Finton Moon (46 page)

As Tom's face showed shock, the youth broke free from his father's grip and followed the policeman, who tipped his hat to Elsie and again to Nanny Moon. “Good night, all.”

“They've all been worried sick about you,” Kieran said as they walked to the police car.

Finton stuck his hands into a pockets and kicked the bumper. “I'm all right.”

“Really?” Kieran seemed neither angry nor earnest. It was one of those strange moods that Finton had a hard time pegging. Because of the uniform, everything he said carried extra weight. Kieran never seemed to take anything too serious, and yet everything, to him, was extremely important. “Are you happy, Finton?”

“I don't know.”

“Listen.” Kieran turned his head slightly, one side of his face catching the soft light of the porch lamp while the other side was captured by darkness. Effortlessly, he opened the car door, reached inside, and started the engine. He turned the headlights to low beam, then closed the door and stood in front of the car. “If you don't know enough about happiness to know when you're feeling it, you need to live your life better. Start on a path that will make you feel good about yourself. I don't know what that means for you—it means something different for everyone. But you're nearly a man now, Finton, and it's time to point yourself in the right direction—before it's too late.”

Finton didn't say anything. He wasn't sure where all of this supposed wisdom was coming from. He'd never heard anything like it before, from anyone, except maybe Atticus Finch.

“You're awful quiet,” Kieran said.

“Just thinking.”

“About what?”

Finton glanced up at the bungalow atop the hill, like a haint in the pale wash of headlights. He exhaled a breath he didn't know he'd been holding. “Nothing.”

“Well, make sure
nothing
doesn't eat you alive.” The words made Finton feel better, as if Kieran had known just what to say. He still didn't quite have faith in the guy, but his words were often the right ones. Maybe he was just trying to trick Finton into giving in to his parents because that would make it easier for everyone. And easy was how everyone liked life to be. But something about Kieran Dredge invited his trust.

“Why do you care?” Finton asked.

The constable stared fully into the headlights. His face and hands glowed white, almost as if he were a ghost Finton had conjured and clung to, willing him to remain, afraid to startle him. “Because the alternative is just too hard, Finton. It's easy to lose faith. Keeping it is a hell of a lot harder and way more admirable. But let me tell you this—life will beat the life out of you, and if you're not strong enough to take it and pick yourself up now and then, you're just gonna stay down for the count. You can't depend on anyone else to do it for you. There are just some things you've got to find for yourself. And I mean
got
to. It's the difference between living and dying.”

“You seem to have given it a lot of thought.”

Kieran smiled. “First time, matter o' fact.” He scratched his head, pushed back his hat and fixed it right again. “I guess you've got a way of bringing that out in me.”

“I'll take that as a compliment, if you don't mind.”

“I'd be offended if you didn't.” Kieran laughed. “But lookie here—I've been where you are, and I made up my mind to either get what I wanted out of life or die trying. People say when you're at the bottom you got nowhere to go but up. But, let me tell you, there's worse. And you don't want to go there.”

When Kieran said goodbye, Finton wondered if he'd ever see him again. To his great surprise, that prospect actually made him melancholy.

“Home” was the word for failure—the place that ensured you retained the emotional perspective of an eight-year-old, filled with people who presumed to know you better than you knew yourself and who presented every obstacle to your attempts to rise up in the world, to become who you truly are.

Don't go back.
His heart beat the words in a primitive rhythm.
Don't go back. Don't go back. Don't go back. Don't go back.
He wanted to scream, the primeval breath urging and plunging behind his rib cage, threatening to explode its marrow and bones. So he followed the taillights of Kieran's car down to the bottom of the lane, where he turned left and walked a short distance.

Ascending the steps of the Battenhatch house was like coming home—as decrepit as it was, despite the bad habits he'd acquired there, the memories were comforting, the creak of the rickety steps reassuring.

Despite the snow packed in front of the door, with no footprints leading in or out, the darkness of the front porch welcomed him.

After he'd knocked, he heard no sound from within. But she was in there. He'd seen the silhouette of her watching him from the kitchen table as he ascended the steps. She'd sat in the dark, the glow of her cigarette a sign to the world.

When she finally opened the door, there was no light inside except the glow from a candle atop the cold wood stove. She stood in the entrance like a banshee bride, dressed in her white nightgown, her blonde hair gone limp and dark. He expected some kind of welcome or an acknowledgement of all that had passed between them and beyond them. Instead, she merely turned to one side and went back inside, leaving him standing in the doorway. He followed her in and shut the door behind him.

“What the hell kind of costume is that you got on?”

“Oh, these are aren't mine. I had to borrow some.”

“Should I ask?”

He shook his head. “I just came over to see how you were.”

She wheeled around and looked at him, her colourless face imprinted with cruel lines. She tapped her cigarette on the handrail of the stairs and poked it back into her mouth. “Good as can be expected, I s'pose.”

He nodded and watched her hands, sensing that to say little was wise. “It feels strange here without… your mother.”

“I s'pose it does.” Puckering her lips and sucking inward, she drew fire from her cigarette until it glowed angry orange. She withdrew her lips from the butt, a long sliver of ash protruding from the filter tip. “People die. Life goes on. Then you die too.” She assessed his silent stance, hands in pockets, staring at her with his head cocked, and she squinted. With a clump of her bedraggled hair overhanging her right eye, she looked like a wild animal. “Got something on yer mind?”

“Mom said Miss Bridie told the truth.”

She laughed—a cackle, really—that was slightly unnerving. “That woman never told the truth about anything. Surely to God, ya knew that much about her.”

