Finton Moon

by Gerard Collins

  “But if I can’t see her, I can’t help her.”

  “You need to go home. This family’s had enough upset without you coming along and making it harder. No one here even knows who you are—but we knows your father, and that’s enough.”

  “That don’t matter.” He summoned the strength to disobey, despite his trembling legs. “I know Mary—that’s what matters.”

  “I’m sorry—” she started to explain again, even as she averted her eyes and began closing the door. He bolted past her and dashed up the stairs.

  When he arrived at the entrance to the bedroom, she was lying in bed, the covers pulled to her chin as she shivered uncontrollably. Near the window, her father gazed out at the backyard, barely giving Finton a glance.

  “What do you want?” Her mother appeared startled, sitting beside Mary and holding her hand. “Oh, you—didn’t Teresa send you away? Who do you think you are?”

  “Finton Moon,” he said as he sniffled and swiped at his nose. “I’m here to save Mary.”

  The room smelled like mothballs and vomit, with a hint of Lemon Pledge. The earth-brown curtains were drawn shut, and Mary’s body was swaddled in quilts, the top one an embarrassment of butterflies. Finton stepped forward as if treading on thin ice, careful of breaking through to the other side. No one spoke to him, but they all observed Mary as if by ignoring the boy they could wish him away.

  He was vaguely aware of how he’d done this before. Just laid his hands on the sick part and… did something. Wish? Pray? He couldn’t remember.

  Somehow, he hoped, it would come to him.

  He forced his way among the strangers and stood beside the bed, gazing at Mary. Despite the blotches on her sallow cheeks, she looked peaceful with her eyes closed. Stepping forward, he leaned down and kissed her forehead. Her skin was cool and clammy. Glancing around, he realized they were all watching him and waiting for something miraculous to happen, even when they didn’t believe it could.

  “I need space,” he said. No one moved, but they all regarded him with quizzical expressions. He looked to Mary’s sister, Laura. “I can’t do it with everyone watching.”

  “Do what?” she asked. “There’s nothing to do. Let God take His course.”

  “Maybe God’s busy,” he said.

  “You mean to say you think God sent you?” A general sense of unease invaded the room as people began to squirm in their seats.

  “I just came to see if I could help.” Finton shrugged. “I’ve done it before.”

  “What have you done before?”

  “Helped sick people.”

  “I’ve heard about you.” Sylvia Connelly cleared her throat and stared at him. “Bridie Battenhatch.”

  Finton nodded, certain she was now going to toss him out.

  “The doctor says it’s useless. And I never put no stock in that nonsense with Miss Bridie.” But she nodded towards her sick daughter. “See what you can do.”

  He knelt on the floor and folded back the covers from the side of the bed, slowly so as not to disturb her. Fumbling around, he at last found Mary’s cold hand and clasped it in his own. He closed his eyes and focused.

  He saw the room go dark. The myriad colours. The flashes of red. The white apple tree on the Planet of Solitude.

  But it didn’t feel real. He wasn’t there. The images were inventions of his conscious mind. When he opened his eyes, they were all looking at him, simultaneously expecting and doubting. If the situation wasn’t so grave, they might have laughed at him.

  “Say the rosary,” he said softly.

  “What?” Laura’s eyebrows were raised in skepticism.

  “Hail Mary full of grace, the Lord is with thee.” Finton started it himself. The words tumbled from his mouth like pebbles—heavy, clumsy, and useless. If God doesn’t save her, there is no God. That’s what he kept thinking while he was praying. When a couple of other voices joined in and blended with his, he sped up the words. Gradually, they accumulated a force of their own and began to traverse the air around them, spinning about their heads like pixie dust from the wands of mischievous fairies. That was how he imagined it—the words circumnavigating the room like a purple streak of light, weaving in and out between them, pinging off the walls and occasionally flitting upon Mary’s upturned nose.

  “Blessed art thou amongst women and blessed is the fruit of thy womb, Jesus.”

  Over and over, they said the words, led by Finton, whose mind disengaged and started to wander, not to the Planet of Solitude, but to Mary’s mind.

