“I told him we’re eatin’ supper,” said Homer.
Just then, the telephone rang. The voice on the other end sounded panicked. “My daughter is having a seizure.”
The next time, someone’s grandmother was dying of old age.
“I can’t help that,” Finton told his mother, who relayed the message. He noticed an aching and trembling in his fingers, as if someone had stepped on them and ground them into the earth. So he held them between his legs to ease their throbbing.
Around ten o’clock that night, things finally settled down. The telephone hadn’t rung in nearly twenty minutes, and no one had come to the door in the past half-hour.
Finton decided to go to bed early, dreading the next time the phone would ring. His entire body was tingling, with a tightness in his chest as if he were wearing a shirt two sizes too small. He slept for a couple of hours but woke up with a cough that racked his chest and exacerbated the persistent pressure at the back of his skull. He crawled out of bed in his pajamas and went to the kitchen. His father was sitting at the table in the dark, his left hand cradling a glass of whiskey.
Neither of them spoke, but sat on opposite sides of the table, letting silence reign. Above the stove, beside the crucified Jesus, the ticking clock punctuated the quiet. Finton finally asked, “Where were you?”
“Out.” Tom swallowed the last of his whiskey. As he lowered the glass, his eyes met Finton’s, exuding something indefinably forlorn. At times like this, Finton felt he could study those eyes forever and never understand the man who was his father. Other times, he felt he’d always known him, had always been with him and had witnessed every smart and stupid thing Tom Moon ever did. Simply put, he was a good man who had lost his way.
“Can I do something for you?”
Tom smiled sarcastically. “You do something for me?” He plucked a cigarette from his shirt pocket and stuffed the filter between his lips. “That’ll be the day I die.”
“I could do something. I really could.”
“Don’t you go startin’ to believe your own press, laddie. All you can do is keep your head down and keep your mouth shut. Go to school, get a trade, and get the hell away from here. Understood?”
The words lashed his soul far worse than the sting of the belt. It was as if his father had been saving up those words his entire life, waiting for the moment when he would show his son he was only a guest and when the time came and his passport was stamped, he was expected to migrate to another country. He went back to bed, leaving his father sitting alone, with an unlit cigarette hanging from his mouth.
Confirmation Redux
“Confirmed?” Elsie read the notice from the school twice and, each time, asked the same question.
Just then, the telephone rang—for about the twentieth time that day—but no one answered it. They just waited for it to stop ringing before resuming their conversation.
“They said I have to be confirmed before I can take First Communion.” And to be confirmed meant he had to take classes. “There’s always bloody classes,” he said.
“That’s because there’s so much to bloody learn.” Nanny Moon peered up from her Bible, her eyes smiling.
“What if I don’t wanna learn it?”
“Of course you want to learn it. What kind of priest will you be if you don’t know how to be a good Catholic? Do you think Jesus was born knowing it all—or the Pope—” She made the sign of the cross. “Do you think His Holiness was born with the Scriptures emblazoned in his brain?”
“You mean he wasn’t?”
“No, he wasn’t. You can be born with the Holy Spirit in your soul, but sometimes it takes a Good Book and the sacraments to beat Jesus into ya. Sure, you knows you wants to be a soldier for Christ, b’y. Who wouldn’t?”
Finton sighed, sensing that he was engaged in a losing battle. He’d already told them of his plans to write, but no one took him seriously. One day in school, Miss Woolfred took him aside and said, “Your story is really good, Finton. You have real talent for making stuff up.”
He puffed up with pleasure, lapping up her words of praise. “Thank you,” he said. “I’m going to be a writer when I grows up.”
The teacher pressed her hands to her mouth to stifle a laugh. “My, but you do have your head in the clouds! You’re still going to need a trade or a degree or something. It’s sad but true—you just can’t make any money at writing.”
“But I like writing.”
“You can still write,” she said. “But someone as smart as you should be a teacher or a doctor. Something realistic. I mean, you can’t feed a family with stories.”
As he left the classroom that day, his cheeks burned with shame. He was used to his family saying he couldn’t be a writer. But to hear it from his favourite teacher was heartbreaking. For the first time, he thought that maybe he was deluding himself, that maybe he needed to forget about his dreams and just be normal.
After that, he didn’t tell people what he wanted to be. When Nanny Moon talked about being a soldier for Christ, he just let her go on, pretending to listen.
As the days went by, people were always wanting something from him. They’d want to be touched, blessed, or prayed for. They’d come to the house any time of day or night. The phone was always ringing, and he’d come to dread its shrill cry. He did his best for people, thinking that if they believed, then who was Finton Moon to deny them some relief? It shocked him that they almost always went away satisfied and, usually, healed. He didn’t know how or why it was happening—and didn’t know why it centered on him—but he tried not to worry about the results. If the worst he got for helping people was the occasional headache, it was worth the price.
But it was getting harder and harder to live an ordinary life. Few people would talk to him unless they had a sore throat or a nasty cut. He’d lay his hands on them and say a few words of prayer. They always insisted on the kiss, which he didn’t like. But he couldn’t deny its effects after, time and time again, witnessing the change come over them. Usually, they’d thank him and run off. Sometimes, they didn’t even look him in the eye. He knew some people were calling him “Freaky Moon” or “the murderer’s son,” spewing unkindnesses about him behind his back, but there was nothing he could do about it. Most times, all he wanted was to be left alone.
