cabbages were resting against the big blue door, like dogs waiting to go out. I could tell that our mother’s own head was thick, filled up with mud. The mud wrapped its big, suffocating arms around every logical thought.
“Come back tomorrow,” my mother said.
I ran out the door
and down the street. My feet smacked the puddles hard. I thought about running away forever, except that the whole point was to be home. I spotted my father in the square near the statue of the long-dead war hero with a bunch of other rain-wet men. I wrapped my arms around my father’s leg. He looked at me in confusion, but then patted my head and said hello. He did not know that a deal was under way to sell one of his children. The men, having finished their lunches but unready to return to work, were arguing over the fate of a typewriter. Around us, people walked from shop to shop, carrying baskets and bags of supplies. There were weak fingers of light coming through the spaces between buildings. The baker held the old black typewriter, tapping the
S
key with his ring finger. Should this be part of the new world? Should it be thrown to the bottom of the river, as the butcher suggested? Should it be stomped to bits and sprinkled over the tomato gardens? Should it be encased in glass and viewed as a museum object—evidence of an unknown time? Or should it be what the barber said it was—a clacking record keeper, inherited and benign?
People snarled, angry about the disagreement. “A lot of fuss over a few buttons,” the barber said.
“How are we supposed to know
what
to do?” the jeweler cried.
“Starting over is starting over,” the butcher spat as he stamped a boot-shaped puddle into the mud.
“Is it better to give the next generations the opportunity to invent new things, or is it better to provide them with the tools that were here when we arrived?” my father asked.
Igor said, “We’ll take whatever we can get.”
The typewriter was only one of the items in question. People disagreed about cash registers and hammers. If we threw out our hair ribbons, should we keep our shoelaces? What about our buttons and watches? “We have not gone
back
in time,” the baker said, “we have gone somewhere in time that no one has ever
been
. A brand-new place. Those watches cannot keep track of this place any better than a hairbrush could. We need to get rid of the watches.” He put the typewriter down on the ground, took his black felted-wool hat off and shook the rain out of it.
The barber agreed. “He’s right. This hat is a new world hat now, just as my eyes are new world eyes. But time roots us to the old world—time must never have existed before. Everything depends on that.”
All the glass faces stared back from a wheelbarrow in the middle of the square, ticking down hours that we denied even existed. The watch killers followed the cart past the butcher shop, the bakery, the bank, the candy store, six houses, four wet dogs, a row of white rosebushes, to the path through the cabbage field toward the river. The river garbled, and the rain tickled our foreheads and the backs of our hands as the men tossed our watches one at a time into the rocky blue. The past and the impending future were buried together like a pair of stillborn twins. The typewriter went in too, but not before the barber could kneel on the bank of the river and type the word
goodbye
. The watch chains made snaky chimes as they hit the water. We did not see a single watch or clock stop ticking; we did not see those faces crack and fill with liquid.
On shore, all we saw was a time-empty cart with a big wooden wheel. No markers of what approached or what had been. No counting up or counting down. Igor looked worried, aware of the vast emptiness ahead of him, the land of the uninvented. The jeweler’s eyes were panes of glass, easy to see through. In his mind was a man with a row of glinting needle-tipped tools and a pocket watch, its chest open and its metal
“Come back tomorrow,” my mother said.
I ran out the door
and down the street. My feet smacked the puddles hard. I thought about running away forever, except that the whole point was to be home. I spotted my father in the square near the statue of the long-dead war hero with a bunch of other rain-wet men. I wrapped my arms around my father’s leg. He looked at me in confusion, but then patted my head and said hello. He did not know that a deal was under way to sell one of his children. The men, having finished their lunches but unready to return to work, were arguing over the fate of a typewriter. Around us, people walked from shop to shop, carrying baskets and bags of supplies. There were weak fingers of light coming through the spaces between buildings. The baker held the old black typewriter, tapping the
S
key with his ring finger. Should this be part of the new world? Should it be thrown to the bottom of the river, as the butcher suggested? Should it be stomped to bits and sprinkled over the tomato gardens? Should it be encased in glass and viewed as a museum object—evidence of an unknown time? Or should it be what the barber said it was—a clacking record keeper, inherited and benign?
People snarled, angry about the disagreement. “A lot of fuss over a few buttons,” the barber said.
“How are we supposed to know
what
to do?” the jeweler cried.
“Starting over is starting over,” the butcher spat as he stamped a boot-shaped puddle into the mud.
“Is it better to give the next generations the opportunity to invent new things, or is it better to provide them with the tools that were here when we arrived?” my father asked.
Igor said, “We’ll take whatever we can get.”
The typewriter was only one of the items in question. People disagreed about cash registers and hammers. If we threw out our hair ribbons, should we keep our shoelaces? What about our buttons and watches? “We have not gone
back
in time,” the baker said, “we have gone somewhere in time that no one has ever
been
. A brand-new place. Those watches cannot keep track of this place any better than a hairbrush could. We need to get rid of the watches.” He put the typewriter down on the ground, took his black felted-wool hat off and shook the rain out of it.
The barber agreed. “He’s right. This hat is a new world hat now, just as my eyes are new world eyes. But time roots us to the old world—time must never have existed before. Everything depends on that.”
All the glass faces stared back from a wheelbarrow in the middle of the square, ticking down hours that we denied even existed. The watch killers followed the cart past the butcher shop, the bakery, the bank, the candy store, six houses, four wet dogs, a row of white rosebushes, to the path through the cabbage field toward the river. The river garbled, and the rain tickled our foreheads and the backs of our hands as the men tossed our watches one at a time into the rocky blue. The past and the impending future were buried together like a pair of stillborn twins. The typewriter went in too, but not before the barber could kneel on the bank of the river and type the word
goodbye
. The watch chains made snaky chimes as they hit the water. We did not see a single watch or clock stop ticking; we did not see those faces crack and fill with liquid.
On shore, all we saw was a time-empty cart with a big wooden wheel. No markers of what approached or what had been. No counting up or counting down. Igor looked worried, aware of the vast emptiness ahead of him, the land of the uninvented. The jeweler’s eyes were panes of glass, easy to see through. In his mind was a man with a row of glinting needle-tipped tools and a pocket watch, its chest open and its metal
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