Finton Moon (20 page)

Kieran came over and removed his cap. “It's just for questioning, Mrs. Moon. If he's innocent, he'll be back in no time.”

They all just watched him as if he'd read from the Good Book. He put his cap back on, returned to the car, slammed the door shut and rolled backwards down the lane without flashing lights or siren.

“Proclaim release to the captives and recovery of sight to the blind!” Nanny Moon said, blessing the night air with the sign of the cross, clouds of breath billowing from her mouth. “And let the oppressed go free. Jesus, have mercy on us all.” It was a queer thing to say since Finton wasn't sure his father was oppressed or would even go free. But maybe the old woman was right to believe it.

Futterman was certain of Tom's guilt. Over and over the corporal said, “We got the body. We got witnesses that say you gave him liquor. We even got motive.”

In the end, however, they couldn't charge him, a purported argument and a beer at Jack's being insufficient evidence to try someone for murder or manslaughter. Officer Dredge brought him home the next afternoon, dazed and angry, but no worse for wear.

Tom clearly wasn't in the mood to talk about what had happened. After he'd relayed Futterman's accusations, he departed to the living room, where he spent the rest of the afternoon on the couch, gaping at the TV, gazing vacantly at the soaps and after-school specials. He didn't eat supper with the family, just sat and stared. After finishing his own supper quickly, Finton sat and watched with his father in silence. One of the big stories on the suppertime news was that President Nixon was in some kind of trouble for withholding evidence in a scandal that was making him look terrible in the eyes of the American people. When the newscast was over, Tom got up and turned off the set. He stood in front of the TV and watched the screen darken, the bright dot in the centre fading away. “They got no proof,” he said, then sat down again and stared at the screen.

Things just got worse as the week progressed. Wednesday morning, he rushed from the house and barely caught the school bus. But there was no Mary. As the week progressed, the classrooms got emptier because of a flu that was going around.

“Mary's got pneumonia,” Dolly told him, and he figured he should buy Mary something to keep her mind off her illness, to help her pass the time alone. He imagined her lying in bed all day in great pain, unable to move and wanting something to do.

After school on Thursday, he got off the bus at Mary's place and walked up to her front step. The Connelly house was the nicest in that part of Darwin, standing out from the landscape by virtue of its pristine beauty. Although better kept than most houses in Darwin, Mary's home was a modest two-storey with pink trim to highlight the white clapboard. Despite the brown muck of a false spring that debased the rest of the town, the Connelly front yard was flawless, looking as if it had been puritanically swept.

Mary's mother answered the doorbell in a pink track suit and sneakers. He'd seen Sylvia Connelly around town, but she was always at mass or the grocery store, or some school function where she always wore a dress, high heels, and pearls.

“Hi, Mrs. Connelly. Is Mary here?”

She glanced with bewilderment from his face to the present in his hand. “Mary can't come to the door. She's sick.”

“Can you give her this, please?”

Smiling, she took it from him. As he was leaving, she called out to him. “Mary's very ill, and she's contagious. Maybe if you came back next week.”

He walked home in a weep of falling snow, consoled that there was a reason he didn't get past the front door and resolved that he would return next week, and every week thereafter, until he saw her. Maybe he could even help her get better.

In late January, Kieran Dredge dropped by the house and gathered everyone together in the kitchen. It was fairly obvious that Clancy and Homer were clueless about the whole affair. Homer seemed uncomfortable even talking about Sawyer and simply said, “I'm glad he's dead.” Nanny Moon and Elsie weren't able to contribute much either, but they listened with a mixture of fascination and dread.

Tom repeated the few facts that were known, and Kieran kept tapping his fingers on the table as if something didn't quite make sense. At one point, he leaned back in his chair and pushed his shiny-billed cap back on his head, impressing Finton with how confident and wise he appeared.

