1955 - Part 2
On a cold day in December, the Finn Brothers were playing Peter Pan in the living room, when all of a sudden, Garrett screamed in pain and doubled up on the sofa. Billy ran to get his mother. She immediately tried to assist him, but the child was writhing in pain, when all of a sudden the body went limp. Billy watched in horror, as his mother made a sound that he had never heard before in his life. He watched her as she became someone that he did not know. She turned and and screamed to Billy, "Go, get your father!" Billy was frozen against the parlor wall. Cathy began ripping Garrets clothes off which were being soiled. She turned and noticed Billy still standing there, not moving, and she lunged toward him and with open hand slapped him across the face. "Goddamn you, I said, get your father!"
Billy Finn ran out of the house and headed for the mining office. He ran as fast as his little feet would take him. He entered the ramshackle building and put his hands on the shelf of the timekeepers office. Billy had been here many times before, especially on payday. Out of breath, Billy shouted, "My dad, my dad, I need my dad!" The man behind the cage said, "Hey Billy, slow down. You know your Dad is down in the tap-room, where's the fire?" Billy flew out of the office and began to run down the railroad tracks to the tap-room of Gibbons Brewery.
Cathy Finn picked up the still body of Garrett and ran out the front door. Her mind was racing, she needed a telephone. How many times she pleaded with Ed for one was not on her mind now. She ran two houses up in the rowhouse settlement to her friend, Anna. She placed Garrett down on the floor, and breathlessly told Anna that she had to call an ambulance. Anna dialed "0" for the phone number of City Hospital while Cathy attended to Garrett. The hospital answered. Anna spoke and told of the situation. She cupped the phone and said to Cathy, "do you have insurance?" Cathy, between her sobs, moaned, "no, please tell them to hurry." Anna then asked, "do you have twenty dollars?" "No" she wailed. Anna was then told to call a cab. The cab arrived fifteen minutes later, and the destroyed Cathy Finn got in the back seat holding the lifeless form of her son.
Billy Finn raced along the railroad tracks in his newly purchased Buster Brown sandals. He was headed for the tap-room. His arms were flailing, and his eyes still red from the slap that his mother never before gave him. Billy tripped, and fell on the steel girders that were held by the wood planks. He winced in pain, but got up and continued running to Pennsylvania Avenue and the Brewery. He circled around to the back of the building toward the tap-room. He knew the tap room well. It was where the employees gathered after work and had a few beers. Ed Finn worked there on Saturdays, but he had access to the tap-room seven days a week. Billy pushed the door open, and saw his father down on the end. He ran up to his dad, "Dad, dad, it's Garrett, ya gotta come home!" Billy was totally out of breath. Ed Finn said, "Ah, Billy me boy! What has ye so excited, ye sound like Santa Clause came to town. Someone get Billy a Snickers, and do me a favor son, pour your dear ol' dad a beer, would ya son?" Billy Finn looked at his father and realized he was drunk. He ran from the tap-room back to his house via the railroad tracks. When he got home, Anna was standing on the front stoop. "Where's mom and Garrett?", he pleaded. Anna told him that they were on the way to the hospital, and that he should stay with her until they returned.
Cathy Finn begged the driver to drive faster. She held her son in her arms, holding him closer, and closer, kissing his face and begging God not to let him die. They arrived at the emergency room, and Garrett Finn was placed on a stretcher and wheeled into the Hospital. The county coroner pronounced him dead on arrival. A doctor appeared and explained something about kidney failure, and his need for an autopsy release form to be signed.
Cathy Finn, now not herself, walked outside of the hospital after signing the paper; looked in the night air and screamed, "I hate you God. Why? Why have you done this to me?" She was screaming at the top of her lungs, and hospital security were dispatched to bring her into the trauma center where she was sedated, and she remained drugged for the next three days.
The funeral procession eased its way onto the highway for the twenty mile ride to an ancient cemetary in Idetown where most of the tombstones were dated in the late 1800's. The old automobiles followed the hearse through the stone pillared entrance and came to a halt near a freshly dug hole in the ground. Billy Finn, still in a state of shock, stood in the exterior rumbleseat of an old Ford coupe, where he watched the funeral ceremony taking place twenty feet from the car. As the Ford drove away, he turned his head and stared coldly, and the last thing he saw was a little white box being lowered into the ground. He noticed his father in the car in front of him; he caught a glimpse of his face; Billy's stare turned to ice.
The day after the death the obituary read "CITY BOY, 6, DIES SUDDENLY." It was an accurate enough article, but it was the small local rags that had a field day with the story. The innuendo of child abuse and descriptions of the squalor of the home was nothing short of accusing Cathy Finn of murder. These local papers were politically slanted toward the Republican party and since Ed Finn was a Democratic Committee Man, they hammered away at Cathy. They avoided Ed because they knew he had a thousand votes in his back pocket and was valuable to anyone running for political office.
The Irish politics of the time was very dirty. Dead people mysteriously voted, absentee ballots were forged, and the slogan of the day when it came time to vote was Vote Early and Vote Often!
It would take months before Cathy self-destructed. This once beauty queen was now reduced to a haggard looking thing who sat around staring in space with garbage newspaper clippings in front of her on the kitchen table. The first breakdown occurred two months later.
Ed Finn quit drinking in a vain effort to save his family, but the family was destroyed and there was no going back. It took twenty years for the ultimate destruction of Cathy Finn. And even Ed Finn lost to the political rags, for when he died, they had the last laugh by printing his obituary in the paper with a photograph of him that the typesetter set upside down.
A week had passed after the funeral, and Billy walked up to his mother who was sitting on the broken-springed sofa. He crawled up on her lap and said, "Mommy, where's Gary?" Not knowing how to deal with such a question, and knowing that a child of 5 could not possibly understand death, she told him the following:
"Gary is with Peter Pan in Neverland, he is with the lost boys, and won't be coming home. But don't worry, Peter is going take good care of him." Billy accepted this response, but said nothing.
Cathy did not know by making that statement, nor was it her intention, that she was placing a psychological scar that would haunt her son for years to come.
That night, when Billy was tucked in for bed, he asked his mother to turn out the night light. "Billy, you always sleep with the little light on," she said. "Aren't you afraid?" "No, mama, I'm not."
"Billy, how come you never cry? Even as a baby, you never cried. It's o.k. you know. We all do from time to time." Billy murmered, "I dunno Mama, maybe I just don't know how."
When his mother left the room, Billy got out of bed and went to the window. He looked up into the stars, searching. He whispered softly...
