Finton Moon (16 page)

He went to school that day with a sense of being different from everyone else. On the bus, he heard Skeet talking about the police finding Sawyer, but was too preoccupied to care, watching his friend's lips mouthing words, a particle of spit forming before he rubbed his lips together and got rid of it. His eyes contained a hilarity that disgusted Finton slightly. No one should be so overjoyed when someone died. When Mary got on board, he watched her eyes for a sign that they now had a bond, but, among the crowd, she didn't seem to notice him. And yet he saw everything about her—that her boot laces were tied too tight, that the front of her slacks had been ironed to a sharp crease, that each of her eyelashes curved gently upwards, that one of her cheeks had six freckles while the other had five, and her small nose pointed slightly upwards. And she seemed sad.

When he lined up behind the other children for entry into the school, he found himself noticing every loose button on every coat, every speck of salt on a pant leg, each individual smile and frown, every emotion in every eye. He sensed a melancholy in Miss Woolfred as she stood on the top step, clanging the handbell. He knew she'd argued with her boyfriend that morning about whether she should take a teaching job in the city. The information caught Finton by surprise; he hadn't even known she had a boyfriend. But he wished there was something he could say to make her feel better.

When Mary and Dolly stepped in front of him in the lineup, he was startled as if jolted from a daydream, but the hyper-reality still pulsated within him. Mary turned and said, “Hi, Finton.” But his concentration was divided, and he could only manage to say, “Hey.” The thoughts came quickly: Dolly was menstruating, and Mary was anxiously awaiting the beginning of her first time.
Someday.
She was aware of him standing behind her, smelling the No More Tangles shampoo in her hair as the breeze riffled through it. He felt her anxiety and suddenly remembered the math test.

His first thought was to run away. But he resisted the urge, believing that if he departed now, he might find it too easy to perform the same disappearing act every day that followed. No, it was important to stay here today, to remain grounded in this existence. Otherwise, he might never feel rooted again.

As he sat at his desk, staring at the test paper, he doodled some pictures, toyed with writing his name backwards, diagonally and horizontally, and stared out the window from time to time. He wondered what the police were doing with Sawyer's body. He suddenly got the urge to start writing a story, and he jotted the first line:
I'll never forget the day I found the dead body of my sworn enemy.

“Finton?” His head jerked at the sound of his name. Miss Woolfred stood over him, a disgruntled look on her face. She was still upset after her fight with
Garnett… yeah, Garnett,
and was in no mood for a challenge. Her eyes were stormy green, and she had a tiny pimple on the side of her nose, which she had squeezed before coming to work, but its redness hadn't altogether faded. Realizing the gravity of the situation, he quickly put the story away, figuring he would finish it later.

“Are you going to do your test?” she asked.

“Sorry,” he said and tried to focus on the paper in front of him.

“Sit up straight,” she said, setting her hands on her hips. “And don't give me that tone.”

“I never used a tone.”

“One more word…” she closed her eyes, inhaled and exhaled, then opened them again. “Just do your test, Finton.”

He drew a deep breath of his own and straightened up in the desk, heels clanging against its metal base. He grasped the pen, set his eyes on the exam. He didn't look at his teacher again until the test was done. It was too much to expect that he would figure out the problems, so he just filled in the blanks with made-up answers. Meanwhile, he kept thinking about how to finish the story he'd started.

He didn't relax until the bell rang, ending the first period, and he was able to breathe. Skeet's leg reached over and kicked Finton's heel.

“You okay, Moon?”

“Leave me alone.”

“It's just not like you to talk back to a teacher—especially ol' Woolfie. I thought you were her pet.” His sarcastic grin was irritating. “What's eating you?”

“
You
, okay?” Finton stood up and jammed his books under his arm, then stomped away and left Skeet with his jaw hanging. From the center of the room, Mary turned her head and watched him leave, her brown eyes filled with concern.

