Finton Moon

by Gerard Collins

  “Not me husband, b’y. Almost, but not quite.” Her eyes flickered with emotion, which she seemed anxious to smother. “Drink yer tea like a good boy.”

  Finton watched the fly still trying to conquer the leaf, which kept floating away from the drowning insect. “I’m not allowed to drink tea.” Unable to stand the guilt any longer, he finally reached into the cup and used his index finger to push the leaf towards the fly, allowing the tiny beast to save itself.

  Miss Bridie sighed. “Wasteful child. What grade are ya in?”

  “Eight.” Despite himself, he couldn’t help letting his eyes wander over to the picture beside her. Bridie, he decided, had been an attractive young woman. But his brain had difficulty bridging the gap between Beautiful Young Bridie and Plain Old Bridie. It was as if they were two different people with a common ancestry.

  “Smallest one, I s’pose.”

  “I’m bigger than some people.”

  She smiled thinly without showing teeth; he could tell by the unyielding cracks at the corners of her lips that she didn’t often smile.

  “Gordie wasn’t right,” she said. Finton felt as if he was watching one of those Japanese movies where the dialogue is a sentence or two behind the action. The effect was enhanced by the fact that he kept stealing looks at the old photograph, even while she was talking to him. “I’m prob’ly better off without ’im. But dis is not me home. I was practically a girl when he brung me here, then he knocked me up and left me. Drowned.” Her eyes shimmered as she nodded at the painted window. “Went off the road one night down by the fairgrounds. Dark ol’ stretch, I tell ya. He was there half the night before someone found him.” Miss Bridie sighed, rubbing her legs as if she were suddenly chilled. “Now here I am, forty-one years old, never married, a crazy daughter, and—”

  “Where’d you come from?”

  She grew thoughtful for a moment and stared at him, her gaze landing somewhere just beyond him. It was then that he realized what bothered him most about Miss Bridie: even though she was right there with him, she always seemed to be somewhere else.

  “My people are from the down the Shore,” she said. “That’s where I was when Gordie came puttin’ in the road. Mudder told ’im we already had a road, but they said that was only a cow path and the government sent ’im to widen the cow path and make it a real road for cars.” She seemed to resist smiling and clucked her tongue instead. “We didn’t have no cars, sure. Didn’t know what a car was.”

  She talked at length about horses and buggies, and long, long walks through the knee-deep snow until Finton became bored and restless.

  Nanny Moon was from the Shore as well and often told similar tales. “Gordie knew I was interested in his truck, so he took me for a ride one morning.” She halted abruptly and sat straight up in her chair. “Drink yer tea, b’y, before it gets cold as the devil’s tit.”

  Finton heard the smooth hum of a pickup as it zipped along the road in front of the house, but he couldn’t see through the painted windows. “Where’d you go?”

  She looked straight at him with her luminous eyes.

  “A place I’d never been,” she said. “Lotta miles away—too far. I never told me mom. But she found out. And now here I am. Dead boyfriend that woulda been me husband. A daughter in the mental, another took, and a burnt-out home in a place where ever’one thinks I’m a witch.” Finton’s eyes grew wide; he nearly lost his breath. Miss Bridie smiled without opening her mouth. “You think I don’t know what you and your friends say about me when yer out on that road?”

  “I never said nudding, Miss Bridie. Some people did, but I never.”

  She stood up and walked over to the stove, muttering mostly to herself. “If they don’t like the look of ya, they judges ya not fit, the unchristly sons o’ bitches.” Finton watched nervously as she plucked a piece of driftwood from the meagre pile beside the stove and held it over the bright, licking flames that nearly singed her arms. He felt the heat from where he sat and couldn’t take his eyes off the flames or the stick.

  “I gotta go.”

  She chuckled softly. “Good luck in that.”

  The door was jammed tight, too large for its frame.

  “Ya gotta pull real hard, b’y.”

  He did. He tried using both hands, with his feet planted on the wet floor.

  She laughed—a throaty, hoarse sound—as if she enjoyed his terror. “Ya’ll tell your friends I tried to put you in the stove, I s’pose.” She tossed the wood onto the flames, and orange sparks crackled gleefully upward. She shuffled over to Finton and took his chin in one of her leathery hands. He smelled lye.

