Chapter 18: The First Tick

The morning was cold. November cold, Vermont cold, the kind of cold that comes through the windows and sits on the floor and wraps around your ankles like a cat, and Henry turned on the space heater under the bench — a small electric heater that Alistair had used for decades, its orange coils glowing, its warmth radiating upward through the bench and into the wood and into the mechanism and into the hands — because cold hands are slow hands and slow hands are imprecise hands and imprecision is the enemy.

He uncovered the movement. It was there, on the white cloth, the gear train assembled, the escapement in place, the bridges screwed down, and the movement was a complete mechanism except for the barrel, which sat beside it, containing the mainspring, containing the energy, and the balance wheel, which sat on the other side, the hairspring corrected, the oscillator ready.

The barrel first.

He picked it up. The barrel was small — about the diameter of a nickel, perhaps a bit larger — and heavy for its size, the weight of the mainspring inside giving it a density that the empty barrel did not have, and Henry positioned it in the movement, the barrel arbor finding the lower pivot hole, the barrel fitting between the plates, and he guided it with the tweezers, the barrel rotating slightly as it settled, the mainspring inside shifting, the energy redistributing, and the barrel seated, was in its place, and Henry screwed the barrel bridge down and the barrel was held and the mainspring was contained and the energy was ready.

He did not release the energy yet. The balance wheel was not installed, the escapement was not complete, and releasing the energy without the balance wheel would send it through the train unregulated, the wheels spinning freely, the mainspring unwinding in seconds, wasted, spent, and Henry would have to remove the barrel and rewind the mainspring and start again, and this was unnecessary, was avoidable, was the kind of error that a careful watchmaker does not make.

The balance wheel.

He held it in the tweezers. The balance wheel was the most delicate part of the watch, the part that required the steadiest hands, the lightest touch, the greatest care, because the balance staff — the thin steel shaft on which the wheel oscillated — had pivots at both ends that were ground to microscopic points, points so fine that they were invisible to the naked eye, points that seated in jewels the way a pencil point seats in a dimple in a sheet of paper, and if the pivots were bent or broken the watch would not run, and the pivots could be bent or broken by the slightest mishandling, the slightest lateral force, the slightest moment of carelessness.

Henry's hands were steady. He knew this. Alistair had said this — to Cal, not to Henry, but Henry knew it now, knew that his hands were steady, knew that the steadiness was a gift, was a talent, was the thing that made him suited for this work in a way that went beyond training, beyond practice, beyond the six years at the bench, was something in the nerves, in the muscles, in the architecture of the hand itself, and he trusted his hands the way a pilot trusts his instruments, the way a navigator trusts the stars, implicitly, completely, because the alternative — distrust, hesitation, doubt — was worse, was the thing that made hands shake, made tweezers slip, made pivots bend.

He positioned the balance wheel over the movement. The lower pivot found the lower jewel — he could feel it, the tiny click, the pivot seating, the steel finding the ruby — and the wheel settled, horizontal, the hairspring extending from the staff in its spiral, and Henry guided the outer end of the hairspring to the regulator pins, the two small pins that controlled the effective length of the spring, that determined the rate of the watch, and the hairspring found the pins and slid between them and the spring was connected, was part of the mechanism, was attached at both ends — inner end to the balance staff, outer end to the regulator — and the balance wheel was in position.

He installed the balance cock. The bridge that held the upper pivot, the cap that completed the mechanism, and Henry guided the upper pivot into the upper jewel — again the tiny click, the seating, the steel finding the ruby — and the balance cock settled into its position and he screwed it down, one screw, a single screw holding the bridge, and the screw turned and tightened and the mechanism was complete.

The Waltham was assembled. Every part in its place. Every wheel on its arbor. Every pivot in its jewel. Every spring attached. Every bridge screwed down. The movement sat on the white cloth, complete, and Henry looked at it and the looking was not casual, was not a glance, was a thorough visual inspection, his eye traveling across every surface, checking every screw, verifying every position, and everything was correct, everything was in order, and the watch was ready.

He had not yet released the mainspring. The click — the small pawl that prevented the mainspring from unwinding backward through the winding mechanism — was engaged, holding the spring in its wound state, and all Henry needed to do was give the balance wheel a push, a tiny push, a nudge with the tip of a piece of pegwood, and the balance wheel would oscillate and the pallet fork would engage and the escape wheel would advance and the energy would begin to flow from the mainspring through the train to the escapement and the watch would tick.

Henry sat at the bench. The loupe was on his eye. The pegwood was in his hand. The watch was in front of him. The shop was quiet — the clocks were ticking, but the quietness was of a different order, was the quietness of a moment that is about to become a different moment, the way the air is quiet before a storm, the way a room is quiet before a concert begins, the way the world is quiet in the fraction of a second between the conductor's raised baton and the first note.

