Finton Moon

by Gerard Collins

“I know what you mean.”

  They had just reached the street lamp at the top of the hill, a few yards away from Miss Bridie’s house. A few yards beyond that was Moon’s Lane. Finton was slightly disappointed that their time was almost done.

  “Would you like me to walk you the rest of the way?” he asked.

  She hesitated. “No, thanks. I’ll be fine.”

  He stood at the middle of the lane and watched her stroll away into the night and gradually disappear.

  He hadn’t expected anyone to be waiting up for him, but there was a light on in the kitchen—Nanny Moon in her chair, reading the Bible. He was startled at first because his head was still filled with bits of his conversation with Alicia.

  All he could think was, How old she’s getting. The lines on her face were etched like tire tracks on a dirt road, her blue eyes sunk deep in their sockets behind her wire-rimmed glasses, leaving half-moon shadows on the upper part of her sallow cheeks. Her white hair glowed in the light that showered down on her from above. When she finally looked up at him, he was reminded of a person who’d been waiting for something for a long time. Nanny Moon’s identity had always been that of the old woman alone—not as “widow” because he’d never known her to have a husband and didn’t think of her as having been with someone. But she had been married once and had lost her husband a long time ago, before Finton was born, before Elsie Fyme and Tom Moon were wedded.

  “Have a good time?” She pulled the silken, blue bookmark taut between the pages and laid the book aside.

  He ambled over to the sink, pulled down a peanut butter glass from the cupboard and filled it under the tap. He was already guzzling when she asked him again if he’d enjoyed himself. “All right.”

  “That’s it? You left here tonight just for that? What’s wrong with ya, b’y? You should’ve had a big ol’ time of it, danced with every pretty girl in sight, and you should have come home here tellin’ us all about it, makin’ us jealous that we weren’t there too. Well, I’m jealous anyway. Lord knows I wish I was your age again. I wouldn’t be sittin’ in this chair tonight, I can tell ya that.”

  “Where would you be?” Finton pulled up a chair and rested his glass on the table, folded his arms in front of him and laid his head atop them.

  The old woman stopped rocking—the effect startling—and appeared defiant, yet sad. For the first time ever, he saw her not as his grandmother—not as old Nanny Moon who read her Bible and rocked, not as his father’s aging, ever-present conscience, nor his own moral compass—but as a young girl who had yet to be kissed, had yet to meet that special young man who would woo her, court her, marry her, and bring her to a house where he would eventually leave her. This tough, old woman was once his own age and had a lot more in common with either Bridie Battenhatch or even Morgan, for that matter, than she had with the other old women he often saw around town. They all dressed in their colourful bandanas and long, felt coats, with their panty hose and long skirts, each of them hunched over and clutching the hands of their companions and protectors as if they were life itself to them. All they were concerned about was making it back home again without falling and breaking a hip or having a heart attack. But that wasn’t always the case, he realized. They, too, had once run fast through the Laughing Woods. They’d gone to the same school and sat in those desks. They probably played Red Rover in the meadow and swam in the ocean, and mumbled impolite words when their parents forced them to go to mass or kneel for the rosary.

  He was struck with an idea—a thought so wonderful—so horrible—so wonderfully, horribly awful that the mere conception of it made his stomach roil and his knees weaken. If he could heal the sick and raise the dead, cure everything from warts to chicken pox, was there even a limit to what he could do? Sure, his power was gone, but what if it was just dormant? What if it came back? Could he, in fact, make Nanny Moon young again? She could make her wishes come true—go dancing or work in the garden again. Was it possible, he wondered, to bring youth to the old? And, if he could, what would the consequences be?

  “You’re awful quiet, b’y. Whatcha thinkin’ about?” She licked her dry lips and cleared her throat. She’d been doing that a lot lately, as if she possessed an unquenchable thirst. With her face so wrinkled and parched, he wondered if she was slowly dehydrating, like a crabapple in the sun.

  “Just you.”

  “What would you be thinkin’ about the likes of me for?” She chortled. “Did ya meet up with any pretty young ones tonight?”

