Chapter 14: The Orphans

There were five clocks that had no one to go home to.

The grandmother clock of Edith Calloway, who was in a nursing home in Rutland and might or might not have received the message that her clock strikes twelve now. The carriage clock of D.K., who was two initials and a rainy day and nothing more. The schoolhouse regulator of the Weatherbee estate, dissolved, the heirs scattered. The Elgin pocket watch of Thomas Wren, unfound. The travel alarm of Ruth Ainsley, deceased, no local survivors. And the ship's clock, which had no name, no initials, no information of any kind, just a clock and a ticket and a bell that rang the watches.

Six, not five. Henry counted again. Six orphans.

He stood in front of the shelf and looked at them. Six mechanisms, ticking, keeping time, repaired and running, restored and purposeless, clocks without owners, voices without listeners, and Henry thought about what to do with them, because doing something with them was necessary — they could not stay on the shelf forever, could not tick on the shelf for years the way they had sat on the shelf for years before he repaired them, because that would be a different kind of neglect, the neglect of the completed rather than the incomplete, the neglect that says you are fixed now, you are fine now, I have done my part, and leaves the clock on the shelf the way you leave a child at school and drive away, assuming the child will be taken care of, that someone will come.

He could sell them. This was the commercial answer, the answer that his twenty-four years in finance would give — these are assets, they have value, they can be exchanged for currency, and the exchange would be efficient and rational and would solve the problem of six ticking clocks on a shelf. But selling them felt wrong, felt like a violation of something he could not name, some relationship between the clock and the ticket and the promise that Alistair had made, a relationship that was not commercial, not transactional, but custodial, the relationship of a person who has been entrusted with something and must decide what to do with it when the entrustor does not return.

He could give them away. He could put them on the sidewalk the way Cal had put the uncollected rocking chair on the sidewalk, with a FREE sign, and they would be gone in an hour, taken by strangers, carried to houses Henry would never see, placed on mantels and desks and nightstands and walls, and the clocks would tick in those houses and keep time for those strangers and the strangers would not know the clocks' histories, would not know about Edith Calloway and D.K. and Florence Weatherbee and Thomas Wren and Ruth Ainsley, would not know that the clocks had been left at a shop and forgotten and found and repaired, and the forgetting would be complete, would be total, and Henry could not bear this, could not bear the idea that these clocks would lose their stories, would become anonymous, would be separated from the yellow tickets and the handwriting and the names and dates that were all that remained of their provenance.

He could keep them. He could keep all six, could wind them, could maintain them, could let them tick on the shelf for as long as he owned the shop, for as long as the shop existed, and the ticking would be the sound of custodianship, of stewardship, of a man who had inherited not just a shop and a skill but a set of obligations, and the obligations included the obligation to keep these clocks running, to keep them wound, to keep them oiled, to keep them in the world of the ticking, the living, the purposeful.

He could keep them. He thought he would keep them.

---

On a Wednesday, a letter arrived. Not for Henry — for the shop. The envelope was addressed to OSGOOD & SON, MAIN STREET, MONTPELIER, VT, and the return address was Green Mountain Senior Living, Rutland, VT, and Henry opened it at the counter with the letter opener that Alistair had kept in the drawer, a brass letter opener shaped like a sword, a miniature sword, the kind of thing that a man buys at a gift shop and keeps for forty years and never questions.

The letter was typed. It was on the facility's stationery. It was from the director of nursing.

Dear Mr. Osgood,

I am writing on behalf of Edith Calloway, a resident of our facility. Mrs. Calloway received your message regarding her clock and asked me to respond on her behalf, as she is unable to write due to arthritis in her hands.

Henry stopped reading. Arthritis in her hands. He thought about Alistair. He thought about hands that cannot do what they need to do. He continued.

Mrs. Calloway was very pleased to hear that her clock has been repaired. She says the clock was a gift from her late husband, William, and that it hung in their living room for many years. She says she left it at your father's shop in 2003 because it was striking thirteen at midnight and she was afraid something was wrong with it. She says she is glad it strikes twelve now.