  WakeupwakeupwakeupsweetMaryLordiswiththeehailmaryfullofgraceilove you

  please wake up

  They were still reciting the rosary when he felt a tingle in his hands, then a tremor. He opened his eyes. Mary was looking at him.

  He heard a gasp from Sylvia, and the rosary stopped.

  “She’s awake!” someone whispered.

  Someone else repeated it, louder. Then someone shouted it.

  The room fell silent.

  “Mary?” Sylvia shuffled closer to her daughter and swiped her hand over Mary’s glistening forehead. “Mary, are you awake?”

  But Mary made no sound and neither did she move. Her face lacked any expression. What he’d seen and heard might have been one last gasp.

  On the window ledge outside, a robin sang.

  The next few minutes were a blur. Sylvia Connelly fell prostrate across her daughter, weeping and wailing, while Laura sank to her knees and thanked Jesus. Mr. Connelly turned from the window and, upon seeing his daughter awake, he fell to his knees beside the bed, arm around his wife’s waist, and sobbing. The others seemed too stunned to know what to do, let alone comprehend what had happened.

  “A miracle!” one old man whispered, gazing at the picture of Jesus and blessing himself. “A miracle!” most of the others echoed, and they, too, looked at the picture and made the sign of the cross on their bodies.

  Finton squeezed closer to the bedside, but Sylvia was blocking Mary’s face. When at last he was able to glimpse her features, the blotchiness was still there, but she didn’t seem quite so pale. Her eyes were open but uncomprehending.

  The moment she blinked, he became aware of a sharp twinge in his right temple, and his head started to pound. As he rubbed the side of his head, she blinked again and it was as if her vision began to clear, as her pupils reset and focused. And finally, she coughed, sending everyone into a frenzy of thanks-be-to-Jesuses and hallelujahs!

  “Some water!” someone said, and within seconds, the young woman who, earlier, had blocked the front door, scurried in with a filled glass.

  Once he realized that no one was paying him any attention, Finton slipped out the bedroom door and crept down the stairs. He felt nauseous as he stumbled down the last few steps and banged his shoulder against the railing.

  By the time he’d opened the front door, they were all praying another rosary, sounding like an Easter mass in the throes of joyful gloom.

  “Where are you going?”

  He halted in the open doorway and looked behind him to see the same family friend at the top of the stairs, arms folded across her chest and tears on her cheeks. She tried to dry them, but couldn’t stem the tide.

  “Home.”

  He stepped out and pulled the door closed, but not before he heard her yell out in a quivery voice. “If you’re not the devil’s imp!”

  It wasn’t thanks, but it would do.

  When he got home, his mother was on the phone.

  “I will,” Elsie said, her face tight with anger. “Where were you?” He suddenly remembered that he’d left by the bedroom window and should have returned that way.

  “Out.”

  “That was Laura Connelly. She says there was quite the goings-on over at their place.” She regarded him closely, but Finton gave nothing away. “Says you were at the centre of it.”

  “I went over to see how Mary was doing.” He left her in the kitchen with an unreadable look on her face. As he lay on his
bed, he stared out at the afternoon sky. The sun had arrived, and the shadows of trees had lengthened and deepened. His head pounded, with thoughts pinging like a pinball as he tried to comprehend what had happened. He couldn’t rid himself of the feeling that he’d had little to do with Mary’s recovery, that somehow it had actually been Mary herself who simply had used Finton as a lifeline to pull herself out. Still, it would do no good to tell that to the rosary-sayers.

  “Finton?” His mother, after some hesitation, had followed him into the room. “Are you all right?”

  He said he was fine, but she sat on his bed and pushed up each of his sleeves, then ordered him to roll onto his stomach while she pulled up his shirt; then she did the same for his back. “You don’t have no scars,” she said, her voice trembling. “No bruises. No cuts.”

  “I don’t get many cuts—or bruises. You know that.” He saw no point in mentioning his headache.

  “I knew it.” She nodded vaguely. “But I didn’t… think about it.”