“I've got to admit, Tom, it doesn't look good for you.” Kieran stood up, obviously wanting to pace, but since there was no room, he stuffed his hands into his pockets and leaned back against the kitchen counter. “There's not enough to convict you for murder, obviously, and the coroner says he died of exposure. But there was a blow to Sawyer's head that probably played a role. Either way, you're our only suspect. A man was killed and, sooner or later, according to Futterman, we're going to have to arrest somebody. Make no mistake.”

The speech might have been impressive, but the message was terrifying.

“The evidence is all circumstantial,” Kieran added, addressing the entire family. “That's not to say Tom did nothing wrong. He shouldn't have given Sawyer a beer, knowing full well it would have a bad effect on his medication. And people are talking, beyond that—stuff that makes you look bad.”

“No matter what they said, I'm not a killer,” Tom declared, leaving Kieran just as mystified as when he'd arrived.

Following that afternoon, every now and then throughout the winter, Kieran would come over and corner one of the boys for a chat, and Finton supposed he asked all of them the same questions. One warmish day in the middle of March, he got Finton alone on the front step and sat down beside him, Kieran's long, gangly legs spread wide, nearly pointing East and West, while his policeman's hat, with the shiny bill and the broad yellow strip around the band, hung from his long fingertips. The pose reminded Finton of the graceful way his father would handle a fishing pole.

“Did Sawyer ever touch you in a certain way, Finton?”

“Once,” he said. “In the woods by the school. Nothin' serious.”

Suddenly, he recalled the exact moment. Coming upon Sawyer sitting on a stump. The crazed look in his eyes. The crow cawing. He remembered going to the Planet of Solitude, a detail he kept to himself. Then Skeet had come back for him, but Sawyer was gone.

“Did your father know?”

“I never told him.”

“What about either of your brothers?” Finton shrugged. Kieran cleared his throat and seemed a little edgy, squirming his backside on the concrete until he was good and settled. “What I mean is, did either of them start acting
different
at some point?”

He immediately thought of Homer that summer when he, all of a sudden, seemed to be spending more time on his own, barring himself in his bedroom and turning the music up loud. He wondered if it would get Homer in trouble if he told. It occurred to him that Kieran knew the same thing he did—that motives for killing Sawyer Moon were so plentiful they practically grew on trees.

But Kieran spared his dilemma. “I already talked to Homer.”

“What did he tell you?”

“Well, now, I can't tell you that. But if you can think of anything else…”

With a shake of his head, Finton drew a curtain of silence between them. He stared straight ahead, trying to convey that it was time to move on.

Mary's seat on the bus remained empty. The ride to school was long and boring, for there were no other girls he loved nearly as much. There were a few whom he considered good-looking, but they weren't reachable like Mary, or nearly as pretty. They had looser morals and ways he didn't approve of.

He had learned from his teachers and parents that women weren't supposed to smoke, drink, or say bad words. They didn't talk back to anyone, and they didn't make loud or rude noises. They didn't romp in the grass with boys or play boys' games. And they always went to mass, carried a prayer book and recited every word of the priest's service. They certainly did well in school while they waited for a boy their own age to ask them to the school dances, then later the prom, and then finally to be engaged and married. Although it was fine if they wanted to be teachers, nurses, and secretaries to earn extra money for the household, they didn't need to aspire to careers and would certainly give up working as soon as the first baby was coming. That was the woman's main job—to stay pure for her husband until she could bear his children.

Mary could be all that and more. Even though she was smart, she was traditional in ways that he liked. Finton wanted an old-fashioned girl and, while Darwin had quite a few of those, it also had more than its share of skanks and streels.

So he focused on a girl he would be proud to have.

When the weekend came, however, he still hadn't seen her.

“Jesus, your girlfriend's not here again today,” Skeet pointed out to him on Friday. “She must really be dyin' or something.”

“She's not my girlfriend.” But Finton was beginning to wonder just how sick Mary was. His worst fears were confirmed when Miss Woolfred started out the morning prayer by asking everyone to remember Mary Connelly because she was sick and her mother requested that they pray for her.

Sunday morning, she wasn't in church, nor was her family. When Father Power dedicated the mass to “the Connelly's dear little girl, Mary,” Finton felt a lump in his throat and a ball of gunk at the pit of his stomach.

