Finton Moon

by Gerard Collins

  Finton went to mass, but all through the service, even the stunning sight of Mary Connelly in a short, yellow dress couldn’t distract him from thinking about Phonse’s words and his father’s quiet anger in response.

  That night, Finton went to bed his usual time. His father had gone out after supper and, while it was past ten o’clock, he hadn’t returned. Finton fell asleep quickly and dreamed he saw a man in the woods, encrusted in ice, lying face down in the marsh. His eyes were open and staring, his mouth forming words that Finton couldn’t decipher. In the dream, Finton waded through bog that was filled with floating chunks of ice. With every step toward the fallen man, Finton sunk deeper into the marsh, fearing the man would drown if he didn’t reach him soon. As he slogged closer and felt the ground give way beneath him, he sank to his neck in frigid water. He gazed, shivering, into the eyes of the man. “You shouldn’t run away,” Finton told him, and the man’s face dissolved and reformed as Sawyer Moon’s. Finton, meanwhile, was sucked deeper into the muck. When he awoke, he was curled in a fetal position, arms clenched around his body, tight to his chest. He’d awakened in the midst of praying a “Hail Mary.”

  Two days later, he still hadn’t told anyone about his dream. Tuesday morning, all through breakfast, he kept replaying in his mind the parts he remembered. No one would notice if he didn’t talk during meals, since Tom insisted on complete quiet unless he chose to announce something or regale them with a story. So Finton kept to himself, noticing only that Homer was missing, probably still in bed.

  “They’re getting a search party out,” Tom said while buttering his toast. “No one’s laid eyes on Sawyer since Sunday night.” Finton stopped chewing and stared at his father.

  “Minnie called the hospital.” Elsie hoisted a fork loaded with scrambled eggs towards her mouth. “The morgue too.” The nurse on duty at the hospital had alerted the police of the potential missing person.

  “I dreamed about this,” Finton said softly, looking at his plate. But no one heard him. They never paid much attention to you when you were being good.

  The rumours swirled as Finton scrambled onto the yellow school bus. Now that he was attending the school in the heart of Darwin, Finton was the first one picked up by the bus driver each morning. He beelined for the last seat so he could peer out the back window and revel in the vision of the houses of Darwin, and especially Moon’s Lane, slipping past and fading in the distance.

  Minutes later, the bus grunted to a halt and idled in front of the Stuckey place. Skeet flung himself up the steep black stairs, scrambled down the aisle to where Finton sat, and collapsed into the seat across from him. Skeet was always running late and had often confessed both his hatred for school and his plan to quit on his fifteenth birthday. He nattered so often about committing violence towards one of his teachers that Finton wondered if Skeet would graduate to the penitentiary one day. Skeet stretched out his legs and laid his books on his lap, rocking and rolling with the jittery bus.

  “They can’t find Sawyer,” Finton said. The bus sputtered and rattled up the hill.

  “Took off somewhere, I’d say—up in the woods.” Skeet reached inside his jacket and pulled out a foot-long piece of red licorice. Finton couldn’t help notice that his friend’s hand was shaking. The bruised knuckles weren’t so unusual, as Skeet seemed to be always into a racket with someone. But something seemed off about him this morning. “Piece?” he said, offering him a string of licorice.

  “No, thanks.” Finton looked out at the passing woods. The trees glistened with melting frost. “Another fine day—but it was some cold last night, I tell ya.”

  “Got that right.” Skeet paused thoughtfully, clamped his teeth around the licorice, bit off a piece and gnawed on it. “Mudder even took Jakey in last night. She said it weren’t even fit for a dog out. Mudder’s a case, b’y.” He jammed the licorice into his pocket and pulled out a Marlboro, which he stuffed into his mouth. “I was out for a while, but had to get home out of it. Freeze the balls off a brass monkey.”

  The bus driver glared into his big, rectangular mirror and yelled, “Put that fuckin’ cigarette away or I’ll tell your mother!”

  Skeet gave him the finger—the one adorned with a wide, copper ring. “Fuck off,” he muttered. “I’m not in the mood for you today.”