“She said…” He swallowed hard and licked his lips, cleared his throat. “She said I was hers—” He felt something pop in his chest and wondered if he was going to have a heart attack. Suddenly, he felt lighter than a late-October leaf wavering on its stem, a freakish holdout caught between worlds. “—that they took me when I was born.”

“Jesus, b'y. Get a grip.” She took another draw and the cylinder of ash lengthened, threatening to break off. “That's some fairytale in that head o' yours.”

“Did you know?”

“Christ, b'y, I don't even know now what to think. I was only a youngster in them days. I didn't know what anyone was up to and, furthermore, didn't care. All I know is Mom never fit in here from the first day. Never belonged no matter where she was.” One more draw; the ashen line got longer and weightier, closer to falling. “Some people never belong anywhere, I s'pose. She said people were cruel to her nearly every day.” She lifted her head and squared her gaze at him. “But not your father.”

“He was good to her. She said that.”

She nodded. “The only one.”

“What do
you
think?”

She grinned, a far less natural, and much more disturbing, expression. Although still young, Morgan had become a creature just like her mother, supplanting her in that house that his father had rebuilt. Where, not so long ago, she had been his haven in an endless storm, now she was on her way to becoming a bitter hag, a face that bore only memorial lines of the beauty she'd been. In her eyes, he still saw some of the girl he'd known. Beneath the nightdress, her body was slender, but not nearly so taut or supple as before. In time, he knew, that girl would be gone for good.

“Your father loved my mother—and he never stopped.” She winked at him and blew an “O” in the air above her head. “The only ones that knew it was Sawyer and Phonse Dredge.”

“You don't know that.”

“She told me one time—not that he loved her, but other things. He liked her 'cause she was different from your mother. Too uptight and religious, he said. And a baby belly. My mother was a heathen, and your father liked that. Men usually do.” The wink she gave made him lower his head.

A truck rolled down the road and baptized them both in a lurid white light. If she was telling the truth, Finton knew the rest: Sawyer kept the secret, but his loyalty came at a price. That secret had bought his father's friendship. He could easily imagine how Sawyer had known—maybe saw Tom and Bridie together one day, a peck on the cheek or a harmless hug, and Sawyer's silence could be bought fairly cheap, no doubt. Phonse was uncomfortable around Finton because he'd been there the night they took Miss Bridie's baby and gave it to the Elsie. Who else was there? he wondered.

“Sure, come in and sit down. Have a yarn with me.” Morgan sashayed her shoulders, trying to be free and easy as she used to be. “Old times' sake 'n all that?”

He thrust his hands deeper into his pockets and nodded. “I gotta go.”

“Afraid of me now, aren't ya?”

“No, Morgan. Not afraid. Just came to me senses.”

“You can come around now and then if ya want,” she said, a twinkle in her eyes. “Just talk. You're good for that.”

He smiled, grateful to see a trace of the old Morgan—the young Morgan, the one who didn't care about the rules or what people expected of her. She did things the way she wanted to, regardless of who got hurt. Mostly it was herself or Miss Bridie. Everyone else was afraid to come near. The wildness in her eyes. That's what drew him in, and he could almost see it returning. Almost. It was enough of a glimmer to make him think she would be okay, once the grieving days were done.

“Sure,” he said. “Whatever you want.” But he knew he wouldn't be coming back around. There was just too much history between them.

She followed him to the door, holding it open as the night breeze wafted inward and swayed the hem of her nightdress to expose her pale thighs. “I never thought I'd say this, but I miss the old girl… ya know?” She wiped a single tear from the corner of each eye, and forced herself to grin. In that same motion, the finger of ash broke away from her filter and dropped onto his leg. He brushed it away as if it were a loathsome spider. He jerked away, trying not to offend her, but her eyes betrayed a mortal wound.

He leaned in closer. His lips found the whorl of her ear, and he whispered low, but clear: “We were innocent.” He raised a hand to her cheek, tender and tentative, as if touching her for the first time. Her flesh was clammy, her cheekbone hard. “No matter what we did—that was then. But we didn't know.”

She pulled away, her eyes full of sadness. “Get home out of it, b'y. And don't come back till ya can talk about something sensible.”

“Take care of yourself, Morgan. It's not too late,” he said. “It never is.”

The smile she attempted warmed his heart and made him smile back. “What you're talking about is hope,” she said. “I don't even know what that means anymore.”

“You need to get out,” he said. “This place is no good for you. You still got time.”

She started to object, but he leaped off the step and started to run. At the last moment, he turned his head to catch her in the act of squeezing the door shut. A cluster of hair had fallen over her face, rendering her virtually unrecognizable. He would never know what it felt like to have a sister, or what that meant. It would probably take years to extract her from his brain, especially those summer afternoons upstairs in her bedroom.

Turning up Moon's Lane, he slowed and regarded the hilltop bungalow. He studied it hard as if its secrets would unfold in its size and shape, the projection of its heart light from the kitchen window to the ground below, the front door that was barred tight like a medieval drawbridge, or the ruinous nature of its concrete doorstep. Perhaps there was a welcoming somewhere, a place to lay his aching and tired head. But, for all its familiarity, he was a relative unknown there, a place where he'd never lived.

The Time of Survival

(1976)

On the fifteenth of May, Finton stood at the counter of the Darwin post office and asked for a stamp. He reached inside his jacket for an envelope, which contained a letter he'd composed the night before in a moment of great hope but low expectation. After affixing the stamp, he glanced at the envelope and gave it only a moment's reflection before dropping it into the slot.