The Home for Wayward Clocks (30 page)

But Ione said that kids need encouragement. Incoragement, she spelled it, but James knew what she meant. She said that Cooley needed it especially.

Cooley looked at James, then at the clipboard. She nearly smiled, but he saw her face freeze as she stopped herself. James forced his rehearsed words past the lump in his throat to his mouth. “You’ve been doing a good job, Cooley.”

She turned the smile loose then and as always, her smile brought a change to that darkly made-up face. It was like for a moment, the makeup disappeared and James could see Cooley herself. It struck him this time that her eyes were blue. He wondered if her hair was black under the purple/red dye, or if under the ragged mop was really a blonde who would do those blue eyes justice.

Then she stopped smiling and dark Cooley returned. She shoved the box closer to James, leaned on it with the notebook to write. Then she set the notebook in his lap and started to open the box.

“I brt U something,” James read. “It was my gramma’s. It stopped working and my Mom pitched it.
I hid it under my bed. Can U fix it?”

James set the notebook aside and looked at Cooley. She cradled a clock in her arms. As soon as he saw that distinctive shape, he knew what it was and his heart misfired. “Cooley,” he said and held out his hands. “Let me see.”

She hesitated for a second and her lips formed a word James recognized. Careful. James shook his head. “Who would be more careful with it than me, Cooley?” Her eyes widened and she said something else as she handed the clock over. James glanced at the notebook. “Use that,” he said. “I can’t hear you, remember?”

She wrote quickly. “Then how cum U knew I said careful????”

James wondered at a girl Cooley’s age using that misspelling, then shrugged it off. “I saw the word on your lips, I guess.” James looked down at the clock, ran his hands over its body.

It was an acorn clock, an American clock made exclusively by the Forestville Manufacturing Company from 1847 to 1850. This one was startlingly beautiful, its acorn-shaped case glowing in a soft rosewood. The two wooden rods that flanked the case on either side were still firmly attached, though one lacked its acorn finial. Looking at the painted tablet embedded in the front of the clock, James nodded. All acorn clocks displayed a scene from Bristol, Connecticut. This one showed what looked like a soft blue pond, complete with a little sailboat. A pale green weeping willow in full leaf hung over the water, and in the distance, a white clapboard house slept in the trees. The tablet was in perfect condition, no nicks or scratches marred the scene. The clock’s face was off-white, with solemn black roman numerals and wrought iron hands. It looked sad to James and he lifted it to his ear, trying to find a tick. Then he remembered and sighed. Placing his hands on the front and back of the face, James waited for any reverberation. There was none. This clock’s heart was definitely stopped.

He glanced at Cooley. She scribbled away again in the notebook. Opening the door that hid the pendulum, James checked inside. The pendulum was there and it swung easily. When set in motion, James could feel the clock’s tick, but it was off beat and irregular, lasting only for a minute and half. He gently turned the clock over. As expected, there was another small door at the back of the face. James opened it and looked inside at the clock’s mechanism. He carefully poked some of the gears and cogs. Everything seemed to be there. It was just very, very old and very, very dirty. Apparently, life under Cooley’s bed was suffocating it.

Still, it was better than being tossed out in the garbage. James shuddered, then carefully set the clock on a table. Pushing the hands just a bit, he felt their stiffness and then winced at his own. This clock needed to be completely taken apart, cleaned and oiled, then put back together. Not an inexpensive job. Not something a high school kid could afford.

“Cooley,” James said. “Didn’t your grandmother ever have this clock cleaned? Didn’t your parents?”

She looked up at him and her lips twisted to the side. She didn’t need to write her answer in the notebook; James knew. And he should have known before asking. Parents that let their daughter look like Cooley would hardly spend the time or money to clean an old clock.

She handed James the notebook, then put one hand at the base of the clock as if to steady it. James read her message.

“When it was at my gramma’s, I looked at it 4-ever. Then she died and it came to my house. Only good thing about her dying. I love the picture. I pretend I’m on that boat. Or sometimes I’m under the tree. And I always go home 2 that house. :-P Stoopid, I know.”

James shook his head. “It’s not stupid, Cooley. And it’s a great clock. Do you know there’s really only a few of these around? It’s called an acorn clock.”

She frowned, then pointed at the tablet.

“No, there’s no acorns in the picture. But look at the shape, especially around the clock face. It looks like an acorn.”

She sat back, squinted, tilted her head and the line between her eyebrows grew deeper. Then she tilted her head the other way and James saw her eyes move around the periphery of the clock’s face. He wondered how many times she actually looked away from the tablet, let herself see the clock above, the time, the handsome numbers and hands. Then she smiled and nodded and traced her finger around the acorn shape.

“Right! That’s where it is! These clocks were all made at one factory, owned by the man who created this style. All the clocks show pictures of where he lived.”

She said something, but James couldn’t catch it. He handed her the notebook. “A real place?” she wrote.

“Yes, Bristol, Connecticut.”

She nodded, then wrote again. “I want 2 go there NOW!!!
”

“Well, anyway, I think I can fix it. Everything seems to be here, but it’s old and dirty and dried out. I have to give it an overhaul.”

For a second, her fingers tightened on the clock and it inched a little bit closer to her.

“It’s okay. That just means I take the parts out, clean everything, then put it back together again. It should run.”