  Finton fell quiet as they passed through Laughing Woods. Nighttime in the woods was darker than anywhere else, especially this time of year when the days were warm and dazzlingly bright, while the nights seemed colder and more foreboding. Sawyer had probably stumbled a lot, tripping in roots and stones. The branches would have scratched his face and tortured him as he called out to his mother.

  “What’s wrong wit’ you?” Skeet stuck the Marlboro behind his ear.

  Finton blinked, realizing he’d drifted off. He could smell the turpentine and 10W-40 off Sawyer Moon’s jacket, but Skeet seemed far away. “Just thinkin’ about Sawyer.”

  Skeet shrugged and gazed out the window. “Poor bugger’s better off dead.”

  “Nobody’s better off dead.”

  “Sawyer is.”

  Finton wrapped himself in silence as the bus squealed to a stop for Dolly. She strode to the back of the bus in cloppy high heels, clasping her books to her breasts and propping them up, presumably to make them look bigger. “You guys heard? Sawyer Moon’s prob’ly dead.”

  Al Kelly followed behind her; because Al was an albino, everything he said carried extra weight. He calmly sat down, taking up a full seat, as they each did. “Dad says he’s gone to St. John’s on a drinkin’ spree.”

  “So how come no one knows where he is then?” Dolly blew a bright pink bubble the size of a plum, popped it, cracked it, and renewed her vigorous chewing which gave Finton a weird, gushy feeling just below his stomach. He watched her intently until she glanced at him. When he looked away, she smiled to herself. While the bus stopped at the Connelly house, he waited breathlessly for Mary to get on board. When he saw her, his brain slipped into a sort of alternate space from where he watched her every move but was unable to sense anything around her except vague images and muffled noises. When she finally took her seat near Dolly, Finton gradually began to breathe again, and the world returned to normal.

  “I bet he’s after callin’ Fanny Fukuto and he’s in gettin’ laid,” Skeet said.

  Finton squirmed. He didn’t exactly know what “gettin’ laid” was, but he had heard some of the boys talking about finding Fanny “Fuck-you-too” in the phone book under “Escort,” then calling her and hanging up, giggling among themselves.

  Al shrugged and pushed up his glasses on his nose so that they squared with his face. “All I know, he was at Jack’s Sunday evening, and Jack gave him a beer. He asked Lance for one, but Lance wouldn’t because Sawyer’s not allowed to drink. They say Tom Moon bought himself two Black Horse and gave one to Sawyer on the sly.” Al’s information was pretty reliable, since Lance, the bartender, was Al’s older brother. “Sawyers’s not supposed to be at it at all, sure. His medication’ll kill ’im.”

  Dolly took her compact out of her big purse and dabbed her cheeks. Finton tried to look away, but couldn’t. She reapplied her lipstick, smacked her glossy lips together and bit benignly on a lacy white handkerchief with two other sets of pink lip marks already on it. Finton’s head felt woozy. Dolly did not acknowledge his interest in her cosmetic touch-up, but there was something self-conscious in the way she looked at no one as she performed. “Either way,” she said, “I wouldn’t wanna be the one that liquored him up—’specially if he turns up dead.”

  “Maybe he just don’t wanna be found,” Skeet said, squinting out the window at the passing woods. Finton stared into woods as well, but found himself mesmerized by the November sun.

  Dolly shook her head. “Someone woulda seen him by now.”

  “Not if he don’t want to be seen,” said Finton. “You can hide forever if you don’t want anyone to find you.” Chewing worriedly on his bottom lip, he sneaked a look
at Dolly applying makeup in her compact mirror.

  “Why do you even care?” she asked. “What’d Sawyer Moon ever do for ye?”

  “I don’t care about ol’ Sawyer Moon,” Mary said. “I’m glad he’s gone.”

  “Me too,” said Finton. “We’re all better off.”

  Skeet assessed him warily. “For someone who don’t care, you sure seem to care a lot.”

  “I just don’t think he’s dead. Probably saw his chance and got the hell outta Darwin.”

  “What are you—psychic?” Dolly asked.

  Skeet poked Finton’s shoulder as the other two laughed. He noticed that Mary had taken to gazing out the window.

  “No.” Finton spoke softly, almost to himself.