He thought about Alistair. He thought about Alistair sitting at this bench, six years ago and more, with this watch in pieces on this cloth, working on this mechanism, enjoying the work, taking his time, and then the stroke, the gasp, the floor, the silence. He thought about Alistair in the wheelchair, directing Henry's hands, saying steady, boy, steady, and the voice was in his head now, was in the shop, was in the air, was everywhere and nowhere, the way a sound persists after the source has stopped, the way an overtone lingers after the bell has been struck.

He thought about Thomas Osgood in Somerset, standing at his own bench, holding his own tools, working on his own clocks, and the watch — this watch, the Waltham — in Thomas's pocket, warm against Thomas's hip, ticking against Thomas's body, keeping time for Thomas's life, measuring Thomas's days, and then Thomas giving the watch to Alistair, the father giving the son the mechanism that measured the father's time, and Alistair taking it to America, to Vermont, to Montpelier, to a shop on Main Street, and the watch traveling from Somerset to Montpelier the way a word travels from one language to another, carrying its meaning but changing its context, the same mechanism in a different place.

He touched the balance wheel with the pegwood.

The push was gentle. A nudge. The smallest possible impulse, the least amount of energy that could start the oscillation, and the balance wheel moved — rotated clockwise, a few degrees, and the hairspring coiled and pulled it back and the wheel reversed, rotated counterclockwise, and the hairspring uncoiled and the wheel came back, and the pallet fork rocked and the escape wheel advanced one tooth and the energy from the mainspring — the new mainspring, the mainspring from Ollie Baker in Rhode Island, the mainspring that had been made in a factory decades ago and had sat in a waxed paper envelope in a drawer in a converted textile mill in Providence — the energy flowed, entered the train, cascaded through the gears, reached the escapement, and the escapement released it, one tick at a time.

The watch ticked.

The sound was small. Smaller than the clocks on the shelf, smaller than the ship's bell, smaller than the cuckoo's call, smaller than anything in the shop except the silence between the ticks of the other clocks, and the watch's tick found that silence and filled it, a new voice joining the chorus, the fourteenth voice, the last voice, the voice that had been absent for thirty years and was now present.

Henry held the watch to his ear. The tick was there, was real, was the rapid whisper of a lever escapement, five beats per second, and the sound was the sound of the mechanism working, the sound of energy being regulated, the sound of time being measured, and the sound was also the sound of completion, of the last repair, of the fourteenth clock, of the promise kept.

He set the watch on the bench. He sat back. He looked at it.

The balance wheel oscillated. Back and forth, back and forth, the hairspring coiling and uncoiling, the small brass wheel spinning in its arc, catching the light from the lamp, flashing, and the motion was mesmerizing, was the same kind of motion as the anniversary clock's four balls, the slow rhythmic motion that empties the mind, that fills the eye, that says time is passing in a way that is more felt than understood.

The watch was running. His father's watch was running. The Waltham that Thomas Osgood had carried in Somerset and that Alistair Osgood had kept in a safe in Montpelier and that Henry Osgood had assembled on a bench on Main Street — the watch was ticking, was keeping time, was doing the thing it had been built to do in 1905, the thing it had not done for thirty years, the thing that three generations of Osgoods had carried and kept and wound and stored and finally repaired.

Henry did not cry. He was not a man who cried. He was a man who sat at a bench and held a loupe to his eye and listened to the tick and felt the feeling and did not name the feeling because naming it would diminish it, would reduce it, would take the fullness of it and compress it into a word the way a mainspring is compressed into a barrel, and the word would not contain it, would not hold it, would not be adequate to the feeling, which was not one feeling but many — satisfaction, grief, pride, loss, completion, continuation — layered on top of each other the way the gears in a train are layered, each one turning the next, each one connected, each one necessary.

He sat at the bench for a long time. The watch ticked. The clocks ticked. The shop breathed. The morning passed.

At noon he picked up the watch. He held it to his ear again. Still ticking. Still running. Still keeping time.

He would need to time it. He would need to measure its accuracy, to adjust the regulator, to bring the rate into specification, to make the watch not just run but run correctly, keep not just time but the correct time, and this would take days — days of timing, of adjusting, of timing again, of the patient iterative process that brings a watch into regulation the way a musician brings an instrument into tune, not all at once but gradually, by degrees, by successive approximations, each one closer to the truth than the last.

But the watch was running. That was the first thing, the essential thing, the foundation on which everything else would be built. The mainspring was delivering energy. The train was transmitting it. The escapement was regulating it. The balance wheel was oscillating. The watch was ticking.