  “No, ma’am. Promise. But I gotta go now. Mom said for me not to stay long.”

  She squeezed his chin, smiled briefly, then released him. “Go on then. Get home.” She took a step back and laughed. “Don’t ya wanna hear about yer second cousin Sawyer? Don’t ya wanna hear what happened to ’im?”

  Again, his eyes grew wide.

  “Oh, they didn’t tell you that part. Never knew you wuz related, did ya?”

  “I don’t care.”

  “Oh, I think you do.” She stood up straight, hands planted on her hips, no longer paying attention to the knife. “His mother was a Crowley that married a Moon—long time ago. And that Moon’s brother was your grandfather Ned. See? So you’re not only related to Sawyer, but to the Crowleys too.”

  “No, I’m not!”

  “Yes, b’y. And I’d say you’re dyin’ to know what the old witch knows. I can tell… and she do know stuff. She really do. And she’ll tell ya some more stories that’ll break yer perfect little heart if ya’ll give her a kiss and a hug.”

  Finton couldn’t move. He thought he might pee in his pants.

  “Come on, b’y. Wha’s wrong with ya?” She smacked her lips mischievously.

  “Un-unh. Let go o’ me.” Finton wriggled free and wrenched the door open with a two-handed tug of the rusty door knob.

  Miss Bridie sighed and clamped a hand to her left side—a reminder of the night he wasn’t even sure had really happened. “Go on then. Guess ya don’t care if he’s dead or alive… or how it involves yer father. I knows more about your father than any one of ye, I do. Stuff I’m sure you’d like to know. Stuff about you too, sure.”

  Finton wheeled around and peered into her eyes, transfixed by the humanity peeking out from the madness.

  “Oh yes,” she said. “There’s lots you don’t know about folks ’round ’ere. Small places got the biggest secrets.” She ambled to her seat at the table and wrapped her hands around the tea mug. “Yup. Lots to know. Where do people go, you must wonder,” she said, mostly to herself. “And where do everyone come from?” She appeared to lose interest in her captive audience and commenced gazing out the window. “I wasn’t always like ya see me today. I used to be good-lookin’ once. Yer father thought so. Still do, I s’pose, in spite of it all.” She coughed and stared at the crackling stove, her back turned so that he couldn’t see her face.

  Finton edged towards the table, maintaining a distance. “What about Dad?”

  She glanced sharply towards him, though not right at him. “No kiss nor hug, no information.” She patted her lips with two fingers—the same two that had just been fishing down the front of her dress—and then spread her arms wide to embrace him.

  No, Finton thought. Nothing is worth that. But who would know if he kissed the old hag? Surely she wouldn’t tell anyone. She had no friends.

  “Thinkin’, are ya? Well, don’t think too long. On second thought, I don’t think I’ll tell ya anyway. You don’t seem like ya wants to know.”

  “I do.” Finton scrambled forward, closed his eyes and thrust his lips towards her. He waited. Then he heard her cackle as if she was in on a private joke. Thinking he was safe, he just opened his eyes in time to see her pale cheek press against his lips. Chalk that was in the freezer for a month. She set her hands upon his shoulders to draw him in, but he only touched her arms and drew aside to
avoid capture. Dizzy, he steadied himself by grasping the back of a chair. “So tell me.”

  She smiled. “Tell ya what?”

  “About Sawyer and Dad.” His voice trembled. “The secret stuff.”

  “Nudding to tell.” She sipped her tea and fell quiet, her lips formed a mocking grin. “Yer a fine kisser, though.”

  “Shut up!” he shouted, and he kicked the table, spilling her tea and washing the black fly onto the floor where it struggled to lift off. After a few seconds of broken-hearted wing-flapping, it seemed to solidify and congeal, becoming as one with the sticky liquid that surrounded it.

  “Watch yerself,” she said calmly, sitting up straight.

  “You watch yourself. You tricked me. You’re not s’posed to tell lies. My mother told me that.”

  “Yer mother, eh?” She sighed patiently and gazed out the window. “You don’t wanna know what I know.” She glanced to his left. “Yer too young.”

  “Tell me.”

  She eyed him suspiciously, looking as if she was withholding much more than she was about to tell. “Sawyer’s waitin’ for ya.”

  “How do you know?” He sat down, feeling dizzy again.

