The Home for Wayward Clocks Read Free Page A

he turned. And he heard every clock in that place that trusted him call his name just before the crash. The victim’s voice was the loudest of all.
    James recognized that voice and as he entered the room, he already knew who it was, but praying, he said out loud, “Please, please don’t let it be the Anniversary Waltzer. Please.” The parents moved away and the boy slunk to the other side of the room. There was the four-hundred day clock, the one that sang the Anniversary Waltz every hour, the one whose four crystal-cut balls at the base of the pendulum threw rainbows around that room every day at noon, when the sun fell in just right. Its glass dome was shattered, one hand was bent, the other spoked upwards through the broken shards on the floor. One of the four crystals was missing, but from the purple and pink and green flashes James saw in the mess of dome glass, glass that doesn’t throw colors, he knew where the crystal went. In pieces everywhere. “Oh, no,” he said and knelt carefully, trying to assess, to determine damage and the possibility of repair. He listened closely for a heartbeat.
    “I’m sorry,” the father said. “My son bumped against it. Of course we’ll pay for it.”
    “Bumped into it?” James shot a glare at the boy who sneered, then looked away.
    “Yes, bumped it,” the mother said. “Brian, come over here and apologize to the man.” She held out her hand, held out her hand to a boy who must have been sixteen years old at least, and she smiled. The boy’s head snapped upright and he pushed his hair away from his face. His eyes went wide and when he stepped forward, James witnessed a moment of gentleness, the quick brushing of a mother’s fingers with her son’s, and James’ breath caught and his heart paused and he wondered if he’d been wrong.
    But still, there was a broken clock, a possibly dead clock, and James seethed. Carefully, he picked the base out of the pile and set the clock upright. Its pendulum tried to spin, but it was out of balance with the missing ball. It was like watching a dog with two broken legs try to run.
    “I’m sorry,” the boy said quietly.
    The mother stooped down. “Really, he didn’t mean it. What can we pay you for the clock?” She touched James’ shoulder and he froze, feeling the warmth in her fingertips. But he knew how quickly that could change. All she had to do was raise her hand, close her fingers. He shrugged her away.
    “This was a four-hundred day clock,” James said. Seeing their confused faces, he conceded and fell into the layman’s language. “An anniversary clock.” James remembered buying the clock at an estate sale, the seller’s sad face as he packed it in a box. “It celebrated,” James said, “a marriage.” In the garage that day, the seller’s face was sodden with love, with sorrow. He said he gave his wife the clock on their tenth anniversary, but his wife left before their twenty-third. The seller said he couldn’t stand to look at the clock anymore.
    James couldn’t imagine. It wasn’t the clock’s fault.
    The father cleared his throat.
    James sighed and stood, lifting what was left of the clock. “It was worth four hundred and fifty dollars,” he said. “I don’t know if it can be fixed.”
    The wife gasped, the son snorted, but the father and James stood and looked each other in the eye. With the clock’s body warm in James’ hands, he didn’t flinch. Then the father got out his checkbook. They left immediately, the boy’s baritone whine hushed as they went through the hallway to the door.
    Setting the clock carefully on a table, James extricated the missing hand from the pile of glass. The pendulum kept trying to work, staggering forward and back, and that cheered him; it meant the movement was mostly intact. It was likely that only a few of the tiny pieces would have to be replaced, pieces knocked loose by the fall. The hard part would be finding a new crystal ball for the pendulum. It was