  That same night, in his dream, Dolly chased him through the graveyard—naked, her boobs bobbing gently. “Give me a kiss, Finton. I won’t bite you, my darling!” Her pink lipstick and white pearls glimmered in the moonlight. Finton ran as fast as he could, leaping over headstones and panting. He felt Dolly’s hot breath on his neck as she drew closer on her long, spidery legs.

  She was almost upon him when he started crying—deep, wretched sobs that rolled down his cheeks and caught his breath short. “Lemme alone!” he cried out.

  “Just one kiss, my love.” She captured and hugged him, kissed his face all over.

  “No! Get away!” Hands flailing, legs kicking.

  His left hand fell under the curve of her right breast, and suddenly he seemed to lose control of his mind and body. He broke from her grasp and scurried away again.

  “Finton!” He heard a raspy female voice—not Dolly, but Miss Bridie. “You’re going the wrong way,” she said. He turned around to see her standing at a distance, like a bride of Dracula in red lipstick, a black wig, and a large, blue, cleavage-bearing dress. She strutted towards him, and he was trapped, struggling to breathe.

  Backing away from her, Finton turned around in time to feel his feet give way beneath him. He plunged into a shallow grave, face down in the dirt, with Dolly on top of him, kissing and stroking him. When he woke up in his bed, his right hand covered his hot groin and a sick, smelly feeling of guilt filled his head. Jesus looked down on him with sorrowful eyes that followed him all the way to the bathroom at the end of the hall.

  A light was on in the kitchen. He could hear murmuring—the whispered words: “…not sure what to do.” That was his father. The second, more hostile voice belonged to his mother. Hand pressed to his cold, sticky groin, he leaned forward and strained to hear.

  “We’re all better off,” his mother said. “Some things are better kept to yourself.”

  His father sighed, followed by a scrape of the chair across canvas. “Sometimes, I don’t even know what’s right anymore. I mean what if—”

  “Just stop it, Tom. Forget about it. That’s what’s right.”

  “Right for who?”

  There was a pause before his mother spoke. “It never gets easy, does it?”

  He couldn’t hear what she said after that, for his mother had lowered her voice. But his father’s response was, “He’s all right. He’s a Moon, after all.”

  Finton felt his nose running and had to swipe it with his sleeve, but he still resisted the urge to run to the bathroom. The voices hushed, as if the speakers had heard something. “I wonder how much he knows,” Elsie said, then she rose from her chair, her shadow shifting towards his hiding spot behind the chimney. As his mother’s chair was scuffed aside, Finton slipped into the bathroom and locked the door behind him. After cleaning himself with a wet face cloth, which he buried in the hamper, he climbed back in bed, where the eyes of Jesus still judged him.

  It was a long time before he fell back to sleep.

  The Devil’s Greatest Trick

  The next day, he stood at the roadside, gazing across the gate at the newly snow-brushed landscape. A rotted, white picket fence halfheartedly protected the property, most of its palings were dead or dying, some buried in tall grass that had laid down and surrendered to the oncoming winter. The shiny, black shingles of the new roof glistened in the sunlit frost and edging of snow. Meanwhile, the sweet smell of fresh-cut lumber drew him in. A busy silence droned in his ears, while the aroma of mildewed sawdust tickled his nose. Finton was seduced forward by the resurrected, but chronically ill house, with its painted yellow windows, sunbeaten clapboard, and newly painted bottle-green door. At that moment, he was keenly aware of the inadequacy of his youth, his relative newness to these strange surroundings.

  Peering through the key hole, he saw no sign of life. Miss Bridie appeared to be out. He knocked anyway and was shocked when the quietude surrendered to the sound of shuffling feet. While he considered running away, the door opened.

