Finton Moon (25 page)

“Exactly. Just because you have it, doesn't mean they deserve it more than you. You need to take care of yourself. No one—not your friends, not your family, or anyone else will do it for you.”

Kieran's words struck Finton as true, and he resolved to try and implement the advice.

Confirmation classes were a great excuse to get out of regular class. For a month prior to Easter, twice a week, he and most of his classmates would get on a bus to go down to the Sacred Heart of Mary church where the old spinster, Miss Wyseman, would lead them through the paces. There were lines to learn, procedures to practice, and hymns to rehearse, like “Make Me a Channel of Your Peace” and “Daily, Daily, Sing to Mary,” which was the only part he enjoyed. It gave him a special thrill to sing such devout lines to Mary while no one knew he was thinking of Mary Connelly when he sang. Except for that, he hated every minute of the Confirmation training, but he didn't want to embarrass his mother or himself, so he endured it.

Mary still hadn't come back to school, and she hadn't attended Confirmation classes. Skeet and Dolly went, though, and so did Bernard, Al, Cocky, and the King twins.

He envied the two Protestant kids who were allowed to stay behind and do school work. Not that it was easy being a Protestant in Darwin. There were only a couple of non-Catholic families in the entire town, and Finton's mother had often warned him against being infected by their hedonistic beliefs. “They don't believe in the infallibility of the Pope,” she'd told him once, meaning they were wicked to the core. Still, Billy Bundy and Trish Gacy didn't seem so bad to him, and they actually seemed cleaner and brighter than most. “That's because the Anglicans have money,” Nanny Moon told him. “Makes them arrogant, like that adultering King Henry the Eighth.”

“Why don't Catholics have money?” Finton wanted to know.

“Because we're God's chosen, b'y. With faith in the Lord, you don't need dollars.”

“But what if you needs to buy stuff. What if I needs to buy chips and bars for watchin' the hockey game?”

“You don't need it. It's Lent, anyway—you should be givin' that stuff up.”

“Why?”

“Because Jesus never had potato chips. And if he did he would have given them to the poor, starving children.”

Finton considered the likelihood that if he didn't have any money, he might
be
one of the poor, starving children. He looked up at the crucifix over the kitchen table. Maybe that's why he looks so miserable all the time. But he didn't say any of this aloud. In fact, gazing at the crucified Christ made him feel depressed, so he told Nanny Moon he would sacrifice chips and bars for the rest of Lent.

“That's nice,” she said. “But it's too late now. Lent is already started. But you can begin now and make up for it by doing the stations.”

The stations meant he had to walk around the perimeter of the church's interior, stop at each of the fourteen Stations of the Cross, contemplate the significance of each one, and say a brief prayer before blessing himself (“spectacles, testicles, wallet, and watch,” as Skeet had taught him). He'd never done them before and actually looked forward to the arduous “journey.” He'd never known his father to do the stations, but his mother did them once a month, to remind her of how Jesus had suffered for her sins.

“What sins?” he asked.

“I don't have any sins,” she would answer.

“Then why do you need to do the stations?”

“Because Jesus wants us to. He died for all our sins.”

“What sins?

“Shut up, Finton, b'y. Yer givin' me a mortal headache.”

“Well, what sins do
I
have?”

“You've got your Original Sin on your soul, like everyone else.”

“How did I get that?”

“You didn't
get
it, b'y. You were born with it. It's what ya gets for bein' born.”

Thus, when the time came for Finton to do the stations, he found out that he also had to endure Confession. He already went once a month, but only to sit outside while his mother and brothers confessed.

“Bless me Father…”

“For I have sinned.”

“For I have sinned. And… I don't remember.”

The priest sighed patiently on his side of the confessional, and Finton wondered if he had somewhere more important to be. “It's been how long since your last confession?”

“This is my first confession, Father.”

“Excellent. Well, have you any sins to confess?”

“I've got Original Sin on my soul, Father.”

“That's true, my son.”

