Angel Landing (19 page)

John Finn was the tallest man there had ever been in the family—he was six-foot-four and not one of his sons was more than five-eleven. And so even though Danny Finn was seventeen years old and stronger than he'd ever be again, when his father reached out and caught him on the jaw, Danny flew up into the air, and landed head first on a block of cement. Although he didn't lose consciousness, a stream of blood trickled through his hair, until his face was streaked red. John Finn knelt down and gently held his son around his shoulders.

“I just wanted you to come to your senses,” John Finn explained to the boy. “You're not sailing any seas.”

Later that day as they walked to the union hall, Danny Finn wished over and over again that his father would drop dead in his tracks. But John Finn's strides grew no shorter, and he was still walking tall when they left the union hall after Danny's induction as an apprentice. But the resentment did not end; although it seemed to disappear by the time John Finn fell from a scaffolding and broke his neck. By that time, Danny Finn had forgotten all about the Navy, he had forgotten any dreams. He really believed he was telling the truth when he shook his head and whispered to his brothers at the funeral, “He was the one who brought me to my senses when I was a boy. Best thing that ever happened to me.” As he stood beside the grave, Danny Finn really believed that all his old resentment was gone; but the curious thing was that he didn't feel a thing when they lowered the casket into the ground; when the first shovelful of dirt hit against the wood with a thud, he didn't even flinch. Still, he had convinced himself that his father had set him on the right road by forcing him to join the union. At nineteen, Danny Finn was a journeyman, he was earning a good salary, and soon there would be the benefits from John Finn's accident to share with his brothers. Danny Finn needed extra money: he had gotten a young woman pregnant, and the terrible thing was, she was the sort of woman that once you got into trouble you had to marry.

But somehow things never worked out. Danny Finn waited for his check, but after a while saw that his brothers meant to cut him out of his share. Danny Finn never saw a cent of his father's money; he learned to hate his three brothers. Dead, John Finn seemed to grow even taller; he became an invisible giant who would have guided Danny had he lived. The more Danny Finn thought about it, the more certain he was that his father would have approved of his marrying a woman like Ada; the old man, had he been alive, would surely have loved her as if she were the daughter he never had.

But after several years of marriage, after the birth of his only son, Michael, and the family's move into the new house in Harbor Heights, Danny Finn suddenly changed. He had seen the face of death; luminous eyes had drilled into his own, the breath of despair had touched him. Danny Finn was only twenty-seven when he left the hospital and walked across the parking lot where Ada and Michael Finn waited in the car, but he walked like an old man, he stumbled on the asphalt. He now knew, as he slid behind the wheel of his car and looked up toward the third-floor window where the girl had sat, where she might be sitting still, straining to see through the smudges and the mist, that his life was not ever going to be different. The only thing that would happen was that he would grow older. If he was lucky he would meet a quick death like his father, while he was still young. If not, he would spend his old age on a union pension, side by side with a woman who didn't even know him, who would not have guessed how he felt when he looked into a young girl's eyes.

That was when he began to grow meaner. He stayed out late every night drinking, hoping to erase all the terrors that had come together like a death knell when he saw that girl's face. He became terrified of life and of death, and of the years stretching out before him. Ada Finn never knew what he felt, she never knew any more than she saw: the young man she had married had disappeared, someone else had taken his place. She knew this could happen, she had seen the faces of women whose husbands it had happened to; she had never thought she would be one of them. But she was; just like the women she had heard whispered about by neighbors and friends, she became a woman who carried dinner out to her family without one word, just like them she was afraid that her husband might slap her for cooking the potatoes too long, or serving the meat undercooked. At night she was glad to sleep alone, and she shuddered when she heard the front door slam at 3 or 4 A.M., she wanted to weep when she heard Danny Finn's footsteps in the hall.

