And so you grow. Outwardly. Your arms and legs shoot out at embarrassing lengths and hang from your pants and your sleeves. Pink skin, almost white, kept hidden from the sun except for brief glimpses during school recesses, should be a beacon of trouble to those around you. But you tug your sleeves down as best you can, sit with your legs crossed at the ankles, pull your socks up as high as they will go. From time to time, your mother blinks and awakes from whatever world she prowls in and goes out to the local thrift stores to buy you new clothes. Overnight, you go from jeans and shirts that are much too small to much too big, hanging in puddles over your shoes, rolling up in thick bracelets on your wrists. And the clothes are always old.
A few kids along the way try to befriend you. The girl in fourth grade, the one with the big teeth and bigger glasses, who asks you day after day to play ball on the playground as you sit huddled in a shadow of the building. You tell her no with a shake of your head, no and no and no, and she keeps saying why and you keep saying no without saying a word. After two weeks, she becomes angry and throws the ball at you repeatedly, bouncing it off your nose, your forehead, your chin. You nestle your head on your knees and then she bounces the ball off your skull, each time harder, each time accompanied by a louder shriek. Kids gather around and take turns. And then you go inside and sit down at your math lesson, trying to see with eyes blurred with tears of anger or sadness, you can’t tell which. After that, you sit alone.
Until the sixth grade and an albino boy sits next to you at lunch. Every day. He doesn’t say a word. He offers you cookies. On the fifth day, you accept one, homemade chocolate chip, and it is like gold in your mouth. Melting gold. He takes you behind the building at recess and shares a cigarette and you have to run to the bathroom and throw up. Soon after, you are down the root cellar for three days and a weekend, and when you return to school, the albino boy is gone. You never know where. You never know how to ask.
A girl in high school smiles at you. You turn away and don’t look back, but you hold that smile behind your closed eyes for days and nights. She begins keeping you company in the dark of the root cellar, her smile an imagined guidepost, and the ticking of the alarm clock becomes her heartbeat. You hold the clock against your chest so you can feel the rhythm as you think of what it would be like to touch her. What it would be like to be touched.
Imagine.
Because that’s all James could do. He felt that the walls of the root cellar followed him wherever he went, keeping him from reaching out, keeping others from reaching in. But keeping him safe too. Because if no one touched, then no one hurt.
James opened his eyes and saw a face. It hovered above him and he saw long hair and brown eyes and he said, “Mama?” He felt his lips move together, touching gently twice for each M, but he heard no sound. The face shook side to side and James closed his eyes. Don’t be so stupid, he said to himself. Mama wouldn’t be here. And her eyes were blue.
When he opened his eyes again, the face wasn’t there. James moved his arms and legs, shifted his body, and he felt the comfort of his sheets and blanket. Then he looked up and the face was there again.
Of course it wasn’t Mama. It was too young. James saw the smile, the freckles on the nose, the upswept eyebrows and he gasped. “Diana?” He hadn’t spoken that name in years, yet it rolled off his tongue as if he said it every day. But he couldn’t hear it, couldn’t hear the three subtle syllables of the name that couldn’t be said aloud without making him ache. “Diana?”
She shook her head again and then James’ vision cleared. He saw the purple-red hair, the nose ring. It was Cooley.
Cooley was in his bedroom.
He thrashed, trying to untuck the blankets, get out of bed, get her the hell out of his house. He was electrified with the need to tally, make sure everyone was there, that she hadn’t touched or taken anything. But then there were arms, more arms than Cooley’s, pushing him back into the bed. He looked around, saw Ione holding down one of his arms, Neal the other. Ione pursed her lips and shook her head, like she was shushing James, and Neal patted his shoulder.
“What’s going on!” James yelled and he could feel the force of his words leaving his throat, flying into the room. But he couldn’t hear them. It was like he hadn’t said a thing.
Cooley reappeared, holding a notebook and a pen. She held them up in the air, displaying them, and then she began to write. Eventually, she handed James the notebook.
“James,” the note said. “U had an accident. The clock went off while U were up there. U were 2 close 2 the sound and UR ears R hurt. U can’t hear right now.”
James remembered. He remembered the chime blending into just one enormous sound and he remembered the dead baby birds and all that pressure, pressure on his ears, pushing him into the scaffolding. But not hear?
He struggled again. He managed to get past Ione and Neal and staggered around, staring at the clocks, seeing the pendulums sway. But there was nothing, he couldn’t hear a single tick. He looked at the clocks’ hands and they were all on the quarter hour, but there were no chimes. Touching a clock, an old cathedral clock, he felt the vibration. The clock was talking, and James couldn’t hear it.
No ticking. No ticking. A searing pain choked his chest and he clasped both hands over his heart, trying to find the rhythm. It was there, steady, but fast. James looked at the clock, watched the pendulum, tried to even out his beat.
Someone touched his arm and James turned and saw Ione. She patted him and smiled, then slowly formed her lips. Oh-kay, he was able to make out. Everything will be okay. James shook his head and looked back at the clock, then he let himself be led to bed.
James looked down as he was tucked in. He was in pajamas. Grabbing the blanket, he pulled it up to his neck. Neal smiled and reached for the notebook.
“It’s OK,” his note read. “Dr. Owen was here. It was he and I that got you undressed and into bed.”