  “I just know.”

  “But how?”

  She paused. “Ever think about a song and then it comes on the radio?”

  Finton nodded. “So?”

  “That’s how I know.” She tapped the centre of her forehead. “Ya don’t have to believe me. But it’s true.” She looked out the window as if seeing beyond her garden of death and decay. “Face down and cold as the grave.”

  “Stop,” said Finton, suddenly standing. “Don’t talk about it no more.” Not only did the details remind him of his disturbing vision, but the look on her face was frightening. Her eyes had narrowed into dark slits, her face both hard and inhuman.

  “Yer father,” she said, suddenly straightening, shaking her head, and remembering where she was. “Yer father can tell you the rest. Maybe someday.”

  “Tell me now.”

  “Forget about me, sure. I’ve heard things about you. Things that make me wonder what in God’s name you are.” The way she looked down at him over her chest made him feel even smaller than he was. Then her eyes softened, becoming almost kind. “I believe I owe you a thank-you.”

  He knew the incident she was referring to, but he wondered what she’d heard.

  “You needn’t say anything,” she said. “We both know what you did.” She leaned forward and partly whispered: “If you ever wants some help with that stuff, you knows where to come.”

  Petrified at first, Finton suddenly understood what she meant and he ran from the house as fast as he could, slamming the door behind him.

  The Cathedral

  It was Clancy who had introduced him to his first love. His older brother had opened the passenger door of the Valiant and said, “Get in.” Finton was six at the time. Clancy had convinced Elsie to drive them to the library, with the understanding that he and Finton would walk home after. “You’re gonna love it,” Clancy had promised. Six years later, Finton still felt indebted to his oldest brother for showing him the portal to an alternate universe, as well as to the world outside Darwin. By the time he was twelve, the library had become his cathedral, a place of sanctuary from the hardness and confusion.

  The bright and spacious Darwin Public Library was divided by an inch-wide strip of wood into two distinct rooms. One room, also the librarian’s reception area, was marked “Children’s Books” and the other was marked “Adult Books.” The former was a place that welcomed him; the latter remained a forbidden country. On that first day, with Clancy watching over him and Finton trembling with excitement, Finton had selected a dozen books. When he’d brought them to the checkout counter, Miss Patterson, the young librarian, had laughed and said, “You shouldn’t take more books than you can read in two weeks.” Finton promised to read them all, but she still called his mother, who assured the librarian that Finton had, in fact, been able to read since he was two. While she obviously considered the claim dubious, Miss Patterson stamped the books and gave Finton his first library card, which, to him, might as well have been a key to the kingdom of heaven. With a willing heart, Clancy, who only went to the library for Hot Rod, Hockey Illustrated and Popular Mechanics magazines, had helped his youngest brother carry home the bulk of the booty. From that Saturday forward, the library became Finton’s refuge from the world of Darwin, all books connected to one another in a single, unified universe. It was with great pleasure that, within five days, he’d returned all of the books and informed Miss Patterson that he’d read them all and was back for more.

  As the years went on, Saturdays became sacred because that was the day he trekked the two and a half miles to the library, found a good book and curled up to read on a bench in the children’s section. There, you were only allowed to whisper, and Miss Patterson would shush anyone who spoke too loud.

  Recently, however, he had developed a problem. In the course of six years, he’d read nearly every book in the children’s section and now he was bored. For several months, he would, on occasion, gaze wistfully at the “Adult Books” sign, peer inside the forbidden zone where, most of the time, the three comfy leather chairs sat empty, and wish with all his heart that he could enter and embark on the new set of adventures it offered.

  One particularly rainy and windy Saturday, he explained his wish to Miss Patterson, asking if he might be permitted to “go into the adult section,” but she was concerned that he was leaping too soon.

  “You’ve read all the books in the children’s section?” she asked.

  “Yes. Every one that I want to.”

  “Well,” she said, with a tinge of worry. “Let me call your mother.”

  While the sweet librarian was on the phone with Elsie, the front door opened, and Mary Connelly strolled in with Dolly and another girl, Willow Lush, who had recently resettled to Darwin from Labrador. Willow had long red hair and thick-rimmed glasses, but she was taller than Dolly, with slightly smaller breasts, and she was twice as pretty, despite her freckles. They talked among themselves and barely noticed Finton at first.