  “I danced a bit.”

  “Good.” She smiled, almost to herself, as if she were harbouring secret thoughts.

  “Nanny Moon?”

  “Yes, child.” She screwed up her face. “What’s got you looking so vexed all of a sudden? Did something happen?”

  “No,” he lied. He just didn’t want to talk about Alicia, Bernard, Homer or Mary, not with the sting of those earlier events so fresh on his mind. “I’m just wondering. Do you remember being young—you know, goin’ to dances ’n all that?”

  She smiled again, more softly, though no less mysteriously. “Oh, the stories I could tell.” He waited, sensing that she would come forth with a few wonderful tales to fill his soul, to make him envision her as she remembered herself. But, just as whenever anyone in his family was questioned about the past, she discarded the smile and seemed to think better about divulging too much. “Things I’d rather keep to meself.”

  It was like having a big fish on a tiny hook, and he was afraid of losing her. He rushed to think up a question. “Do you ever wish you could be young again?”

  The sadness returned to her eyes, and she nodded. In them he saw profound regret and he wondered if, even on his strongest days, he could remove it.

  “Do you think I could try?”

  She laughed, but the look on her face was deathly serious. “What do you mean?”

  “You know. What I used to do… with my hands.” He held them up, palms toward her. She studied them carefully as if he were promising her the moon and she didn’t trust him at all to deliver. “Maybe I can give you back your looks. Maybe I can—”

  “No, Finton.”

  “—make you young again.”

  “God’s sake, Finton, no. Not in this lifetime.” She stopped rocking—though her rocking was so natural, like breathing, that he hadn’t even noticed she was doing it—and she stood up, leaning on the kitchen table for support.

  “But I could try.”

  “Look here,” she said, attempting to soften her tone, but still glaring at him with those sunken, blue eyes and her voice as rough as a scowl. “What you’re talking about, even if it was possible, isn’t God’s work. It’s the devil’s.”

  Finton stood up, white-knuckled, clutching the edge of the table. “You didn’t say that when I was helping make all those people better.”

  “You seemed to enjoy helping them—and they had stuff wrong with them—but this… this is going too far. It’s goin’ against nature.”

  “You want it.” He understood the startled, clear look that came to her eyes. She was afraid to admit it, fearful of its possibilities, unwilling to consider that her smallest grandchild could remove years of aging and hardship, nullify decades of anger and regret, render moot all those hours wasted on prayer. For if her grandson could save her life, restore her youth, what was the point of God?

  “No,” she said, shaking her head. “It’s not possible.”

  He stood perfectly still, clutching the table as she toddled up the hall and shut the bedroom door behind her. He didn’t move until he heard her crying—at least, he thought it was crying, since he’d rarely heard the sound before.

  But when he tapped on her door, she didn’t answer.

  Trials and Tribulations

  If August was a whisper that gradually, gently awakened the soul, September was a shout that called his spirit to life. The days were bursting with vibrant sunshine, fleeting warmth and disquieting cool. Finton often yearned for something diff
erent, someplace more exciting, and September filled him with a burgeoning desire to see the world that his books told him existed, out there somewhere beyond the borders of Darwin.

  Nonetheless, while school was interesting at first, it quickly became a drag. Even though his grades were quite good, the lessons were easy and rarely retained his interest.