As the years went by, Ada Finn did not know that it was no longer her husband's footsteps she heard in the hall, but her son's. For years, Michael Finn had been illegally driving the family car. He was fourteen the first time he was dragged along to a bar. He sat at a rear table drinking Cokes until his father became too drunk to drive. Danny Finn threw the car keys over to his son that night. “Drive,” he said. And Michael Finn did just that, although it took some time before he could shift the car into first gear. And from that time on, when Michael Finn awoke in the night to see that the car was not in the driveway, he got dressed, walked downtown to the Modern Times, and drove his father home. It was expected of the boy, it had become a habit, and in part he enjoyed it, because he was able to drive when no other boy he knew could even tell the brake pedal from the clutch. It was on these drives that Michael Finn first heard about the girl in the hospital. Danny Finn, lying in the back as Michael drove, would mutter about the girl, calling out to her, begging for her forgiveness, for her love.

For quite a long time Michael Finn thought that the girl had existed nowhere other than in his father's imagination; she seemed to be nameless and faceless, more like a spirit than anything else. But one night the boy discovered just how real that girl in the hospital was, just how much she meant to Danny Finn. When Michael arrived at the Modern Times, he found Danny Finn drunker than he had ever seen him before; several men had to lift Danny into the back seat of the car. It was winter, the roads were slick, and Michael drove slowly, hoping with each block that no policeman would stop him and demand the license he didn't have. From the back seat came a low moaning sound; Michael hoped that his father would not be sick; if he blacked out he'd be far too heavy for Michael to carry alone. When they turned onto Route 18, down by the harbor, Danny Finn cried out in pain. “There she is,” Danny Finn cried. “I can see her face; she's like a Goddamn saint. Pull over.”

Michael Finn kept driving, though he kept a careful eye on the rearview mirror. He was certain his father would fall asleep, but instead Danny Finn managed to sit up in the back seat.

“I said pull over,” Danny Finn cried. He took hold of Michael Finn's shoulder and squeezed it so hard that Finn nearly lost control of the car. Finally, Michael pulled over, into the deserted parking lot of the old Fishers Cove Ferry. Danny Finn threw open the back door; he ran from the car as if chased by spirits. Michael Finn followed his father, who crouched close to the earth, a tired old wolf.

“I know her,” Danny Finn said gravely. Saliva ran down his lips and his eyes were wide with liquor and memory.

“The girl in the hospital?” Michael Finn asked.

“I should have seen it before,” Danny Finn cried. He looked up at his son, shivering in only a denim jacket. “I should have known who she was,” Danny Finn went on. “My mother,” he said, amazed and terrified. “It was a visitation, that's what it was,” he cried. “A ghost.”

The girl who had sat in the patients' lounge so long ago had probably died a quiet, bitter death not long after Danny Finn checked out of the hospital; she had surely never given the man in the lounge a second thought. But she had haunted Danny Finn for so long that he could not spend a night without her; she had become the most important person in his life.

“It was her,” Danny Finn whispered. He held his hands over his face; tears dripped through his fingers. “My God. My God. It was her,” Danny Finn shrieked.

Michael Finn crouched down next to his father; he bit his lip to keep his teeth from chattering; he wondered what he was supposed to do. Perhaps he was supposed to throw his arms around his father, perhaps he was supposed to carry Danny Finn back to the car and hold him until his father's outburst subsided. But after a lifetime of beatings and distrust, Michael Finn did none of the things he was supposed to do, none of the things he wished he could have done. Instead, he rocked back and forth on his heels. The harbor they faced was a phosphorescent green. He was so close to his father that he could smell the bourbon, he could feel his father's hot breath each time Danny Finn cried out loud, each time Danny remembered the man he used to be.

Michael Finn would have liked to run; he would have liked to kick up his heels and run far away from Danny Finn and his ghosts, but the boy couldn't take his eyes off his father, he couldn't see anything but the man he had despised for so long, weeping in an empty parking lot. Before Michael Finn knew it, before he had time to stop himself, he was weeping alongside his father. Michael Finn never knew if his father noticed his tears; he doubted if Danny Finn could have noticed anything but his own pain that night. Michael's tears were brief, he did not weep for long, still he had shocked himself. When his eyes were dry, Michael breathed deeply as he waited for his father to calm down. After a while, Daniel Finn did stop weeping; he lay down, exhausted and shaking.