James sighed and tried to relax. He started to write his own note, but then stopped. His voice worked, he reasoned, only his ears didn’t. “Is this permanent?” he asked. “Do my sounds make sense? I can’t hear myself speak!”
Neal nodded. Then he wrote, “We don’t know. Dr. said to wait a few days and if it’s not better, there’s a specialist in Des Moines. You’re loud.”
Cooley came back into the room, carrying Felix the Cat. “Be careful!” James shouted and he knew he must have made sense, because her fingers tightened.
She brought the clock to the bedside and James took it quickly, balancing it gently in the nest of his lap. He worked so hard to fix that clock; he didn’t need her undoing everything. He checked it over as she scribbled in the notebook. Don’t worry, James told the clock, I won’t let any more girls touch you. He checked the pendulum, the glued spots. The clock was fine.
When James looked up, they all stared at him, Cooley over the top of the notebook. James realized he must have spoken aloud. He looked away.
Cooley handed over her note. “I found it on UR workbench,” she said. “I can hang it back up 4 U. Same room as the dwarf tall clock?”
James wanted to yell at her, to tell her to stop writing in strange codes. He wanted to tell her to go away, for them all to go away, to just leave him alone. He snatched the pen from her hand. In big letters, he wrote, “STAY OUT OF MY WORKROOM! STAY OUT OF ALL MY ROOMS!” Then he wrote and underlined, “GET OUT!”
She must have been reading over the top of the notebook because before he was done with the exclamation point, she was gone. James put the notebook aside and then carefully lay the cat clock on the bedside table. He would hang it himself, as soon as he and the clocks were alone.
Ione came over and took the notebook. James watched her, amazed. This woman never said anything and here she scribbled away like Shakespeare. She handed him the page.
“You shouldn’t of yelled at Amy Sue,” she said. “She was only trying two help. She’s been hear the hole time.”
An illiterate Shakespeare. The woman couldn’t spell. James looked at her note again, read it through while substituting corrections. Have, to, here, whole. The whole time. He glanced at the clocks again. It was ten-forty, over four hours since he went up that clock tower. Four hours since he’d heard anything. He listened carefully as he sucked air deep into his lungs, then let it out in what he knew should be a whoosh. But he couldn’t even hear himself breathe. Sighing, James wrote, “I’d like to go to sleep now. Thank you.”
Neal and Ione said something to each other. Then Neal took over the pen. “Why are you writing everything? You can talk. Do you want anything? Are you hungry?”
James shook his head and then wrote, “It’s just easier this way. It’s too hard to talk when I can’t hear my own voice.” Neal and Ione fussed around the room a little bit, then walked away, turning out the light as they went. James waited for a few minutes, until he was sure they were out the door, and then he got up and put the light back on. He went downstairs, wanting to make sure the doors were locked.
The Home was completely silent and James was chilled without the cloak of ticks and chimes to cover him. He touched clocks as he went by, but he couldn’t hear their soft hellos. “Damn!” he yelled. “Damn!” But there was nothing. Again, he clutched his chest, felt his heart, and then sank down onto the bottom step.
Closing his eyes, feeling that beating beneath his skin, he brought his lips together in rhythm with it. “Bum-bum,” he said. “Bum-bum. Bum-bum.” James tried to hear it, somewhere deep inside of himself, but it just wasn’t there. Trembling, he went back upstairs to his room and picked up Felix. Then he went down the hall to the back east bedroom. Cooley was wrong. Felix didn’t belong in the same room as the dwarf tall clock.
The spot on the wall looked empty without Felix. James set him down on a chair and went in search of a hammer. When he came back, he stood on the footstool and raised Felix’s nail by a good foot. No child would be able to reach him here. No girl would ever touch him again.
Hanging him securely, James set the tail to wagging and watched the eyes start moving left and right, left and right. There was no sound, but the cat grinned with the same familiar smile James returned for years.
He remembered when the cat clock first arrived. It was in the middle of a summer day, a Saturday filled with tourists. James stood by the front door, getting a breather from answering questions, when a young man approached. He held the cat clock.
“Excuse me,” he said. “Would you like this? I’ve looked throughout your home and I don’t see another one like it.”
James took the cat and looked it over. The face was missing a few numbers and its eyepiece was broken in half. Only one eye looked out through the sockets. “It’s in pretty sad shape,” James said.
“Oh, I know.” The man reached out as if to stroke one of the cat’s ears, but then he stopped and put his hand in his pocket. “Anyway, I know they can be quite valuable. I thought this might be a good place for it.”
James looked at him quickly. Someone who knew the monetary value of a clock could be hard to bargain with. “How much do you want for it? It would need a lot of work.”
“I don’t want anything.” The man rubbed his hair, making it stand up like a rooster’s comb. “My mother died recently. This was hers and I…well, I just couldn’t throw it out.” He did touch the clock then, with one finger, right on the tip of its nose.
The clock suddenly felt cold in James’ hands. The remaining eye looked up and despite the smile, the cat looked sad.
“Well, thank you for offering it to me.” James shook the man’s hand. “I’ll take really good care of it.”
“You think you can fix it?” he asked.
In James’ mind, he was already fixing the clock, using a set of eyes he had down in the skeleton boxes. Once, when an old clock shop in Cedar Rapids closed, he picked up some Felix parts. He didn’t own a Felix clock, not until this man arrived, but it never hurt to be ready. “Oh, yes,” James said. “I’m sure I can.”
