Finton Moon (4 page)

“Go read a book, Finton. Get outside on a nice day like this.”

“But you told me to come in 'cause of—”

“Yer mother told you to get out!” a voice roared from the living room.

Finton flinched and bumped the back of his head on the iron handle of the oven door. “I wish ye'd make up your bloody minds.” With one hand, he rubbed his head and inspected his fingers for blood. He squeezed back the tears that blurred his vision, not wanting them to assume it was because he was sensitive.

“Lord thunderin' Jesus—” Then the pattern unfolded: the matchbox struck Rusty's beak; his father's feet pounded the canvas as he whipped out his brown leather belt, rushed towards Finton, grabbed his shoulder and whacked him on the arse.

“Don't you ever talk back to your mother again! What'n hell do you think?”

“I just wants ye to stop fightin'. Yer always at it!” His own tears blinded him, and he rubbed his eyes, growing angrier at nearly letting them see the extent of his pain.
Don't you cry
, he told himself.
Don't you cry.

“Get out, ya goddamn sissy!” his father said and whacked his behind again as Finton skittered past him, bending down to snatch up his book. With
Man O' War
clutched to his chest, Finton stumbled into the daylight and didn't stop running until he'd gotten far away from that house. Deep in the woods, he collapsed into the foxhole.

“What'n hell do you think?” His father always said that when he was hitting someone, though he never expected an answer, just wanted to point out the confused nature of the antagonist.

Finton lay back, his head against a rock,
Man O' War
open flat on his chest, its spine raised upward as if in readiness. With black flies buzzing around him, the occasional one pitching on his face, his only thoughts were of hatred and revenge. He was capable of killing his father when he cursed and hit him, asking, “What'n hell do you think?” He despised his mother for stirring him up. Why couldn't she just give in to him? She always had to struggle and make it worse for them all.

The longer he lay there, gazing up at the tree tops and savouring the singing of hot, boiling sap, the more his anger subsided into helplessness. He'd never felt like a part of this family, with their rough ways. It wasn't just the constant swearing or the loud voices, but the way those voices talked to, and about, one another in a casually callous way. It was the insensitive manner in which they treated most living things, whether slapping a child's face, drowning unwanted kittens, or eating a good meal without seeing the need for gratitude. It was the way his mother, like a good Darwin wife, complained in a high, shrill voice about her husband's drinking, while he, in her absence, like a good Darwin husband, would call his wife by indelicate names. But more than their voices, it was their silence that bothered him: their unwillingness to speak words that could easily build bridges, settling for careless actions that, instead, built fences or moats.

None of them were readers, except for an occasional
Word Jumble
or his father's Mickey Spillanes. But Finton lived his life in books. They all complained he was too reclusive. “Too much to yourself all the time,” they mocked him. His father would call him “the lone wolf.” Novels were his means of escape, and he was keenly aware that they sharpened and defined the separation between him and them. The nature of that separation was something he couldn't quite name, and yet he was sure it was symbolized by the fact that both of his brothers were given bicycles on their respective eighth birthdays, and yet Finton remained bikeless, walking everywhere. It wasn't a big deal and yet, it was, for the small neglects contained larger meaning. His difference was further emphasized each time he was called out of bed to entertain some stranger with his ability to read. Sleepy-eyed and dressed only in his pajamas, Finton would stand in the kitchen in front of a visitor, and his father would hand him a book. “He's some hand to read—just watch,” Tom would say. “Finton, read for the man. Show him what you can do.” The reward for meeting their expectations was usually a quarter, though sometimes as much as a dollar. But the effect on Finton was a burgeoning sense of difference, as they made a show, for strangers, of his ability to do something they themselves found mysterious and useless. The more he thought about it all, the more he wanted to get away.

