13

WHILE SHE WORKED, Valerie imagined Matt alive, remembering how they were young together, the boy who’d lived at the end of her street. His property faced on Willow Drive, an old brown-shingled stump of a house set deep in its wooded grove, its back to hers. From what her family could see of it, untidy oaks and sycamores shadowed the yard and the house was hidden because the path to the back door was overgrown.

Matt was an only child with few friends, except for a sallow-looking kid with wiry hair the colour of rusty fenders, a pest who got As in everything, as well as suspensions for setting off cherry bombs in the schoolyard. The two boys spent lots of time together, but Matt’s buddy had a slingshot, and once when Valerie went down the slide at recess, he aimed it at her and she ducked, but he hit her anyway. Matt was standing right there, and he didn’t try to stop that creep. Scaredy-cat Matt, she’d thought. Her mother was furious. She bawled out the kid’s parents, and Matt’s, too. Sister made that smart-aleck apologize in front of the class. After that, he left her alone.

Still she’d wondered why Matt had just stood there.

She was about twelve years old at the time, and soon afterwards she saw Matt sitting on his stoop, working a piece of wood with a knife. Curls of wood fell away from the blade and what emerged was winged and delicate, like a chick wriggling out of a shell. He noticed her, then lowered his eyes.

“That’s neat,” she said.

“My dad taught me. He learned from an army buddy.”

“Can I hold it?”

Matt handed her the bird. “Our dads were in the army together,” he told her.

She didn’t know how to answer.

“My dad died,” she said.

Matt fiddled with his knife. “Bet he was a hero,” he replied.

She told him he was. When she went to give him back his bird, he wouldn’t take it.

“You keep that,” he said.

Valerie thanked him.

“I’m sorry about what happened. I should’ve beat him up.”

She was pleased and worried at the same time. Then she heard it: tick-tock-bong, tickety-tock-bong.

“What’s that?”

“My dad’s clocks.”

“How come they’re so noisy?”

“He makes them himself. That’s how come.”

Valerie recalled that she’d never liked the sounds of those clocks, but she was impressed by the fact that Matt’s dad had made them. Summer found her hanging out in his backyard. The murmur of the clocks enticed her — the tickety-rattle of minutes and seconds, all talking at the same time. After a while it seemed that the din shaped itself into the low whisper of secrets, and she could feel them humming in her ear, as if they might tell her something if she’d listen.

***

Valerie had Matt’s cell phone number, but when she tried, she couldn’t get a connection. She realized she had no idea what time his flight would have left Boston. He might still be in the taxi — tipping the driver, striding into the check-in at Logan Airport, its lower concourse a knotted jumble of cops, armed guards, frightened passengers. Ticket in hand, he’d glance at his watch, go talk to a cop, find out that all flights had been cancelled. Up the escalator he’d go, to sit in the café, to try absorbing the murmured news that a plane had struck a tower in New York City. He’d be horrified.

Then she imagined a croupier, shuffling time. New game. Cut and deal.

Deuces are wild. What a gorgeous morning, says the deuce.

This time, Matt’s running to the departure gate, and he glimpses the sky, frail and blue as a robin’s egg. He dashes through the passageway. As he boards the plane, he can hear the ticking of his father’s clocks, the whole earth striking the hour.