This sparked a sudden smile and then the man ran down the stairs to his car.
Now James watched the clock with two good eyes run smoothly, but without a sound. “I wish I could hear you,” he said to Felix. “I wish I could hear you tick, so I could know that I fixed you up just fine.” The tail continued to wag steadily, so James figured everything must be in place again.
He left the room and went back downstairs. Without sound, he felt like he was in a new house, following a new path. He had to look at the clocks to recognize the room, to orient himself in the Home. He stopped by the dwarf tall clock. Her hands were just before eleven o’clock and her presence was warm and solid. Carefully, James knelt down and placed his cheek against her longcase. He waited and soon he felt it, that vibration that shook through the clock’s body as she sang. Pressing in closer, James tried to pull that vibration into his head, through the passages to his eardrum. But nothing broke through. The clock sang just for him and he couldn’t hear a single note.
Pulling away, James took his pajama sleeve and polished the oily spot from the clock’s case, the spot left there by his own skin. He didn’t want his own body to ruin the patina.
Standing and putting his fingers on the light switch, James remembered Cooley’s words on the notebook paper. She asked if the cat clock hung in the same room as the dwarf tall clock.
She said dwarf tall clock. Not grandmother. James blinked. The words were still on the notebook paper upstairs. He could check and make sure she really used the right term.
Hitting the light, the darkness fell all around. James waited for his eyes to adjust. He always believed he could find his way around the Home blindfolded, just by following and recognizing all the different ticks and chimes. Now, he didn’t know if he could find his own room in the dark.
“Goodnight, friends,” James said out loud, hoping the clocks heard. Wishing he could hear his own voice.
In his sleep, James could still hear. He burrowed in deeper, listening to the ticking, the chimes, all the wonderful noise echoing throughout the Home. Everything was dark and it didn’t matter that he couldn’t see; he could hear. The ticking seemed continuous, all those clocks moving at different speeds, but then they began to stop. One by one, James heard clocks drop off and he scrambled to catch up with them, to find them again. The sounds grew fainter and fainter and then there was just one clock, one simple rhythm, ticktock, tick-tock, and he tried to catch it, he tried to press his ear to it, he felt himself growing thinner and thinner, fainter and fainter with the beat. “Mama!” he yelled. “Mama!” And then the sound left him alone, he couldn’t find it, no matter how he turned his head, and his heart slowed and stopped. And he died.
James woke up, the side of his face pressed into the pillow, his cheeks damp and his pajamas soaked with sweat. Turning on the light, he looked at the clocks, trying to hear through his sight, trying to imagine the sound as their pendulums moved back and forth and round and round. He had to hear! Staggering around the room, James stopped in front of one clock and then another, pressing his ears to their bodies, but nothing came through.
Falling to his knees by the bedside table, James looked at his mother’s anniversary clock. The dancing couples spun around and around, going forward, moving back, every fifteen seconds, and he tried to hear the soft ticking that followed him all his life, the ticking he used to listen to while his mother and his father fought, while she screamed and he whispered, until he left for good and then she left and came back, left and came back. James took the glass dome off the clock, exposing the dancers to air, and they seemed to twirl faster, and he asked them, out loud, he begged them, “Please be noisy! Please stomp your feet! Let me hear you!”
And they looked at James and twirled, but there was still no sound. He saw the gilded hands meet on the three, it was three-fifteen in the morning, and he pressed his ear to the clock’s base where he knew the music mechanism lay hidden, and he listened for the quarter-hour chime, the first part of the four-part Westminster, short and sweet, and there was nothing. The cold golden base vibrated against his skin, but there just was no sound. No sound at all.
James lunged to his feet and tripped over the blanket, hanging loose off the bed, and the glass dome flew from his hands and smashed on the floor. James saw the shards and pieces, the millions of sparkly-sharp shards and pieces, and he wanted to cry out, “Mama, I’m sorry!” because he knew she’d be angry, he wasn’t supposed to play with her things, and he knew the belt would be coming, and the leash, the cage, the root cellar, and he had to hide the glass pieces, hide them before she came, even though she wouldn’t be coming, he knew that, she was dead, but suddenly, it seemed as if she was right around the corner, leash in hand. The leash he hadn’t seen in years, but felt every day, tugs here and there, just the way an amputee feels his missing leg. Scooping up the pieces of glass in his hands, he felt himself cry out, felt his chest constrict and his throat tighten, when his fingers and palms were sliced, and he dropped everything back to the floor, saw the glass explode even smaller, but he heard nothing.
James had to hear. He needed that steady rhythm, everything was going haywire, he had to hear! He ran through the broken glass and down the stairs into the kitchen. Digging through the silverware drawer, James picked a long, slim knife, one he thought would slip through the passages in his ears and pop whatever was there, lance whatever was swollen, and allow the sounds in. Standing straight, he put the knife point to his right ear and felt it, shiny-sharp, against his skin.
And he saw it. His reflection was in the kitchen window, he stood there with his hair straight up and a knife to his head, and he shuddered. He shuddered until he folded in half and dropped the knife to the floor.
It was insanity. It was insanity and James knew it and he didn’t know who to call. There was no one to call. There was no one. And even if there was, he would never hear them.