“But Mudder says there's nudding you can do about that.”

“I can give you a penance, but your Original Sin was absolved at Baptism.”

Sitting in the velvety darkness of the confessional, he felt relieved. Then he thought hard about what other sins he was going to confess. He didn't think he should tell about his premonition of Sawyer's death, partly because Father Power hadn't believed him about Miss Bridie being dead a few years ago, and partly because he feared being implicated. Still, his mother and Nanny Moon had told him to confess everything to the priest and to trust in his forgiveness. “The parish priest talks directly to God,” Nanny Moon had said. “If you tell Father Power, then God hears it at the same time.” When he asked why he couldn't just tell God his own sins, she told him not to be so saucy. “Only the priest is God's vessel—that's one of the mysteries.”

Still, he was afraid to tell everything for fear that God might punish him. On the other hand, God probably already knew what was in Finton's heart. Maybe he'd even feel better if he confessed about his part in Sawyer's death, but he didn't know if that was a good reason to confess. The only good reason, really, would be to purge his soul and thereby avoid purgatory when he died. He also wondered if it was a sin to think his father might have killed Sawyer. But he decided he shouldn't say that aloud to anyone.

Unsure of the course that would reward him with the most redemption, he relied on the list of sins he'd compiled in his head, thinking he might just go with that—unless the priest asked him specifically about whether he'd killed anyone with his thoughts.

“I told a lie and had bad thoughts about someone. I talked back to my mother and father. And Nanny Moon too. And my teachers. And Mrs. Sellars because she gypped me fifty cents. She was mean to me too. She told me to get her something to hit me with, but I told her to kiss me arse.”

An extended silence, and a sound which could have been mistaken for laughter came from the other side. “Is that all, my son?”

“No, Father. This is my first confession, and I've been alive nearly thirteen years, so I've got lots more. Do you want to hear them all?”

“Just the highlights will be fine.”

“All right. I looked at Mary Connelly with lust, Father. And I had a dream about her and Dolly. I couldn't help it. Then I lied about that. I had bad thoughts about Bridie Battenhatch too, and Sawyer Moon, and my mother and father. I had bad thoughts about Bernard Crowley too. And Cocky Munro. I called him an arsehole, and he is too. But I'm sorry for saying it.”

The priest seemed to be smiling, though it was hard to tell through the wire. Finton thought he smelled cat's pee.

“You've been a busy little sinner, haven't you?”

“Yes, Father.”

“I tell you what—just say a whole rosary, and all your sins will be forgiven.”

“But I got more.”

“That'll be fine.” He raised his hand and made the sign of the cross. “I absolve you of all your sins. Go forth and sin no more. Father, Son, Holy Ghost, Amen.”

That was the hardest part. He could recite the rosary like his own name, but going forth and sinning no more wasn't going to be easy. He felt better about himself when he left the confessional, for it was as if God had personally taken his sins away and cleansed him, like taking a toilet scrubber to his soul and scouring it clean.

Go forth and sin no more.
He liked the sound of it and thought he might be able to do it. But he wondered if he should have told the priest about Sawyer Moon if only to alleviate his guilt. “To be secretive is to sin twice over,” his mother used to say. “And every time you don't confess, you're committing the same sin again.” It was when he visited the Twelfth Station that his mind was made up. “Jesus died for your sins.” How many times had he heard that? Nanny Moon often said that every time he lied, especially at Lent, he was driving the nails deeper into Jesus' hands and feet. He didn't think he could handle being responsible for something so horrible.

So he lined up again and waited. Finally, after what seemed like forever, he sat with sweaty palms and shallow breathing in the same Confession box, anticipating the sliding open of the small wooden door and the appearance of the priest's perspiring face.

“Bless me father for I have sinned. It's been twenty minutes since my last confession.”

“You sin quickly, my son.”

“No, Father. I mean, there's one I didn't tell you before.”

“But you told me an awful lot.”

“Not this.”

