The Finger by Joy Oden

The hydrangeas were bent under veils of snow. Irritated at late spring snowstorms and disorder, Ethan Crick had his broom to the bushes and the sidewalk before the fat flakes had stopped falling. He noticed the oddity right away, standing up out of the drift, pointing to heaven.

He picked it up. A man’s forefinger, the right pointer, light skin, slightly blue, severed just above the joint that had connected it to its hand. The print, more conspicuous without blood, featured a low whorl, like a surprised mouth. Its nail, trimmed and softly shiny, had been buffed. Not like Ethan’s own rough and ragged nail, which he held up beside the foundling.

Ethan swallowed and bounced lightly on his heels.

He sniffed the finger. What did one do with a lost finger? Was there a hotline he could call? Or a lost and found? He looked back under the bush for other fingers, body parts, blood, but found nothing else.

“Well, how about that?” He whispered to the finger, his eyebrows climbing. “This is highly extraordinary.”

“What’s highly extraordinary, Mr. Crick?” His next-door neighbour’s high-pitched voice startled him, and he shoved the finger into his pants pocket.

“Nothing, Delia,” he kept his eyes on his hydrangeas.

“Well, anyway, Mr. Crick. I know you won’t, but would you like to buy some Girl Scout cookies this year?”

“No thank you, no cookies for me.” He glared at the flowers, the back of his neck hot.

“Well, just thought I’d ask. We’ve got Adventurefuls now.”

“What? I have to get going to work.”

“No, you don’t Mr. Crick. Your shift doesn’t start for another three hours.”

Ethan gripped his broom like a safety line, and leaving the rest of the sidewalk unswept, escaped into the house.

He set the finger upright in the windowsill, as he washed his hands. It stood straight as a rod, like it had been protesting with indignation the schism from its hand. The fingerprints formed a face, and it watched Ethan.

“What?” he said to it, as he made his cheese sandwich, washed his apple, and wrapped his one Digestive cookie, the same meal he had every work night. “I like this lunch. There’s no need to change things. If it works, why bother messing with it? Honestly, you sound just like my mother.”

Ethan had been living in this two-bedroom house all his life. His father had left early taking his blaring voice and ready fist with him. His mother had continued to shrink, blending into the furniture like camouflage. She rarely roused to notice she had a son, if a disappointing one.

When she died last year, Ethan stood over her for many minutes before he pushed on her chest and felt the velvet bulb of her earlobe. After they’d taken her, he pulled the bedcovers taut to hide the depression she’d left behind in her bed, lined up her brush and favorite hair comb on her dresser, then rearranged the clothes in her closet by color, pulling the fabric of her housedress to his cheek to feel its softness for the first time in his life.

When he went to work, Ethan took the finger.

He cleaned the courthouse, and spent his shift alone, which was why he’d been working there for 28 years and 4 months next Tuesday. Pushing the green sweeping compound ahead of his mop soundtracked by the squeak of his rubber soles and the jangling keys at his hip was about all the noise he could handle.

But not tonight. Tonight, Ethan’s deep voice filled the space. As he dusted, he felt the finger thump against his heart.

“Did you know that this part of the building is the oldest? Built in 1834,” he informed it. When cleaning the restrooms, he placed the finger on the ledge above the sinks so that he wouldn’t accidently flush it. He polished the mirror with sure strokes, standing taller and smiling at the finger’s boldness as it watched him. At one point, he thought about whistling and discovered that he’d never learned how.

He finished the building an hour early. When he took the bus home in the hint of dawn, his throat scratchy from use, he strode down the aisle and sat in the seat that he’d always admired – center back. He held his chin high, cupped the finger in both hands and knew not to talk to it out loud.

Later that day, Ethan picked up groceries, selecting a new bread: wholewheat. When he paid, he even looked briefly at the cashier. Carrying the food into his house, he saw Delia’s mother and almost waved.

It was the smell that woke him three days later. The finger slumping on the bedside table sat in liquid, bold in a new way. Panicking, he rushed it into the freezer.

Ethan visited the finger often and went out to buy new pants, started thinking about painting his mother’s room. But after a few weeks, the finger, black and curved, didn’t resemble a finger anymore. Just a humble knob.

Out front, the hydrangeas featured new green buds. In the very place he’d found it, Ethan dug a hole for the finger, placed it reverently and smoothed it over with dirt. He stuck his mother’s hair comb at the head of the grave.

“Mr. Crick, are you okay?” Delia’s shoes showed on the other side of the flowers.

“No, Delia.” He sat back and looked into her eyes, not bothering to hide the tears streaming down his face. “But, if you have any left, I’ll take a box of those Adventurefuls.”

Joy Oden

Image: An index finger from pixabay.com