Finnie Walsh Read Online Free Page A

father had given it to me. My father gave me a great many more rocks over the years, but it wasn’t until much later that I understood why.

    It was nearly Christmas before I could convince Finnie to come to my house again. He hadn’t been there since the night of the accident, three months earlier. Finnie had great respect for my father. Unlike me, and nearly everyone else, he understood my father almost instantly. In some bizarre way, Finnie was envious of my family. We were, he imagined,
normal
.
    There was snow on the ground when we tramped into the backyard and, even though it was well below freezing, my father was sitting out on the deck. He looked up at us and waved, accidentally, with his missing hand. “Afternoon, boys.”
    “Hi, Dad.”
    “Hello, Mr. Woodward.” Finnie was shaking from cold or fear. He tugged down on the ear flaps of his furry winter cap.
    “I haven’t seen you around for a while,” my father said, smiling.
    “No, sir.”
    “Come here for a moment, would you, Finnie?”
    Finnie blanched. He looked at me, wondering if my father was about to exact revenge. I shrugged; I hadn’t the slightest idea what my father was up to.
    “You come here too, Paul.” Now it was my turn to be nervous. Maybe my father was going to cut off our arms.
    Slowly Finnie and I worked our way across the yard and onto the deck. We sat down beside my father, who was well dressed against the cold.
    “Why aren’t you boys playing hockey today?” he asked.
    “Well, um, we don’t much feel like it anymore, sir,” Finnie said. This was a lie; Finnie and I had been playing at the reservoir nearly every day after school.
    “Paul, have I ever told you why we named you Paul?” He had, and he knew that he had; this was for Finnie’s benefit.
    “Yes,” I said.
    “Then you can tell Finnie.”
    “I was born on the day that Paul Henderson scored the winning goal to beat the Soviet Union in the 1972 Super Series.”
    Finnie’s eyes widened. “Really?”
    “Really,” my father said. “Now, I know that you boys like to play hockey. And I know that our driveway’s a fine place to play. So if you want to play hockey on the driveway, then go ahead. Just mind that you don’t hit the car.”
    I was relieved; we could keep our arms and what was more we wouldn’t have to hike all the way to the reservoir to play anymore.
    Finnie appeared unconvinced, however. My father saw this and reached into his pocket. He handed Finnie a rock. “Hold onto this. You’ll feel better.”
    Whatever doubt had existed in Finnie’s mind now disappeared. My father saw that Finnie understood how the rock worked, but it didn’t matter. They had connected. He never gave Finnie another rock. I guess he didn’t have to.

    We resumed play in the driveway, with some minor adjustments. We placed our net at the street end of the driveway. OccasionallyLouise would venture away from her kingdom to watch us. She displayed no interest whatsoever in actually playing, even though I was almost desperate to have someone to pass to, but she would watch me take shots on Finnie for hours, carefully observing our technique and once in a while even offering advice. “Your glove side is weak, Finnie.” She was right too. He had never liked his catcher; it was “too flashy.” He refused to look at the glove while he played, so he hadn’t developed any sort of
relationship
with it, which is an absolute necessity for a goalie.
    I confess I didn’t give him much practice. I knew that I could score on his glove side at will, but the truth of the matter is that I didn’t really want to score, ever. Every time I scored, I heard, in my head, the horrible sound of a ball hitting the garage door. I did my best to take shots that I thought Finnie could stop, but not such easy ones that he would suspect I wasn’t trying. I’m not sure if he knew or not. If he did, he never said a word.
    On rare occasions we would play at the schoolyard with Finnie’s older