  His father’s heavy footsteps came down the hall, and he peered around the doorway. “What’s goin’ on in here?”

  “Nothing,” Elsie said and held her breath. “Just comforting him after what you put him through.” She seemed grateful when he retreated wordlessly to the living room.

  “You can’t tell anyone about this thing with Mary, okay?”

  “Why?”

  “Because they wouldn’t understand.”

  He said he wouldn’t, but he couldn’t help thinking about the witnesses at the Connelly house. It might not be so easy to silence them.

  The Days After

  It turned out that no one who’d been at the Connelly house cared to keep the story to themselves. After Finton had left, Mary gradually awakened more and more, and began to recognize her surroundings, as well as the faces of those who had gathered. A short time later, her fever returned, but her mother placed cold cloths on her forehead and gave her water, and the fever quickly receded.

  When the real change happened, it was radical. “Miraculous” was the word most often used. “I don’t care what his father done or didn’t do—that little Finton is a miracle worker,” Sylvia Connelly told anyone who would listen. The next day, she was at the grocery store, shopping for ice cream and any food she thought might tempt her daughter. Each time someone asked about Mary’s health—which was nearly everyone—she told them the story of how this young fellow from up the road had come to the door asking to help, and the next thing they knew, Mary was sitting up and drinking chicken soup.

  “What was wrong with her?” they’d ask.

  Sylvia would just shake her head and shrug her shoulders. “The doctors never said. Could have been a virus, some kinda new disease. It started out as pneumonia. But she don’t have it no more. Young Finton cured her.”

  “But how did he do it?” they would want to know.

  “He put his hands on her hands—and said some prayers.”

  “Amazing!”

  “He’s a little saint, is what he is. I’ll be singing his praises to the rafters for the rest of my days.”

  “Don’t blame ya, girl. If it was my young one saved from death’s door, I’d be singing the glory hallelujahs too!”

  “It was the strangest thing, though,” Sylvia would say with a perplexed look on her face, as if the mysteries of the universe were threatening to unfold in her brain.

  “What’s that?”

  “Well, when he took to saying the rosary, he was like—I don’t know—his eyes were all fluttery, and he started saying it faster and faster. None of us could keep up with him.”

  “The rosary!”

  “That’s what he did.”

  “He must be one o’ them what-ya-call-its? Prophets. That’s it. He’s a messenger from Jesus!”

  “Well, I dunno.” Sylvia would start to walk away then, talking over her shoulder and laughing. “He’s something, for sure.”

  And she’d go off a few feet, only to be stopped by someone else, inquiring about Mary, and she’d start the same dialogue again.

  Elsie Moon happened to be in the supermarket that Monday morning, with her green bandana tied around her head, getting checked out as fast as she could. It must have scared her, Finton thought as she told the story at suppertime, because she looked as if the worst thing in the world had happened.

  “You’ll have to be extra careful from now on,” she told him.

  “Careful?” Tom wiped the gravy from his chin using the back of his hand. “What in hell’s name for?”

  Finton glanced back and forth from one parent to the other.

  Elsie wouldn’t even look at him. “People might not take it the way he means it.”

  “People!” Nanny Moon guffawed. “People can go to hell if they don’t know how to take it. Finton’s a child of God, plain as the nose on their face. If they can’t see that, they can kiss my arse and Finny’s.” She hoisted a half potato towards her mouth, paused and added, “And they can kiss Jesus’s arse too.”

  “Nanny Moon!” Elsie’s knuckles whitened around the fork handle.

  “He held hands with Mary Connelly. Big, fat, hairy deal,” Homer said. “I would’ve at least got a feel out of ’er while I was at it.”

  “Shut up, you!”

  “Finton, that’s enough.” Tom cast him a glare that made him lower his eyes and pretend to eat. “Homer, go to your room.”

  “Say a round of the rosary while you’re at it,” said Elsie while Tom sighed and shifted in his seat.

  “For God’s sake,” said Tom. “This is gone too far. She just got better. That’s all. She obviously wasn’t as bad off as they thought.”

