Finton Moon (24 page)

In his mind, he soared to the Planet of Solitude, and sat with her under the apple tree, rocking her back and forth with his hand on her chest. Only a few seconds later, he returned, startled to be standing in front of his own house with his hand on the breast of a strange girl. “That's all I can do,” he said. After he'd stuffed both of his hands into his pockets, she grabbed him by the ears and kissed him on the lips.

Finton rubbed his temple as he looked to the third visitor, a boy slightly older than himself, who stood up and limped towards him. “Put your hands on me laig, b'y.”

“What's wrong with it?”

“My smallest wart is nearly gone!” Laura emitted a squeal and threw herself at Finton, wrapping him in her arms and twirling him around like a rag doll.

“I'm getting dizzy.” His voice was muffled against her jacket.

Just then the front door rattled open and Nanny Moon stood there, squinting. “What's goin' on?”

“Finton cured my warts!” Laura squealed as she released Finton and began squeezing her own hand in disbelief. “You don't know what this means!”

“Oh.” Nanny Moon chewed worriedly on her bottom lip. “I think I have an idea. Finny, come in to your supper.”

Without a word, he tromped towards the step.

“Hey! What about my laig?”

“Oh. Sorry.” Finton whirled around to face him. “What's wrong with it?”

“I hurt me knee playin' ball, and now I can't walk on it.”

“Well,” Finton placed one hand on the boy's thigh and the other on his knee. He closed his eyes and immediately felt the earth shift as he seemed to leave his own body. Within seconds, he was back, opening his eyes. Bending down, he gave the knee a peck. “You won't have that problem no more,” Finton said. Then he spat on the ground and wiped his mouth.

“You're shittin' me.” The boy stood up straight and shook his leg, twirling his foot around until the feeling appeared to come back to it. “Goddaim.”

“You shouldn't take the Lord's name in vain,” Nanny Moon said. “Now get on home and leave poor Finton alone.”

The boy took a cautious step forward, planted his right foot on the ground, took a deep, quivering breath as he moved his left foot forward. He did this again, wincing in anticipation of excruciating pain. Instead he turned towards Finton and shook his hand. “Goddaim,” he kept saying over and over. “Goddaim.”

“Go home,” said Finton, feeling truly great and terrible, his head throbbing.

“And don't tell anyone!” Nanny Moon shouted as she bustled her grandson inside.

“I'm tellin' everyone!” Laura shouted, then sent a “whoop!” to the sky as she ran down the lane.

The brown-haired girl smiled and blew him a kiss.

The slightly older boy took hold of his crutch and threw it with all his might into the meadow alongside the Moon house. “No more crutches!” he yelled as he strutted away, hobbling slightly. “Goddaim!”

By the time the door was nearly closed, there were five new visitors coming up the lane, and suddenly Finton was afraid.

“Heaven's floodgates are after been opened now,” Nanny Moon said, and she took him inside. They had barely sat down when a knock came on the door.

Elsie answered it. “It's a man who says he fell off a ladder and broke his arm.”

“It'll wait till after supper,” Nanny Moon said, instructing Finton to sit.

Another knock came and this time it was a woman whose child was sick.

“Let her in,” said Finton.

“Are you serious?” Elsie's face was pale. “Are you saying you can help her?”

Finton nodded. “Think so.”

That was when Nanny Moon took him by the hand, and he could swear he felt an energy coming from her, though he couldn't decide if it was good or bad. “Don't ever doubt what you can do,” she said. “It is what it is, and all you need is your faith. These people believe in you, and that's good enough. Isn't it?”

He thought only for a moment. Nodding, he looked to his mother and told her to let the woman in with her child.

The baby girl's face had a blue tinge and the child was clearly having trouble breathing. Finton took her into his arms and rocked her gently, speaking to her of how beautiful she was. He hummed a few lines of a Dean Martin song he remembered from childhood, then kissed her forehead and gave the baby back to the distraught mother.

“She'll be okay,” Finton said and made the sign of the cross over the baby.

“Thank you,” the mother said over and over, but she wouldn't take her gaze from her baby's face. “If this works, b'y, I'll owe ya the world.”

Finton nodded thoughtfully and went back to eating his dumplings and pea soup.

When they'd left, his mother and grandmother stood staring at him, looking back and forth to each other.

“You're spooky,” Homer said. He dashed to the living room and, within seconds, returned with the Bible. “We need an exorcism!”

“Leave 'im alone.” Clancy just gazed at Finton with awe, resting his head on his arms on the table. “Finton's got a gift. We all got something, and Finton's is making people feel better.”

Another knock came on the door. This time, Homer answered it, with the Bible in his hands.

“Who was it?” Nanny Moon asked.

“Some guy saying he was hearing voices. Thought Finton could fix his head.” He looked at Finton as if half wondering if it were possible. The youngest Moon just sheltered his eyes with one hand as he ate and considered the possibility of running away.

“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.”