Somewhere in the thicket behind him, a twig snapped and suddenly the woods seemed to split wide open. Flipping onto his stomach and supporting his rigid body with his elbows, Finton scanned the trees. Ceased breathing. Listened for another noise. His heart hammered. The hungry eyes of a girl he knew peered back at him from the shadows. A flash of red. For a half-minute, he didn't breathe. Gazing and gazing, but finally, seeing nothing more, he gasped for air. The hungry eyes of Alicia Dredge had vanished, and the twig-snapping became increasingly distant. Although she never spoke to him, sometimes Alicia seemed to be constantly waiting for him and scouting him from a distance. To Finton, her behaviour was annoying. He wanted nothing to do with her. As he was thinking that fact, a mosquito buzzed near his ear, and he flicked it away.

Tucked away in the bottom bunk bed that night, staring at the picture of the tortured Jesus that hung on his wall, he wondered if there was anywhere in the world where he could ever feel secure and normal.

Battenhatches

(Autumn 1969)

By the time he'd turned nine, Finton had scurried hundreds of times past the Battenhatch house's grim exterior. Arms flailing and heels kicking himself in the backside, he wouldn't slow down until he had turned into Moon's Lane a few yards down the road. He would peek out of one eye as he passed the mangle of birch and spruce that festooned the front yard. The interior layer of trees formed a ruddy wall of impenetrable red pine that cradled the house as the arms of a frail woman would embrace an unattractive baby. Their intent wasn't to nurture, but to hide and suppress.

There had never been a husband as far as he knew—questions to his parents initiated a change in subject—and Miss Bridie Battenhatch's daughter Morgan was rarely home. Lately, rumour had it, Morgan split her time between Moon's Lane, her mother's house, and the psychiatric ward at St. Clare's in St. John's. Sometimes, though, her dead father's relatives would send for her to come stay with them in Halifax. “For her own protection,” Tom would say, as if twenty-year-old Morgan was harmless to anyone else.

For most of his life, Finton saw her only as his golden-haired babysitter, but there were often whispers that Morgan wasn't normal. She was always swearing and talking back to her mother. Although most of what happened behind Battenhatch doors was unknown to the rest of Darwin, a passerby could hear bloodcurdling screams and the shattering of glass against walls, furniture being upended—all adding to the legend of Miss Bridie and, increasingly, that of her untamable daughter. While he didn't witness any of those wilder moments, Finton could distinctly recall a specific summer afternoon when Morgan had demonstrated to Finton and Homer how to fry ants in their backyard with a magnifying glass, the sun's rays, and a little patience. They'd accidentally set fire to the grass and Homer had dashed inside to tell. After Clancy and Elsie put out the blaze with buckets of water, both disciples were grounded and Morgan was sent home with a whack on the arse.

“The girl is not right,” Elsie said. “I don't want her babysitting anymore.” Finton complained bitterly, since he was in love with how Morgan sometimes made fudge for the boys, swore violently when she lost at poker, and let them stay up late when their parents were gone to the Saturday night dances and political rallies. Nanny Moon agreed with Elsie, however, remarking how the Battenhatch girl sometimes stared off into space and talked to herself. “With a mother like that? It just goes to show,” Elsie said.

“All they've got comin' in is Morgan's babysitting and Miss Bridie's welfare cheques,” Tom argued, but to no avail. Ultimately, he gave in to the nagging and banned Morgan from babysitting at the Moon house. Still, there were plenty of other places in Darwin for her to find work. Gradually, however, word had spread of Morgan's exploits, and there was a rumour going around that she'd been caught in bed with one of the boys she was supposed to be looking after.

The other rumour was that, when she was eighteen, Morgan had thrown a rope over an exposed beam in her bedroom, stood on a chair and put a noose around her neck. Even bending her legs, of course, the ceiling was too low, and her mother had caught her before she could kill herself, throwing her arms around Morgan's legs and thereby saving her from “an eternity in purgatory.” Instead, Morgan was sent to the psychiatric ward at St. Clare's in the hopes that she could be cured of the darkness tormenting her soul.

One cold night in early September of '69, there came a thunderous pounding upon the front door. Finton was parked on the floor, hugging a pillow and watching
Gilligan's Island
, thinking he would never want to leave any island that had both an exotic Ginger and a pretty Mary Ann. He heard mumbling from the porch: “Morgan home from the mental—Miss Bridie—fire, Tom.”