There was blood everywhere. Dripping from his hands and his bare feet. There was a red trail across the kitchen floor and James knew it led all the way back up to his bedroom. A wave of nausea hit and he straightened and vomited into the kitchen sink. He felt the heaves, felt his body convulse and bend, felt even his bleeding toes curl, and yet he couldn’t hear a sound. And James knew there were terrible, awful sounds coming from his stomach, through his throat, out his mouth.
Everything was such a mess and James couldn’t keep it like that. Peace had to be restored, everything needed to be in its place. Clean and shiny. He rinsed his mouth and got out the bucket and sponge and a cleanser. Getting down on his knees, James plunged his hands into the soapy water. The cleanser bit deep into the gashes and he thought he felt his skin peel back. But he gritted his teeth and set to scrubbing. This had to be cleaned up before anyone saw it. Before Mama saw it. Anything was better than the root cellar.
James made it as far as the bottom of the stairs. It was so hard to scrub the carpeting. Looking back, he saw that his bleeding feet were leaving a new path where he washed the old one away. His hands were burning. It was hopeless.
Dropping the sponge into the bucket, James crawled into the living room. After turning on the light, he climbed into his recliner. At least he could see the pendulums from there. He could watch the rhythm. Trying to quiet his body, James focused as hard as he could. He stared and stared, trying to sleep with his eyes open, and after awhile, he was able to see the clocks behind his closed eyelids. He could see them and he was able to sleep.
Dr. Owen and Neal broke the door down the next morning. James didn’t hear it, he was still asleep in the recliner. He woke up to find them shaking him, Neal wide-eyed and flushed, Dr. Owen checking James’ pulse. The door lay on the floor, completely off its hinges.
James could see their mouths moving, it looked like Neal was yelling, but James shook his head and tried to get up. That’s when he saw his hands, raw and shredded from the night before. Dr. Owen pushed James back into the chair while Neal disappeared. He came back with the notebook. Quickly, he wrote something and handed it to James.
“What happened? The door was locked and we looked in the window and saw blood so we broke our way in.”
James cleared his throat and tried his voice. “I broke a dome from one of my anniversary clocks. I cut myself trying to clean it up.”
Dr. Owen said something and Neal scribbled. “Why are your hands so red?”
“I tried to wash the floors.” James indicated the hallway, the last place he saw the rags and bucket. Neal looked around the corner, nodded and said something.
Dr. Owen pulled James to his feet. James followed both the doctor and Neal upstairs, picking their way around the glass, and then he sat on the bed. The room was a mess. Dr. Owen went into the bathroom and began running a bath while Neal stood there, his hand on James’ shoulder. Then Dr. Owen took over the notebook.
“Go soak,” he wrote. “Use lots of soap. When you come out, I need to look at your hands and feet, make sure there aren’t still glass slivers. Then I’ll bandage you up. I want to look at your ears too.”
James sighed and went into the bathroom. He couldn’t deny that his hands and feet hurt. They burned. And he needed Dr. Owen to look at his ears. There was nothing to do but obey. James shut the bathroom door, undressed, and sat in the tub.
The warm water seemed to help. He kept his hands and feet submerged as much as possible. He tried to relax, but he kept wondering what they were doing out there. He didn’t want them to touch anything.
James washed his hair as best he could in a tub; he really preferred showers. Standing, he decided to turn on the shower to rinse off, so he shut the curtain. The warm water hitting his back and shoulders felt wonderful. Then there was a draft and when James turned, Neal was there, his eyes hard. James yelped and quickly covered himself. “What are you doing?” he asked. “Can’t you let me just take a shower?”
Neal’s eyes dropped to James’ hands, then he nodded and backed away. James watched through the curtain, making sure Neal left the bathroom completely. Then he looked down at his own hands, trying to see what Neal saw, what he was looking for. It took a moment, but as James thought about last night, about how things must look, he was able to put it together.
They thought he tried to kill himself. The knife in the kitchen, the blood, the marks on his body, particularly his hands. Too close to the wrists? Then James looked at his feet and sighed. Did they really think he was the kind of person who would attempt suicide by slicing his feet and palms, rather than his wrists?
James began to laugh, but then he stopped. If they thought he was nuts, giggling in the shower wouldn’t help.
When he got out, there was a fresh set of pajamas waiting on the lowered toilet lid. Someone must have come in again; James never heard the door.
And they must have looked through his drawers for the pajamas. James shook while he got dressed. He decided to get rid of everybody and then change into regular clothes. There were things that needed doing and he wasn’t about to stay in his pajamas.
The bedroom was completely straightened. The glass was gone, the carpet soft and clean, and the dancers from his mother’s anniversary clock still twirled, though they were exposed in the air. Ione was there now and she motioned to the bed. It had fresh sheets and was turned down, waiting. James grunted and climbed in. Anything to make them go away.
Before he could pull the covers up, the doctor sat down and took James’ feet in his hands. He held up a bottle and a tube, the labels turned toward James so he could read them. Alcohol and an antibiotic ointment. James winced; it was going to hurt. And it did. The doctor prodded at James’ feet for what seemed like hours. Then he smoothed on the ointment and wrapped both feet up in bandages. James wondered if he’d be able to get his shoes on. Then the doctor repeated the whole thing with James’ hands. With all the bandages, James’ fingers were barely able to move.