  “You know what I’d like to see.” All eyes turned to Clancy. “I’d like to see Finton scare the shit outta the works of ’em. Start making the beggars work and the blind see.”

  “Beggars walk,” said Finton.

  “Who says all beggars are cripple? Anyways, you could make a fortune. You could make more money than Doctor Kildare.”

  “I don’t think I want to make money that way. I’m gonna be a writer.”

  “A writer?” His mother scrunched her face as if she’d tasted something sour.

  “I thought you were gonna be a priest.” Nanny Moon blessed herself. “That’s what you always said, wasn’t it? And I don’t see what’s changed now. If anything, you should be more likely to become a boy of the cloth.”

  “I don’t want to be a boy of the cloth. I want to write stories.”

  “Writers are smart,” said Clancy, “And they knows big words.”

  “I know words,” he said softly. But Clancy had struck a sensitive nerve.

  “Big words,” his brother said. “Besides, who do you know that’s a writer?”

  Finton fell silent rather than perpetuate the argument. Fact is, he didn’t know any writers. Didn’t know if just anyone could be one. But he would rather dream big and become disappointed than allow himself to be bullied into accepting his limitations.

  That night, he wrote another story, this one with the premise that Jesus was born in Darwin in 1960 as a redheaded girl named Evelyn. People didn’t know Evelyn was Jesus reincarnated, and they treated her with great cruelty; ultimately, Evelyn was killed by a bunch of bullies, who stoned her to death, and they all watched in the end as she ascended to heaven. He finished the story in one sitting and wrote “The End.” After he’d read it over one last time, he stuck it between the pages of his English grammar book, determined to show it to Miss Woolfred.

  The shouting began as soon as he got on the school bus. “Hey, there he is!” they yelled. Some ordered him to sit down with them; others shoved their books to the seat beside them or scooted over to occupy two places. The headache he’d gotten after healing Mary—or whatever he’d done—had subsided, but he was physically drained and slightly dazed, even so many hours after the incident.

  He automatically scanned for Mary, but, of course, she wasn’t there.

  Dolly in h
er usual seat, looked out the window, disinterested. Skeet was at home, apparently with the same illness that had affected Mary.

  “Don’t let him touch you!” someone shouted. A few others started chanting: “Coo-dees! Coo-dees! Finton Moon’s got coo-dees!”

  Two reached towards him as if to poke him. But he didn’t flinch. His best chance for survival was to assume a seat as quickly as possible. Alone in the back of the bus, Alicia was surrounded by a moat of empty seats as she, too, gazed out the window. Just glancing at her would get him severely taunted.

  Amid the din, Bernard Crowley cupped his mouth and yelled, “Aren’t you gonna sit with yer girlfriend?” Finton wanted to shout back at him, but didn’t see the point. Instead, he thought, Forgive them, Father, for they know not what they do.

  Overwhelmed, he wheeled around and sat on the floor, behind the driver’s seat.

  At school, Finton wasn’t normally the centre of attention, but this day they all stayed clear of him. In the classroom, he kept his head down or, alternately, stared out the window, incapable of focusing on work. Now and then, he’d catch someone looking at him—with either curiosity or disdain. Even Miss Woolfred occasionally glanced his way.

  Only Alicia came up to him at recess. “They’re all talking about you,” she said.

  “What are they saying?”

  “They don’t talk directly to me—you might’ve noticed.” She tried grinning, but he saw the hurt in her eyes. “But from what I can make out, they thinks you’re strange. They says you thinks you’re Jesus.”

  “I’m not—” He caught himself in midsentence and actually grinned, remembering the story he’d written the previous night. “I don’t think anything like that.”

  “Some of them heard you could raise the dead and heal the sick, and they thinks that’s pretty cool,” she said. “But that’s only a few. The rest, I’d be careful of.”

  “Thanks.”

  “Oh, and Finton.” She gazed right into his eyes. “You probably shouldn’t have talked to me.”

  “Why not?” He knew why not, of course, but saw no reason to be rude.