He set it on the bench. He went to the front of the shop and looked out the window. Main Street. November. The sky low and gray. The trees bare. The capitol dome muted. Cal's shop closed — Cal was at a furniture show in Burlington this week, gone since Monday, the loading dock empty, the barn doors locked. Marion's shop open, the lights on, the books in their rows.

Henry went back to the bench. He picked up the oiler. He had not yet oiled the movement — he had assembled it dry, had checked the function before oiling, because oil can mask problems, can make a dry pivot seem smoother than it is, can fill gaps and reduce noise and hide the symptoms of a fault, and Henry wanted to hear the mechanism without oil, wanted to hear the truth before applying the lubricant, the way a doctor wants to hear the heart before prescribing medication.

The truth was good. The mechanism sounded clean, sounded correct, sounded the way a Waltham Grade 620 should sound, and Henry picked up the oiler and began to oil the pivots, one drop per pivot, the smallest drop, applied with the precision that the watch demanded, and the oil went in, the pivot turned more freely, the friction decreased, and the tick changed subtly, became smoother, became more even, became the refined tick of a well-oiled mechanism.

He oiled all the pivots. Upper and lower, every wheel, every arbor, twenty-two oiling points, twenty-two drops of Moebius 9010, the finest watch oil, synthetic, designed to remain fluid for decades, to resist evaporation, to reduce friction to the minimum, and the oiling took thirty minutes, because each drop had to be precisely placed, precisely sized, and Henry placed each one with the care of a calligrapher placing an ink stroke, a single gesture, irreversible, correct or incorrect, and every drop was correct, was in the right place, was the right amount.

The watch ran more smoothly now. The tick was quieter, more even, the friction reduced, the energy flowing more freely from the mainspring to the escapement, and Henry timed it against his watch — the wristwatch he wore, a Seiko, nothing special, a quartz watch that kept time to within fifteen seconds a month, the kind of watch that a clockmaker wears without irony because a clockmaker knows that a quartz watch is more accurate than any mechanical watch ever made and accuracy is not the same as beauty and sometimes you need accuracy and sometimes you need beauty and sometimes you need both.

After one hour, the Waltham had gained eight seconds. Eight seconds per hour was too fast, was significantly too fast, and Henry adjusted the regulator — a tiny movement, a fraction of a millimeter, the regulator lever sliding along the regulator scale, moving the curb pins, changing the effective length of the hairspring, slowing the balance wheel — and he timed it again.

After one hour, the Waltham had gained three seconds. Better. He adjusted again.

After one hour, the Waltham had gained one second. Close. He adjusted a final time, the smallest possible movement, less than a tenth of a millimeter, and he timed it again.

After one hour, the Waltham was dead on. Zero seconds gained, zero seconds lost, the watch keeping perfect time, the balance wheel oscillating at exactly the correct frequency, the hairspring doing its job, the escapement doing its job, the train doing its job, the mainspring doing its job, and the watch was accurate, was regulated, was what it should be.

He would need to check it in different positions — dial up, dial down, crown up, crown left, crown right, crown down — because a watch that is accurate in one position may not be accurate in another, because gravity affects the balance wheel differently depending on the watch's orientation, and a well-regulated watch should keep time within a few seconds per day regardless of position, and Henry would check each position over the coming days and adjust as needed.

But for now the watch ran and kept time and the tick was the sound of the last repair and the last repair was the sound of the last promise being kept, the sound of the fourteenth ticket being closed, the sound of the son's hands doing what the father's hands could not finish.

Henry set the watch on the bench. He installed the dial — the white enamel dial with its chipped edge, its black numerals, its WALTHAM at the twelve — pressing the dial feet into their holes, the dial settling over the movement, covering the mechanism, hiding the beauty, enclosing the truth behind the face, and the watch now had a face, had an expression, had the outward appearance of a timepiece, and the hands went on next — the hour hand, pressed onto the cannon pinion with the hand-setting tool, and the minute hand, pressed onto the center post — and the hands pointed to twelve and Henry set them to the correct time, 1:47 PM, and the minute hand swept and the hour hand followed and the watch showed the time on its face.

He did not install the watch in the case. Not yet. The case was the last thing, the final act, the closing of the shell around the mechanism, and Henry was not ready for the last thing, not today, today was for the first tick, for the running, for the accuracy, for the sound, for the feeling of a watch that had been silent for thirty years speaking again.

He set the watch on the bench. He turned off the lamp. He went upstairs.

Below him, the clocks ticked and the watch ticked with them, a new voice, the smallest voice, the voice of a Waltham Grade 620 that had been made in Massachusetts in 1905 and carried in Somerset and kept in a safe in Vermont and disassembled by a father and assembled by a son, and the voice was there now, was part of the chorus, was the last voice, was the voice that completed the choir.

Fourteen mechanisms. Fourteen voices. Fourteen promises kept.

The shop ticked. The night came. The watch ran.