Michael Finn helped his father back to the car. Danny Finn nodded off to sleep, and Michael Finn drove home slowly, all the time trying to forget all that he had seen and heard. When they reached the house, and Michael had pulled the car into the driveway, Danny Finn awoke suddenly; he looked at his son as if the boy was no one he knew.

“What the hell are you doing?”

“We're home,” Michael said as he turned off the engine and the headlights. “I'm parking the car,” he explained.

“All right then.” Danny Finn nodded. “That's okay.”

When they were inside the house and had closed the door behind them, Michael Finn felt a hand on his shoulder as he began to walk down the hall to his bedroom.

“Everybody makes mistakes,” Danny Finn told him.

“Sure,” Michael Finn said evenly, but the night had been too much for him; his voice was hoarse, and he wanted to escape to his room, where he would close the door and forget all that had happened in the deserted parking lot.

“Maybe I wasn't supposed to be a father,” Danny Finn went on. “I should have been a Navy man.” Then he looked over at his son, and for a minute it seemed as if he wasn't drunk at all, as if he'd never been drunk. “Maybe you wish that you had someone else for a father,” he said.

Michael Finn wasn't a liar, but he didn't have the courage to tell the truth. Perhaps he thought a time like this would come again, a time when his father once more asked for forgiveness and love, when the two men would talk in the hallway while Ada Finn tossed and dreamed behind the bedroom door. But such a time would never come again, the two men would grow farther and farther apart, so far that when Danny Finn sent Michael off to the Stockley School, father and son really believed they were strangers. But that night when he might have said something, Michael Finn didn't answer and he lost the one chance he would ever have to talk to his father.

“Hell, maybe you would have liked a father who had money,” Danny continued. “Somebody who didn't scream so much. But shit, the way I scream is nothing compared to my father. And if you think I leave my mark when I smack you, just remember that my father was six-foot-four and when he walloped you you didn't forget it. “No,” Danny Finn shook his head, “you never forgot it.”

Something was happening to Michael Finn—his throat was closing up, his lungs were heavy and full, he was afraid that when he breathed he might squeak, he might burst right open.

“My father,” Danny Finn whispered, “was a real bastard. Forget everything I ever told you about him; he was a bastard and he killed my mother. That's right, he killed her with too much work and no love. That can kill a person.” Danny Finn nodded.

“I have to go to school tomorrow,” Michael Finn found himself saying. “I've got to get up early in the morning.”

“Maybe he wasn't meant to be a father either,” Danny Finn said. “Maybe he did the best he could.”

“Maybe,” Michael Finn said noncommittally.

“Maybe I did, too,” Danny Finn said. He looked his son straight in the eye. “Think that could be a possibility?”

“Could be,” Michael Finn said without conviction.

Danny Finn looked quickly away. “You better go to bed,” he said. “I don't know what the hell you're doing up so late. You've got school tomorrow, and don't you forget it.”

Michael Finn went to his room and shut the door. He tried to sleep, but each time he closed his eyes he saw Danny Finn's face, he saw his father's tears, he heard his father's choked pleadings. Michael Finn had always felt that he and his father would never know each other, they would never talk or be close; but now he felt a terrible sadness deep inside, one which threatened to explode. When he finally did fall asleep, Michael Finn dreamed that he was not a son, but a father. He and his son walked side by side across the snow; they followed a path on the other side of the harbor where the land was still wild with brambles and roots, and sea gulls nested in huge pines. Michael Finn and his son walked together, and they knew each other better with every step they took, as if their spirits floated above their bodies and conversed freely with words that were open and true. When Finn awoke he felt a terrible loss; he was as sad waking from his dream and having to face the day as he would have been had his dream son slipped through a hole in the frozen harbor, had the child's hands clutched the ice and finally disappeared before Michael Finn could do a thing to rescue him.