Next came the ears. James held still, even stopped breathing. He hoped the scope the doctor poked inside would somehow burst the bubble that was between James and hearing. He thought he heard a scraping, but it was so far away, he wasn’t sure if he really heard it or if he only felt it. Finally, Dr. Owen fluffed the pillow, placed it between James and the headboard and pushed James back. He covered James, carefully tucking in the blankets. Then he grabbed the notebook. It seemed like he wrote forever. Dr. Owen was always long in talking. He said he wanted to get the most out of his education and so he showed it off all he could. James wasn’t surprised when he wrote as much as he talked.
“James,” he started. The entry in the notebook looked like a business letter, complete with paragraphs. “You really made a mess out of your feet and hands. It looks like you’re clean of glass shards and I’ve covered you in ointment to prevent infection. I’ll be back tomorrow to change the bandages. Your eardrums are both still very red and swollen. It’s not surprising that you can’t hear. I want to give it a couple days before I send you to a specialist. This might clear up on its own. I’m writing you a prescription for an anti-inflammatory and an antibiotic. It’s too early to tell if there’s any permanent damage to the inner ear. It looks like both your eardrums burst. I’ll drop the prescriptions off at the pharmacy and Tom will send someone around with them later.”
More people in the Home. More that James couldn’t hear. How could he keep watch over the clocks if he couldn’t hear all these invaders moving in and out and around? James pictured them, touching the clocks, poking the pendulums, moving the hands out of sync, even backwards, and parts rained to the floor. James would never catch up, he’d never get it all sorted out. His heart began to race and he clutched both his ears and rocked in the bed.
Someone patted his wet hair and James looked up. It was Ione and she again made that shape with her mouth: Oh-kay. But James shook his head hard. To his horror, he fell into tears in front of them all.
Dr. Owen and Neal gaped, but Ione grabbed him. She wrapped him tight and held him to her chest and began to sway. James cried until he thought he was dry, every pore, every tissue dehydrated and shriveled and dead. And then he felt it. He pressed his head harder into her chest.
Ione must have been humming. James could feel the vibration through her skin. And there was a beat against his cheek. A ticking so strong and steady, she could have been one of the clocks.
Bum-bum. Bum-bum.
James closed his eyes and sank into the rhythm. His tears dried into her blouse. Then, tenderly and carefully, she set James back against his pillow.
For a second, James scrambled, trying to get close to her again. But her lips puckered, Shhh, and he stopped. She smiled. “Thank you,” James said. She nodded.
Dr. Owen waved goodbye. Neal said something to his wife, then nodded at James. He took up the notebook. “I’m going back to the shop,” he wrote. “Ione will stay. Molly will be here with your lunch.”
As soon as James read that last word, he felt his stomach rumble. The last time he ate was at lunch yesterday. He looked up at Ione who laughed. She took the notebook.
“I’m sure you haven’t had brekfast,” she said. “I’ll go see what I can russle up.”
Breakfast, James said silently, and rustle. “There are doughnuts in the cabinet. They’re yesterday’s day-olds, from the bakery. And there’s coffee too.”
She wrinkled her nose. Then she and Neal left and James was alone.
Really alone.
He looked around at all his clocks and for the first time, he felt friendless among them. They all talked to each other, curved in a circle that didn’t include James. He couldn’t hear them and they stared at him with blank faces. They held themselves back and all that was left was this awful hollow silence. No ticking. No rhythm. Nothing to keep James company. Nothing to keep James steady.
A flash of gold caught his attention and he looked at the bedside table. The dancers whirled away there, to the left, to the right, then to the left again. It was nine o’clock, the top of the hour, and no one, not even this sad clock that belonged to James’ mother, said anything to him. This clock knew James better than anyone else and it couldn’t reach him.
James hesitated, then firmly put his bandaged hand into the center of the pendulum. The clock stopped.
Closing his eyes, James thought about stopping other clocks. Felix, the cat he just fixed. The dwarf tall clock in the living room. The steady forward-moving plain-faced office clock.
James thought about stopping them all.
They couldn’t talk to anyone but him. They wouldn’t.
Someone touched his shoulder and James opened his eyes. Ione stood there with a tray. Behind her, Cooley carried two mugs of coffee. James sat up and Ione nestled the tray over his knees. He looked at it, wondered where it came from. He didn’t own any such thing, breakfast in bed was ridiculous. Cooley placed one mug in front of James, then handed the other to Ione. She smiled at James, pointed to the tray, then patted her chest.
Cooley brought it over.
The food smelled really good and his stomach growled again. Scrambled eggs, bacon, two pieces of toast spread with butter and jelly. James knew he didn’t have any bacon in the house and the eggs were probably outdated. “Where did all of this come from?” he asked out loud.
Ione pointed her mug at Cooley, who shrugged. She grabbed the notebook. “Mr. Simmons gave me all this stuff,” she wrote.
Gene and Molly too. James thought about resisting. About telling Ione and Cooley to go away, throwing the food across the room, going downstairs and getting his usual day-old doughnut. But it just smelled too damn good. And some odd internal voice told James that maybe if he ate well, ate healthy, his ears would get better faster. He needed his ears to get better.
While James ate, Ione and Cooley talked. James saw their mouths moving, saw their shoulders shake in laughter. His fork fell a few times, slipping through his bandaged fingers, and they looked over, concern on their faces. But he wasn’t about to let himself be fed. Then Cooley took the notebook again. “Sum clocks stopped. Do U want me 2 wind them?”