Mrs. Calloway is 94 years old. She is in good health for her age but is not able to travel to Montpelier. She asked me to tell you that she would like the clock to stay with you, at the shop, and to be cared for. She says your father was a good man and she trusts that his son is also a good man. She says the clock belongs in the shop now, with the other clocks, and she hopes it is happy there.

She also asked me to tell you something about the clock. She says the clock was made in 1906 by the Herschede Hall Clock Company in Cincinnati, Ohio, and that it was a wedding gift to her grandparents, Harold and Eleanor Paxton, who were married on June 14, 1906. She says the clock has been in her family for 120 years and she is the last of the Paxtons and she would like the clock to continue after her.

Please feel free to contact us if you have any questions.

Sincerely, Janet Tremblay, RN Director of Nursing

Henry set the letter on the counter. He looked at the grandmother clock on the shelf. A Herschede. He had guessed Herschede. The maker's mark was worn but the quality was Herschede quality, the movement was Herschede quality, and now he knew, now the clock had a provenance, a history, a lineage — Harold and Eleanor Paxton, married June 14, 1906, Cincinnati, and the clock had traveled from Cincinnati to Vermont, had been a wedding gift, had been in the family for 120 years, had passed from grandparents to parents to daughter, from Harold and Eleanor to whoever came next to Edith, and Edith was the last, was ninety-four, was in a nursing home with arthritis in her hands, and the clock was here, in the shop, ticking on the shelf, and Edith wanted it to stay here, wanted it to continue, wanted it to be cared for.

Henry read the letter again. She hopes it is happy there.

She hoped the clock was happy. Not a word Henry would have used, not a word clockmakers used, because clocks are not happy or unhappy, are not sentient, are not capable of satisfaction or dissatisfaction, are mechanisms, are machines, are assemblies of brass and steel and springs that do what they are designed to do without opinion or emotion — but Edith Calloway hoped the clock was happy, and the hoping was not about the clock, was about Edith, was about a ninety-four-year-old woman in a room in Rutland imagining her grandmother's clock on a shelf in a shop in Montpelier, ticking, keeping time, striking twelve at midnight, and wanting it to be happy, wanting the clock to have what she could not have — a place, a purpose, a continuation.

Henry sat down. He was at the counter, on the stool, not at the bench, and the stool at the counter was a different stool, was his stool, was the stool he had sat on when he was a boy and Alistair was at the bench and Henry would do his homework at the counter after school, math and English and science, while Alistair worked on clocks, and the sounds of the shop — the ticking, the filing, the tapping, the occasional chime — were the soundtrack of Henry's homework, the background music of his education, and the stool held no memory of anyone's shape but his own.

He picked up the phone. He called Green Mountain Senior Living.

"This is Henry Osgood. I'd like to speak with Edith Calloway, if she's able."

A pause. Footsteps. A phone being placed on a table. Footsteps again. A rustling. Breathing.

"Hello?" The voice was thin, old, the voice of a ninety-four-year-old woman who had arthritis in her hands and who hoped her clock was happy.

"Mrs. Calloway, this is Henry Osgood. From the clock shop."

"Oh. Oh, yes. The boy."

The boy. The word again, the word Alistair had used, the word that followed Henry like a shadow, the word that said you are someone's son, you are someone's boy, you are the younger one, the next one, the continuation.

"Yes. I got your letter. Thank you."

"Is the clock all right?"

"The clock is fine. It's running well. It strikes twelve."

"Twelve. Good. Only twelve. Not thirteen."

"Not thirteen."

"Thirteen frightened me. I know it's silly. I know it's a clock. But thirteen — it's not a real hour. It's an hour that doesn't exist. And hearing it, at midnight, in the dark — it was like the clock was telling me something that wasn't true, and I couldn't — I couldn't have that. I couldn't have a thing in my house that told me things that weren't true."

