Angel Landing by Alice Hoffman Read Free Book Online

sections of town; it was a good walk from Minnie’s, and by the time I reached the field my nose was running, my fingers were numb. There was a slight moon that night and the bleachers cast long shadows in the hard autumn dirt. When I had walked halfway across the field I thought I heard breathing, but no one was there, the only things moving were the oak trees which bordered the field. I waited for Finn behind the bleachers, standing among fallen leaves and empty beer bottles, watching the moon’s reflection in the narrow glass panels of the auditorium.
    It was after eight and Finn had still not arrived. If I had headed back across the field, if I had run, I could have made it back to Minnie’s in ten minutes. I remember, then, that Lark’s EMOTE group was meeting that night; I remembered I was in the field for a reason. When I closed my eyes it was as if Lark had found me. Envy touched me, purpose made me hold ground; I tried to think of the book that might spring from my work with Michael Finn. I wondered how high the fees were on the social-work lecture circuit. While I was thinking about fortune, anticipating fame, I suddenly heard something move, something was out there. I noticed now that there were owls in the oak trees; their wings fluttered above my head. When the earth behind me was crushed beneath someone’s step, I turned as quickly as I could.
    â€œMichael Finn?” I called.
    â€œIt’s me,” he answered.
    I looked closely at the man who now stood beside me. He could have been anyone, an impostor, a criminal.
    â€œI’m glad you’re here,” Finn said. “I thought you might decide not to see me.”
    The owls suddenly took flight; they hooted and called across the clear sky.
    â€œThis is a ridiculous place to meet,” I said.
    Finn nodded solemnly and went to sit on the lowest rung of bleachers.
    â€œSugar?” he said. He had brought two cups of coffee with him in a paper bag and now offered me one. I sat across from him on the bleachers; the night was so frigid, even the coffee didn’t seem hot.
    Finn’s head was bowed. “I wish I had someone to talk to,” he said.
    Although he didn’t seem to be addressing me, I answered anyway. “You do. That’s why I’m here, isn’t it?”
    Finn looked up at me. “You?” he said. “I don’t know,” he shook his head. “I’m going to jail. I’m going for a long time.”
    â€œWhy don’t you get some of your fears out,” I suggested. “Talk about it.”
    Finn smiled. “Going to jail isn’t just a fear. It’s going to happen.” He spoke quite softly, but his words were fragments of iron. His eyes now seemed dangerously wide. I was there, sitting across from a stranger, I was conversing with a criminal in a forgotten, deserted place. The longer we sat together the more certain I was that Finn was who he claimed to be. His honesty and guilt were evident in every word, in the tension of his body. The man I spoke with was the bomber, the lunatic of everyone’s dreams, the man our town feared most.
    â€œRelax,” I said.
    Finn’s eyes focused. “I’m scared,” he admitted. “This isn’t the way I was supposed to feel.”
    Slowly, Finn’s voice was taking me over, entering my bones.
    â€œWell, here’s your chance,” Finn laughed. “Do some therapy. Tell me that fear is normal.”
    â€œIt is,” I nodded. “It’s perfectly normal for you to be anxious about the possibility of prison.”
    â€œPossibility,” Finn smiled bitterly. Finn looked like a nearly perfect statue which had been damaged. “When I first came to you at Outreach I had a plan,” Finn now told me. “If I acted crazy enough I thought you would agree to be a witness at my trial. I’d plead insanity, you’d give the evidence. But I don’t want to do