He went home after mass and went straight to the bedroom to pray. Kneeling on his bed and looking up at the crucified Jesus, he repeatedly asked God to save her. He was still kneeling when Homer and Clancy crashed into the room, laughing and roughhousing.

“Didn't you get enough o' that in mass?” Clancy asked.

Homer asked if he'd heard about Mary Connelly. Finton stopped praying and looked at his brother, who actually appeared sombre. “I can't believe she's that sick. I mean, she's only your age, isn't she?”

“She's in my class.”

“She's cute too,” said Clancy. “I'm surprised you're not after her.”

He felt his heart grow tight in his chest. “Me and Mary are friends.”

“Better her than that Dredge streel.” Homer chuckled. “Anyway, it don't look like you'll be friends for much longer.”

Finton launched himself towards Homer's throat, knocking his brother onto Clancy's bed. “Shut up!” he yelled. “Just shut your goddamn mouth!”

Homer was able to fend him off, and it didn't take long before Clancy managed to peel the younger away from the elder. By then,

Nanny Moon and both parents had come rushing in to demand an explanation.

“He's pissed at me because his friggin' girlfriend is sick.” Homer straightened himself up and sniffed, touching a couple of fingers to his nose. Then he smirked at Finton. “You swore.”

“Never.”

“I heard you.” Homer looked to their mother. “Finton said the g-d word.”

“Finton, you didn't.” The disappointment in his mother's eyes hurt him as much as any words or hitting could do. But Finton locked his lips tight, for fear he might incriminate himself—advice he'd gotten from watching
Perry Mason
.

“Jesus, you're bleedin',” said Elsie, frowning in Homer's direction. “Let's get you cleaned up.” Before whisking Homer to the bathroom for repairs, she turned back to Finton. “And you, I'd suggest, better get your act together. Good boys don't hit their brothers and make them bleed. And they certainly don't take the Lord's name in vain.”

“He started it,” Finton yelled.

But his mother was clearly frustrated. “Don't you think we got enough to worry about around here without the likes of you actin' up and startin' rackets?”

“I'm not just gonna let him—”

“That's enough out of you,” said Tom. “One more word, and you'll be grounded to your bed for the rest of this day of Our Lord.”

“I don't care.” Even as he said the words, Finton felt the anger welling up inside him, and all eyes turned to him. “You won't even listen to me.”

His father had no choice. He knew that.

“That's it,” Tom said. “Stay here till you rot. Clancy, leave him alone.”

They all filed out of the bedroom, one at a time.

“I hate you,” Finton said. His father halted and wheeled around, simultaneously removing his belt.

“Just say it again,” he warned as he twisted the belt into a weapon and wrung it tight until the leather creaked.

Finton squared his shoulders and glared into his father's eyes. “I hate you.”

Tom pulled off and slapped Finton's face with the belt. The boy fell backward and smacked his right ear against the wall as he felt the thin leather belt strike his ribs. He knew by the burning sensation on the flesh of his stomach that the belt had raised a welt.

“Say it again, ya little bastard. Say it again and I'll strike ya down!” His father was panting, eyes blazing with anger, the belt poised and ready to relaunch.

Finton knew he should stop talking, if only for his own preservation, but he couldn't help himself. He had to stand up for what was right or no one ever would. His father had become the enemy of truth. “I hate you… goddamn you.”

Tom lashed out again and walloped him in the stomach, engraving his skin with a deep, red mark. Over and over, they replayed the same scene as Finton uttered the words he knew would hurt his father the most—and the father, with his leather belt, meted out justice. Several blows later, panting harder, Tom's tone shifted from angry to pleading. “Say you're sorry, and I can stop hurting you.” The hand that gripped the belt was quivering. The eyes that glared at him were deep set and red.

“No,” he said softly but as firmly as the first time.

The belt hit him again. And every time his father asked, Finton refused, and Tom would wallop him. “Had enough?” Tom arched the belt, prepared to strike another blow.