"The lifting piece was worn," Henry said. "It was slipping past the twelfth notch on the count wheel. An extra strike."

"Your father explained it. He said the same thing. He said it was mechanical, not — not supernatural. He said clocks don't know about thirteen. They only know about the mechanism."

"That's right."

"But I knew about thirteen. I knew about the number and the superstition and the fear. And the clock didn't know, but I did, and the knowing was in me, not in the clock, and the fear was in me, not in the clock, and your father understood that. He understood that the repair was not just mechanical. It was — it was for me. The repair was for me, not for the clock."

Henry held the phone. He looked at the grandmother clock on the shelf, the walnut case, the Roman numerals, the blued hands. The clock that Edith Calloway's grandparents had received on their wedding day in 1906. The clock that had ticked through the First World War and the Great Depression and the Second World War and the Cold War and everything else that had happened in 120 years, ticking through all of it, indifferent, faithful, keeping time while the world kept changing.

"Mrs. Calloway, I'll keep the clock. I'll take care of it."

"Thank you. Thank you, young man."

"Is there anything you'd like me to know about it? Anything else?"

Silence. The breathing. The thin old voice considering.

"My grandmother wound it on Sundays," Edith said. "Harold died in 1938 and Eleanor wound it alone after that. She wound it every Sunday until 1962, when she died, and then my mother wound it, and then I wound it. Sunday mornings. Before church. You reach into the case and you wind the key and the spring tightens and the clock runs for another week and the week passes and you wind it again. Fifty-two windings a year. I wound it for — let me think — from 1987 to 2003. Sixteen years. Eight hundred and thirty-two windings. And before me, my mother, and before her, Eleanor. Thousands of windings. And each winding is a week and each week is a life and the clock has been wound thousands of times and each time is a hand reaching in and a key turning and a spring tightening and a promise — a promise that the next week will come, that the clock will run, that time will continue."

She paused. The breathing.

"Wind it on Sundays," she said. "If you don't mind."

"I will."

"Thank you."

He hung up. He went to the grandmother clock and opened the case and found the winding key and wound it — seven half-turns, the same as the Ansonia, the same as most eight-day clocks — and the mainspring tightened and the clock would run for another week and Sunday was in three days and on Sunday Henry would wind it again, would reach in and turn the key and tighten the spring, and the winding would be his now, his hand, his week, his promise, added to the chain of windings that stretched back through Edith and her mother and Eleanor and 120 years of Sundays.

---

That afternoon Henry sat with Marion at three o'clock. The tea, the two cups, the bench, the chair. The ritual.

"I heard from Edith Calloway," Henry said.

"Oh?"

"She wants the clock to stay here. She's ninety-four. She can't travel. She wants me to take care of it."

"That seems right."

"She asked me to wind it on Sundays."

Marion looked at Henry over her teacup. "Sundays."

"Her family always wound it on Sundays. Her grandmother, her mother, her. She wants me to continue."

"Another ritual."

"Another ritual."

Marion sipped her tea. She set the cup down. She looked at Alistair's cup, the cup on Alistair's bench, the cup that was steaming, the cup that would cool and be taken away.

"The shop is filling up," she said. "With rituals. The winding on Sundays. The tea at three. The clocks ticking. The bell ringing the watches. The cuckoo at the hour. You're building something, Henry. Not just repairing. Building."

Henry did not respond. He did not know if she was right. He was repairing clocks. He was finishing what Alistair had started. He was keeping promises. He was not building anything — or if he was, the building was incidental, was the byproduct of the repair, the way sawdust is the byproduct of woodworking, the way heat is the byproduct of friction, a thing produced by the process but not the purpose of the process.

But the shop was different. He could feel it. The shop had been a closed place, a quiet place, a place of Alistair's absence and Henry's obligation, and now it was — not open, not yet, not officially — but occupied, populated, filled with the sounds of ten ticking clocks and a bell that rang the watches and a cuckoo that called the hours, and the sounds were company, were presence, were the acoustic equivalent of the people who had left these clocks and who lived now in the ticking, in the chiming, in the striking, in the cuckoo's call, their stories attached to their mechanisms, their tickets in the box, their names in Henry's mind.

