My
first thought was to strangle the beast and hide the body in the basement. Then I’d leave the front door ajar as if a
thief had snuck in. It seemed unlikely
anyone would steal only a clock and leave the silver service untouched, so I
wasn’t sure this scheme would fool anyone.
I could also steal our silver and even the Infant of Prague statue. But I’d never heard of any clocks stolen in
our neighborhood, and for certain no Infants of Prague ever went missing. And come to think of it, since I didn’t have
my own apartment, what would I do with a silver service and an Infant of
Prague?
The
thief in the night scheme was probably no more sophisticated than simply taking
my brother’s baseball bat to the clock and pleading insanity by way of a
strange dream that made me do it. Eventually
I had a better idea as I lay there sleepless.
I would poison the clock, making it so sickly my father would become frustrated and throw it out or leave it to sit
quietly on the mantel.
After
everyone in the house was asleep, I tiptoed into the living room, opened the little
door on the clock and stopped the pendulum.
Then I moved the hands ahead to 3 a.m. so it would appear the clock gave
up the ghost long after we were all in bed.
At
breakfast I could see disappointment on my father’s face as he expressed
frustration over the clock’s apparent cardiac arrest.
“It
never stopped during the test shot … not once,” he said. “I let it run the entire week that I was
finishing the cabinet.”
“Well,
it’s old,” I said. “Give it a rest, like
Grandpa.”
“Grandpa’s
dead,” he said.’
“Well,
that’s what I mean. Honored in life, but
more so in death. A quiet memory is
best. Either in the ground or on a
mantel.”
In
the evening Dad hustled the clock over to Gene’s and the two men thoroughly
inspected every tiny component and re-made each adjustment to perfection. That night I got up and stopped the clock
again, shoving the hands ahead as though it stopped sometime before dawn.
When
I rose the following morning, Dad was on the phone.
“Gene,”
I heard him say, “the clock made it to 4 o’clock this morning. We did something
right last night. We’re gaining on the problem!”
My
father and Gene spent another six hours that night re-adjusting just about
every tension spring and turn screw in the clock, I got up and stopped it again
after midnight, but this time I set the hands ahead to only 2:30.
The
next morning at breakfast my father was devastated, a haggard look across his
face, full of worry and concern for his first big clock project. Myself, I was feeling quite chipper and refreshed
after a full two nights of restful sleep.
“I
don’t know what I’m doing wrong,” said Dad. “The clock only made it to 2:30
last night. Now we’re going
backward. We’ve made things worse.”
“But
maybe,” I said and paused for a beat, “pendulum clocks won’t run in this
house. You know, like maybe the earth’s
lines of magnetic flux just are not good for a pendulum here. Remember the time all the apples fell off the
tree out back? Bad flux, I’m thinking, for
anything hanging … or swinging. You
know?”
Dad
didn’t appear to be listening.
“I’m
not sure if Gene really knows what he’s doing,” he said to no one in particular. “Maybe I’ll take it in to work. Herbie the maintenance guy is a mechanical
wizard. Maybe he can help.”
Dad
told us later that Dr. Herbie conducted an unbiased exam of the patient and
pronounced the time piece hale and hearty.
But after my father’s insistence the clock was sick, Herbie thought a
minute and said maybe it wasn’t sitting on the mantel perfectly level.
“I
mean perfectly,”
he told Dad. “Take this six foot mason’s
level home tonight and line it up so you’re sure the clock is perfectly
level.” Herbie might as well have
suggested Dad line it up with the North Star for all the good it would do.
This
night, Dad performed all the checks and re-checks on the clock downstairs on
his workbench. He made no mention of
Gene. Then he very carefully carried the
patient up to our living room. On the
mantel he placed the long mason’s level, a device with the width and thickness
of a pack of cards, but six feet long.
Embedded in the level was a
bubble that told you when things were perfectly horizontal. When the instrument and C-clamps and various
holding tools were arranged on the mantel, he placed the clock precariously on
top and jiggled it a bit to make sure it wouldn’t fall off. Then, down at the far end of the mantel, he very carefully slid a pack of
matches under the six foot mason’s tool and moved it toward the clock until the
bubble pronounced everything true. He
used the clamps to hold all the parts in place.
This
was the carefully balanced pile confronting me when in semi darkness I stepped
into the living room around midnight to continue my regimen of clock poisoning.
Even
if I managed to not make a mistake and cause the assemblage to come crashing
down from the mantel, I wasn’t sure I
could remove the clamps and then open the clock
in the dark without making a noise that might wake the household.
“You
made one dumb mistake,” came a stage whisper from behind me.
I
turned to see my mother sitting in her chair across the room.
“Was
it the goofy theory about the earth’s lines of flux?” I asked.
“No,
I didn’t hear that one,” she said, “but it sounds like something your father
would believe.”
“How
did you know it was me?” I asked.
“I’ve
been following you around since you began to walk,” she continued. “You leave a trail as wide as an elephant’s
behind you.”
“A
trail of what?” I asked.
“Everything,”
she said. “Toys, books, magazines, cookie
crumbs, last week’s homework, hair combs, socks, shoes, shirts, Aqua Velva … “
“OK,
OK,” I interrupted. “What did I leave on
the mantel?”
“Nothing,” she said. “Specifically, not your car
keys.”
“My
car keys …” We left our keys on the
mantel at night so cars could be moved if anyone needed to get out of the
narrow driveway early the next morning.
“When
I didn’t see them on the mantel,” she said, “I guessed why you didn’t leave
them.”
“I
needed the little flashlight on the keychain to get back to bed …”
“
… without tripping over the coffee table or a hassock,” she said.
“That’s
pretty smart, Mom,” I said. “So now, how
will I get to sleep after Dad finds out what I’ve been doing?”
“He won’t find out,” she said. “You keep stopping that noisy clock every
night and I’ll hold the pillow against his ear like I’ve been doing. Eventually,
we’ll wear him down. He’ll find another
hobby and we’ll get some sleep.”
Copyright 2010 David Griffin
The Windswept Press
Murrells Inlet, South Carolina
windsweptpress.com
