Finton Moon (39 page)

About seventy yards off, moonlight illuminated the ocean's surface. Each wave roared as it struck the rocky shore, enlivened by a breeze from the east.

“Was this your first dance?” he asked.

“No. First time I've danced, though.” She chuckled. “You were the first boy who ever asked me.”

“Seriously?”

“Seriously.”

The rush of a distant wave swept onto the shore below, sending a shiver through Finton's entire body.

“I never saw you at the Grade Nine dances,” she said. “Well,
dance
. Singular. I only went to one. But I went home early because I got tired of holdin' up the walls.”

“I can't believe that. You're so—”
Shit
.
Almost spilled the beans that time.
“Any fella should be proud to dance with you.”

“Thank you, Finton.” He could hear the smile in her voice. “How come you don't have a girlfriend?”

“I don't want one,” he said, which actually felt true.

“Why not?”

“Because I'm not planning to stay here, and I don't want to have a girlfriend making me stay.”

“What if your girlfriend—I mean, if you had one—was willing to go with you? Not that I know where you're going. Where would you go?”

“I don't know. Just somewhere else. Somewhere better.”

She fell silent for a moment, letting the surf have its time. Finally, she asked, “What if Mary wanted to be your girlfriend—would you still say the same thing?”

“It don't matter who,” he said. Then he added suspiciously, “Why Mary?”

“It's kind of obvious,” she said with a laugh. “I think you've been after Mary Connelly for as long as I've known you.”

Known you.
The words suggested familiarity. Intimacy. A relationship. “How would you even know something like that? Have you been spying on me?”

“Noticing,” she said. “When you're as quiet as I am, you notice a lot.”

“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 different, 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.”