It was Kieran who sat with him on the front step one day during one of his visits and told him, “You need to protect yourself, Finton. Learn to protect your own interests.”
“What do you mean?”
“You’re too open all the time. You don’t always have to give them what they want. I had an aunt who won the lottery—she was up in Ontario, and it was a couple of hundred grand. Nothing too much, just enough for herself really. But she made the mistake of giving some money to her favourite sister, and a little bit more to a poorly off family back home, which was us. Next thing she knew, the whole family, most of her friends, and every charity from here to Burlington was asking for what she had and some even thought she was the meanest woman alive because she didn’t give them enough. She never said no to anyone. Well, you can guess the rest of the story.”
“She gave it all away?”
“Every red copper—and she died a pauper, far too young.”
“So what you’re saying is I shouldn’t do everything people asks me to do.”
“Exactly. Just because you have it, doesn’t mean they deserve it more than you. You need to take care of yourself. No one—not your friends, not your family, or anyone else will do it for you.”
Kieran’s words struck Finton as true, and he resolved to try and implement the advice.
Confirmation classes were a great excuse to get out of regular class. For a month prior to Easter, twice a week, he and most of his classmates would get on a bus to go down to the Sacred Heart of Mary church where the old spinster, Miss Wyseman, would lead them through the paces. There were lines to learn, procedures to practice, and hymns to rehearse, like “Make Me a Channel of Y
our Peace” and “Daily, Daily, Sing to Mary,” which was the only part he enjoyed. It gave him a special thrill to sing such devout lines to Mary while no one knew he was thinking of Mary Connelly when he sang. Except for that, he hated every minute of the Confirmation training, but he didn’t want to embarrass his mother or himself, so he endured it.
Mary still hadn’t come back to school, and she hadn’t attended Confirmation classes. Skeet and Dolly went, though, and so did Bernard, Al, Cocky, and the King twins.
He envied the two Protestant kids who were allowed to stay behind and do school work. Not that it was easy being a Protestant in Darwin. There were only a couple of non-Catholic families in the entire town, and Finton’s mother had often warned him against being infected by their hedonistic beliefs. “They don’t believe in the infallibility of the Pope,” she’d told him once, meaning they were wicked to the core. Still, Billy Bundy and Trish Gacy didn’t seem so bad to him, and they actually seemed cleaner and brighter than most. “That’s because the Anglicans have money,” Nanny Moon told him. “Makes them arrogant, like that adultering King Henry the Eighth.”
“Why don’t Catholics have money?” Finton wanted to know.
“Because we’re God’s chosen, b’y. With faith in the Lord, you don’t need dollars.”
“But what if you needs to buy stuff. What if I needs to buy chips and bars for watchin’ the hockey game?”
“You don’t need it. It’s Lent, anyway—you should be givin’ that stuff up.”
“Why?”
“Because Jesus never had potato chips. And if he did he would have given them to the poor, starving children.”
Finton considered the likelihood that if he didn’t have any money, he might be one of the poor, starving children. He looked up at the crucifix over the kitchen table. Maybe that’s why he looks so miserable all the time. But he didn’t say any of this aloud. In fact, gazing at the crucified Christ made him feel depressed, so he told Nanny Moon he would sacrifice chips and bars for the rest of Lent.
“That’s nice,” she said. “But it’s too late now. Lent is already started. But you can begin now and make up for it by doing the stations.”
The stations meant he had to walk around the perimeter of the church’s interior, stop at each of the fourteen Stations of the Cross, contemplate the significance of each one, and say a brief prayer before blessing himself (“spectacles, testicles, wallet, and watch,” as Skeet had taught him). He’d never done them before and actually looked forward to the arduous “journey.” He’d never known his father to do the stations, but his mother did them once a month, to remind her of how Jesus had suffered for her sins.
“What sins?” he asked.
“I don’t have any sins,” she would answer.
“Then why do you need to do the stations?”
“Because Jesus wants us to. He died for all our sins.”
“What sins?
“Shut up, Finton, b’y. Yer givin’ me a mortal headache.”
“Well, what sins do I have?”
“You’ve got your Original Sin on your soul, like everyone else.”
“How did I get that?”
“You didn’t get it, b’y. You were born with it. It’s what ya gets for bein’ born.”
Thus, when the time came for Finton to do the stations, he found out that he also had to endure Confession. He already went once a month, but only to sit outside while his mother and brothers confessed.
“Bless me Father…”
“For I have sinned.”
“For I have sinned. And… I don’t remember.”
The priest sighed patiently on his side of the confessional, and Finton wondered if he had somewhere more important to be. “It’s been how long since your last confession?”
“This is my first confession, Father.”
“Excellent. Well, have you any sins to confess?”
“I’ve got Original Sin on my soul, Father.”
“That’s true, my son.”
“But Mudder says there’s nudding you can do about that.”
“I can give you a penance, but your Original Sin was absolved at Baptism.”