  Meanwhile, he had underestimated the capacity of some Darwinians to gossip and to pass judgment, particularly in the absence of proof. The first time someone mentioned his father and Sawyer in the same sentence that fall, he was shocked to realize that many people were talking about him and had already convicted him, no matter what the legalities were. In the summer, he was mostly alone and hadn’t heard much gossip, except for the occasional taunt. But now that he was back in school and surrounded every day, he heard the rumours constantly. He overheard one of the Donnelly girls asking another girl at recess how any of the Moons slept at night, with a murderer under the same roof. Every week seemed to bring another incident—Clancy in a fight because someone said his old man was a “murderer,” Homer raising his fists to defend the family name, or Finton tolerating bullies who called his father a “killer.” Even Elsie had to put up with people shaking their heads and whispering when she went for groceries. Nanny Moon had stood on the steps of the church one Saturday evening, leaning on Clancy’s shoulder, telling a couple of gossipers to mind their own business. Late in September, Tom was told there likely wouldn’t be any more work for him at Taylor’s. “It don’t matter if you’re guilty or not,” Pat Taylor said. “Not enough people want you to work on their cars, and I can’t afford to lose the business.” Besides Phonse Dredge, there were a few people who stood by him—most noticeably Francis Minnow and his wife Winnie, who occasionally dropped by for a cup of tea, as well as Miss Wyseman, the church lady, who didn’t mind telling people she still thought Tom was a good man, no matter what he did. But it was shocking how many chose to disassociate themselves from the Moons.

  Of course, none of Finton’s friends repeated the rumours in his company. He talked to Alicia almost daily now, usually in the morning before school started. Neither of them had asked to have their desks moved closer together, since that particular commitment was beyond the range of their unspoken friendship. He hardly ever saw Mary, although he perked up whenever he caught a glimpse of her in the corridors, the lunchroom, or on the playground. But she was in a different homeroom: thus they ran in different circles. A few times, he saw her on the steps of the school, sneaking a kiss with her newest boyfriend. For both his own sake and Mary’s, Finton resolved to let her go. Twice a day, when he and Mary saw each other on the bus, they nodded and said hello, but that was all. Once again, she was slipping away. Skeet, meanwhile, seemed to have forgotten all about Sawyer Moon. Finton even asked him once if he’d heard the rumours, but Skeet just shrugged and said, “I couldn’t care less.”

  On the first day of October, there was a slight change in Tom’s usual, quiet demeanour. At the breakfast table, the boys were filled with the exuberance swept in by the cooler days of October. For Finton, it was the turn towards Hallowe’en, the start of the new hockey season with the new divisional alignment, and the Bruins finally getting the chance to redeem themselves for last spring’s devastating loss. But he suspected it might be more than hockey that caused his father’s anxiety. Elbows on the table, Tom barely touched his food and only sipped his tea once in a while as he tapped his leg nervously. Finton kept expecting Tom to make some grand announcement.

  “New hockey season starts today,” Finton said, trying to provoke a discussion.

  Tom forced a smile. “Something to look forward to.”

  “Leafs got ’er this year,” Homer said. “Stanley Cup this year for sure.”

  Finton could only shake his head.

  “I can’t believe it’s October already,” Elsie said as she wrapped her arms around Tom, who stiffened. “I’m not lookin’ forward to the winter.”

  Tom slurped his tea. “It’s been hard, I allow.”

  “What are you going to do today?” Finton asked, prompting his father to stand up, sweep his hand through his hair and fold his arms across his chest.

  “What are you, The National Enquirer?”

  “I’m just askin’.”

  “If you must know, I’m going huntin’.” A triumphant gleam shone from his eyes. “Job huntin’.”

  It had been months since Tom’s last contribution to the family coffers. The only steady income, besides Elsie’s part-time hours at the liquor store, was Nanny Moon’s pension—“God love Joey,” she said every time the old-age pension cheque came in. Clancy had a talent for finding part-time work, but even that kind of labour was scarce lately. Homer assisted a local contractor with the occasional house. Even Finton felt he should find a way to contribute, but he wasn’t sure what kind of job he could get with book smarts.

  “Can I come with you?” he asked his father. “Maybe they’ll give me a job too.”

  “You can ride along if you want. Be like old times.”

  “You should go to school,” Elsie interjected, looking slightly worried.

  “One day isn’t gonna kill me.”

  “Just for the morning, Else.” Tom gave her a wink. “It’d be good for ’im.”

  She relented more easily than Finton expected, but then, she probably sensed that Finton might have a calming influence on her husband.

