drawn to the flames, curiosity and fear etched on their faces. Some, like his father, were lured by compassion for a woman whose daughter was trying to burn her home to the ground. Most were drawn by the desire to witness the unveiling of Bridie Battenhatch.
Strange visions too clear to be real presented themselves inside his head. Miss Bridie rocking back and forth, counting blue ceramic rosary beads with her spindly fingers, wheezing an old song from her blackened lungs. Beside her, a man genuflected on one knee, using one hand to protect his eyes from the overpowering smoke. He grabbed hold of the woman’s arm just as a flaming beam crashed from above and hurled him backwards, smacking his head on a table and leaving him dazed on the floor.
Finton blinked—not exactly seeing, but imagining. He had these kinds of visions occasionally and they sometimes came true. Didn’t I dream this? he wondered in a voice that seemed outside himself. Blinking again to reset his focus, he identified his mother at the fringes of the crowd, peering into the fire, double wrapping her orange-lined navy parka around her as the wind riffled through the grey fur trim of her hood. She always seemed to be cold and alone. Just off to her right his mother’s sister-in-law, Aunt Lucy, leaned forward like a dying willow over her nine fatherless children who huddled like strewn petals at her feet. A quick scan of the crowd showed his best friend Skeet Stuckey smoking and sputtering a string of curse words; Winnie and Francis Minnow, arm in arm, chatting to each other in soft, calm voices; young Doctor Abel Adams; Davey Doyle, star pitcher of Clancy’s softball team, the Esso Extras; his mother’s Uncle Tim with the red cheeks and gleaming, bald head; and Albino Al Kelly with his older brother Lance, the bartender at Jack’s Place. Also guest starring were various teachers, particularly Father Power, who stayed in his car with the windows rolled up, as well as Miss Fielding and Miss Woolfred, who stood talking to each other, their eyes shining with fear. He also noted a murder of Crowleys that included his mortal enemy, Bernard. Behind the Crowleys stood a flock of Dredges, including the pretty one, Alicia, with the hungry eyes. Beside her was a gaggle of girls Finton knew from school. Tall, strong Dolly Worchester looked as if she could lead an army of Amazons into battle. But Mary Connelly, with her needle-thin body, seemed in perpetual need of a hug; he wished he had the nerve to offer her one.
Standing atop the culvert where the river ran beneath the road, Finton observed the rolls of black smoke spewing out from the windows and eaves in an ominous cloud that extended as far as he could see, above all their heads and over his parents’ house at the crest of Moon’s Lane.
A dark figure bolted out of the house and fell face forward onto the ground. It was his father, he quickly realized, who stumbled as if drunk, then rolled onto his back to suck the dense air into his lungs, his sweaty visage reflecting orange and black. Two men with worried expressions hovered over him. They kept looking at the house where billows of smoke poured out the broken front window and the open door.
Sliding invisibly through the awestruck throngs, Finton sidled onto the ground beside his father.
“She won’t come out,” Tom Moon was saying. “Stubborn as they come, she is.”
“What’s wrong with ’er?” one of the men asked.
“She’s just sittin’ in her chair, rockin’ back and forth with everything going right to hell around her. ‘Let’s go, Miss Bridie,’ I says. ‘You’ll be burnt to death if you stays here.’ She don’t even look at me. Just rockin’ and singin’ ‘The Wabash Cannonball’.”
“Sounds like she’s in shock,” said the other one.
“Couldn’t stay no longer, b’ys.” Tom spit a black glob onto the ground in front of Finton. While the boy was still gazing at the shiny dark stuff that came from his father’s insides, Tom stood up shakily.
“Yer not goin’ back in!” the first man said, wiping the blackened sweat from his brow.
Tom stopped. Glared at the ground, absently rubbing a sore spot on his crown. “Are you goin’ to?”
Silence. Tom spit again—not angrily, but as a sign of covenant. Without another word—although Finton thought of a few things he could have said to the cowardly men—Tom darted into the flaming building.
