left the Home to them, to their direction. It was good to know that the museum’s doors wouldn’t close when James’ eyes did for the final time, but there needed to be somebody special there. He or she needed to be more than a caretaker, a supervisor, someone who opened the door in the morning and locked it at night, from the outside.
James felt that the key to the town of What Cheer should have meant something. The promise that the Home for Wayward Clocks would remain open when he was gone should have made him feel safe, should have made him feel that the clocks were safe, in good hands. But the council just couldn’t imagine the need to have someone live there, in the museum, to be with the clocks through the day and into the night.
James knew the need. The clocks did too. He felt their gratitude as he tended to them. But it was more than tending. You just don’t leave your family alone and unprotected at night.
James found the graveyard clock in the exact center of the fireplace mantel on the second floor. He thought of it sitting on a grave late at night in the dark, the fresh dirt pulling at its legs. Did it worry about being buried? About being pulled under, trapped away from the light and the air? James imagined that it did, and he knew how it felt to be held in the cold underground. Did it think its voice would never be heard again, its heart stilled with the crumbling of the grave, a dead hand wrapped around the pendulum? Around the clock’s heart? James deliberately kept this clock in the center of the mantel, where it could feel the warmth from the noonday sun falling in the windows, where it could draw in the heat from a late-night fire, the flames flickering in playful shadows on the wall.
James wanted this for all his clocks. To feel warm and safe and secure. And to know that someone was always close by. To know that the closing of a door, the click of a lock, didn’t seal in loneliness forever.
CHAPTER FOUR:
HELD FAST
The Graveyard Clock’s Story
I didn’t even notice his name at first. I read the obituaries for years and learned to block out those capital-lettered names until I found what I needed to know:
Were they my age?
What did they die of?
When I found someone younger, I felt lucky and thought, There but for the grace of God goes me. When it was someone older, I thought it was his or her time and I hoped and prayed that I made it even longer. Even longer than the ones that said one-hundred and two. But when there was someone my age, I had to read what killed them. It was usually the cancer and then I wondered if it was after me too. Only then did I look at the name. I would sound it out, compare it to my own, add up syllables, vowels, consonants, and feel relieved when our names didn’t match up. I could always find some way that we were different. And then I felt I would have at least one more day to live. To wait.
So at first, the name whipped by, a blur of block letters. I saw my age so I read the cause. Prostate cancer. And I let out a breath because that’s one thing that can’t get me. Us women seem to have an overabundance of spaces and places that fall victim to the cancer, so I’m always glad when I find a kind that has no choice but to leave me alone. But then I looked at the name.
And I thought, It can’t be. And then I thought, Oh, no. Because it was Jerry. And Jerry wasn’t ever supposed to die.
For a while, I just stared at his name, printed so fine, like a title in bold black. His proper name always did have a high class ring to it: Gerald R. Endicott. It was that “cott” that did it. There’s just something almighty about it. But he was always Jerry to me.
I scanned the rest of the obituary. He was survived by his wife and three sons and five grandchildren. And me, I wanted to add. He was survived by me, though I never in my life wanted to live on this world without him someplace on it.
And suddenly, it was like that world hollowed out. Like all the
James felt that the key to the town of What Cheer should have meant something. The promise that the Home for Wayward Clocks would remain open when he was gone should have made him feel safe, should have made him feel that the clocks were safe, in good hands. But the council just couldn’t imagine the need to have someone live there, in the museum, to be with the clocks through the day and into the night.
James knew the need. The clocks did too. He felt their gratitude as he tended to them. But it was more than tending. You just don’t leave your family alone and unprotected at night.
James found the graveyard clock in the exact center of the fireplace mantel on the second floor. He thought of it sitting on a grave late at night in the dark, the fresh dirt pulling at its legs. Did it worry about being buried? About being pulled under, trapped away from the light and the air? James imagined that it did, and he knew how it felt to be held in the cold underground. Did it think its voice would never be heard again, its heart stilled with the crumbling of the grave, a dead hand wrapped around the pendulum? Around the clock’s heart? James deliberately kept this clock in the center of the mantel, where it could feel the warmth from the noonday sun falling in the windows, where it could draw in the heat from a late-night fire, the flames flickering in playful shadows on the wall.
James wanted this for all his clocks. To feel warm and safe and secure. And to know that someone was always close by. To know that the closing of a door, the click of a lock, didn’t seal in loneliness forever.
CHAPTER FOUR:
HELD FAST
The Graveyard Clock’s Story
I didn’t even notice his name at first. I read the obituaries for years and learned to block out those capital-lettered names until I found what I needed to know:
Were they my age?
What did they die of?
When I found someone younger, I felt lucky and thought, There but for the grace of God goes me. When it was someone older, I thought it was his or her time and I hoped and prayed that I made it even longer. Even longer than the ones that said one-hundred and two. But when there was someone my age, I had to read what killed them. It was usually the cancer and then I wondered if it was after me too. Only then did I look at the name. I would sound it out, compare it to my own, add up syllables, vowels, consonants, and feel relieved when our names didn’t match up. I could always find some way that we were different. And then I felt I would have at least one more day to live. To wait.
So at first, the name whipped by, a blur of block letters. I saw my age so I read the cause. Prostate cancer. And I let out a breath because that’s one thing that can’t get me. Us women seem to have an overabundance of spaces and places that fall victim to the cancer, so I’m always glad when I find a kind that has no choice but to leave me alone. But then I looked at the name.
And I thought, It can’t be. And then I thought, Oh, no. Because it was Jerry. And Jerry wasn’t ever supposed to die.
For a while, I just stared at his name, printed so fine, like a title in bold black. His proper name always did have a high class ring to it: Gerald R. Endicott. It was that “cott” that did it. There’s just something almighty about it. But he was always Jerry to me.
I scanned the rest of the obituary. He was survived by his wife and three sons and five grandchildren. And me, I wanted to add. He was survived by me, though I never in my life wanted to live on this world without him someplace on it.
And suddenly, it was like that world hollowed out. Like all the
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