“I reckon Jon Clinch’s words won’t sit pretty with many.”
“There is no harm in it.”
“It ain’t right.”
“It’s honest.”
“I know.”
“Sit. Have some more whiskey.”
When he gets home he reacquaints himself with the reasons he has admitted the strange dark creature into his house into his heart into his mind and once he finishes that last page he sits alone on his couch and stares off. Slightly drunk, he sits and lets the night chill settle into him and tells himself any decent man would throw those words out of his head into the river to drown. Thus stymied, he drinks more whiskey and when he finishes admits the truth. Finn exists.
In the terribly dark, disturbingly brutal, and to steal a phrase from another book club member, grotesquely ultra-violent corners of our mind. Finn exists. In a world where treachery is commonplace and the worst possible outcome is forever to be expected. Finn is our history.
Clinch’s steamboat arrives from the past to the present, a sidewheeler bearing upon its broad decks a shadowy, disturbing cargo: The last chapter of the life of a bigoted, racist, murderous, lowlife and their justifications, morals, and personal demons. Step aboard all thee with fortitude.
6/10