Finnie Walsh by Steven Galloway Read Free Book Online

me.
    “Sure,” I said. His family owned the store; of course he could come.
    We waited anxiously outside the school for my father to arrive. He wasn’t allowed to drive because of his lost arm, but in Portsmouth you can walk pretty much everywhere. My father didn’t go out often; he was still a little self-conscious about his arm, so when he did go out he walked. Unlike other adults I knew, he didn’t walk so fast that it was hard to keep up with him. He wasn’t in any hurry and he knew it. On this day, though, I thought he could have made an exception and I was mad as hell, waiting out front and picturing him sauntering along as if he hadn’t a care in the world, while in fact he had a young son who was almost crippled by anticipation.
    “There he is!” Finnie cried, frightening me, but it wasn’t him. “Never mind. It’s only Mr. Palagopolis.”
    Mr. Palagopolis was the school janitor and Portsmouth’s only other one-armed man. He had lost his arm in the Korean War and he was truly one of the nicest men I knew. He was getting on in years, however, and had a tendency to remember things the way he
wished
they had happened and not the way they had actually occurred. The only time I had seen him get upset was when someone’s dad called him Greek. “I don’t know why you think I’m Greek,” he had said, his face turning red. “I was wearing a Canadian uniform when they blew my arm off.”
    Actually, his arm had not been blown or even shot off. He had scratched it badly on some barbed wire he was laying out around his platoon’s camp and, because he had mistrusted army doctors, he had left the scratch untreated and developed gangrene. He had nearly died and was lucky to survive with just the loss of his arm.
    He usually wore a prosthetic limb to aid him in his janitorial work, but that day he was without it. As he approached us, he appeared flustered, his face red and his fist clenched. “Hello, Mr. Palagopolis,” Finnie said.
    “You boys seen my claw?” he asked.
    “Huh?”
    “Someone stole my claw.” “Your arm?”
    “Yes, yes, my claw. Do you know where it is?”
    “No,” Finnie answered.
    Mr. Palagopolis looked at me. I supposed, since my father was the only other person in town who would have a practical use for his claw, I was a likely suspect. “No, sir.”
    “I hope not. You boys are good boys and I like you, but that claw’s dangerous.”
    “Dangerous?” Finnie’s eyes widened. Finnie found danger very exciting.
    “Oh, sure, it’s dangerous all right. Got a mind all its own. And if it’s not attached to me, I can’t control it.”
    “What does it do?”
    “Who knows? I never know what the claw’s up to.” Mr. Palagopolis walked away, shaking his head.
    I shuddered. “I wonder who stole his arm?” I said.
    “Who knows? Maybe someone else needed it more.”
    While we waited for my father to arrive, we both imagined what the claw could possibly be up to.
    When I looked up and saw my father standing in front of us, I remembered where we were going and I put Mr. Palagopolis out of my mind. Finnie, however, was still captivated. “Someone stole Mr. Palagopolis’ claw,” he said to my father.
    “He probably thinks I did it,” he replied.
    “He said it has a mind of its own.”
    “He ought to know, if it does.”
    By the time we arrived at the sporting goods store, my father and Finnie had discussed at length the possibility that Mr. Palagopolis’ claw was on the loose roaming wild about town. As we walked through the doors, though, my father became all business. Finnie was equally enthusiastic, following my father from aisle to aisle, offering suggestions as he saw fit.
    “What Paul is, really, is a defenceman,” Finnie said, “so he ought to have good shin pads for blocking shots. Really good shin pads.”
    “Gloves,” my father said. “Gloves are what make the difference.”
    “Gloves?” I said.
    “If you can’t feel your stick, how are you going to be able to