“Why not?”

“Because I was too afraid.”

There was a pause. “Go on.”

Although Finton's hands were clasped, his body trembled. He kept seeing that image of the crucified Jesus being nailed to the cross and, suddenly, the Confession box seemed deficient of air. “Can you keep a secret, Father?”

“My son, I have no choice. I am bound to forgive and forget. I can tell no other living soul what you tell me in confidence. Speak freely and all will be forgiven. That is the Church's promise, as well as God's.”

Finton breathed easier, but his voice quivered. “I wished for a man to die…” He hesitated, feeling the tiny confessional spinning and closing in on him. “…and he did.”

“Which man was this?”

“Sawyer Moon.”

“The man they found dead just before Christmas.”

The priest made a whistling sound as if sucking in a breath. “Killing a man is a serious sin, as it goes against one of God's commandments. But—” the priest hesitated as if to weigh his words. “You can't kill a man by thinking about it. I mean, it's
wrong
to think about it—and for that you should do penance and ask God's forgiveness—but his death is hardly your fault.”

“But I dreamed about it, and he went missing right after.”

“My son, you give yourself far too much credit.”

Finton didn't feel like arguing. He had confessed and that was all he could do. “Do you have penance for me, Father?”

“Yes, of course.”

He offered Finton a blessing and further penance of ten Our Fathers. The boy hurried out of the confessional, tripped in the threshold, and swore under his breath as he ran out of the church. The whole way, he felt the eyes of his fellow confessors on him, and he wondered how many of their souls were stained as black as his own.

The hardest part about Confirmation was choosing a name. He'd been given one at birth, but he was too young then to know the difference. Now that he was older and about to become one of Christ's soldiers, he was old enough to pick out a name that suited him. Finally, the chance for individuation had come.

Secretly, Finton feared excommunication more than anything else. His mother and grandmother were always telling him stories about people who were excommunicated, the idea being that if he didn't stay on his best behaviour, banishment from the church would be his ultimate fate. “Fidel Castro was excommunicated and so was that baseball player that married Marilyn Monroe.” They would tell him tale after tale of people being excised from the church for not going to mass, for questioning the Pope's infallibility, and for embarrassing the Holy Mother Church in some way. Finton didn't want to be like Castro—“The In-Fidel,” Nanny Moon called him—so he felt the pressure to do everything right. Picking the right name was paramount because the bishop himself was going to be there to hand out the sacrament.

“Have you come up with a name yet?” His mother was ironing his new white shirt. Confirmation was tomorrow, Palm Sunday, and he was getting anxious.

“I thought about John or James or something like that.”

“Those are nice names.”

“But I was thinking Scout.”

He noticed his mother's ironing became more methodical as if she was pressing down on the shirt hard enough to make an imprint of the iron in the material. The iron hissed, sputtered, and made bloated sounds, as she pushed it across the white landscape of the shirt. “Is that a saint's name?”

“I like it.”

“Surely God, Finton, there's another name you like.”

“I like Scout.”

“How about James? He was Jesus' brother.”

“It's all right. But Scout is better.”

“Jesus, Finton, you might as well call yourself Judas and write a big scarlet
J
on your forehead. The bishop won't allow it.”

Nanny Moon, who'd been sitting with her eyes closed, opened them and watched Elsie perform her ironing duties. “The name should be appropriate for a soldier of Christ,” she said. “But it should also be a Christian name.”

“How about Arthur, then?” He knew how it was spelled, but they all pronounced it
Arder
.

There was silence as the two adults looked at each other. “Is there a Saint Arder?” Nanny Moon asked, looking mystified.

“There's a King Arder.”

“Go ask your father what he thinks,” his mother said at last.

His father was watching
Hee-Haw
, and the fat girl with the big breasts was just popping up out of the cornstalks when Finton asked his question. Tom lit a Camel and blew a smoke ring. Finton wondered if Lulu's parents were proud of her for being on
Hee-Haw
.