Rain fell to the pavement as Finton fled the classroom and then ran from school. It was a couple of weeks before Christmas holidays, but it felt like Doomsday. It was usually a three-mile walk back to the house, but Finton knew a shortcut through the woods. About a quarter mile from the school, he left the road and veered into the trees, slowing his pace only when he'd reached the thicket. He could hear the occasional car zipping by on the wet pavement, but he couldn't see them, and they couldn't see him.

Within minutes he'd found a trail Clancy had showed him a couple of years ago from when the telephone company was erecting poles. It was hard going because much of the underbrush had grown back in, barren as it was this time of year, and the path was muddy. Every once in a while, he'd come to a wide strip of dirty-brown water, and he'd have to criss-cross the whole way to keep from stepping in it.

An hour later and soaked to his skin, Finton broke through the clearing behind the Battenhatch house. He tiptoed across the soggy marsh and crept along the edge of the swollen Moon's River. It was twice as wide and probably twice as deep as normal, with the torrent roaring downstream at a pace that would make it impossible to cross. A dirty, white diaper that had snagged itself in the clutches of a large fallen branch waved at him from the undulating stream.

There was no other choice. Leaving the roar of the river behind him, he turned left towards the Battenhatch house. His sneakers still squished in the soggy grass, and he kept both eyes trained on the dark windows. Finally, as the rain started coming down harder, he ran. His clothes were saturated, but he managed to trot around the blind side of the house. The spruce trees in the front yard stood like sentries. Even though the road was just yards away, he feared he would never escape the Battenhatch yard.

From behind him, he heard the sound he dreaded most.

“Come here!” the voice yelled from the open front door.

Reluctantly, he turned and looked. There she stood, in all her gothic glory, shaking her grey head and beckoning him towards her. “You're soaked to the bone, b'y,” she said in her quavering voice. “Come in and get dry.”

Halfway between the house and the road, Finton stood, unable to move. He was torn between running and giving in. A glance to his right, through the thin veil of trees between the Battenhatch and Moon properties, showed him an odd vehicle pulling into his parents' driveway—a black cruiser with white doors, a cherry-red light on top, and an RCMP crest emblazoned on the door. Officer Dredge got out and lumbered towards the Moons' front door, soon joined by the second policeman, probably Corporal Futterman. They stood and knocked, but had to stand for a while on the front doorstep in the rain.

“Come in, ya bloody fool!” Bridie fixed him with a threatening glare as she coughed sharply. She stepped onto the front porch, shielding her face with one hand. “Afore you catch your death, luh.”

Some combination of obedience and courage impelled him forward, as Finton followed her into the house.

“What in blue blazes were you doin' out there?” Just like last time, she already had the kettle on and two places set. With this weather, he had expected to see buckets everywhere, catching raindrops. But there was a crackling fire in the wood stove, and the air was drier, almost cleaner, than he remembered.

“Nudding.”

“Aren't you supposed to be in school?”

“I left.”

She didn't respond, but bustled around the table, pouring tea and ripping open a fresh pack of Jam-jams, which she laid on the table in front of Finton. “Have a cookie—good for what ails ya.”

“I'm not ailin'.” Ravenous from not having eaten yet that morning, he snatched a cookie and broke it in two, taking one half of it in his mouth and staring at the other half as if to ponder its medicinal benefits. Munching slowly, he glanced out at the falling rain, scanning the road for a sign that the police had finished interrogating his parents.

“Oh, I'd say you are. That's what you are, indeed.” Miss Bridie sat across from him, cradling a full teacup between her hands, coughing occasionally as if she had a tickle in her throat. “You're soaked from the rain. I got some old clothes, I'm sure—”

“No, thanks.”

“Or a blanket.”

“I'm not stayin' that long. I got to go home.”

She smiled, but with a worried look in her eyes that he had never seen before.

“You know that the fuzz are up in your driveway, don't you?” He nodded. “And you know why they're there.”

He fixed his gaze on the painted window through which he could just make out the shape of some trees and, beyond them, the shadow of a narrow, black road. The thumping of his heart marked each passing moment.

“You're in a mess—you and your father,” she said. “Old Sawyer really did it this time, didn't he? And there's no comin' back once you're in that particular hole.”