  Miss Bridie cocked her head sideways and regarded him as if he were prey. Her unwashed hair hung about her face, traces of orange whispering of the redhead she once had been. The lines around her blue-black eyes made her look tired, and yet those same eyes contained a vivacity that the rest of her lacked. They looked right through him as if to read his thoughts, even though she seemed to be thinking about something else. Because her head was slightly too large for her neck, it seemed to float above her gaunt body that was draped in a sack-like dress sprayed with grey and black flowers. Finton couldn’t swear he wasn’t seeing a ghost, nor did the odour emanating from Miss Bridie discourage his suspicions. If she had, indeed, been good-looking once, from this close up, he could see little trace of her former glory, except in those remarkable eyes that suggested intimacy with such horrors as he couldn’t imagine. Perhaps it was the result of being bedridden for so long after the fire because of damaged lungs. Maybe because she had never fully recovered, emotionally or physically, from being stabbed by her own daughter. Or maybe there was some other reason that had long ago sprung something vital loose within her. But, regardless of the reasons for her rapid deterioration, she had looked much better from the distance of a high tree branch.

  “What do you want?” She did not demand so much as inquire disinterestedly.

  Barely able to breathe, Finton spoke sporadically, in short sentences. “Don’t know if you know me.” She stared at him. “Finton Moon,” he said.

  He looked past her uncertainly and into the dark house.

  “Tom’s boy.” When she spoke, it was the same futile sound like deadened air an accordion makes when it squeezes shut without fingers holding down the buttons. Her words came heavy and slow. “He’s a good man, that Tom.”

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  “Are you like him or your mudder?”

  Finton chose the answer he knew would gain him entry. “Mostly father.” He felt guilty about having to choose, so he added, “I got Mom’s height.”

  She appraised him up and down, then turned and hobbled back into the house. “Yer mudder haven’t had an easy—” she breathed with difficulty, holding onto her side where he knew she’d been stabbed “—life.” She sat at the kitchen table. Assuming he was expected to follow, Finton reluctantly closed the door and took a seat.

  The table was large, pure Newfoundland pine, painted chocolate brown to match the chairs. A steaming, brown teapot sat in the middle of the table. There were two cups and saucers, as well as two plates, and everything seemed coated in a layer of fine dust. She reached for the pot and poured for them both. “Drop o’ tea—good for what ails ya.”

  He thanked her even as he watched the leaves floating at the top. He asked for milk and sugar, but she laughed and said she liked it black. “It’ll clear ya out better.”

  Finton didn’t really think he needed to be cleared out and certainly didn’t crave anything that would perform that task.

  “Why’d you come?” she asked after she’d poured the tea.

  Finton shrugged, unable to find the words to explain that everything seemed crazy and that he had seen her in a dream last night.

  She blinked as if refocusing and, in that moment, he became absolutely enthralled with her eyes, how
much lovelier they were than the rest of her. “I was expecting you.” Taking advantage of the long silence, he lifted the cup to his face. When he saw all the unsavoury green things floating around in it, he pretended it was too hot.

  “Do you know what happened to Sawyer?” he asked.

  While she slurped from her tea, he looked around for signs of both humanity and monstrosity. His gaze lit upon a recently dusted object that was set in the middle of a white doily atop a chocolate brown hutch with glass doors: a black-and-white picture in a plain wooden frame. In an old-fashioned, knee-length dress that looked to be her Sunday best, her light hair coiffed to be nearly glamorous, the face of the slim, but sturdy, young woman in the photo shone with the splendour of innocence. Glancing from the woman before him to the one in the picture, he satisfied himself that they were one and the same. Due to the ravages of time and neglect, they didn’t look much alike, but there was enough similarity in the length of hair, those dark eyes that even then were slightly troubled, and a thin, pointed nose that Finton was certain of the relationship between past and present. The only difference was that the eyes of the younger woman were even more full of life, the nose not so prominent, and the hair, while untamable, had been subjected to an attempt at styling.

  “’Course I do.” As he listened to the wheezing of the house, he realized there was no clock ticking. Nor was Miss Bridie wearing a watch or any jewelry, except for a silver chain that disappeared down the front of her dress. Her eyes had followed his, and she fished it out for him to see. “It’s a little crucifix.” She displayed it for only a couple of seconds before returning it to its safe place. “Gordie gave me that when he brung me here. Same year he left me here, just meself and Morgan.”

  Finton watched a black fly—unnatural for this time of year—climb out of his tea and onto a tea leaf. Empathy tugged at him, but he wasn’t about to rescue it or drink the tea. “I never knew you had a husband.”