James froze and the food he just ate threatened to come back up. His heart slid, fell off rhythm, then began to jump over hurdles. James knew it was just that some clocks were due to be wound, he knew it, but somehow, it felt like he killed those clocks with his thoughts. He only thought about stopping them and they stopped.
James squeezed his eyes shut. He had to wind the clocks. He was the clock-keeper, not a clock-killer.
Ione patted his arm and he looked at her, startled. “Oh-kay,” her lips formed. James thought for a moment of the rhythm of her heart against his cheek. He imagined it now, steady as if a clock tapped him gently with its pendulum, and he slowed that pendulum down until his heart met it, beat for beat. When James felt settled again, he pushed the tray away. “I have to wind those clocks,” he said. “There are others that will be due too.”
Then he stared at his hands. At his fingers, stiff in the bandages.
Ione took the notebook. “Let Amy Sue help you,” she said. “She helps me out every weekand at the store. She’s very carful with the clocks, never broke a won. Let her help.”
Weekend, careful, one. James put the notebook in his lap and wished for a red pen. His mother’s anniversary clock sat unmoving beside him, still exposed, still unprotected, the dancers holding their breaths. The clocks weren’t safe. What choice did he have? It was either let Cooley do the winding or let all those clocks die. One by one, all around him. It wouldn’t matter if his hearing never came back; there’d be nothing to hear anyway. Carefully, James poked out a bulky finger and started the pendulum on his mother’s clock. It hesitated, then swung into its rhythm. It was still alive. He had to find a replacement dome.
James looked at Cooley. “Why aren’t you in school?”
Cooley said something, then Ione wrote on the notebook. “Perent/teacher confrences,” James read. He wondered about that, wondered if Cooley was skipping school and using him as an excuse.
Then he thought about the tourists. Alarmed, he grabbed for the notebook, but Ione immediately began scribbling again. “It’s OK,” she wrote. “We closed the Home just until you get back on your feet again. You can reopen on Monday.”
No tourists. Mixed blessing; no other people traipsing through the house, but no revenue either. James sighed and threw back the covers. “Come on then, Cooley,” he said. “I’ll have to show you what to do.” Ione grabbed at his arm, trying to pull him back into the bed, but he shook her off. “Ione,” he said, the name foreign on his tongue. He wondered how it sounded. “It’s not just the stopped clocks that have to be wound. There are others. Some get wound every day. I’ll have to show Cooley which clocks they are and where I keep the keys. It’s too complicated, I can’t do it from here.” James’ tongue felt clumsy and he wondered if he was forgetting how to talk. Ione frowned, but then she crossed the room to the closet. She looked through the clothes, finally pulling out a robe. She must have understood. While James stuck his arms into the sleeves, Cooley looked under the bed and found James’ slippers. They were useless though; his bandaged feet were too fat to fit. James kicked the slippers back under the bed, a move he instantly regretted as pain shot up through his toes to his ankle. He let loose a string of curses that made Ione turn away and Cooley smile. “Sorry,” he said when the pain slid away. Then they went downstairs, James leading the way, Cooley taking up the end, Ione in the middle, carrying the tray.
Cooley and James left Ione in the kitchen and moved on toward the office. James couldn’t help but notice that everything was cleaned and put back in its place. The bucket and rags were gone, the floor as clean as could be. There was no sign of last night’s nightmare. Even the knife was gone. James shuddered, then glanced automatically at his security cameras. Except for Ione in the kitchen, all the rooms were empty.
Fetching the clipboard, James flipped it to the appropriate day. “Here,” he said to Cooley, handing her the schedule. “This is a list of everyone that needs to be wound. I have them all organized into groups. Clocks that need to be wound every day, clocks that are 5-day, 8-day, 31-day, and so on.”
Cooley seemed to study the list. The tilt of her head reminded James of Diana, the way she used to pore over books, the way she used to pore over him, and he quickly looked away. “I keep all the keys and notes on the individual clocks in here.” James pointed to the old card catalogue. Quickly, he explained how it was organized, according to the type of clock and the amount of time required between windings. When he was done, Cooley shook her head. “What?” he asked. “It’s really very simple, anyone could understand it. Don’t you get it?”
She glared, then found a pen. James flinched when she wrote at the bottom of the schedule. He never wrote on the schedules, that way, they could be used over and over, until a new clock had to be added to the list. Then he retyped each of them.
“U should buy a computer,” James read. “Way easier.”
He sighed. “I don’t need a computer. It’s easy. I never have a problem.” Checking the schedule, James turned to the card catalogue to start collecting the day’s keys. But he couldn’t wrap his fingers around the tiny handles of the drawers.
Cooley touched his shoulder, then opened a drawer herself. One by one, checking the list, going back to the card catalog, writing questions on the schedule, she collected the keys. There were twenty-seven clocks to be wound that day. James showed her how to sort the keys by room, using individually marked keyrings. He had her take the index card for each clock out of the drawer, tucking it into her back pocket for reference. James didn’t need them, but she might. She was the one who needed to learn.
They started in the living room. A mantel clock waited for them, as well as an 800-day and a cuckoo. It was odd for James, odd and uncomfortable and disconcerting, seeing someone else wind his clocks. Seeing Cooley. “Be careful!” he called out more than once. “You wind, you don’t crank!” She snarled back at him, her lips curled, saying God knows what, he couldn’t hear, but she eased up, her fingers relaxing, her wrist going soft. The clocks needed a gentle touch, not a bully.
