Finton Moon by Gerard Collins Page B

boss and then his son, as if unable to recognize either one. He opened his hand.
    â€œHmm.” Pat cautiously, awkwardly began winding the gauze around Tom’s hand. “Put your finger there, Finton. That’s the boy. Your dad’s gonna be okay.” He stopped what he was doing and peered at the injury. “Doesn’t look too bad, though, Tom, b’y.”
    â€œWhattya mean?”
    â€œJesus, b’y, I thought you were gonna bleed to death. But it’s startin’ to heal already. Looks like the wound’s closed up on its own. Still might need stitches, though.”
    After Pat had firmly wrapped the wound and asked Tom to hold it closed with his good hand, they stood him up. “I’m not crippled,” Tom said. But they helped him to the other man’s car. Finton accompanied them to the hospital and sat in the back seat with his father.
    â€œWhat did you do?” Tom asked him in the waiting room.
    Finton shrugged. “I did that thing.”
    â€œThat thing?”
    â€œThat thing I can do.”
    â€œOh. That thing.”
    Finton wasn’t sure if his father didn’t know what he was talking about or simply didn’t believe him. Regardless, when the doctor saw Tom about twenty minutes later, he informed him that the wound was mostly healed, that he was a lucky man and should be more careful next time he was getting under a car.
    When they were in the Valiant and on the way home, Finton finally exhaled. Tom lit a cigarette and said, “Don’t tell your mother.”
    â€œWhy not?”
    â€œIt would worry her.”
    â€œWhich part—you getting hurt or me fixing your hand?”
    Tom blew a smoke ring and said, “Don’t tell her anything.”
    As soon as he got home, Finton washed the blood from his hands and went in to check on his mother. He knocked gently on the bedroom door and she told him to come in. Elsie lay on her back, covered in blankets and looking up at the ceiling. Her face was flushed. Finton crept over to the bedside and laid a hand on her forehead.
    â€œAre you all right, Mom? You’ve got a fever.”
    â€œI’m all right.” She didn’t look at him. “Enjoy your morning at the garage?”
    â€œNot really.”
    â€œWhy not?”
    He shrugged. “I’d rather be home.”
    Elsie smiled wanly. “I’m beginning to worry about you. You need to take more of an interest in things.” He laid his hand on her forehead again. “I’m okay,” she said and closed her eyes. “That feels kinda good, Finton. Your hand is cool.”
    He stood beside her for fifteen minutes, long enough for her to fall asleep. Before he left the bedroom, he kissed her forehead, noting how he felt kind of dizzy. Fifteen minutes on the Planet of Solitude will do that, he reminded himself, thinking it wasn’t a place he could stay for very long.
    â€œI’m not staying here if she comes.” Elsie clanked the dishes so hard in the sink that Finton was amazed they didn’t break. It had only been a day since her “spell,” as she called it, but Elsie was already up and back to normal. Her fast recovery didn’t surprise anyone, though, since no one but Finton knew how sick she’d been.
    â€œShe got nowhere else to go.” Tom ran a hand through his mass of black hair, obviously exasperated. He winced from the pain in his bandaged hand. He’d told Elsie he’d slammed the car door on it, and it was nothing to worry about.
    â€œDon’t she have family in the States? And what about her good-fornudding nephew?” Finton heard desperation in his mother’s voice. She didn’t like visitors because, as a general rule, people were just too much trouble.
    He nibbled his dry toast. “She smells funny, Dad.”
    â€œWell, so do you, but we don’t send you to the States.” His father winked in a way that made the boy wonder if