  They took Clancy’s Galaxy because, despite Tom’s mechanical talents, the Valiant was too old, with “more problems than Buckley’s goat,” as Elsie said. In the passenger seat with the window rolled down, cool air on his face, Finton felt like things might finally get back to normal. The sun was shining, the engine rumbled smoothly, they had a quarter tank of gas, and he was riding shotgun for his father. And it had been nearly a couple of months since Futterman had come around to poke at Tom’s cage.

  Tom turned the radio on and fiddled with the dial. Father and son sang together: “Her eyes they shone like the diamonds—ya’d think she was queen of the land…” Finton didn’t even like Irish music, but he tolerated it, and could even enjoy some of it for his father’s sake, just as his father had learned to accept that his three sons were maniacs for rock ’n roll. Their common ground was country music; not one of them would pass up the opportunity to sing along with “Your Cheatin’ Heart,” “Snakes Crawl at Night,” or “Folsom Prison Blues.”

  When the next song came on, Tom turned it up. “This a good one—just listen.”

  Finton paid close attention to the lyrics and tapped his foot to the beat. It was obvious why his father liked that song. “One Piece at a Time” told the story of a mechanic who worked at General Motors and wanted to own one of the Cadillacs he worked on. His genius solution was to steal it one part at a time in his lunch box. He took the parts home and assembled his new car in the garage, without it costing him a dime.

  “I like it,” Finton said. Tom turned off the radio during the commercials about MUNN insurance, Caul’s Funeral Home, and Good Luck margarine.

  “Our first stop,” Tom said as the car came to rest in front of Taylor’s Garage. “You stay here.”

  Although tempted to follow, Finton sat and waited. Within a couple of minutes, Tom came out, got in, and slammed the door. “Well, that’s that.”

  “What did he say?”

  “Not much.” Tom gripped the steering wheel and stared straight ahead. In the open doorway, Pat Taylor cleaned a wrench and stared at the ground. The garage owner seemed sad, which, in turn, saddened Finton. But he didn’t have much time to think about it before they pulled in front of Brown’s Supermarket.

  Tom took a deep breath and exhaled. He glanced into the rear-view mirror.

  “I’m coming in this time.”

  His father’s glance showed clear disapproval. And yet he suddenly changed his mind. “Sure—why not?”

  Maybe he thought, as Finton did, that his youngest boy would be his good luck charm. But it didn’t work
that way, not this time. The manager, a nice, balding man named Donnelly, told him the boss wasn’t hiring.

  “Give him a call,” said Tom.

  Donnelly did call—and Finton gave him credit for trying—but the owner, Mr. Brown, said he didn’t have any openings.

  “Where to now?” he asked his father as they got back into the car.

  “Everywhere.”

  They stopped by Jack’s Place, but Jack Senior had room for only two full-time bartenders, which he already had, and Jack Junior was now working part-time for free. From there, they drove to the new mall, where Tom hoped he could get a line on something—full or part-time, cashier, security—he didn’t care. But no one hired him.

  “I’ll tell you the truth, Tom.” The superintendent of the school board sat on the corner of his desk while Tom sat in the chair, looking very uncomfortable. “I’d be uneasy hiring you as a school janitor—you’d be around kids all day long. Know what I mean?”

  “No.” The stress on Tom’s face was palpable. “I don’t know what you mean.”

  “Well, here’s the thing—and you should thank me for being straight with you—there are rumours. And I don’t care if they’re true or not. I usually don’t even listen to gossip. Just hearsay, is all. But, now, how would it look—”

  “But he didn’t do anything wrong!” Finton blurted.

  “How would it look?” asked Tom, hands folded on his lap.

  “To a lot of parents, it would look like we hired someone without considering his reputation.”

  “That’s just—”

  “Stupid,” said Finton.

  “Go wait in the car.” Tom’s fists clenched, but didn’t yet leave his lap.

  Finton never heard the rest of the conversation. He sat in the car, watching the entrance. When Tom finally emerged, he said nothing about the meeting.

  “Next.” He backed the Galaxy up and pulled onto the road, the tires squealing in complaint. “He asked why you weren’t in school today. ”

  “What did you tell him?”