Time stood still as he watched the front door. Presently, he felt a well-meaning hand on his shoulder, which turned out to belong to one of the cowardly men. Finton shrugged it off and dashed to the front step. As he peered through the smoke, the heat threatened to melt the flesh from his face. Finton shielded his head and stepped back.
He observed no more, for one of the cowards stepped in front of him, inadvertently posing a barrier between the flames and the boy. The man, who was Mayor Munro, seemed to be considering his options. Lucky for His Worship, and for Finton, Tom Moon’s backside broke the spell as, swearing like a madman and pulling with all his strength, he partially emerged from the curtain of smoke.
“Come on, Miss Bridie! There’s nudding in here for you now.”
“Morgan!” she was sobbing. “My Morgan’s still in there!”
“Morgan’s up at my place, Miss Bridie. She’s best kind. Now come on.” He jerked the rocking chair, in which the hysterical woman sat, onto the threshold. But they both came up solid in the door frame as she refused to be dragged any farther.
“S’me home, Tom! I can’t leave me ’ome!” Clinging one-handed to her blue ceramic rosary beads, she grasped both sides of the door frame. The sight of those beads was paralyzing; except in his vision, Finton had never actually seen them before. Meanwhile, Tom Moon kept tugging at Miss Bridie’s chair and swearing at her.
“I wants to go back home!” Bridie leaped from the chair and scampered inside the house, clutching her long, grey hair, rosary beads dangling from one hand.
“Jesus!” Tom spit on the porch once more. “You’re askin’ to get the two of us killed.” He hauled the rocking chair outside on the porch and flung it aside.
Finton lurched forward and grabbed his father’s belt above the left hip. “Don’t go in again, Dad!”
Tom didn’t hear him, though, and Finton got dragged a few feet before he fell aside. He wondered what sort of moral code reasoned that the life of a suicidal hag was worth a man leaving his family without a provider. Regardless of the reason, he left his youngest boy lying on the porch of a burning building. It was the closest to an apocalypse Finton assumed he would ever come: the flames, the heat, the smoke, the hordes, and the abandonment. This time his father returned in mere seconds, carrying Miss Bridie in his arms. He fell across the porch with her and pinned her to the ground as she flailed in her bare feet, crying out for her daughter.
The Girl in the Pink Coat
At the breakfast table, everyone talked about last night’s fire, but Finton ate quickly. Upon finishing, he mumbled gratitude to his mother, grabbed his bookbag, burst out of the house, leaped over the steps, and ran down the lane. Right about now, she would be emerging through her own front door and on her way to the red schoolhouse at the top of the hill. Rubbing his invisible power ring, he called on Green Lantern to help him fly at the speed of light, and his feet seemed to lift from the ground.
Before he veered right at the bottom of Moon’s Lane, he glanced to his left at the burnt remains of the Battenhatch house. It appeared more haunted than ever, especially now that he could see right through the dark, open space where the front door once concealed the secrets of those within. The stink of burnt wood and smoldering ash assaulted his nostrils as he flew past the awakening bungalows, towards Mary’s house, where he could see her in the distance, strolling and chattering with Dolly Worchester.
He couldn’t recall a time when he didn’t know Mary Connelly, and yet he would always remember the first moment he saw her. It was Grade One, the beginning of the school year. He was five and she was six because the results of a test administered by the Darwin School B
oard Authority deemed Finton more advanced than most children his age, and so he was permitted to skip kindergarten. Thus, he would always be a year younger than nearly all of his classmates. That first day, there was a girl wearing a pink nylon jacket so bright that it hurt his eyes. She had just hugged her father after letting go of his hand, and she strutted away from him like she was ready to attack the world.
Despite her small frame and wide, brown eyes that gave her the air of a fairy princess, she had a warrior’s spirit that was enhanced by the upward turn of her small nose, the quiet set of her determined chin, and the way her fine brown hair stranded across her face in the breeze. He’d been so entranced by that first sight of her that, as she approached him, he forgot to move. He just stared at her, admiring her luminous jacket and the confidence with which she tread the earth. She stopped in front of him, mere inches away, and only then did he realize he’d been standing in her path.
“What are you looking at?” she’d asked.
Finton Moon Page 3