Edith Calloway. D.K. Florence Weatherbee. Thomas Wren. Ruth Ainsley. The unnamed owner of the ship's clock. Robert Payne (clock returned). Agnes Firth (clock on the wall, letters sent). Martin Leveque (clock returned). Polly Arsenault (clock returned). Sarah Halliday (clock returned). James Okonkwo (clock returned). Michael Corvin (clock returned). Frances Osgood (clock on the mantel).

Fourteen names. Fourteen tickets. Thirteen repairs completed. One remaining.

"There's one more," Henry said.

"I know," Marion said.

"In the drawer."

"I know."

"Did you know about it? Before?"

Marion set her cup down. She folded her hands in her lap. She looked at the bench — at Alistair's bench, at the cup of tea, at the lamp with the green glass shade, at the tools laid out in their places, the screwdrivers in their roll, the loupes in their case, the tweezers in the jar, the oiler in its stand.

"He showed it to me," she said. "A few weeks before the stroke. He was working on it. He had it in pieces. On the bench. Right there." She pointed. "The parts were laid out on a cloth. A white cloth. He used a white cloth for watches, not the felt he used for clocks, because the parts were smaller and the white made them easier to see."

"What did he say about it?"

"He said it was the most important repair he would ever do. He said it had been in a drawer for thirty years and he had finally decided to repair it and he was taking his time. He said he was enjoying it. I remember that word — enjoying. He was enjoying the work. He was not rushing. He was not diagnosing. He was just — sitting with it. Attending to it."

"And then the stroke."

"And then the stroke. Three days later. He was at the bench. I heard the sound — a sound, not a word, not a cry, just a — a sound, a gasp, something — and I came through the door and he was on the floor and the watch was on the bench and the parts were on the cloth and I called 911 and they came and they took him and the watch stayed on the bench and I — I didn't know what to do with it. I didn't touch it. I left it there. And then Henry — you — came, and at some point the watch was in the drawer. In the pouch. I don't know who put it there. Maybe you. Maybe Alistair, before — I don't know."

Henry did not know either. He did not remember putting the watch in the drawer. He remembered arriving — the long drive from New York, the I-89 north, the Green Mountains growing in the windshield — and he remembered entering the shop and seeing the bench and the cloth and the parts and not understanding what they were, not recognizing them, because at that point he was not a clockmaker, was not a repairer, was not a man who could look at a disassembled movement and know what it was. He had been a man in a suit with a briefcase, a man from finance, a man who understood markets and not mechanisms, and the parts on the cloth had been meaningless to him, small bright shapes on a white surface, and he had put them somewhere — the drawer, the pouch — and forgotten them, and then six years had passed and Alistair had taught him the craft and Alistair had died and Henry had found the pouch and opened it and seen the parts and known what they were.

A watch. His father's watch. A Waltham. Disassembled. Unfinished. The last thing Alistair had been working on. The final repair.

"Tomorrow," Henry said.

"Tomorrow?"

"I'll start tomorrow."

Marion nodded. She picked up her cup and Alistair's cup and went to the door. She stopped. She turned.

"Henry."

"Yes."

"He was enjoying it. Remember that. He was enjoying the work."

She left. The door closed. Henry sat at the bench. He put his hand on the drawer. He did not open it. He felt the warmth of the wood through his palm, the warmth of the shop, the warmth of fifty years of hands on this bench, his father's hands and his hands and all the hands that had come before, the chain of hands that went back to Somerset and to Bristol and to the master horologist who had taught Alistair's father, and the warmth was real, was physical, was not a metaphor but a temperature, the temperature of a shop in November, the temperature of wood that has absorbed the heat of a lamp and a body and a craft for half a century.

Tomorrow.