  “Well, I talked to your mother.”

  “Did she say I could go into the ADULT section?” It was for Mary’s sake that he raised his voice on “adult,” and, sure enough, she glanced his way, smiled and waved as she passed by with the other two girls.

  “She said it was up to me. But I have to say I’m concerned, Finton. What kind of books do you like?”

  “I don’t know. All kinds.” Truthfully, he didn’t know what to expect in the adult section. For all he knew, there would be pictures of bare breasts and blood-drenched murder scenes, with more swearing per page than he’d hear in a year on the playground.

  “Do you like Westerns? Mysteries? Travel? Books about life? Philosophy—”

  “Yes,” he said, nodding for each genre. “I want to read it all, Miss Patterson. I’m bored to death with all the children’s books. Some of them I’ve read two or three times.”

  It was true. He’d already been through every Hardy Boys book and even the Nancy Drews, although he didn’t let his brothers catch him reading about a girl’s adventures. He’d devoured the Enid Blytons, the Freddy the Pig Detective series, the Doctor Doolittle books and the Tintin comics, as well as Carbonel, Peter Pan, Alice in Wonderland, Bambi, The Wizard of Oz, Return to Oz, Black Beauty, My Friend Flicka, Man O’ War, Brighty of the Grand Canyon and every book the library had on horses. From various books, likely rarely read, he’d learned about Houdini and magic, mask-making, handicrafts, storytelling, weather forecasting, and judo (most fascinating chapter: “How To Fall”). In short, he really had read every juvenile book he intended to read and was more than ready for something more challenging.

  “Well, I see we can’t hold you back any longer,” she said. “But you will need another library card.” Every couple of months, when his card was stamped full with return dates—one for every bo
ok he’d borrowed—she issued a new one. He kept the old ones as a record of all his adventures in reading. This would be card number sixteen.

  “Somebody likes to read an awful lot,” he heard a female voice say. It was Willow, leaning on the far end of the desk, waiting to ask the librarian a question.

  He couldn’t tell if he was being made fun of him, so he simply said, “I do.”

  “Me too,” she said. “Do you like Alice in Wonderland? That’s my favourite. I’ve read it, like, eight or nine times.”

  “I read that a long time ago. I’m in the adult section now.” He gulped hard, thinking how pretty she was and that he’d never talked to a girl in the library before.

  “Adult? Wow. You must be special.”

  The words made him feel good, but he still wondered if she might be teasing him. Her face was earnest and kind, though, and he thought he might be able to trust her. “Naw. This is my first day. I haven’t even been in there yet.”

  Miss Patterson smiled as she gave him his new card. “Welcome to the adult section. And if you read anything you don’t understand, just skip over it. You don’t need to know yet.” She winked at him, his sign of initiation.

  “Well,” he said to Willow. “I better go.”

  “Yeah,” she said. “Those books aren’t gonna get read by themselves.”

  Looking up at the big sign in white letters—“Adult Section”—he felt a slight thrill as he crossed the threshold. For the next half-hour, he browsed through the stacks, finding most of the books too advanced or uninteresting. They were all about sex, adultery, murder, and war—subjects he was pretty sure he wasn’t allowed to read about. He tugged at the spine of A Spy in the House Love and browsed through it. The title promised excitement, and the author was Anaïs Nin—which, in his mind, was pronounced “Anus Nine.” The words drew him in, like a hungry animal devouring unexpected food: “Moonlight fell directly over her bed in summer. She lay naked in it for hours before falling asleep, wondering what its rays would do to her skin, her hair, her eyes, and then deeper, to her feelings.” As intoxicating as the words were, he was embarrassed to be reading them in public, so he put the novel back. Emboldened and intrigued, he opened Lady Chatterley’s Lover, knowing by the title that its contents were forbidden. “She lay with her hands inert on his striving body,” he read silently, “and do what she might, her spirit seemed to look on from the top of her head, and the butting of his haunches seemed ridiculous to her, and the sort of anxiety of his penis to come to its little evacuating crisis seemed farcical. Yes, this was love.” Softly, hands trembling, he put the book back on the shelf, promising himself that, one day, he would read it all. As thrilled as he was by the appearance of words like “body,” “penis,” and “spirit” he didn’t understand what the author was saying.