James let her stand in front of the cuckoo clock a good long while. He could see her trying to figure out which key belonged and where it would fit. Her shoulders braced, she was so determined not to ask for help. When her eyebrows descended in a dark cloud, forming a black V, and her fingers began frantically flinging the keys around the ring, James spoke up. Softly. “There’s no key for a cuckoo clock, Cooley,” he said. “See the weights? It’s driven by weights and pulleys. You pull on the three chains. One chain controls the hands, one controls the pendulum and one controls the cuckoo bird.” She stared, then put the keys down on a table. There was a resigned set to her shoulders as she began carefully tugging on the chains. “Easy,” James said. “It’s like you’re pulling on the clock’s heartstrings.” He could tell she was frustrated; he knew she thought she’d never get it. He’d never admit it to anyone, but he stripped enough gears when he was learning about clocks. There might even be a few clocks in the backyard cemetery that were the results of his first unknowledgeable and clumsy attempts. But no one would ever know. No one except Diana, he corrected. He wondered if she ever told anyone. He wondered where she was. She would certainly be a help right now. Though she was an old lady. Old, like him. That was hard to imagine.
Cooley’s fingers on the chains reminded James of Diana’s; long, slender, tiny-knuckled. A purple-stoned ring glimmered from Cooley’s left hand and he remembered Diana’s ring. He remembered the coolness of her skin as he slid it onto that finger, that steady finger that never shook or pointed or jabbed. It was just a promise ring, a tiny silver band with threads of turquoise running through it in waves, but it was all James could afford at the time, with the Home so new. He knew that Diana understood what it meant, what he wanted it to be. She took the ring with her when she left. James wondered if she wore it now, the silver embedded in the wrinkles of a much older, heavy-knuckled hand.
Diana used to wind the clocks, back when the Home was young. There weren’t nearly as many clocks as now. And back then, it wasn’t just James’ bedroom that was sealed off, but theirs, the one they shared. He didn’t want the tourists to see the bed Diana always forgot to make, the sheets still twisted like their bodies the night before.
James wasn’t as worried about the clocks then, as long as they ran, as long as their ticking filled his ears. He needed to be around that sound. He could trust Diana to wind them, to look at him over her shoulder as she did so and laugh. Her sound as sweet as any Westminster chime.
Then she broke a clock, overwound it so the spring sagged and drooped out of the bottom of the base. And instead of burying the clock, James discovered the excitement of searching for parts, digging through backrooms of clock shops or into piles of discarded, disemboweled clocks at the flea markets. He fixed that clock by himself and then moved on to fix others, putting them back together, filling the Home with the noise that kept his blood flowing, his heart beating. And Diana came along for the ride, she tried to keep up. But she couldn’t.
Nobody could. Not even a young girl. James looked at Cooley now, standing in front of the cuckoo clock, smiling as the bird popped out and chirped its gratitude.
“This is only temporary,” he said, as much to himself as to her. “Only until I get these damned bandages off.”
Eventually, they worked their way to the back east bedroom. The birdcage clock was on the list and James stood under it, saving it for last, while Cooley moved around to the others. He craned his neck to see the clock’s face, flat against the bottom of the cage, and he was relieved to see it was still on time. It was almost the top of the hour and in a few minutes, the golden bird in the cage would start to sing. It wasn’t one of the ones that stopped; James didn’t have the heart to ask Cooley which ones she saw, which ones fell silent when he wished them dead. He would find them on his own and he would fix them, if he had to remove his bandages himself. It was his fault they stopped. He would show them that the clock-keeper could still be trusted.
Cooley joined James and together, they craned their necks. Birdcage clocks were unusual, crafted in Switzerland near the end of the eighteenth century. James always figured they were popular until people began to complain of perpetual pains in their necks. The only way to truly see the time was to stand directly under the cage and look up. The clock face couldn’t be seen from across the room; you only saw the bird cage. The discovery of the clock was often a great surprise.
This clock was delicate and gold, the bars made from thin braids. They were far enough apart that the bird could easily have flown away, if it chose to, and it looked like it was in the act, its wings spread as it stretched from its perch. The birdsong was actually a music box, so the bird’s voice was a twinkly tinny unrecognizable tune. But it was cheerful and the bird always called to James at the top and halfway through the hour. It was like having spring caught in a cage, always ready to perform. James’ clock was unusual in that it also chirped the hour. Most birdcage clocks just sang; you didn’t know the time unless you stood under it and looked up.
And now James couldn’t hear it at all.
Cooley flipped the schedule over and wrote a note. “How do I wind it?”
James pointed to the little stepstool. “This clock’s movement is in its base,” he said. “When you stand on the stepstool, look on the side, behind the bird. There should be three holes. One is for the time, one for the birdsong and one for the chime.”
Cooley nodded, then went to get the stepstool.
James found this clock at a flea market in St. Charles, Illinois. It was a huge flea market, one he heard about for years before he finally decided to pack up the car and drive down one weekend. It was worth it; acres of tables and booths to dig through. He brought home at least thirty clocks that weekend. But this one sat in the front in the passenger seat, safely buckled in, on the way home.