Sitting in the velvety darkness of the confessional, he felt relieved. Then he thought hard about what other sins he was going to confess. He didn’t think he should tell about his premonition of Sawyer’s death, partly because Father Power hadn’t believed him about Miss Bridie being dead a few years ago, and partly because he feared being implicated. Still, his mother and Nanny Moon had told him to confess everything to the priest and to trust in his forgiveness. “The parish priest talks directly to God,” Nanny Moon had said. “If you tell Father Power, then God hears it at the same time.” When he asked why he couldn’t just tell God his own sins, she told him not to be so saucy. “Only the priest is God’s vessel—that’s one of the mysteries.”
Still, he was afraid to tell everything for fear that God might punish him. On the other hand, God probably already knew what was in Finton’s heart. Maybe he’d even feel better if he confessed about his part in Sawyer’s death, but he didn’t know if that was a good reason to confess. The only good reason, really, would be to purge his soul and thereby avoid purgatory when he died. He also wondered if it was a sin to think his father might have killed Sawyer. But he decided he shouldn’t say that aloud to anyone.
Unsure of the course that would reward him with the most redemption, he relied on the list of sins he’d compiled in his head, thinking he might just go with that—unless the priest asked him specifically about whether he’d killed anyone with his thoughts.
“I told a lie and had bad thoughts about someone. I talked back to my mother and father. And Nanny Moon too. And my teachers. And Mrs. Sellars because she gypped me fifty cents. She was mean to me too. She told me to get her something to hit me with, but I told her to kiss me arse.”
An extended silence, and a sound which could have been mistaken for laughter came from the other side. “Is that all, my son?”
“No, Father. This is my first confession, and I’ve been alive nearly thirteen years, so I’ve got lots more. Do you want to hear them all?”
“Just the highlights will be fine.”
“All right. I looked at Mary Connelly with lust, Father. And I had a dream about her and Dolly. I couldn’t help it. Then I lied about that. I had bad thoughts about Bridie Battenhatch too, and Sawyer Moon, and my mother and father. I had bad thoughts about Bernard Crowley too. And Cocky Munro. I called him an arsehole, and he is too. But I’m sorry for saying it.”
The priest seemed to be smiling, though it was hard to tell through the wire. Finton thought he smelled cat’s pee.
“You’ve been a busy little sinner, haven’t you?”
“Yes, Father.”
“I tell you what—just say a whole rosary, and all your sins will be forgiven.”
“But I got more.”
“That’ll be fine.” He raised his hand and made the sign of the cross. “I absolve you of all your sins. Go forth and sin no more. Father, Son, Holy Ghost, Amen.”
That was the hardest part. He could recite the rosary like his own name, but going forth and sinning no more wasn’t going to be easy. He felt better about himself when he left the confessional, for it was as if God had personally taken his sins away and cleansed him, like taking a toilet scrubber to his soul and scouring it clean.
Go forth and sin no more. He liked the sound of it and thought he might be able to do it. But he wondered if he should have told the priest about Sawyer Moon if only to alleviate his guilt. “To be secretive is to sin twice over,” his mother used to say. “And every time you don’t confess, you’re committing the same sin again.” It was when he visited the Twelfth Station that his mind was made up. “Jesus died for your sins.” How many times had he heard that? Nanny Moon often said that every time he lied, especially at Lent, he was driving the nails deeper into Jesus’ hands and feet. He didn’t think he could handle being responsible for something
so horrible.
So he lined up again and waited. Finally, after what seemed like forever, he sat with sweaty palms and shallow breathing in the same Confession box, anticipating the sliding open of the small wooden door and the appearance of the priest’s perspiring face.
“Bless me father for I have sinned. It’s been twenty minutes since my last confession.”
“You sin quickly, my son.”
“No, Father. I mean, there’s one I didn’t tell you before.”
“But you told me an awful lot.”
“Not this.”
“Why not?”
“Because I was too afraid.”
There was a pause. “Go on.”
Although Finton’s hands were clasped, his body trembled. He kept seeing that image of the crucified Jesus being nailed to the cross and, suddenly, the Confession box seemed deficient of air. “Can you keep a secret, Father?”
“My son, I have no choice. I am bound to forgive and forget. I can tell no other living soul what you tell me in confidence. Speak freely and all will be forgiven. That is the Church’s promise, as well as God’s.”
Finton breathed easier, but his voice quivered. “I wished for a man to die…” He hesitated, feeling the tiny confessional spinning and closing in on him. “…and he did.”
“Which man was this?”
“Sawyer Moon.”
“The man they found dead just before Christmas.”
The priest made a whistling sound as if sucking in a breath. “Killing a man is a serious sin, as it goes against one of God’s commandments. But—” the priest hesitated as if to weigh his words. “You can’t kill a man by thinking about it. I mean, it’s wrong to think about it—and for that you should do penance and ask God’s forgiveness—but his death is hardly your fault.”
“But I dreamed about it, and he went missing right after.”
“My son, you give yourself far too much credit.”
Finton didn’t feel like arguing. He had confessed and that was all he could do. “Do you have penance for me, Father?”
“Yes, of course.”
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