He scrutinized her face, wondering,
What makes her so mean? And how does she seem to know everything?
He could count the lines in her face and smell the odour of her unwashed flesh. But he was unable to read her thoughts.

She tapped her right temple with a solitary finger. “You tell more than you think you do. And I listen clearer than most.”

Finton shoved the remaining half Jam-jam into his mouth, but struggled to chew. Under her omnipotent gaze, he felt the overwhelming urge to cry, but he held it in.

“He's a goner.” She paused and looked out the window, trying to glimpse what he saw. Or maybe she was looking at his reflection in the glass. Or possibly her own. “Doesn't matter.” She shook her head as if recovering her senses. “He had it comin' and now he's gone. All we can do is take care of what's left and do what's right.” She stopped once more and regarded him closely. “You know what I'm saying, and don't let on otherwise—you know what you have to do.”

He looked into her haunted eyes and shuddered. Rain dripped from his hair and nose, splattering onto the plastic-covered tabletop. “What do I have to do?”

“You don't need me to tell you that, child. Just go home and take care of them all that needs taking care of.”

Scraping the legs of his chair on the floor, Finton struggled to his feet. He was getting cold and felt a fever and headache coming on. His body ached for something it would never attain. He snatched a cookie and held it carefully as he ran towards the door and yanked it open. Leaping outside and over the steps, he clambered onto the road and took off running. He could feel her watching him as he crossed the flooded culvert.

A muddy brown rivulet flowed down the centre of Moon's Lane. At the lane's pinnacle squat a troubled bungalow and a troublesome car.

The police were still in the kitchen. He tried to be invisible, but they easily noticed him when he opened the front door and slipped inside. Both men seemed anxious, but neither spoke to him at first, as they finished discussing Kieran Dredge's experiences upon returning to Darwin as a lawman.

“It's been strange, indeed,” Kieran was saying. “And busier than I would've expected, for sure.”

Elsie nodded, sitting by the stove, arms folded across her chest. She turned towards Finton. “Where have you been?” she asked in her telephone voice.

“Out.” He scooted past the officers' sharp-creased slacks and shiny shoes with the mud stains on the bottoms. They each held their hats with the shiny brims, their skulls sporting crew cuts.

“Shouldn't you be in school?” Elsie asked.

“I'm sick.”

“Why didn't you call?”

“I found my own way home.” He paused only for a moment and turned around to face them all. “I'm goin' to bed.”

“These fellas want to talk to you, Finton.” Elsie opened her stance, laying one arm on the cold stovetop to her right and the other on the tabletop to her left. “Kieran and Officer Futterman are looking into the thing with Sawyer.”

“Maybe you heard something at school today?” prompted Kieran.

Finton shrugged. “I didn't talk to no one today.”

“You must have talked to
some
one.” The older policeman, Futterman, the one with the mustache, was turning his hat over and over in his hands.

“Some people say he got drunk and fell down,” said Finton.

“Maybe,” said Kieran. “He might have fallen and smacked his head on a rock. Or someone could have hit him and caused him to fall. We won't know for sure till we see the coroner's report, but there's no harm in gettin' a headstart.”

“We're asking around to see who knows what,” said the older one. There might be something more to it, ya know?”

Elsie spoke up. “Well, Finton doesn't know anything, Earl. He's just a boy.”

“Yes, ma'am. And we do appreciate your time,” said Futterman. “But we were hopin' to talk to your husband today. Is Tom around?”

“To tell the truth, I haven't—”

She looked to be about ready to tell one of the biggest fibs of her life when the toilet flushed in the bathroom, separated from the kitchen only by a thin sheet of gyproc. “That would be him now.” He'd never seen his mother's face turn so red.

She called out to Tom and, after a brief pause, in which the two officers exchanged unreadable glances, he appeared in the kitchen. His hair was tousled as if he'd just woke from a nap, and he pulled on his belt to insert the metal prong into the correct hole as he intermittently tried to stuff the hem of his white t-shirt into his pants.