James saw it from a distance. It sat on a table and it looked like an ornate statue of a bird in a cage. He could tell it was light by the thinness of the bars, easily hung from a ceiling, and he wondered if it could be a birdcage clock, and if it was, why the owner didn’t have it hanging somehow, to show off the face. Wandering by the table a few times, James glanced at the clock, trying not to appear too interested. It was on the third pass that he caught sight of the three holes at the base and he knew he’d not only found a clock, but a rare one. Stopping at the table, he picked up a few items, and then picked up the clock itself.
James admired the bird, poised, ready to take off. Then he hefted the clock above his head, to get a look at the face. Some glass shards rained down and James dodged.
The glass was smashed. What was left dangled like sharp pointed tears and the hands were missing. The face, unprotected by the glass, was scratched and gouged. But James knew he could replace it.
The man behind the table watched. “Does it work?” James called. The man shrugged. This was a good sign; he didn’t know what he had. James set the clock back down and opened a door in the side of the base. Inside, the clock movement was a mess. It would take months to restore it, months to determine what parts were needed and to find them. If James could even fix it at all. He could make the clock look good. But he didn’t know if he could start its heart again.
“How much?” James asked.
The man shrugged again. “Two-hundred,” he said.
James closed the clock door, poked at it a few times. He must have looked too interested…the price was higher than he expected from a shrugger. So James shook his head, turned as if to walk away. He even took a few steps, stopped, then walked back. “Fifty,” he said.
The man laughed. He came over, patted the clock, straightened it out on the table as if he was making it look perfect for the next buyer. “One-fifty.”
“It’s a mess,” James said. “The hands are missing, the glass is broken, and the insides are all in a jumble. I bet you don’t even have the key.”
The man shrugged.
James sighed, turned to leave and really left this time. He walked down a couple booths, got out of the shrugger’s line of vision and waited ten minutes. Then he strolled back. The shrugger was sitting again, reading a book. The clock, James noticed, was shinier, as if the shrugger polished it during James’ absence. The sunlight caught the bird and it spread its wings. James needed to get it out of there, take it home, start working on it. “One hundred,” he said.
The shrugger looked up from his book. His eyebrows went up, as if he was surprised to see James, but James knew the shrugger was alert and aware from the moment James stepped back to the table. He’d been waiting. And then, mercifully, he shrugged and held out his hand.
The clock was James’.
It took almost a year to fix it. That bird sat, voiceless, on the basement worktable until James thought it would build a nest and roost there. He always tilted the clock when he was done with work, so the face could see out too. That clockface wasn’t meant to be buried; it was supposed to shine down on whoever wandered by and looked up. Eventually, the clock was done and the bird sang twice an hour from the back east bedroom. James made sure to stop, at least once a day, and raise his face to the clock, let it tell him the time.
Now Cooley climbed up and James watched her insert the key and start twisting. The clock swung slightly from its hook. “Be careful,” James said. “Hold it with your free hand. Don’t pull down on it, you don’t want the extra weight to pull it from the ceiling.”
Cooley made a face, but she steadied the clock. She wrapped an arm around it, as if she was putting her arm around the shoulders of a friend. And that clock nestled right in while she wound.
James was still watching this, seeing the tender bend of her arm, the concentration in her face, when Ione appeared in the room and tugged at his shoulder. She tilted her head several times toward the doorway. James didn’t want to leave, there were still over a dozen clocks left to go. But Ione grabbed the schedule and then she wrote on it too. James wanted to scream.
“Let Amy Sue do sum of this on her own,” she said. “You need two rest. She’ll find you if she needs help.”
“I’ll just go with,” James said. “I’ll sit down in every room and watch.”
Ione shook her head and took his arm again.
He yanked it away. “Damn it, Ione!” he yelled. “It’s my house and these are my clocks! If I’m tired, I’ll take a break. But it’s me that says so.”
Ione’s face clouded. She turned and left the room. James felt the reverberation from her feet as she stamped down the stairs and he followed her movements until she was out the door. The slam shook the floorboards. For a moment, James thought about calling out to her, telling her to come back, that he was sorry. But only for a moment.
When James turned back, Cooley shook her head. She wrote on the schedule. “Maybe we both need a break,” she said, and then headed off toward the kitchen.
James groaned. At this rate, the clocks would never get wound. He swore at his hands, at the bandages, at Dr. Owen. And he swore at himself for getting into this mess. He never should have tried to fix that damn clock tower. It was just too big.
James went to the kitchen. Cooley stood at the sink, looking out of the window. The clipboard, the keyrings, the stack of index cards were in neat piles on the table. After James sat down, Cooley went to the coffeepot, searching in the cupboards above for a mug. Ione already washed the breakfast dishes. James stared at his bandaged hands, thought about his damaged ears.
The remaining clocks needed to get wound. James hated to admit it, but he needed someone. More importantly, the clocks needed someone. He thought of Ione slamming through the front door. For now, all he had was Cooley. All the clocks had was Cooley; James was useless.
“Cooley,” he said.
She turned, her hands cupped around James’ mug. He thought her hands must be cold and she was drawing warmth from the coffee.
“The newspaper should still be on the front stoop, unless someone brought it in. Go get it and help yourself to the comics. Then get your own mug of coffee. And the day-old doughnuts from the cabinet.”
She looked at him and beamed, the light of her smile bringing a new, old light to this room. But it wasn’t welcome. James knew that lights could go out as quickly as they go on. He flinched away when she touched his shoulder, on the way to get the newspaper.
Then he concentrated on picking up the coffee in his thick fingers, determined not to spill a drop.