As if on cue, a mournful siren's wail pierced the night. Finton dashed to the kitchen and climbed onto the kitchen counter to peer out the window. He was just in time to watch the sleek, red truck, glistening in the moonlight between gathering dark clouds, its blood light flashing as it pulled in front of the ghostly residence.

Tom cursed under his breath, wondering aloud what that “bloodofabitch” was after doing now. He slipped his feet into his shoes and tied them rapidly. “I'll go have a look, Else.”

Finton hopped off the counter in his bare feet. “I'm goin' too!”

“Nearly bedtime for you. I'll tell you about it in the morning.” Tom popped a cigarette between his lips, a frightened look in his cobalt eyes that made Finton all the more eager. Both of his brothers were out—likely down at the fire. So Finton feigned sleepiness, went to bed, and waited for the telltale creaking of his mother opening and closing the front door. Careful not to make the floorboards squeak outside Nanny Moon's bedroom door, which was always barred tight when she was praying, he crept out into the night air.

Even from his own front step, he could see that the blaze had painted the sky a lurid orange-blue. It was like stepping inside the hell of his nightmares. Flames seeped like liquid from the eaves of Miss Bridie's house. Orange sparks spattered upward and twirled about like fireflies before settling mischievously among black branches. Suddenly, Finton was terrified: it had been a warm, dry Indian summer up until that day, and the fire would spread quickly to the trees and houses on Moon's Lane.

He galloped down the lane, feeling as if he were entering the screen of a colour television like he'd seen on display at Sam's Stereo. About a hundred Darwinians had congregated before the burning house while, all around them, treetops blazed and the velvet stream that flowed between Moon's Lane and the Battenhatch estate glowed silent orange and blue. Red parking lights winked on and off for half a mile, while the flashing lights of an RCMP patrol car bathed everything in hysterical crimson.

At first, Finton watched the show from the bottom of Moon's Lane. Nearly everyone he knew was standing there, driven out of their homes and drawn to the flames, curiosity and fear etched on their faces. Some, like his father, were lured by compassion for a woman whose daughter was trying to burn her home to the ground. Most were drawn by the desire to witness the unveiling of Bridie Battenhatch.

Strange visions too clear to be real presented themselves inside his head. Miss Bridie rocking back and forth, counting blue ceramic rosary beads with her spindly fingers, wheezing an old song from her blackened lungs. Beside her, a man genuflected on one knee, using one hand to protect his eyes from the overpowering smoke. He grabbed hold of the woman's arm just as a flaming beam crashed from above and hurled him backwards, smacking his head on a table and leaving him dazed on the floor.

Finton blinked—not exactly seeing, but imagining. He had these kinds of visions occasionally and they sometimes came true.
Didn't I dream this?
he wondered in a voice that seemed outside himself. Blinking again to reset his focus, he identified his mother at the fringes of the crowd, peering into the fire, double wrapping her orange-lined navy parka around her as the wind riffled through the grey fur trim of her hood. She always seemed to be cold and alone. Just off to her right his mother's sister-in-law, Aunt Lucy, leaned forward like a dying willow over her nine fatherless children who huddled like strewn petals at her feet. A quick scan of the crowd showed his best friend Skeet Stuckey smoking and sputtering a string of curse words; Winnie and Francis Minnow, arm in arm, chatting to each other in soft, calm voices; young Doctor Abel Adams; Davey Doyle, star pitcher of Clancy's softball team, the Esso Extras; his mother's Uncle Tim with the red cheeks and gleaming, bald head; and Albino Al Kelly with his older brother Lance, the bartender at Jack's Place. Also guest starring were various teachers, particularly Father Power, who stayed in his car with the windows rolled up, as well as Miss Fielding and Miss Woolfred, who stood talking to each other, their eyes shining with fear. He also noted a murder of Crowleys that included his mortal enemy, Bernard. Behind the Crowleys stood a flock of Dredges, including the pretty one, Alicia, with the hungry eyes. Beside her was a gaggle of girls Finton knew from school. Tall, strong Dolly Worchester looked as if she could lead an army of Amazons into battle. But Mary Connelly, with her needle-thin body, seemed in perpetual need of a hug; he wished he had the nerve to offer her one.