She nodded, ran her finger down one of the wooden rods, then pushed the clock to James. On the notebook, she drew a dollar sign and a question mark.

James attempted to drum his fingers on his knee. It hurt, but he kept it up while he thought. Normally, these overhauls cost about two and a quarter. But James knew Cooley didn’t have that kind of money and he was sure her parents would die laughing before they paid that much to fix a clock they thought was in the garbage. Normally, if someone didn’t want to pay for a repair, James offered to buy the clock at a dirt-cheap price. But he didn’t think Cooley would sell. And in this case, the clock was loved. It didn’t deserve to be taken from its home. Even if its home was under a bed.

James considered doing the repair for free. He’d never worked on an acorn clock before and his stiff fingers itched as he thought about diving into those parts. Maybe working on this clock would be the healing his fingers needed. They would loosen up, smooth out, as they attempted to bring life to this clock once again.

But then James glanced at Cooley, sitting quietly by his knees. Diana’s shards pierced him. Why should Cooley get anything for free? She was getting away with breaking Diana’s clock. With making James break Diana’s clock, which meant she broke it too. Why should she get a fixed and valuable clock out of all this?

James looked at the clipboard, at the list of clocks waiting inside. He knew they wondered if they were going to be allowed to stutter, to gasp and then to die. Diana’s clock was broken, Cooley’s wasn’t breathing, and there were lots of other clocks whose lives were hanging on someone’s fingers, someone who had the ability to wind them.

“Cooley,” James said slowly. “It costs a lot of money to fix a clock like this. Over two-hundred dollars.” She turned red and made a grab for the clock, but he put his hand over hers, keeping the clock firmly on the table. “You’ve been working a lot around here, and I’m going to need more help for a while, I guess. Doc says I probably have to go to Chicago, to get my ears looked at. Someone has to keep the clocks running while I’m gone. And I’d like to reopen again too, at least on the weekends when you’re not in school.” James cringed at that, at people walking through the Home without his overseeing. But the longer the Home stayed closed, the longer James was without revenue, and since the Home was what tourists came to see, the rest of the town suffered too. “Maybe you could just work off the repair?”

Cooley’s shoulders relaxed and she sat back down on the step. And she nodded. Then she picked up the clipboard and made a motion toward the house.

“Yes, you’d better get started.” James stood and picked up the clock. “I’ll take this down to my workshop.” She rose too, grabbing the notebook.

Cooley turned toward the living room as James headed for the basement stairs. “Oh,” he said, remembering yesterday. He turned back. “Cooley?”

She looked over her shoulder.

“No more outbursts like yesterday’s, understand? You work here now. You need to behave yourself.”

Cooley opened the notebook and James braced himself as she wrote in huge, swirling movements. But then she turned the notebook to him. “U 2!” blared across the page. She thrust it at James twice, scowled, then turned and stamped away. James couldn’t hear the sound of her feet smacking the floor, but the vibrations ran up his legs.

James went downstairs. Setting the acorn clock on the worktable, he prepared to take it apart. Pulling a big fluffy towel out from a drawer, James nested the clock face down on it. The tablet and the glass over the clock face needed protecting, plus James always thought a clock should be as comfortable as possible while he worked on its insides. Finding a small screwdriver, James opened the little door again and set to undoing the screws that held the clock’s heart in place.

His fingers complained, they didn’t want to move, to make the little fine twisting motions that the clock needed. James swore, and felt himself swear, his body tensing under the words, sweat slipping from his temples. In the time it normally took to remove an entire mechanism, James got one screw out.

Then suddenly, Cooley was by his side. She touched James’ trembling hands, then held out the notebook. “Can I watch?” she wrote. “I want 2 know how.”

James started to shake his head, but then looked at her hands again. The fingers were supple and smooth, and despite the black nail polish, delicate. They were slimmer than James’ and didn’t seem to show much strength. But he thought again of the warmth, of the softness and the cushion of those palms. She would be gentle with the clocks, with all of them, but especially with her own.

“Go finish the winding, Cooley,” James said. “Those clocks that are still living and breathing have to come first. Make sure you get them all. Then come back here. I’m not going very fast anyway, you won’t miss much.”

She frowned, looked like she was going to argue, but then seemed to think better of it. She patted her clock again and James felt it relax under his hands. The screw he was working on suddenly loosened. Then Cooley headed back up the stairs.

James waited until he thought she was halfway up. “Double and triple check that list, Cooley,” he yelled. “No more mistakes.” Then he smiled and leaned back over the clock. He could imagine her expression. Her red face alone would keep the clocks warm.

T
he work on Cooley’s clock went well. Cooley did some of the work herself, but mostly, she just watched. As James carefully removed all the individual pieces from the mechanism, he explained what they were, then handed them over for her to look at, to study. From there, she slipped them into a shallow pan, filled with a cleansing fluid.

“Looks like mechanic’s soup,” she wrote in the notebook and James told her to concentrate and keep working.

Once, she slipped off her high stool and came around to James’ other side. She looked at the leftover pieces from Diana’s clock. When she picked them up, James flinched, and she quickly put them back down. Then she pointed at them and frowned.

James focused in hard on a stuck gear. “They’re from a clock that broke upstairs.”