Free Finn by Jon Clinch Page A

giant Willis from his place near the fire.
    “It ain’t. Brand new.” Showing it off adangle from one finger, like some odd and desperate haberdasher.
    Willis rises like a breaching whale. The coat will no more fit him than it will fit his horse. “Give you a dollar for it.”
    “Paid three and a half just today.”
    “Not likely.”
    “Shows what you know.”
    Still the coat is clearly worth something. “I’ll give you two. Take it or leave it.”
    Finn calculates not the true value of the coat but the duration of the walk back to Judge Stone’s as measured against such a quantity of whiskey as he can acquire as fortification, and upon reflection he decides that two dollars is not only a fair price but the highest bid that he is likely to get anywhere at this time of night. He folds the coat as meticulously as it stands to be folded ever again and lays it over the back of the chair opposite Willis and holds out his hand.
    “Put the two on his tab,” says the giant to the barman, simplifying the transaction for all concerned.
    “I ain’t open all night,” says the barman.
    “I know it,” says Finn.
    “Whiskey, I reckon.”
    “Just bring the bottle and leave it.”
    “I can’t leave it for long.”
    “I should have gone somewheres else.”
    “Willis ain’t somewheres else, and then you’d be out of luck.”
    “I know it,” says Finn, and he commences to drink.
    When he has used up two dollars’ worth and the barman has restored the cork and Willis has thrust his arms into the arms of his new coat like paired sausages and gone happily home, Finn trudges back up the hill to Judge Stone’s. The powdering of snow has become an inch and he moves as rapidly as drink and footing will allow, stumbling to his knees once or twice and recovering with a curse. The cold amplifies his purpose and assists his concentration but at journey’s end the slick fresh-painted boards of Judge Stone’s porch conspire with the fresh snow to trip him up and so down he goes, ass over teakettle, arms aflail and hat taking wing, to land hard on the flagstone walk. He is there still when Stone comes upon him in the morning, dead asleep or else merely dead, covered over with snow, his left arm oddly bent and buckled beneath his fallen weight.
    The doctor, an ill-tempered hogshead of a man awakened far too early for his liking, has nothing in the way of sympathy. “This should teach you to handle your own anesthesia,” he says to Finn with a glance toward the judge. Neither one of them is amused.
    For a while he squeezes and pokes the broken arm like a joint of meat, and when he’s satisfied he commences twisting it this way and that like a pump handle, and once Finn has finally had enough the doctor instructs him to take a seat in a straight-backed chair and plant his feet squarely upon the floor. He removes his belt and ties it around the patient and the chair both, and he orders Stone to kneel behind the chair with his arms around Finn’s chest. At last he takes Finn’s wrist in both his hands, and with a curse and a grunt he throws all of his considerable and compacted weight in the opposite direction.
    Finn deflates like a balloon and his shoulder nearly separates and the pain in his arm screams louder than any whiskey could possibly mitigate, much less whiskey drunk six or eight hours previous, but the arm goes straight or nearly so. The doctor mops his forehead with his sleeve and ties Finn’s arm to a splint, and in the aftermath he presents his bill.
    “If this is yours, Judge, I’ll forgive it. If it’s his, I reckon you’ll have to lock him up before I get so much as a nickel.”
    “Now, now, that’s not fair to you.” Reaching for the paper.
    But just as death outpaces justice the doctor is faster than the judge, and he snatches up the bill and tears it to bits.
    Judge Stone: “Do you see that, Mr. Finn? Do you recognize basic human kindness when you see it?”
    “I see it,” says Finn, testing his